{"id":214062,"date":"2022-05-30T12:00:36","date_gmt":"2022-05-30T11:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=214062"},"modified":"2022-05-29T05:31:34","modified_gmt":"2022-05-29T04:31:34","slug":"the-killing-of-shireen-abu-akleh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/05\/the-killing-of-shireen-abu-akleh\/","title":{"rendered":"The Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh"},"content":{"rendered":"

28 May 2022 – The Collaborative article below was published in <\/em>Foreign Policy in Focus on May 23, 2022. The killing of Shireen Abu Akleh sent shock waves throughout the Middle East as she was known and respected as a trusted journalist. We keep waiting for a \u2018Sharpville Moment\u2019 with respect to Palestine and Israeli impunity. When will it come?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

****************************<\/p>\n

The USA Must Demand a Credible Investigation into Shireen Abu Akleh\u2019s Killing<\/strong><\/p>\n

By\u00a0Phyllis Bennis <\/a>and Richard Falk<\/a><\/p>\n

If our tax dollars are furnishing the weapons that kill journalists and other innocents, that\u2019s not just an international crime \u2014 it\u2019s against U.S. law, too.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Shireen Abu Akleh was a seasoned al-Jazeera correspondent for the past 25 years. She was known and respected throughout the Arab world for her brave, honest reporting of the Palestinian struggle.<\/p>\n

On May 11, she was shot and killed while covering an Israeli raid on the Palestinian refugee camp outside Jenin.<\/p>\n

Abu Akleh\u2019s killing in the Israeli-occupied West Bank was shocking, but hardly unusual. According to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, she was\u00a0the\u00a086th\u00a0journalist to be killed<\/a>\u00a0while covering Israeli oppression since Israel first occupied the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem in 1967.<\/p>\n

But her killing is part of a longer pattern of Israeli violence and collective punishment \u2014 not just against journalists but against all Palestinians \u2014 committed with impunity and rationalized by trumped up \u201csecurity\u201d concerns.<\/p>\n

The depth of this abuse was again made shockingly visible after the killing itself,\u00a0when Israeli police attacked the funeral procession<\/a>\u00a0carrying Shireen\u2019s body to the church. They threw Palestinian flags to the ground and violently beat mourners \u2014 including the pallbearers, who nearly dropped the casket.<\/p>\n

The killing of Shireen and the assault on the funeral procession demonstrated once again the structural nature of Israeli racism and violence against Palestinians. As\u00a0Amnesty International describes<\/a>\u00a0it, Israel\u2019s \u201cregular violations of Palestinians\u2019 rights are not accidental repetitions of offenses, but part of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no serious question that Abu Akleh was deliberately killed by an Israeli sniper.\u00a0She was wearing a helmet and a blue protective vest marked \u201cPRESS\u201d<\/a>\u00a0and surrounded by other journalists when the group was fired on. She was shot in the head and killed. Another Palestinian journalist was shot and seriously injured.<\/p>\n

As so often happens, Israeli officials immediately tried to blame the Palestinians. Israeli officials from Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on down\u00a0made\u00a0unconvincing claims<\/a>\u00a0that Palestinian gunmen were responsible for the killing. Within hours, fieldworkers for the Israeli human rights organization B\u2019tselem easily\u00a0refuted the Israeli claims.<\/p>\n

By the time Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met with his Israeli counterpart Benny Gantz on May 17, Tel Aviv had largely pulled back from its claims of Palestinian culpability. The\u00a0Israeli press claimed<\/a>that Gantz had indicated Israel welcomed an investigation of Shireen\u2019s killing.<\/p>\n

But that claim (unmentioned in the Pentagon\u2019s read-out of the meeting) flew in the face of\u00a0reports that Israel had already decided<\/a>\u00a0it would not investigate, because questioning Israeli soldiers as potential suspects \u201cwould provoke opposition and controversy within the IDF and in Israeli society in general.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such a pattern of denial is but one aspect of a broader pattern of oppression that is much more pervasive.<\/p>\n

Israel itself makes no secret of this.\u00a0The country\u2019s own Basic Law of 2018<\/a>\u00a0explicitly gives only Jewish citizens of Israel, not Palestinian citizens, the right of self-determination.<\/p>\n

Amnesty<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Human Rights Watch<\/a>, along with\u00a0B\u2019tselem<\/a>, have concluded that this pattern constitutes the crime of apartheid. This international crime, and its associated human rights violations and war crimes, has continued for decades while political, diplomatic, economic, and military support from the United States goes forward unconditionally.<\/p>\n

Washington sends more than $3.8 billion every year directly to the Israeli military, most of it used to purchase U.S.-made weapons systems, ammunition, and more. This makes the U.S. complicit in Israel\u2019s criminal wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

So what needs to happen now?<\/p>\n

International engagement is crucial. The International Criminal Court has the authority to add the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh and attacks on Palestinian journalists to its\u00a0existing investigations<\/a>\u00a0of alleged Israeli crimes. A variety of UN bodies could also respond by issuing reports that offer policy recommendations.<\/p>\n

Calls for an independent, credible investigation need to include a focus on United States responsibility.<\/p>\n

Biden administration officials and some members of Congress have\u00a0called for an investigation of Abu Akleh\u2019s killing<\/a>. That\u2019s welcome, but hardly sufficient. Israel has a long history of conducting its own investigations, and\u00a0virtually all result in impunity for Israeli military forces<\/a>. High-ranking military officials and political decision makers are never even scrutinized.<\/p>\n

We in the United States should insist on more.<\/p>\n

Why? Above all, because our own tax dollars pay for\u00a020 percent of Israel\u2019s entire military budget<\/a>. The bullet or the gun used to kill Shireen could have even been purchased from U.S. weapons manufacturers with our own money.<\/p>\n

If that\u2019s the case, we need to know \u2014 because U.S. laws prohibit it.<\/p>\n

The Leahy Law\u2019s restrictions on military aid is unequivocal: \u201cNo assistance shall be furnished,\u201d it says, \u201cto any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

Credible information, including from Israel\u2019s leading human rights organization and five respected journalists standing with Shireen Abu Akleh when she was killed, indicates she was\u00a0shot in cold blood<\/a>. If that isn\u2019t sufficient, the State Department should propose an independent, UN-based fact-finding team to prepare a report.<\/p>\n

Militarism is on the rise, both in the U.S. and around the world. Maybe the brutal killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, a U.S. citizen as well as a proud Palestinian born in Jerusalem \u2014 and the police attack on mourners grieving her death \u2014 will provide an impetus toward rethinking Washington\u2019s unconditional support of Israeli lawlessness.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Richard Falk is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, Chair of Global Law, Faculty of Law, at Queen Mary University London,\u00a0 Research Associate the Orfalea Center of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Fellow of the Tellus Institute. He directed the project on Global Climate Change, Human Security, and Democracy at UCSB and formerly served as director the North American group in the World Order Models Project. Between 2008 and 2014, Falk served as UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Occupied Palestine. His book,\u00a0<\/em>(Re)Imagining Humane Global Governance\u00a0(2014), proposes a value-oriented assessment of world order and future trends. His most recent books are\u00a0<\/em>Power Shift\u00a0(2016);\u00a0<\/em>Revisiting the Vietnam War\u00a0(2017);\u00a0<\/em>On Nuclear Weapons: Denuclearization, Demilitarization and Disarmament\u00a0(2019); and\u00a0<\/em>On Public Imagination: A Political & Ethical Imperative, ed. with Victor Faessel & Michael Curtin (2019).\u00a0He\u00a0is the author or coauthor of other books, including\u00a0<\/em>Religion and Humane Global Governance\u00a0(2001),\u00a0<\/em>Explorations at the Edge of Time\u00a0(1993),\u00a0<\/em>Revolutionaries and Functionaries\u00a0(1988),\u00a0<\/em>The Promise of World Order\u00a0(1988),\u00a0<\/em>Indefensible Weapons (with Robert Jay Lifton, 1983),\u00a0<\/em>A Study of Future Worlds\u00a0(1975), and\u00a0<\/em>This Endangered Planet\u00a0(1972).\u00a0His memoir,\u00a0<\/em>Public Intellectual: The Life of a Citizen Pilgrim\u00a0was published in March 2021 and received an award from Global Policy Institute at Loyala Marymount University as \u2018the best book of 2021.<\/strong>\u2019 He has been nominated frequently for the Nobel Peace Prize since 2009.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 richardfalk.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

28 May 2022 – The USA Must Demand a Credible Investigation into Shireen Abu Akleh\u2019s Killing – The assassination sent shock waves throughout the Middle East as Shireen was known and respected as a trusted journalist. We keep waiting for a \u2018Sharpville Moment\u2019 with respect to Palestine and Israeli impunity. When will it come?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":122129,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[928,101,100,87,2414,2415,2416,767,771,427,85,880,99,92,1025,886],"class_list":["post-214062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide","tag-bds-boycott-divestment-sanctions","tag-cultural-violence","tag-direct-violence","tag-gaza","tag-israeli-apartheid","tag-israeli-army","tag-israeli-occupation","tag-middle-east","tag-nakba","tag-palestine","tag-palestine-israel","tag-state-terrorism","tag-structural-violence","tag-violent-conflict","tag-west-bank","tag-zionism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}