The US State Department’s annual report on human rights accepts the Israeli government’s version of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh’s death and does not cite it as an extrajudicial or arbitrary killing.
Israeli forces killed Abu Akleh on May 11, 2022 while she was covering Israel’s invasion of a Jenin refugee camp and wearing a vest that was clearly marked PRESS.
As author and Georgetown University adjunct professor Josh Ruebner notes on Twitter, referring to Abu Akleh’s death as an extrajudicial killing would technically trigger sanctions against Israel under the Leahy Law.
In a hearing before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations just two days after the report was released, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) that Israel was in compliance with the Leahy Law “to the best of my knowledge.”
The only reference to the late Al Jazeera reporter can be found under a section on freedom of expression under the report’s Israel, Gaza, and West Bank portion. “On May 11, Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot and killed while reporting on an IDF raid in Jenin,” it reads. “In the same incident, Palestinian journalist Ali Samoudi was shot and injured in the shoulder. On September 5, the IDF reported it had concluded its investigation into the circumstances surrounding Abu Akleh’s death and stated there is a high possibility she was accidentally hit by IDF gunfire. According to media, the military advocate general stated there was no suspicion of a criminal offense and declined to open a criminal investigation into the incident. Some human rights NGOs criticized the IDF’s inquiry, stating it could not replace a criminal investigation.”
The Israeli government initially tried to blame Abu Akleh’s death on “dueling gunfire” between the IDF and Palestinian militants. However, this was quickly disproved by video footage, eyewitness testimony, and multiple media investigations.
Israel launched its own probe into the incident and released a “report” on the killing four months later. The IDF acknowledged that there was a “high possibility” that the bullet came from an Israeli soldier but said it was an accident and declared that no one would face criminal charges.
The senior IDF official who briefed reporters on the results of the probe reiterated the dueling gunfire myth. “It is our estimate that there were militants in the vicinity of Ms. Abu Akleh. Maybe not one meter beside her, but they were in that area,” he said, providing no evidence to support that claim.
The US State Department had publicly been calling for “accountability” in the months leading up to the Israeli report but provided very little in way of details. Secretary of State Tony Blinken was confronted about the issue by the journalist Abby Martin at an event in Los Angeles and told her, “We are looking for an independent, credible investigation. When that investigation happens, we will follow the facts, wherever they lead. It’s as straightforward as that.”
However, the State Department expressed no issues with the Israeli probe despite it being neither independent nor credible. “We welcome Israel’s review of this tragic incident and again underscore the importance of accountability in this case, such as policies and procedures to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future,” said former State Department spokesperson Ned Price at the time.
In November 2022, amid mounting pressure from Abu Akleh’s family, activists around the globe, and a number of congressional Democrats, the FBI announced that it was launching its own investigation into the killing. The Biden administration was reportedly unaware of the move before it happened.
Israel immediately declared that it would not cooperate with the investigation. “Our soldiers will not be investigated by the FBI or by any other foreign country or entity, however friendly it may be. We will not abandon our soldiers to foreign investigations,” declared then-Prime Minister Yair Lapid.
The following month Al Jazeera announced that it was submitting a case to the International Criminal Court (ICC) over the killing. The request includes a dossier on the network’s own six-month investigation into Abu Akleh’s death. The Biden administration immediately expressed their opposition to such a probe. “When it comes to the ICC, we maintain our longstanding objections to the ICC’s investigation into the Palestinian situation and the – and the position the ICC should focus on its core mission, and that core mission of serving as a court of last resort in punishing and deterring atrocity crimes,” said Price.
The State Department’s human rights report also neglects to mention Omar Asaad, the 80-year-old Palestinian-American who died shortly after being placed in Israeli custody in January 2022. Assad reportedly suffered a heart attack after being dragged out of his car by IDF soldiers, bound, gagged, and left in a cold abandoned warehouse for hours.
The State Department report does criticize some Israeli policies and acknowledges that the IDF and civilian justice systems rarely hold members of security forces accountable. It also mentions that NGOs like Military Court Watch, HaMoked, and B’Tselem have accused the Israeli military of using isolation to punish “politically prominent Palestinian detainees.”
The Neocon Blinken State Department seems committed to supporting Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
Just as the Neocon-driven Bush administration was committed to killing vast swaths of Iraqis.
“I promise you all this stuff is going to come out, about the Jewish neocons and Iraq”
https://mondoweiss.mystagingwebsite.com/2008/12/i-promise-you-all-this-stuff-is-going-to-come-out-about-the-jewish-neocons-and-iraq/
Similarly, the Neocons are driving the war in Ukraine, with its virtual ethnic cleansing of Ukrainian males, toward Zelensky’s stated goal of making Ukraine a “big Israel”.
“Zelensky and NATO plan to transformd post-war Ukraine into ‘a big Israel’”
https://thegrayzone.com/2022/09/17/zelensky-nato-ukraine-big-israel/
So covering up the assassination of a problem journalist is small potatoes.
This is similar to the killing of another American who was trying to support human rights, Rachel Corrie. America has an ugly record of choosing and supporting the killers, over its own murdered citizens and their families, when it comes to that apartheid country.
First they pretend to be “concerned”, then they say they will investigate the killing, while all along going with the lies, and justifications of the killers. Then despite the pleas of the families, they eventually accept the lies, and pretend it was a minor incident. Never mind the killers lied initially, blamed the victim or the other side, and then admit they did it in a very offhandish manner. Never mind human rights organizations have condemned the killing, and proved that the killers have lied again.
Israelis can kill an American anywhere in the region, and it will never lose American support.
Nor will the American funding of the brutal occupation end for those reasons.
There is no justice nor support, for the families of Americans who have been brutally killed by our so called ally. Israel has spied on us, lied to us, sold our weapons to China, bombed our ships, interfered in our internal affairs and foreign policies, disrespected our presidents, and keeps ignoring our warnings when it comes to stealing lands and building illegal settlements, yet NOTHING it does ever warrants the US from ending this sick relationship, where a superpower is kowtowing to an apartheid nation.
Typical cover-up and whitewashing of Israeli killings of American citizens. I don’t think there is another country (including all of Western Europe) that would be able to murder so many Americans without any consequences. It speaks to the complicity of America in Israel’s criminal settler-colonial enterprise.
This is why peaceful yet forceful grassroots movements like BDS art critical – and must continue until this injustice ends.
The US state dept recd it,s report from zionist central and promptly attatched it to their own report.
Who believes otherwise.
Samantha Power writes the following in the Preface to Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress by Raphaël Lemkin.
Lemkin was less interested in refining his theory of punishment than he was in ensuring that states joined together to ban the new crime of genocide. From the start, the meaning of “genocide” was controversial. Lemkin was adamant that the word “genocide” not be equated with Hitler’s Final Solution. In Axis Rule he wrote that “genocide” meant “a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.” The perpetrators of genocide would attempt to destroy the political and social institutions, the culture, language, national feelings, religion, and economic existence of national groups. They would hope to eradicate the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and lives of individual members of the targeted group. He continued:
Extermination was one means of destroying a group, but it was not the only means. A group did not have to be physically exterminated to suffer genocide. They could be stripped of all cultural traces of their identity. “It takes centuries and sometimes thousands of years to create a natural culture,” Lemkin wrote, “but Genocide can destroy a culture instantly, like fire can destroy a building in an hour.”
Journalism has been an essential foundation of Palestinian national life since the founding of Palestinian newspapers at the beginning of the 20th century. Murdering a journalist like Susan Abu Akleh is an act of genocide. Genocide is a US federal crime. We should focus on the issue of an ongoing genocide that an alleged American ally is perpetrating. Genocide is a US federal crime. Were Americans involved? The US has an FBI office in the Zionist state. It should be investigating a genocidal act, in which an American is the victim.
When the US dismisses the accusation of murder of Susan Abu Akleh, the US at least aids and abets an ongoing genocide.