From Shireen Abu Akleh to Amal Khalil, the killer is the same

I am still under the tree. Beside me are Shireen and hundreds of journalists from Gaza and Lebanon, holding each other’s hands, trying to survive the monster of occupation.

On the day Amal Khalil was killed in southern Lebanon — following appeals she made to the Lebanese army and the Red Cross to evacuate her and her colleague, Zeinab Faraj, after being trapped in a building while reporting on Israel’s attacks on Bint Jbeil — I saw myself back under that tree with Shireen, the bullets surrounding us.

Four years ago today, a bullet fired by an Israeli soldier struck Shireen Abu Akleh in the head and killed her. On that day, the Israeli occupation’s war against journalists became visible to the whole world. 

But since then, life for journalists in this region has only become harder with each passing day. The occupation’s crimes have not stopped. The killers were never held accountable. And international law did not prevent the occupation from killing again.

People ask me how I am doing after these four years. I tell them that more than 275 journalists have been killed in Gaza and Lebanon since Shireen’s assassination. If the world had held Israel accountable for that first crime, would we have reached this number?

That lack of accountability is what makes Israel’s current conduct possible, which has grown so brazen that it proudly and openly announces when it kills journalists, doctors, and paramedics. It did it with Anas Al-Sharif, Hasan Eslayeh, and Ismail al-Ghoul in Gaza, and with Ali Shuaib, Fatima Ftouni, and her brother Muhammad in southern Lebanon. In each of those cases, and in many others, the Israeli army issued official statements confirming they had been targeted, after previously threatening to kill them, sometimes openly on social media.

The entire world, its institutions, its human rights bodies, its international forums, bears responsibility for the bloodshed in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon. Including the blood of journalists sitting in Israeli prisons right now: more than 44 held under administrative detention, living in isolation, hunger, illness, and thirst, with no clear date of release. Their only crime is being journalists.

Days ago, journalist Ali al-Samoudi was released after a full year of administrative detention. Ali had accompanied Shireen on the day she was killed and was wounded on the same morning by a bullet to the shoulder. He came out emaciated, with sunken eyes, and stories that would make anyone weep. He said they told him during interrogation, “You bothered us, Ali.”

His colleague Mujahid Al-Saadi, who was also with us that day, remains in Israeli detention. There is no news of his health or any date for his release.

Then there is Raneen Sawafta, a Reuters photographer and my friend, who miraculously survived after settlers attacked her while she was covering the olive harvest in the mountains of Nablus. They threw stones at her and beat her with clubs. She is still receiving treatment in hospitals.

And my colleague Mujahid Bani Mufleh, one of the finest Arabic editors in Palestine, was detained for eight months. Four days after his release, he suffered a stroke. He is still in the hospital in critical condition. A friend said, “I cannot imagine what Mujahid must have lived through in prison to come out this way.” Mujahid himself told me that two prisoners had died in his room. I felt, after hearing that, as though he had watched death enter the room, smelled it, and waited for it to reach him.

Every day, journalists in Gaza, the West Bank, and southern Lebanon leave their homes not knowing whether they will return. Each day is an attempt to survive: a missile from an Israeli aircraft, a bullet from an Israeli soldier, a settler armed with a club, attacking everything Palestinian.

And four years after Shireen, I am still under that tree.