On her last day as White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked about Israeli police beating mourners with batons at the funeral procession for Shireen Abu Akleh. Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist and veteran correspondent at Al Jazeera, was shot dead by Israeli forces while reporting on a military raid in Jenin on Wednesday.
“I would say first that we’ve all seen those images, they’re obviously deeply disturbing,” Psaki told reporters. “This is a day where we should all be marking, including everyone there, the memory of a remarkable journalist who lost her life…with the disturbing footage from the funeral procession today in Jerusalem, we regret the intrusion into what should have been a peaceful procession. We’ve urged respect for the funeral procession, the mourners, and the family at this sensitive time.”
“We’re also in close touch with Israeli and Palestinian authorities,” she continued. “We have been, and will continue to be, especially with the images we saw today. We’re not currently involved in the investigation, but we are working to bridge cooperation and available to provide assistance as needed.”
When asked if Biden will speak directly with the Israeli government about the killing Psaki said, “We have been engaged with them and have offered support and if they need specific support from us we will provide that.”
Some U.S. lawmakers, like Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, have called for an independent inquiry into Abu Akleh’s death. However, the Biden administration has made it clear that they support Israel running its own investigation. Yesterday State Department spokesman Ned Price said that “the Israelis have the wherewithal and the capabilities” to be “thorough” and “comprehensive.”
Axios’s Barak Ravid reports that their is “anger and frustration” among some Biden officials over the violence, but so far this emotion hasn’t added up to any discernible action or calls for Israeli accountability. During the same briefing Price was asked whether Israel was justified in bombing Associated Press’s Gaza office a year ago, but refused to condemn the attack.
The Biden administration also currently opposes multiple United Nations investigations into Israeli human rights violations and potential war crimes in Palestine. “We have concerns with the council,” said Price last year. “We will vigorously oppose the council’s disproportionate attention on Israel, which includes the council’s only standing agenda item targeting a single country.”
This is inhumane and uncivilized behavior. First they brutally killed this brave lady, lie about it, and when the real facts comes out from BT’selem, they reluctantly admit to the fact that it “might” be their own that killed her, then they raid her home, and attack the mourners carrying her coffin to her resting place. Looks like killer Bennet is trying to look more vicious than Crooked Bibi.
Our esteemed President, the White House, and the majority of members in Congress , say nothing, do nothing, or cannot bring themselves to condemn this outrage. They will bury their heads in the sand, and hope it will all go away as it always does.
If this were Russian thugs that deliberately killed a Ukrainian journalist, we can only imagine the howls of outrage, and statements that Russia is going to be held accountable for this brutality.
Our leaders do not have the basic decency to acknowledge that she was an American, and that those who killed her, should be held accountable. Calling for investigations and not following through means nothing. Who do they think they are kidding?
I think it might be anti-Semitic to condemn the Israeli forces’ attack on the funeral.
That is the problem…the total lack of gonads (balls) to stand up to israel. For shame!!!
My input: Jenin is the spot and source of lawlessness. Not that maintaining law and order is a high value, but in the Israeli strategy of managing the conflict, the mode of management varies from place to place and from situation to situation. I did not agree with the shooting at the border with Gaza, although the March of Return is the tactic of the desperate, I favor Israel figuring out a modus operandi with Hamas in Gaza but the actual policy of freezing any progress with Hamas in Gaza leads to the Palestinian tactic of self immolation like the March of Return for the sake of “useful” headlines. I don’t have a similar policy prescription regarding the West Bank and so the lawlessness of Jenin is not something where I can say, “you should be doing x, y or z and since you aren’t you ended up here.” the civilian settlement of the west bank is the big “problem” for me, the mixing of voting Israelis among disenfranchised indigenous is the problem and the military aspect of the occupation is inevitable as long as there is no solution and as such centers of resistance to a prolonged occupation are part of the equation. thus the situation of the prevalence of weapons in Jenin is not in the prescription stage of my assessment. when there is an armed city where the occupying army treads the ground with anticipation of firefights, the situation is “hotter than a match head” and so the situation is flammable and soldiers quite often shoot first and ask questions later, that is the nature of a free fire zone situation. when that kid mohammed al dura got shot I did not spend hours poring over the evidence in the argument about who fired the fatal shot. I don’t expect a real investigation here. if b’tzelem thinks it was idf gunfire that killed this “admirable” journalist, this seems like a fair assessment. but the nature of a free fire zone needs to be in the discussion. i oppose the management of the conflict as the primary strategy and advocate whatever attempts at making peace Yossi Beilin or Gershon Goremberg or Gershom Baskin advocate at this moment (whatever they propose has an ice cube chance on a sizzling day in the current environment and this is why I emphasize the lack of a concrete strategy proposal analogous to proposals vis a vis Gaza.)