After months of pressure from activists, human rights groups, progressive lawmakers, and members of her family the FBI is finally launching a probe into the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh. The fact that the announcement was made shortly after the Israeli and U.S. elections can hardly be a coincidence.

In a surprising but welcome development, the United States’ Department of Justice has initiated an investigation into Israel’s killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. Almost immediately, Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz declared that Israel would refuse to assist with the investigation.

Although it is unlikely the U.S. investigation will lead to meaningful accountability, Israel’s refusal to cooperate should raise questions about the US/Israeli relationship.

The U.S. Justice Department has informed the Israeli government that the FBI will finally investigate the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian American journalist who was shot during an Israeli raid in May. Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz has already declared that Israel will not cooperate with the probe.

Last week the U.S. State Department called for an investigation into the death of a 7-year-old Palestinian boy after an Israeli raid in his village. This week State walked the demand back, in its effort to demand zero accountability from Israel for the deaths of dozens of Palestinian children in the occupied territories this year.

“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” –US ambassador to Israel Tom Nides on his job description. And that means praising the Israeli military repeatedly despite the fact that it killed a Palestinian-American journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh. Nides justified the killing by saying Abu Akleh had gone into a “dangerous place.”

On September 18 the New York Times published an article by Ellen Barry titled How Russian Trolls Helped Keep the Women’s March Out of Lock Step.

New analysis by Forensic Architecture and Al Haq shows Shireen Abu Akleh was “deliberately and repeatedly targeted” by an Israeli military sniper taking “precise and careful aim.” These findings were disclosed today following the submission of a complaint to the ICC by lawyers for the family of Abu Akleh and two Palestinian journalists standing beside her that day.

“There has been no independent, credible investigation,” VT Senator Patrick Leahy said yesterday of Israel’s killing of Shireen Abu Akleh May 11. “To say that fatally shooting an unarmed person, and in this case one with PRESS written in bold letters on her clothing, was not intentional, without providing any evidence to support that conclusion, calls into question the State Department’s commitment to an independent, credible investigation and to ‘follow the facts.'”

Two Israeli writers explain the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh as the price of Israel’s clamping down on terrorism originating in the West Bank, with no consideration of the Palestinian experience under an apartheid army. Yet these talking points are echoed by Biden administration officials. Even as the Lapid government moves forward on more Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands, colonies that the Netanyahu government didn’t approve.

The bond between the U.S. and Israel is in the “souls” and “DNA” of Americans because we are both democracies facing terrorists, US Ambassador Tom Nides says. And so he does not mention the 17 children Israel killed in Gaza last month, even as he praises Israel for keeping the besieged Strip “relatively calm.” Nor does he mention Israel’s killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in May in the occupied West Bank.