Israel has a lot to answer for over death of journalist
Disinformation engulfs Shireen Abu Akleh killing even as she is laid to rest
THE playbook is familiar. One of our very own is unlawfully killed in a conflict zone.
Hardly had the body touched the burial shroud, and the blame game for the responsibility of the atrocity had already begun. Disinformation engulfs the tragedy as the truth is lost in translation – an expedient casualty of war.
But when the above scenario is played out in a 55-year-old occupation as specified under international law, as the illegal Israeli Occupation in the Palestinian Territories now in its 55th year is, the loss of any journalist assumes much greater importance and concern.
Not that the lives of journalists have a greater value. They, together with aid workers are exposed to extraordinary risks and dangers in pursuit of their profession, often bearing witness to horrific events in theatres of war and civil conflict.
The brutal slaying of prominent Palestinian-American journalist, 51-year-old veteran Shireen Abu Akleh on Wednesday, is a case in point.
Akleh, a Palestinian Christian, was shot in the head by a bullet while covering an Israeli army raid in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank town of Jenin, which has drawn worldwide opprobrium.
Akleh worked as the Israel/Occupied Palestine correspondent for the Qatar-based Al Jazeera TV for 25 years until her death.
She was widely respected and admired by international officials, viewers and colleagues.
When even one journalist gets murdered, harassed, detained and incarcerated for simply doing his/her job, then the entire global fraternity of the Fourth Estate is consumed by the loss, pain and assault on their profession.
According to the Paris-based NGO, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), more than 30 journalists were killed and about 500 imprisoned to date this year.
Abu Akleh is the second Palestinian with US citizenship to be killed this year in a situation where the IDF was present.
In January, Omar As’ad, 78, died of a heart attack after he was detained in the West Bank.
While the war of accusations as to the exact circumstances of the killing will take time to abate and unfold, Israel as the occupying force under the various international conventions and declarations has a lot to answer for.
Its credibility as the sole bastion of liberal democracy in a sea of absolute monarchies, dictatorships and authoritarian regimes rings hollow, as if holding regular general elections is its key determinant.
The RSF World Press Freedom Index 2021 ranks Israel 86th out of 180, with a score of 59.62 denoting that press freedom in Israel is “problematic”.
Israel is a past master in ignoring international law and consensus, including the resolutions of a discredited and anachronistic UN Security Council with its veto power for its permanent five members, three of which support Israel unremittingly.
If something good is to come of Shireen Abu Akleh’s murder, it is the exposé of the naivety of those Gulf Arab states, Egypt, Sudan and Morocco, which embarked on a onesided US-brokered rapprochement with Israel in the past two years in the belief that they could persuade the Israeli government towards a peace settlement based on the UN two-state solution through dialogue and the normalisation of people-to-people contact.
It is an Israeli slap in the face for the ruling Qatari family, ironically the owner of Al Jazeera.
Most South African journalists, with their legacy of the brutal suppression of freedom of expression under apartheid, will have enormous empathy and solidarity with their colleagues in, and those from outside covering, Occupied Palestine.
Watchdogs such as New York-based Human Rights Watch maintain that “Israeli authorities are committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution against millions of Palestinians.
“For more than 54 years, Israel has occupied Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, relying routinely on forcible displacement and excessive force. The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza arbitrarily arrest dissidents and torture Palestinians in their custody.”
RSF has catalogued a de facto twotier system of treatment of Israeli and Palestinian journalists:
Arab journalists in Israel encounter more difficulties in their work than their Jewish counterparts, because of the tensions inherent in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Palestinian journalists are systematically subjected to violence because of their coverage of events in the West Bank.
Israeli reporters are barred from visiting the Gaza Strip.
Several smear campaigns against the media have been carried out by politicians, their parties and supporters. Journalists were harassed or received threats, requiring them to be placed under protection.
At least 144 Palestinian journalists have been at the receiving end of live rounds, rubber bullets, stun grenades or teargas fired by Israeli soldiers or police in the Palestinian Territories in the past four years.
The International Press Institute led the chorus for “a thorough and transparent independent investigation” into Akleh’s killing, “in order to determine those responsible, including whether the journalists were intentionally targeted”. Even the US State Department concurred.
The PR machine of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) quickly reacted with its now familiar narrative that it was “likely” that Akleh and her injured colleague Ali Samoudi were shot by Palestinian gunmen during an exchange of fire – a narrative the western media was only too willing to report without further scrutiny. Witness reports contradict this claim.
“Documentation of Palestinian gunfire distributed by Israeli military cannot be the gunfire that killed journalist Shireen Abu Akleh,” tweeted B’Tselem’s The Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.
A field researcher documented the exact locations in which the Palestinian gunman depicted in an IDF video fired, as well as the exact location in which Abu Akleh was killed.
Persistent impunity has emboldened successive Israeli authorities.
At UN forums, too many Western states repeat platitudes and tired talking points that bear little relation to the reality of structural repression on the ground, laments Michael Lynk, the UN special rapporteur for the Human Rights Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.