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‘A phenomenal, phenomenal military’ — US ambassador praises Israeli army in wake of Abu Akleh killing

US ambassador Tom Nides justifies Israel's killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by saying Abu Akleh had gone into a "dangerous place."

It has been four months since an Israeli soldier killed Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in the occupied territories, and Tom Nides, the US ambassador to Israel, has done all he can to avoid addressing the matter publicly. But asked about it recently, Nides justified the killing by saying Abu Akleh had gone into a “dangerous place.” The ambassador embraced Israel’s claim that the killing was not intentional, and heaped praise on the Israeli military, bragging of meeting with soldiers “hundreds of times.”

At a Jerusalem Post conference in New York on September 12, Nides was challenged by journalist Lahav Harkov about the latest American response to the killing, that Israel reexamine its rules of engagement in the West Bank. Nides responded:

My heart breaks for Shireen’s family. I went to the wake and spent time with Shireen’s brother and niece, and you know my heart breaks for her. She’s an American citizen. We spent a great deal of time working with both the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] and the Palestinian Authority to try to come up with some conclusions of what happened. Yes, the IDF ultimately concurred as we did, that it was likely– not intentionally by the way– we said it was likely that sadly, the IDF likely shot her.

This is a dangerous place! Jenin was a dangerous place! She’s a reporter. My wife is a reporter. It’s very difficult to do these jobs. Very complicated. But we need to make sure that the media has a right and an ability to cover these stories.

Yes, yes… America has said… America has the most powerful military in the world, we are constantly, constantly relooking at our rules of engagement. I have an enormous respect for the IDF, I spend an enormous of my time working with the IDF, the soldiers, the leaders. I’ve done hundreds of events with the IDF. They are a phenomenal, phenomenal military and they have unbelievable cooperation with the U.S. Defense Department. So I’m one who hopes to always continue to improve, and that’s what we are trying to do and talk about with the IDF.

Israel is a sovereign country, they will make decisions about what they believe is the right thing to do to protect their people. We understand that and we support that.

Abu Akleh was wearing a bulletproof vest clearly marked PRESS and was walking with a group of reporters when she and another reporter were shot on May 11. Israel denied its responsibility for months even as investigation after investigation showed that an Israeli soldier killed her. The tight grouping of shots from a sniper has caused some to conclude that the reporters were targeted.

Shireen Abu Akleh
Shireen Abu Akleh

I have long criticized Nides for his promotion of Israel and his indifference to Palestinian human rights. But in his 20-minute appearance at the rightwing pro-Israel conference, Nides doubled down on his support for Zionism and Israeli militarism.

“My north star is maintaining a democratic Jewish state. That is the single most important thing I believe that I can do as American ambassador and to do that we have to send a message of the important unbreakable security alliance between the United States and Israel and the importance of making sure everyone understands this relationship… between the IDF and the Defense Department, our security industries are critically important to that… I come to this from my heart. I want to maintain a democratic Jewish state, and I’m proud of this relationship, and I’ll do everything I can to keep it strong.”

Nides is expressing the credo of the Israel lobby: maintain the close political relationship of the U.S. and Israel, so that Israel, a state that discriminates in favor of Jews, earning the label of an apartheid state from human rights groups, is never accountable for its actions toward the Palestinians.

Nides bragged of spending every day and devoting hundreds of U.S. officials’ time to try to waive the visa-requirement for Israelis visiting the U.S.

“My friend Howard Kohr at AIPAC called me the the first day I was nominated and said you’ve got to get that visa waiver done. and I have spent every day at least a portion of every day trying to work that out . And we’re really close. We’re really close…. We’ve got hundreds of people working on that.”

The reference to Kohr, the ceo of the Israel lobby group AIPAC, was one of Nides’s many signals to American Zionists that he’s on their side. Nides comes out of the establishment Jewish community in Minnesota, and he commented that Joe Biden’s statement on arriving in Israel in July “‘that you don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist’ was a beautiful way to start a remarkable trip.”

And Nides couldn’t stop heaping praise on the Israeli military:

“I spend an enormous amount of time with the generals on the ground… I have enormous respect for the team of the military that we’ve been working with and we work with them every day.”

He promised that the Biden administration won’t surprise Israel over the Iran deal.

One thing Joe Biden made very clear when he became president, There will be no light between the two countries. Meaning, no secrets. Everything’s shared. Complete transparency what we’re doing. I’m not in any way suggesting they necessarily like it. But we are completely in tune. They know what we know. We know what they know.

And he gushed over how great Israel is, and its military:

Here’s the deal, it’s an unbelievable honor to be the American ambassador to Israel… I’ve been blessed, I’ve had a lot of good jobs. I wake up every day and say to myself, Wow, America’s relationship to Israel is unbreakable.. When I came to Israel I didn’t really realize, this isn’t just about America helping its important ally, which we do, but Israel helps America in a thousand different ways which I had no idea till I got into this job.

Its not just the leadership, it’s in the DNA of our military and intelligence operations, it’s in our culture… The two words I wish I never said to my friends were, Come visit. Because everyone comes to visit. Everyone cares about Israel. I don’t care if you’re a Jew or an Arab or anything in between, everyone wants to be there and the vast, vast majority of people love it… And how cool is it to be the guy to represent America in Israel.

Nides surely doesn’t have many progressive, or Palestinian friends.

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“‘A phenomenal, phenomenal military’ — US ambassador praises Israeli army in wake of Abu Akleh killing”
Beyond words!! In essence, U.S. Ambassador Tom Nides has freely admitted that he is a true fascist. No surprise!!

“A phenominal military”, working with colonial Zionists to carry out the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians/non-Jews from Zion (a) just as the Canaanites were driven out of their homeland as God “had promised it to the Children of Israel” and (b) because this is a condition (!) for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.