Israel will be reassured by world’s response to Abu Akleh’s death
As Palestinians marked Sunday’s anniversary of the Nakba and reflected on 74 years of calamity, the life and death of Shireen Abu Akleh sums up so much of that shared national experience. This is why her killing as she was covering another Israeli assault on a Palestinian refugee camp — a daily reminder of that catastrophe — matters. Given her stature across the Arabic-speaking world, the legacy of the Al Jazeera Arabic journalist will be immense and long-lasting.
Yet Abu Akleh’s killing has created headlines. Her death cannot be ignored. Israel tries to muddy the waters, victim-blaming and changing its official line several times, but the onus is on the occupying power to either demonstrate that its forces definitively did not kill her or own up to the crime for once.
One thing the anti-Palestinian mob cannot do is pretend that she posed even the tiniest of threats to any Israeli. She was just doing her job.
Even if the killing carries a tiny bead of doubt, the actions of the Israeli armed forces at the family home the day after her death and at the funeral in Jerusalem do not. Abu Akleh was not allowed peace even in death. For forces of the occupying power to harass, intimidate and disturb a grieving family is abhorrent, but the behavior of the armed police in assaulting mourners, even the pallbearers, is shameful to all but the most ardent racists. It highlighted the sheer vindictiveness of the Israeli forces.
How does Israel continually get away with all this? The climate of impunity for its behavior is extraordinary. It is now more than a year since Israeli planes bombed the Gaza offices of Al Jazeera and the Associated Press, but Tel Aviv is still yet to provide the promised evidence to show that Hamas was using the tower. Several Israeli human rights groups have given up calling for Israel to investigate its own actions, as time and time again all that happens is a massive whitewashing exercise.
Two things in particular will have comforted Israel’s leaders. First were the lame, weaselly words of senior Western leaders. Take Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state. He tweeted: “We were deeply troubled by the images of
Israeli police intruding into the funeral procession.” There was no condemnation and how anyone can call beating up mourners with batons “intruding” is remarkable. America’s permanent representative at the UN was little better, stating that she was “distressed by the images” at the funeral, while referring to the tragedy of Abu Akleh’s killing as if it were some natural disaster.
The other major factor that would have reassured Israeli politicians was the media coverage. As ever, there was some first-class coverage, but mixed in with it were some dreadful headlines. A BBC website piece referred to a “tense funeral,” where Israeli police were “jostling” mourners and that Israeli forces waded in. Many headlines referred to clashes at the funeral or even reported that violence broke out. Plenty of passive tenses. Much of the coverage of the killing stressed responsibility was disputed, but failed to mention the video analysis and the three eyewitness testimonies as if they did not count because they were Palestinian.
In her death, Abu Akleh has revealed much about this conflict and occupation, just as she did in her working life. Israeli leaders continue to displace Palestinians, erase their national identity, act with impunity and crack down on journalists and human rights defenders who try to hold them to account. But it is the failure of the international community to uphold its legal and moral duties that is telling. If the major powers had done so over the preceding decades, Abu Akleh might still be alive today, albeit with a lot less to report on.