On Wednesday, May 11, Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian journalist, and senior correspondent for the Al Jazeera news network, was shot in the head and killed while reporting on an Israeli military raid in Jenin, in the West Bank region of Palestine. Two days later, a funeral procession of thousands of Palestinians as well as a small number of people from around the world, was attacked by Israeli forces who provoked the crowd of mourners by tearing Palestinian flags off a vehicle leading the procession and then viciously and indiscriminately beating people—at one point causing mourners to nearly drop Shireen Abu Akleh’s casket.

The assault, in its obscene desecration of a funeral procession, sparked international outrage. And it came as evidence accumulated that at minimum raises serious questions about Israel’s explanation for Abu Akleh’s death.

A Courageous Reporter Giving Voice to the Lives of the Palestinian People

Shireen Abu Akleh’s funeral on May 13 was the largest mass funeral in Palestine in years, with block after block in East Jerusalem packed with defiant mourners.

Israeli police threatened the leaders of the funeral procession that if there were “inciteful” chants or songs, or display of Palestinian flags, they would stop the funeral. But Palestinian flags flew, songs and chants for a free Palestine were not silenced, and the march was not stopped—even in the face of a vicious assault by club-wielding police. In some instances, marchers defended themselves and each other from the brutal police attack.

In the wake of the Israeli assault on the funeral procession, outrage spread. People have gathered daily outside Abu Akleh’s home in East Jerusalem with Palestinian flags to mourn her death and celebrate her life. People in the house and from her neighborhood stood their ground and would not back down when police attempted to storm her house and force the people inside to take down a Palestinian flag. One neighbor said, “Shireen was a Christian and we are a Muslim family, but that didn’t matter. She has united us.”

Shireen Abu Akleh entered college in Jordan to become an architect but later switched her field of study to journalism. Speaking at a ceremony commemorating her 25 years of journalism, she said she chose that profession “to be close to people. It might not be easy to change the reality but at least I could bring their voice to the world.”

As a reporter, mostly for Al Jazeera, Abu Akleh brought the lives and struggles of the Palestinian people to the world. She reported from inside Israeli jails where Palestinians were tortured. She took great risks to cover sustained armed conflict between Palestinian and Israeli forces in the West Bank city of Jenin in 2002, and the horrific death and suffering inflicted on the Palestinian people in Gaza in successive Israeli slaughters. Her stories punctured the whiteout of Israeli crimes by Western media and were looked to by Palestinians to get a wide-angle picture of the oppression and repression they were subjected to as a people.

A 66-year-old resident of the Palestinian city of Ramallah told the New York Times, “When we saw that Shireen had been assassinated, we all felt it, in every Palestinian home. The bullet didn’t just kill Shireen—the bullet killed a piece of all of us. She was a symbol, and she lived inside all of our homes.”

Abu Akleh told Al Jazeera that she was constantly being accused by Israeli authorities of photographing Israeli military activity (something that is impossible to avoid for any honest journalist covering Palestine under constant Israeli military repression, but an accusation with draconian criminal implications in Israel). And she described being targeted by fanatical Zionist settlers who act as shock troops for Israeli expansion into lands where Palestinians live.

After the club-wielding Israeli police assault on Abu Akleh’s funeral in East Jerusalem on May 13, Gideon Levy, an Israeli Jewish journalist wrote: “Our police are storm troopers. Palestinians have long known this, but Israelis now have to understand this as well: Israel’s police have shed all restraints. The blue-uniformed policemen and the green-uniformed Border Policemen have become storm troopers in the deepest and most loaded sense of this term; there is no other way of describing them.”

U.S. Spin Doctors Advise on Managing an Ally’s Crisis

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he was "deeply troubled by the images of Israeli police intruding into the funeral procession of Palestinian American Shireen Abu Akleh." (Abu Akleh was born, raised, and lived most of her life in Palestine but obtained U.S. citizenship while living in the U.S. for a time.) Compare that obligatory and toothless statement to a recent State Department tweet: “We are horrified that journalists and filmmakers—noncombatants—have been killed and injured in Ukraine by Kremlin forces… This is yet another gruesome example of the Kremlin’s indiscriminate actions.” Actually, this is yet another gruesome example of the hypocrisy of the U.S. when it comes to the treatment of journalists by countries in conflict with the U.S. (like Russia) as opposed to countries like Israel that are strategic allies of the U.S.

And the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield—quick with (hypocritical) accusations of war crimes when that serves the interests of the U.S.—would only say she was "deeply distressed" by the images from the funeral. Thomas-Greenfield’s statement that "the tragedy of her killing should be handled with the utmost respect, sobriety and care" can only be objectively understood as advice by a top operative of the U.S. empire to a key ally on how to manage and cover up a public relations crisis.

Lies and Coverup

The Israeli government initially claimed Abu Akleh was most likely shot and killed by Palestinian forces who were involved in an armed clash with Israeli troops in another part of Jenin than where Abu Akleh was on scene. Those claims came in the context of lies and distortions by the Israeli government, the U.S. government, and media mouthpieces of U.S. imperialism that turn reality upside down to claim there is a “wave of terrorism” in Israel against Israelis. As pointed out in our article “The REAL ‘Wave of Terror’ in Israel: Intensified Apartheid Repression and Genocidal Killings OF PALESTINIANS”: “What is going on is the intensification of Israel’s genocidal assault on the Palestinian people, driven by the reality that Israel is a colonial settler state on the land of the Palestinian people which for decades has served the interests of U.S. imperialism.”

A valuable Time Magazine report documents Israel’s record of attacks on Palestinian journalists including command-ordered police beatings. And as the Time report summarized: “Deny and deflect is Israel’s usual strategy for dealing with high-profile civilian deaths.”

In this case, witnesses and subsequent investigation have poked huge holes in the Israeli story. Shireen Abu Akleh was with a colleague, Ali Samodi, an Al Jazeera producer, each of them with a large “PRESS” sign in English on their jacket. Ali Samodi, who was shot in the back, told reporters from his hospital bed that even after Abu Akleh had fallen to the ground and colleagues tried to reach her, the bullets kept coming. Video from the site of the shooting immediately after Abu Akleh was hit confirms this version of events. In a phone interview from his hospital bed, Ali Samoudi said: “There were no armed Palestinians or resistance or even civilians in the area,” adding, “We walked toward the soldiers for about 20 meters. Then all of a sudden, the first bullet was fired.”

Another journalist on the scene, Shatha Hanaysha, tried to reach out to Abu Akleh after she was shot. Hanaysha was forced back by a volley of gunfire. Hanaysha told Al Jazeera that Israeli forces “did not stop firing even after [Abu Akleh] collapsed. I couldn’t even extend my arm to pull her because of the shots. The army was adamant on shooting to kill.” And she said, “I think that what happened was an assassination targeting press.” (Wall Street Journal, 5/13/2022).

If Abu Akleh was indeed killed by Israeli forces, it would not be the first time a journalist’s voice was violently silenced by Israel. Since 1992, at least 15 Palestinian and other journalists have been killed by Israeli forces in the Palestinian territories, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. (See “Abu Akleh’s killing highlights Israeli attacks on journalists,” Al Jazeera, 5/11/22.) And Israel’s violent attacks on reporters to silence exposure of its crimes include the bombing of the headquarters of the Associated Press and Al Jazeera in Gaza as Israel was carrying out one of its repeated massacres in that region of Palestine (see “Israel Bombs Associated Press and Al Jazeera Offices: A War Crime to White Out War Crimes”).

An autopsy on Abu Akleh’s body conducted by the Palestine Authority (PA) produced a 5.56 mm cartridge that struck her in the head. This is ammunition used in M-16 rifles, the standard-issue weapon of Israeli units in the area. Armed Palestinian groups also obtain and use Israeli M-16s through various means. As its original story has been exposed, Israel is calling for a joint investigation with the PA to determine whose gun the bullet came from saying only they have the technology and expertise to settle that. The PA has refused that and announced they "will immediately go to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to chase down the criminals."

The U.S. and Israel have officially exempted themselves from the ICC and insist its jurisdiction applies only when it serves their interests. And, as Bob Avakian speaks to in Part Four of a recent interview, in relation to bodies like the ICC that uphold human rights in the abstract, “within the current power relations obtaining in the world, there is no real way to ‘enforce’ these rights—and, in a more basic sense, there is no real way to ‘effect’ these rights within the confines of a capitalist-imperialist world economy and political system.” Within those limits, the ICC can sometimes be a forum for adjudicating accusations of war crimes and putting Israel on trial in respect to the death of Shireen Abu Akleh could contribute to getting to the truth of what happened. As such, any move to take this case to the ICC will be opposed and stonewalled by Israel.

Whatever the exact circumstances, the death of Shirleen Abu Akleh was framed and defined by the fact that Israel is built on the violent ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, maintained through brutal Apartheid style and increasingly genocidal repression, terror and murder, and has for decades had the full backing of U.S. capitalism-imperialism which sees in Israel a unique and invaluable enforcer and ally (see the Revolution special issue Bastion of Enlightenment… or Enforcer for Imperialism: The Case of ISRAEL).

The whole truth behind Shireen Abu Akleh’s death must come out, including whether it was part of the pattern and practice of Israel targeting and killing journalists (a war crime in its own right) to cover up ongoing war crimes against the Palestinian people.