It has now come to light that the May 11 (2022) killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh (another journalist accompanying her was also shot in the back) was very likely more than just an innocent mistake.
Thanks to the careful and thorough investigation of two organizations, Al Haq (based in Palestine) and Forensic Architecture (based in the UK), not only were other reports of the fatal bullet being an Israeli one confirmed, they were made conclusive.
From the Intercept:
“…the new reconstruction clearly shows that there were neither armed gunmen nor shots fired in the minutes leading up to Abu Akleh’s killing. Instead, the reconstruction shows that Abu Akleh’s and her colleagues’ ‘PRESS’ insignia was clearly visible from the position of the IDF shooter; that the shooter had a ‘clear line of fire,’ indicating ‘precise aim’; and that the firing continued as the journalists sought shelter. After Abu Akleh was hit, a civilian attempting to provide aid to her was fired upon each time he tried to approach her.”
The footage of this event—curiously previously unreleased by Al Jazeera—is even more shocking than I had imagined. This is because unlike the typical scenes released from within the occupied territories, there’s no fighting at all. There are no Palestinians locked into a skirmish with the Israeli forces. There’s no rock-throwing. There’s absolutely nothing going on; just some journalists (clearly marked as such) standing around in the late afternoon along with a few Palestinian civilians. They’re all just standing around, unarmed. Have a look for yourselves.
The investigators make it very clear that Shireen Abu Akleh was not caught in the crossfires of a fight between Palestinians and Israeli forces:
“‘We can prove conclusively that there was no one — zero persons — in between the occupation forces and Shireen,’ they added. ‘There were no bullets, in sound or visually, so it’s not that the army was responding to anything. We can also show using visibility analysis that we’ve done in our model, that the shooting only happened when they were within the visible range of the army, which means that it was fully intentional.’”
When a regular civilian tried to help Shireen, he too was then targeted by the shooter.
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As pointed out by the investigators, this means that she was “deliberately prevented from receiving medical attention.”
Of course, very little has been done by the U.S. in order to discover and demonstrate what really happened to this American citizen. It was not a mistake at all, but rather a crime.
Senator Leahy of Vermont pointed out:
There is an increasing foreboding that, as in so many other cases and like the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, there will never be the independent, credible investigation and accountability that Ms. Abu Akleh’s family, the Secretary of State, I, and others have called for.
May Allah protect our Palestinian brothers and sisters. Amin.
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