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Shireen Abu Akleh

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Palestinian journalists hold posters displaying Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh on May 11, 2022, in the West Bank city of Hebron. The poster reads in Arabic, "the Martyrdom of Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh". (Photo: Mamoun Wazwaz/APA Images)

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 at her funeral. Since then, Shireen’s Al Jazeera colleagues have joined her family, fellow Palestinian journalists, members of Congress, politicians worldwide, human rights groups, and press unions to demand that the Biden administration hold Israel accountable for her murder. The last thing they wanted was for their calls to still be unmet after one hundred days. Worse, they have been ignored and dismissed.

Lina Abu Akleh, the niece of slain Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, speaks at the U.S. Capitol during a trip to Washington, Wednesday, July 27, 2022. (AP Photo/Nathan Ellgren)

If you want to get your heart broken, you only need to watch a few moments of the press conference the family of Shireen Abu Akleh gave outside the Capitol on Thursday demanding U.S. action, more than two months after an Israeli soldier shot the renowned journalist in Jenin and the Israeli government washed its hands of responsibility.

Shireen Abu Akleh

The B’Tselem report on the May 11 killing of Shireen Abu Akleh emphasizes eyewitness accounts, including the stunning heroism of Sharif al-‘Azab who tried to save her life amid gunfire. And it blows up the U.S. claim that the Israeli shooting was “tragic” not “intentional.” Such a finding is “detached from reality” — in this case, repeated “shooting directly at unarmed civilians” demonstrates that Israel uses live fire in non-life-threatening circumstances and takes no action against killers. And Israel is whitewashing the Abu Akleh killing, like 100s of cases before it, B’Tselem says.

Joe Biden meets Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel on July 14, 2022. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US ambassador Tom Nides are at left. Photo tweeted by Benjamin Netanyahu.

Biden’s trip to the Middle East was a fiasco but the Israel lobby loved it. Former ambassadors Dan Shapiro and Martin Indyk celebrate the trip as a breakthrough and manage not to mention Israel’s killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh during an hour’s talk. While an AIPAC officials says of the speech Biden gave when he arrived, “you would have been hard pressed to write a better speech, for the things we believe in.”

US President Joe Biden is received by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas during a welcome ceremony at the Palestinian Muqataa Presidential Compound in the city of Bethlehem in the West Bank on July 15, 2022. (Photo: Thaer Ganaim/APA Images)

Joe Biden met with Mahmoud Abbas in the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem on Friday to announce “confidence-building measures” in an attempt to boost the standing of the Palestinian Authority, but Palestinians are skeptical that the moves will have any meaningful impact. “Biden represents a continuity of Trump’s policies, especially on Jerusalem,” Jalal Abu Khater, a Palestinian writer and analyst from Jerusalem, tells Mondoweiss.

Even as several U.S. senators press Joe Biden to address Israel’s killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in May on his trip to Israel, experts at an Israel lobby organization say the matter is a “domestic issue” in the United States and not an issue for Israel. While Neri Zilber, an Israeli journalist, laments that Palestinians will hold up photos of Abu Akleh in demonstrations– “not a terribly helpful visual.”