100 days later, the world still demands justice for Shireen Abu Akleh

It has been over one hundred days since Israel killed veteran Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and assaulted the crowds of Palestinian mourners and pallbearers carrying her casket at her funeral two days later.

One hundred days is beyond enough of time to hold a criminal to account. In the case of Shireen Abu Akleh, however, it has not been enough. 

Shireen’s Al Jazeera colleagues have joined her family, fellow Palestinian journalists, members of Congress, politicians worldwide, human rights groups, and press unions in demanding the U.S. launch an independent and transparent investigation into the crime and pursue justice and accountability. 

The last thing they wanted was for their calls to still be unmet after one hundred days. Worse, they have been ignored and dismissed.

After prominent news platforms like the Washington Post, CNN, Al Jazeera, and belatedly the New York Times demonstrated through visual, unquestionable evidence that Israel was responsible for the kill shot, a light of hope was ignited that Israel would be held to account. Predictably, Israel’s impunity thrived. The White House maintains a steady stance of whitewashing Israel’s hands of every Palestinian it kills.

Although Shireen was a dual citizen of the United States and was killed by an Israeli sniper, the American government simply uttered “deep condolences” to her family three days after the killing, and took no action to hold Israel to account. 

Since then the Biden administration has only provided lip service to the millions of people grieving their loss of Shireen and announced that it failed to reach a “comprehensive conclusion for the investigation.”

Surprisingly enough, President Biden had pledged billions of dollars worth of military support to the Israeli military during his visit to Palestine on July 15, and refused, although minutes away from their home in Jerusalem, to meet with the Abu Akleh family. Shireen’s brother, niece, and nephew were then forced to travel to D.C. to push for more American-led action that would bring them justice, only to come back home empty-handed.

Shireen was not an ordinary Palestinian media figure. I watched her report on countless injustices, raids, and attacks, often more from prisoners’ homes and protest tents. She was killed while covering an Israeli military raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. The only thing that armed Shireen throughout her venerable career was a press vest and a helmet. 

She devoted her life to changing the cruel reality of her home and people living an occupation. And she sacrificed everything for that sole goal, solemnly and with love.

When Shireen was killed, she wasn’t holding a gun. She wasn’t firing a rocket. She wasn’t threatening someone with a knife. She wasn’t even chanting a slogan that may scare an Israeli sniper. She was empty handed. She was no threat to anyone. She was wearing a press vest and a helmet. She was in the Jenin camp to cover a military raid – to do her job. And she was killed for it. 

I never missed a chance to learn from Shireen and copy her bravery and determination at work. It is with great pain and anger that I am writing in tribute to her noble legacy and omnipresent spirit at a time when accountability or justice has been delivered, or is even in sight. 

She was not, nor unfortunately will be, the last journalist to bear the cost of a lifetime for exposing an indisputably superior power that crackdowns on the most basic right a journalist could ever yearn for – the freedom of speech and expression. 

Today we are past one hundred days of Shireen Abu Akleh’s murder – the world has done nothing near the bare minimum to hold Israel to account, which continues to enjoy impunity and protection for spilling Palestinian blood. 

As fellow Palestinian journalists we’re reminded once again that Israel’s deliberate attacks on freedom of media and press are as old as the early days of the occupation of Palestine. But with perseverance and willpower we continue to undermine the attempts to conceal the injustices inflicted daily in Palestine.

We shall grieve Shireen and carry on her legacy despite the fear we could be next. And we’ll keep on persisting and telling the truth that Israel killed Shireen to hide, and she sacrificed her life to tell.