It was another painful week in Palestine. On Wednesday, Shireen Abu Akleh, a venerable Palestinian journalist, was shot dead by Israeli forces while covering a raid in the Jenin refugee camp. As usual, Israel denies that it is responsible for the killing, but eyewitness accounts and B’Tselem’s investigation refute Israel’s denials. Thus it seems this is another example of Israeli execution of a Palestinian who posed no threat whatsoever and was only trying to do her job – which in this case was to document Israel’s illegal assault on Palestinian population centers.
And as if the murder wasn’t enough, Israel outdid itself on Friday when it attacked Shireen Abu Akleh’s funeral. Israel maintains that it needed to maintain order at the funeral, which by its account was a hotbed of anti-Israel sentiment. Aside from the notion that anti-Israel sentiment at the funeral of a Palestinian murdered by Israel is completely understandable, why were Israeli forces there to begin with? Who did they need to protect from the anti-Israel sentiment aside from themselves? No one and that’s the point.
They were there to instigate a scene of chaos and violence so that instead of a story about a funeral for yet another murdered Palestinian instead you have another example of an incident that the mainstream press can report as one where both sides made mistakes and of course you get Palestinians hurling deadly objects, i.e rocks at occupation soldiers, the fact those same soldiers are wearing body armor and armed with machine guns notwithstanding. And of course we get the same mealy-mouthed garbage from the administration in response.
We are in the season of the anniversary of the Nakba, that this has gone on unabated for 74 years, is a blight on mainstream Judaism and the western powers that have the means to end it, if only they wanted to.
