The Biden administration needs to get Israel’s killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh out of the headlines before he goes to Israel and Palestine next month, so today, July 4th, the State Department issued a statement on the killing that is as weasely as they get. We can’t tell anything from the misshapen bullet the Palestinians turned over. Yes it looks like Israel killed the Palestinian American journalist on May 11. But they were fighting terrorists. It was tragic and not intentional.
State’s Ned Price says:
The USSC [U.S. Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority] concluded that gunfire from IDF positions was likely responsible for the death of Shireen Abu Akleh. The USSC found no reason to believe that this was intentional but rather the result of tragic circumstances during an IDF-led military operation against factions of Palestinian Islamic Jihad on May 11, 2022, in Jenin, which followed a series of terrorist attacks in Israel.
Shireen Abu Akleh’s family issued a powerful statement in response this morning that calls for an open and transparent investigation, free of “political consideration.”
The Abu Akleh family dismisses the State Department findings as an assumptive and irrelevant effort to “spin the narrative” in Israel’s favor, ala a CSI-style test.
The focus on the bullet has always been misplaced and was an attempt by the Israeli side to spin the narrative in its favor, as if this were some kind of police whodunit that could be solved by a CSI-style forensic test. The notion that the American investigators, whose identity is not disclosed in the statement, believe the bullet “likely came from Israeli positions” is cold comfort. We say this in light of the addition of a conclusory pronouncement that the killing was not intentional but rather the result of a purported Israeli counterterrorism raid gone wrong, which is frankly insulting to Shireen’s memory and ignores the history and context of the brutal and violent nature of what is now the longest military occupation in modern history.
The family says the truth is that Israel killed Shireen Abu Akleh under policies that regard all Palestinians as targets.
The truth is that the Israeli military killed Shireen according to policies that view all Palestinians – civilian, press or otherwise – as legitimate targets, and we were expecting that an American investigation would focus on finding the responsible parties and holding them accountable, not parsing over barely-relevant details and then assuming good faith on behalf of a recalcitrant and hostile occupying power. In other words, all available evidence suggests that a US citizen was the subject of an extrajudicial killing by a foreign government that receives billions of dollars in American military aid each year to perpetuate a prolonged and entrenched military occupation of millions of Palestinians.
Palestinians had been urged by the U.S. to turn the bullet over for testing. The examination of the bullet included Israeli officials and was apparently held at the U.S. Embassy. The New York Times toes the official line, it says, Biden is about to visit and he doesn’t want the matter to “overshadow” his trip. Any more than the Jamal Khashoggi murder when Biden goes to Saudi Arabia.
This whole thing is a charade. Israel knows who shot that bullet and the shooter’s motivation and they are not turning over that evidence. And the U.S. is now doing Israel’s bidding to try to make the matter go away. As the Abu Akleh family says, this statement does nothing to dispel the possibility that Israel targeted Shireen Abu Akleh that morning. A tight group of bullets were fired near her head. These were not ricochet bullets.
Journalists should be demanding that Israel produce its evidence in the case. They should be publicizing the family’s demand:
We continue to call on the American government to conduct an open, transparent, and thorough investigation of all the facts by independent agencies free from any political consideration or influence.
Israel is not happy with the U.S. conclusion that the bullet “likely” came from an Israeli soldier, as everyone has already told us. It wants zero responsibility for the killing even as it refuses to release information. Writes Jeet Heer: “The State Department went about as far as possible to whitewash this horrific killing & that’s still not good enough for Israel’s government, which wants nothing less than a complete lie.”
h/t Dave Reed.
This is an American citizen for goodness sake. Is this how our nation responds to a brutal assassination, and dealing with her killers? Once again the US does its utmost to protect and defend a bunch of killers. BT’selem and other human rights groups have all concluded that Israel is indeed the criminal nation that killed her, using intensive investigations to prove that she could NOT have been killed by any Palestinian. We have experts in ballistics, and experienced officials in forensics, and they cannot recognize the bullet and make a firm conclusion? Do they think people are stupid?
The US is once again covering Israel’s Sh*t for them, and trying to minimize their crimes.
I suppose the “Israel was defending itself” narrative that American leaders are known to make when justifying Israel’s brutal crimes, cannot be used here. Unless of course they want to run with the “she was armed with a camera” justification. So now it has come to the “inconclusive” results of the so called investigation.
Shireen Abu Akleh’s family is right, this is an insult to her memory, and yet another embarrassing move by the US to downplay a crime, and give Shireen’s killers the “get out of jail” card again. The same way they allowed Rachel Corries killers to get away scot free.
Shame on the Biden administration for doing Israel’s dirty PR work. Hope they feel happy when Israel announces annexations of land or maybe more illegal settlements when he lands in apartheid land, sending Biden a strong message once again, that he is not respected in apartheid land, and they do not give a damn about America, but do keep sending them the billions of dollars and the weapons anyway.
Once again the US sucks up to Israel. As long as AIPAC controls the US politicians with their money and reelection influence it will never change. Israel will continue to play the victim and get away with absolute impunity. Why is there no investigation? Why have the Israeli’s not turned over the results of soldier interviews and rifle ballistics? Why has not the soldier come forward? He/she probably got an all expense paid vacation to Thailand. More importantly, why has the US not asked for any of the obvious? Israel knows exactly who fired the bullet and why. As a former Investigator I will tell you these are just a few of the more obvious items to find out, There are many more. Biden and the State Department are whitewashing this whole affair. Israel wants absolution. Enough lying. What a tragedy for the family and memory of Shireen Abu Akleh. Hopefully this will not be over soon and the truth will eventually be told.
If Shireen was shot accidentally, why did the soldiers continue firing and preventing anyone from helping her? You don’t need to examine a bullet to pursue that line of enquiry.
Laughable, as if anything less than directly naming Israel and declaring it an assassination was acceptable. BTW, maybe the vaunted Palestinian CSI unit can give the Americans a clue as how to examine a bullet. For some reason the bullets condition did not hamper their “investigation”.