Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, a well-known and much-loved Al Jazeera reporter who covered Palestine for two decades, was shot and killed by an Israeli sniper May 11 while documenting an Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the Occupied West Bank.
Footage of the moments after her death show Abu Akleh, still wearing her press vest and helmet, lying face down on the ground below a tree, as Shatha Hanaysha, another Palestinian journalist and writer for Mondoweiss, sits by her side and attempts to reach out to her. Writing for Mondoweiss (5/11/22), Yumna Patel described the video:
A young Palestinian man is then seen jumping over a wall behind Abu Akleh and Hanaysha. When he attempts to retrieve Abu Akleh’s body, another round of sniper fire can be heard, and he quickly takes cover behind the tree.
No armed combatants are there. Journalists are shouting for an ambulance. The young man tries a second time to remove Abu Akleh, but fails. He manages to help a shaken Hanaysha hide behind the tree. The footage is harrowing.
Shatha Hanaysha crouches near her slain colleague Shireen Abu Akleh—both wearing jackets that clearly identify them as press.
The Qatar-based news network interrupted its broadcast (5/10/22) with breaking news reporting that “an Al Jazeera correspondent has been shot by Israeli forces” and killed in Jenin. The network called it “deliberate,” adding that the killing of Abu Akleh was a “heinous crime which intends to only prevent the media from conducting their duty.”
Reporter Nida Ibrahim, on the phone from Ramallah, recounted the announcement of Abu Akleh’s death by the Palestinian Health Ministry, saying she was shot in the head. Her voice broke up as she talked about Abu Akleh’s dedication, her long experience covering Palestine, and the grief Ibrahim and her fellow journalists were experiencing. She carried on, saying, “This is the reality of Palestinian journalists covering the news”; unfortunately, they find “themselves part of the story.”
Outpourings of grief
News of Abu Akleh’s death spread across the world at the speed of the internet, with outpourings of grief, tributes, and international condemnation for her killing. Journalists who have covered the Israeli occupation of Palestine provided context, hitting Twitter with art, videos, eyewitness testimony and images from Palestinian activists, advocacy groups and press critics, among many others. Clips of Al Jazeera footage were prominent.
Late Wednesday, the Israeli military posted an online video and an implausible scenario to deflect blame for the murder, a denial that, with a few notable exceptions, corporate media would assiduously repeat. Yet the documentation and eyewitness accounts continued to mount.
Mondoweiss‘s Hanaysha told Al Jazeera (5/11/22):
The [Israeli] occupation army did not stop firing even after she collapsed. I couldn’t even extend my arm to pull her, because of the shots. The army was adamant on shooting to kill.
Electronic Intifada (5/11/22) included the Twitter post of another Palestinian-American journalist—Dena Takruri, host of Al Jazeera‘s Direct From—who said, “Shireen was shot near her ear, where the helmet didn’t cover. This was a shot of extreme precision.”
Abu Akleh was taken in a private vehicle to a hospital in Jenin, where she was declared dead. The shot to the head killed her instantly. An Al Jazeera producer, Ali Samoudi, was also shot in the back by an Israeli gunman, but will recover.
At the hospital, Samoudi told reporters, “We were covering the raid of the Israeli occupation forces when they suddenly opened fire at us; the first bullet hit me and the other killed Shireen.” He went on to say, “They killed her in cold blood.”
WSWS (5/11/22) also reported that Samoudi confirmed that “there was no Palestinian military resistance at all at the scene.”
“We pledge to prosecute the perpetrators legally, no matter how hard they try to cover up their crime, and bring them to justice,” the Qatar-based network said in a statement (NBC, 5/11/22).
The Israeli response
The Israeli prime minister offered video of a Palestinian fighter firing a weapon as evidence that Israel’s military did not kill Abu Akleh.
The video the Israeli military posted online depicted a lone Palestinian resistance fighter shooting down an alleyway, purportedly evidence that the Al Jazeera team were victims of Palestinian gunfire. In a series of statements on Twitter (Mondoweiss, 5/11/22), the office of Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said:
According to the information we have gathered, it appears likely that armed Palestinians—who were firing indiscriminately at the time — were responsible for the unfortunate death of the journalist.
Israel’s claim was refuted by a number of sources, in addition to other eyewitness testimony. The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem’s field researcher in Jenin documented the location of the Palestinian gunman depicted in the Israeli government video. “According to B’Tselem, the location of the video is in a completely separate location than where Abu Akleh was killed,” Mondoweiss (5/11/22) reported, and “cannot be the gunfire that killed the journalist.”
NBC’s Raf Sanchez’s reporting from Jenin corroborated B’Tselem’s. He posted on Twitter (5/11/22) that NBC researcher Matthew Mulligan “has geolocated the Al Jazeera video” and found that the “area doesn’t match the alleyways shown in the video being put out by the Israeli government.”
A thorough debunking by human rights groups, witnesses and journalists aired on Al Jazeera (5/12/22) also exposed the online video as Israeli military fabrication. Using a map of the occupied West Bank, the network illustrated how occupation forces had a direct line of fire to where Abu Akleh was shot, while the Palestinian resistance fighter shown was too far away to have shot her, blocked as he was by alleyways and buildings.
Hagai El Ad, executive director of B’Tselem, told viewers that the Israeli version of events is based “on a false narrative designed to protect the perpetrators.” He explained the “impossible logistics” of the Israeli scenario, adding that he recognized this as a “trick” often used for the “blanket impunity that Israel provides for itself.” He went on to say that
Israel has a track record of not punishing its soldiers who have committed crimes against Palestinians, and it has never jailed one of its soldiers for the killing of a journalist.
Though it provides another point of evidence, the geolocation data is hardly necessary, as simply looking at the videotapes and listening to corroborating journalistic and eyewitness testimony renders Abu Akleh’s death at the hands of the occupation forces beyond dispute.
Attacks on journalists
Intercept (4/5/22): “The journalist will be told that the reports he posts on Facebook are considered incitement—and although he is only reporting news, the fact that that news is made public is tantamount to incitement.”
Many independent news outlets provided context by including numbers and details of journalists killed and wounded by Israeli forces. Though well-documented, the numbers may be different due to different criteria and the difficulty of recording.
Cross Currents (5/12/22) reported that since 1972, the Amman-based Center for Defending Freedom of Journalists, “has documented 103 deaths of Palestinian journalists and nearly 7,000 injuries, plus many detentions and imprisonments.”
According to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (Mondoweiss, 5/11/22):
Abu Akleh is the 86th Palestinian journalist to be killed by Israel since the occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza in 1967. And since 2000, more than 50 Palestinian journalists have been killed, including six in the past two years.
In April, the Intercept (4/5/22) revealed the ongoing harassment, jailing, repeated interrogations and threats against Palestinian journalists, so severe that many abandoned the work of journalism. The primary charge against them was ‘incitement.’” Vice reporter Hind Hassan posted a string of horrific videos on Twitter (5/12/22) documenting Israeli attacks on journalists. One dated April 15, 2022, shows an Israeli police officer run across the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in a surprise attack, breaking the arm of journalist Alaa Sous with a baton smash (Mondoweiss, 4/22/22).
‘Armed with cameras’
The Middle East Eye (5/11/22) reported Israeli military spokesperson Ran Kochav telling Army Radio that even if soldiers shot at someone, “this happened in battle, during a firefight,” so “this thing can happen.” Kochav went on to say Abu Akleh was “filming and working for a media outlet amidst armed Palestinians. They’re armed with cameras, if you’ll permit me to say so.”
Numerous press advocates responded to this statement. Reporting on a tribute for Abu Akleh held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, Cross Currents (5/12/22) called the accusation “an outrageous and egregious claim by any standard.” Reporters Without Borders has condemned Israel’s disproportionate use of force against journalists, saying under no circumstances should they “be treated as parties to the armed conflict.”
Vox (5/11/22) noted that if Abu Akleh’s was killed by the IDF, her death “will fit into a larger pattern of attacks on the press in Palestine and in the systemic violence against Palestinians more broadly.” It called the “armed with cameras” assertion “a not-subtle comparison between the work of journalism and that of violence.”
Viewing cameras as weapons, together with the history of escalating attacks on reporters and charges of “incitement” for bearing witness to Israeli attacks, makes clear that the Israeli government considers journalists to be the enemy, and by extension suitable targets for snipers. Because journalists document the actions of Israeli occupation forces against the Palestinians, they jeopardize the military’s continued ability to act with impunity. Repressing press freedom in the Occupied West Bank seems to now be part of the state’s increasingly militarized strategy.
Calling for investigation
The Turkish international news outlet Anadolu Agency (5/11/22) covered Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s moment of silence for the slain journalist on the floor of the House of Representatives, including Tlaib’s opening that quoted President Biden at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner:
We honor journalists killed, missing, imprisoned, detained and tortured covering war, exposing corruption and holding leaders accountable. The free press is not the enemy of people, far from it; at your best, you are the guardians of the truth.
Though she is a Palestinian American like Abu Akleh, no US corporate news outlet used Rashida Tlaib as a source for covering the slain journalist.
Tlaib also called on the US government to investigate the killing, saying that Washington should not allow “the same people committing those war crimes to do the investigation.” (Al Jazeera, 5/11/22). The International Criminal Court launched an investigation last year into possible Israeli war crimes (AP, 3/3/21).
In an interview between MSNBC news host Ayman Mohyeldin and on-the-ground reporter Raf Sanchez (5/13/22), Sanchez explained why the Palestinians don’t trust the Israelis to investigate Abu Akleh’s death. In 2018, he said:
I was in Gaza; an Israeli sniper killed a young Palestinian journalist called Yaser Murtaja. He, like Shireen Abu Akleh, was wearing a vest that clearly showed he was a member of the press. That was four years ago. The Israeli military said they were investigating then, and I asked them today to give me the report…. They sent me a very short statement saying that they had looked into the incident, they had determined that there was no criminal activity by any Israeli soldiers, and they had closed the case. That gives you a sense of why Palestinians feel that they are unlikely to get the full story out of the Israeli military.
Murtaja’s story also appears in the Intercept (4/9/18).
Palestinian rights advocates in the United States have called on the Biden administration to demand an independent probe into the killing of Abu Akleh, saying that Israel should not be allowed to investigate itself. Ahmad Abuznaid, executive director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, said investigations are “empty gestures” if the probe is to be left for Israel (Al Jazeera, 5/11/22).
Addressing reporters at UN headquarters in New York, Palestine’s UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour (Al Jazeera, 5/11/22) said:
The story of the Israeli side does not hold water, it is fictitious, and it is not in line with reality, and we do not accept to have an investigation on this issue with those who are the criminals in conducting this event itself.
He said what is needed is an investigation that is “internationally credible.”
House Democrats demanded an independent investigation. Though US Department of State spokesperson Ned Price (Reuters, 5/11/22) called for a “thorough investigation and full accountability,” when asked whether the US would support an international investigation, Price repeated: “Israel has the wherewithal to conduct a thorough investigation.”
Al Jazeera reported the calls by US sources for an independent investigation, while most US corporate news repeated Israel’s demand to control any investigation.
US corporate coverage
The context of escalating Israeli attacks on freedom of the press and on journalists in the Occupied Territories did not enter the frame of most US news coverage. Instead, many used a back-and-forth blame frame for reporting the murder of a veteran war correspondent who knew well how to negotiate crossfire in the field of battle. This was acknowledged by Ali Samoudi, who said from his hospital bed, if there had been crossfire, they wouldn’t have been there.
Amidst the debunking of the Israeli messaging, by late Wednesday some news outlets, including NBC (5/11/22), noted that Israel “appeared to step back from that claim” that Abu Akleh may have been killed by Palestinian gunmen.
Yet most big media would continue to include Israeli messaging in their reporting, while failing to disclose any of the factchecking done on the Israeli video. They “balanced” on-the-ground testimony with Israeli statements, keeping the propaganda story alive.
The second sentence of the CBS report (5/11/22) from Jerusalem said, “The broadcaster and a reporter who was wounded in the incident blamed Israeli forces, while Israel said there was evidence the two were hit by Palestinian gunfire.” The opening set the tone for a long series of opposing claims, in which every fragmented aspect about Israel and Palestine becomes a tedious set of contentions, rendering the truth incomprehensible.
The story included the “camera as weapon” comment, followed with the unrelated, “CBS News correspondent Imtiaz Tyab knew Abu Akleh personally,” adding more laudable details about the slain journalist. It continued, “Israelis have long been critical of Al Jazeera‘s coverage, but authorities generally allow its journalists to operate freely”—presented not as a requirement for democracy, but as a generous act of tolerance.
CBS said that the relationship between Israeli forces and Palestinian journalists “is strained,” and ended with a series of toned-down examples of Israeli attacks on journalists, without one unifying critical comment. It even included the killing of three Palestinian journalists, including AP (12/21/18) reporter Rashed Rashid in 2018, followed by: “The military has never acknowledged the shooting.” It failed to connect that history to Palestinian demands for an independent, international investigation into Abu Akleh’s murder.
The most disingenuous comments, which revolved around the investigation, were included early on. CBS offered fragments of truth—saying, for example, that US Ambassador Tom Nides called for “a thorough investigation into the circumstances of her death,” without saying by whom. It stated uncritically, “Israel said it had proposed a joint investigation and autopsy with the Palestinian Authority, which refused the offer,” with no explanation as to why.
The reporting illustrated how “balance” and fragments of disjointed “facts” have become a stylistic method to confuse and obliterate meaningful connections that drain compassion, outrage and demands for justice for the victims of state violence.
The New York Times (5/11/21) ran a home-page headline that could have run if Abu Akleh had died of natural causes.
In a similar manner, the New York Times (5/11/22) attributed Abu Akleh’s death to “gunfire” in the second paragraph. A second article posted later that day was more definitively structured by false balance: “The network and Palestinian authorities blamed Israeli troops for the killing. Israel said the blame could lie with Palestinian gunmen.”
ABC News (5/12/22) presented the same style of decontextualized back-and-forth, referring to a proposed Israeli investigation in the lead paragraph: “The head of the Palestinian Authority blamed Israel for her death and rejected Israeli calls for a joint investigation.” It evoked the “angry Arab” lexicon, saying, “Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas angrily rejected that proposal,” while “Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett accused the Palestinians of denying Israel “access to the basic findings required to get to the truth.” No mention was made of past Israeli failures to investigate the killing of journalists.
ABC dismissed the investigation into Israeli war crimes with one phrase: “Israel has rejected that probe as being biased against it.”
An end in sight?
When the Al Jazeera news anchor (5/10/22) asked Nida Ibrahim what could be done now, the reporter answered that a “powerful military occupation has been targeting journalists for years,” and if no one is brought to justice, “there will be no end to this.” She explained that Palestinian journalists are targeted by the IDF because “part of what we do is uncover the crimes,” or what the Israeli army doesn’t want to be shown. “Palestinian journalists will show you injuries where they’ve been shot by the Army or settlers,” she noted.
Responding to Representative Tlaib’s statement on the House floor, the New York Post (5/12/22) called it an “anti-Israel tirade,” charging that Tlaib was only interested in “slamming the Middle East’s only true democracy as it defends itself against terrorists.”
Chris Hedges (Consortium News, 5/17/22): “The execution of Abu Akleh was not an accident. She was singled out for elimination.”
Writing for Consortium News (5/17/22), former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges called Abu Akleh’s death an execution. “Assassination” may be a better word for her killing, but she did not simply “die,” as the New York Times reported. As the Chicago Sun Times (5/14/22) pointed out, “Palestinian Journalist Dies” is an “especially egregious” New York Times headline, “blatantly ignoring” that Abu Akleh “was struck by a bullet.”
That the state of Israel can continue to be labeled a “true democracy” after years of human rights violations, the repression of press freedoms and the extreme of killing journalists outright—not to mention that approximately 30% of the population under its control not allowed to participate in national elections—attests to the strength of the dominant narratives that have long guided US news coverage of Israel, recently identified by writer Greg Shupak in The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel & the Media. The misleading and distorted frames of “both sides,” and “Israel’s right to defend itself” even as they are aggressors, are presented in a manner that benefits Israel.
Yet with the targeted killing of the globally prominent Al Jazeera reporter, as global calls for accountability mount (The Nation, 5/18/22), a crack seems to have appeared in the media armor of the Israeli military. Some US corporate media, most notably NBC, have shown a willingness to follow on-the-ground truth instead of Israeli fabrications. Other outlets, however, seem resigned to repeat increasingly implausible, transparently incoherent reporting that fails the basic test of decent journalism practices.
RT is censored for running cover for Russia
Our “free press” for shilling for Israel … ?
Doug, I see your rants all over the place. You are a celebrity of hate according what I see, never missing any opportunity to push your bias to ever more extremes. You fail to discuss any actual issues, opting instead for the smart remark to throw contempt and a confident know-it-all attitude that of course you know what you’re talking about and it is so well understood that you don’t even need to prove it, or justify it … just like those crooked-cross people
The fact is that this kind of what has come to be known as Leftist Anti-semitism is not Leftist at all, and it is squeezed together in all of the Right-Wing-Extremist funded ownership of the political opposition in this country. That is, the money for these so-called Leftist media organization come from Right-Wing sources that have a quid-pro-quo that irrational nonsense has to be packaged and associated with any Leftist ideas in order to discredit the Left, Socialism, and ever democracy itself.
That is now confident the fascists are in this process they have and have developed over the last 40 or so years of presenting a controlled OWNED-oppostion media in order to limit or curtail the effectiveness of any political opposition.
My thesis is that you with your never-ending Israel hate, no matter how justified in your mind you are, presenting it here or there and combining it with ordinary actual Leftist/Progressives/Socialist ideas cheapens and spoils those ideas in the minds of people coming to look for answers, and ends up turning them away.
My solution would be, if you cannot suppress your hatred of Jews and Israel, that is your personal problems, but FAIR and you should both express it somewhere far away where it will not repulse normal positive civilized people with the stink of racial hatred and genocide.
Have a great one.
Yea Bruce that guy is anti-semitic for sure. In fact, there are several jew haters lurking around this site. At the end of the day, similar to Fox news, the cost of free speech to society is allowing the lunatic fringe to have a voice. That’s always been the case, you know. Just push back when appropriate, as you did.
LOL so now it’s anti-Semetic to point out the obvious in Israel and that the US corporate media regularly covers for Israeli crimes and war crimes? OK, if you say so. Maybe you guys can get a purge going at FAIR.org like they did to Corbyn in the UK.
Israel could not continue its bloody apartheid landgrab without support like this.
I’m sure half of them are paid. Hasbara doesn’t write itself, ya know.
Eat your own feeces you scumbag P0S. USS Liberty ISIS 911 and Epstein ops prove scumbag satanic zioNUT P0S slime Israel should be nuked not iran
I’ve watch the news for many decades, and I’ve watched the news from the Middle East just as long. What I notice as the constant is an unending series of articles about what Israel does. That is, what Israel does in the name of defending itself – presented in the most negative, blameful, unending, contemptible way. The comments I notice on social media was far worse. If these social media comments we present in person together they would no doubt be putting on uniforms, helmets and jackboots and marching to burn down the nearest Jewish church. Bluntly, I am sick and tired and revolted by the programmed mainstream media of trying to hot tar and feather Political Progressives by associating them everywhere in the media with the unreasoning hatred of Jews and Israel, and yes, I do mean both.
Why don’t you start a new policy, for every story you do centered around Jews and Israel, make one about Palestinians and Muslims – because we never hear anything about the reality of Palestine, or are given to sense any reason why Israel reacts to the Palestinians they way it does – short of just unconsciously being brainwashed to understand that Palestinians are perfect Islamic angels and total victims that never did anything wrong and do not deserve to even be talked to harshly. I exaggerate, but only in order to highlight the point that when people see these stories over a long period of time that all have the same on track message, they start to believe it and internalize – and that is media manipulation and brainwashing. Let’s call it what it is. And just to end with a though, I think we all know what the Middle East would look like it shoe was on the other foot.
‘the nearest Jewish church’
Then they will have to march pretty far, won’t they, Bruce K?
I thought any reader of that might catch the hint by that I am not Jewish. But some people are not very perceptive, and willing to jump on anyone for anything when they finally think they have something important to say.
The reality of Palestine is that it’s an occupied land and that the people there are subjected to discrimination and apartheid at the best and outright violence at the worst. Have you been there and seen the apartheid highway and road system? The giant walls? The theft of homes from Palestinian families?
You’ve got it exactly wrong. The US corpress routinely covers up and minimizes or memory holes Israel’s crimes. There is data to prove this, not some ridiculous anti-semitic bent among the American media.
The headlines alone often provide the clue. “Palestinian Reporter Hit in the Head by a Bullet” instead of “Palestinian Reporter Shot Dead by IDF”, etc.
The notion that anyone, including Palestinians, are being portrayed as “perfect Islamic angels” is completely ridiculous Newspeak. They are portrayed in the US media as the opposite.
Do you recall the struggle for equality and against apartheid in South Africa? The same held true for a long time. This is just a never ending redux of that on steroids. Any “hate” that “the force” tells you exists for Jews here and most everywhere else is mere projection on your part. You hate the Palestinians and think of them as sub-human. It’s evident in everything you write.
In Apartheid South Africa Blacks were just trying to live amidst the White exploitation and genocide. The Whites were not trying to defend themselves against hatred and terrorist attacks from the Black population.
Palestine is not the same as South Africa, and therefore what is going on there can only dishonestly be called apartheid to tar Israel with the negative branding.
> The reality of Palestine is that it’s an occupied land and that the people there are subjected to discrimination and apartheid at the best and outright violence at the worst.
In Israel, before the existence of Israel the Jews in the area, and pretty much all over Europe, and the Middle East were subject to discrimination and violence, which made the whole push to create a Jewish state necessary. Apparently you would either do not know this or would like to return to that status quo?
The question is – where does the situation go from here?
The Palestinians believe in the status quo victimhood and misery because they will hold out until the death for the destruction of Israel. It says so right in their Charter – same as for decades – it has not changed, and it is not a secret. I can’t believe an educated guy like you does not know that. Meaning they do not care about peace – they just want the destruction of Israel.
You complain about discrimination and walls, but those are devices to keep from having violent confrontations. Before Israel started knocking down houses and building walls there was direct violence. Now, by knocking down and taking houses – and face it, if in the future there were honest peace negotiations those houses and lands would be up for negotiation or return. They are a NON-VIOLENT device ( I believe ) to tell the Palestinians time is not on your side.
Israel is not by nature violent – obviously if you look at the history. War has been the social norm for the Arab tribes in the area for a very long time. Mohammed is the only religious leader that was also a military general. Apply whatever weight to that you want to.
> You’ve got it exactly wrong. The US corpress routinely covers up and minimizes or memory holes Israel’s crimes.
This is your claim, but I can’t remember the last time I read about Palestinian violence in Israel – missiles, rockets, kidnappings, suicide bombings, snipers, etc. I guess that is because the Palestinians are perfect little angels, not because the Western media covers up for them, right? Gee, wouldn’t it be better if every time either side committed a crime it was reported, and followed through to resolution – and then archived so we could compare what is going on instead of going nuts every time the media decides to dump exclusively on Israel?
>In Israel, before the existence of Israel the Jews in the area, and pretty much all over Europe, and the Middle East were subject to discrimination and violence, which made the whole push to create a Jewish state necessary. Apparently you would either do not know this or would like to return to that status quo?Gee, wouldn’t it be better if every time either side committed a crime it was reported, and followed through to resolution – and then archived so we could compare what is going on instead of going nuts every time the media decides to dump exclusively on Israel?<
Again, Newspeak and a false call for balance. The US media ALWAYS reports on ANY Palestinian military action against Israel as terrorism. The US has put Hamas and other groups on the official list of terrorists. When Palestinian youths throw rocks at armed Israeli soldiers and police (there isn't a difference in reality) the US media calls it unprovoked. When the Israelis beat up and kill Palestinians who are gathered together, the US media calls it "clashes" and downplays the violence. Not so when it's the other way around.
https://theconversation.com/when-it-comes-to-media-reporting-on-israel-palestine-there-is-nowhere-to-hide-160992
When actually comparing the victims and dead, there is no real comparison to be made.
https://www.theage.com.au/world/middle-east/thai-workers-killed-in-israel-palestinian-conflict-as-truce-calls-mount-20210518-p57t2r.html
It is sad to say, but no matter what horrors Israel creates—-there is never any kind of consequence. In reading history, it is horrifying to find out what happened to the sailors on the USS Liberty, as many were murdered by Israelis . This was not a case of misidentification either. It was clearly a US ship. A horror of an attack by Israel, and for whatever reason, LBJ had no response nor did the US military. Denial appears to be a trait shared by Israel, the US military and very often—the US media.
Can you imagine if the shoe was on the other foot, if an Israeli journalist were shot? We would see a fully computer generated hologram of the street with news anchors walking through them, daily interviews with Israeli officials, editorials in the Journal, Times and Post about how there’s no partner for peace, and a spike in anti Arab hate crime.
Instead, Israel made a boo boo.
When was the last time a bombing, or murder, or slashing or rocketing against Israel was even reported. I’m sure I cannot be the last word on that. So you, please do tell me, give me a link to the last terrorist act that happened in Israel that made the American news. Oh, and make that link an act that was not overtaken by Palestinian victimhood please, because we get a constant stream of those.
We just never hear anything about what happens behind the boundaries of Palestine. We don’t hear about them making missiles. We are not taken into their government process or meetings. We don’t hear about demonstrations in the street. We don’t know, or at least most of us do not understand what their government is or how it works. I’d venture to say that most Americans do not know that the Hamas charter after all these years still calls for the destruction of Israel – with no mention of a Palestinian state.
Historically, no one seems to be able to live with Palestinian refugees, and no Arab/Islamic country wants to take them in. Why is that not as important news for people to understand than someone disobeyed orders and shot a Palestinian, and what the circumstances were around that?
Just plan objectivity in reporting and some fairness on both sides might actually motivate some negotiations. The widespread understanding that Hamas doesn’t want peace. So, commenters, what policy to you prescribe for Israel to manage the situation where a growing number of desperate children are raised to focus their hate on Israel 24 hours a day, and their own government is fine with encouraging that? Let’s hear some answers.
“someone disobeyed orders and shot a Palestinian”? No. The shootings of Palestinian reporters and civilians are very much under official Israeli orders. There are rarely if ever any negative consequences for murderers in the IDF, police or illegal Zionist settlers; indeed, they are widely praised in the apartheid Israel corporate media. You forget to include the constant, lethally-racist oppression of Palestinians and of black Jewish people in Israel.
> No. The shootings of Palestinian reporters and civilians are very much under official Israeli orders.
And you know this how? Because you hate Israel so much that it manifests in your irrepressible desire to make up facts that don’t exist?
And what about the stated intentions of Palestine to destroy Israel – and not to make peace. Do you just ignore that, or think it doesn’t matter or they don’t mean it?
How can that not enter into your thinking if you want to call yourself an objective participant in this discussion? You are so manipulated by the anti-israel Leftist ( sorry to use that term because I am a political Leftist, and i think the Israel-Palestine issue has no business in a Left/Liberal/Progressive/Socialist agenda ) that you don’t even have to think about facts, you just automatically join the herd.
Are you capable of writing a reply without trying to accuse the other side of “hate”?
Everything Rebecca Turner writes is true and rather than attempt to refute any one assertion directly, you turn to accusations of anti-semitism and hate.
“Because you hate Israel” is your evidence-free opinion. I don’t hate Israel, Jewish people or anyone else. I do hate the apartheid state that Israel has been since it used lethal violence in 1948 to take over the land occupied by Palestinian people, a period widely known as the Nakba. If you are on the Left, then what are you doing supporting a far-right government which allies with fascists around the world along with repressive Islamist governments like Saudi Arabia?
Israel, as an undemocratic, deeply racist project aimed at wiping out the Palestinian people, never had any right to exist in that form. Why do you prefer an ethno-nationalist state to one of democracy?
Anybody who pays any attention to any reporting from Mondoweiss has got to be brain-dead. It is one of the many rabidly anti-Israel sources, so extreme that it can be ignored wholesale.
Perhaps you will provide evidence of false reporting by Mondoweiss. Without it, your comment has no value.
I don’t know, Hence I googled it and here is the page one search return:
Does Mondoweiss have a pro-Palestinian bias?
“Analysis / Bias In review, Mondoweiss reports news and commentary on Israel, Palestine, and the United States with a strong pro-Palestinian bias and extremely negative toward the Israeli Government with stories such as this If Israel accuses Iran of doing something, Israel is likely already doing it.”
Google Source = https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Bias/Fact_Check
According to Daniel Funke and Alexios Mantzarlis of the Poynter Institute, “Media Bias/Fact Check is a widely cited source for news stories and even studies about misinformation, despite the fact that its method is in no way scientific.”[2] In 2018, the Columbia Journalism Review described Media Bias/Fact Check as an amateur attempt at categorizing media bias and characterized their assessments as “subjective assessments [that] leave room for human biases, or even simple inconsistencies, to creep in”.
There it is: mediabiasfactcheck.com does not apply any scientific method, it is “amateur,” open to human biases and simple inconsistencies.
OK, well it does appear tainted on several respects. That said, according to Wikipedia, (your source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poynter_Institute) Poynter Institute appears to as or even more tainted with big corp money (Times Publishing Co, WaPo), hard right and left corp support (Charles Koch Foundation, Facebook, Amazon, Google) and worst of all – our own government (Voice of America). Bottom line – no one is pure or totally clean.
> Israel has a track record of not punishing its soldiers who
> have committed crimes against Palestinians, and it has never
> jailed one of its soldiers for the killing of a journalist.
Statements like this in a vacuum are exactly what I was trying to point out earlier. These blanket statements that focus on Israel in a vacuum while completely ignoring the larger picture.
OK, let’s all agree that if this is what is happening, it would be a bad thing, a crime, and deserving of punishment and systemic analysis and change. But then how about turning an eye towards the Palestinians who lionize and make martyrs of Palestinians who become suicide bombers or participate in terrorist ops against Israel.
Palestinian culture is such that they raise children in a stew of anti-semitism, giving them suicide bomber vests as children, and saturating them with anti-semitic TV shows and news propaganda. They pay money to the poverty stricken families of suicide bombers, which is so sad to be almost unthinking, and this is never mentioned.
If one side is going to be reported on – why not report on both sides at the same time in order to compare and contrast the differences? Why is virtually every mention I see in the media – and particularly the opposition/Lefist media always anti-Israel in an isolated vacuum, and how is it Leftists who are supposed to be open minded and objective and apply the same rules to all so accepting of this biased status quo?
It is a true outrage – and the only thing that explains this is that the Leftist media, when it comes to this issue, is being somehow manipulated to be blatantly unfair and illogical in order to discredit the Left in all the other dimensions of politics.
I remember as a listener of Pacifica/KPFA in the Bay Area who I would eagerly tune to that channel all the time because of such great political programming, but then noticed such a strong emphasis on the Palestinian side ( this was back in the 70’s when the Arabs were attacking the Olympics, hijacking airplanes, and other terrorist operations to try to influence the world about Israel ). Then there were other issues that just seemed to turn people against the Left, such as the shows about turning criminals into political prisoners, and focusing support in a blanketed way to all incarcerated prisoners.
All of it was very successful at turning normal, perhaps naive, middle class American voters against the Left, and against political change. How can people think this is a coincidence? The same psy-ops are in play today. The money people just find people on the Left that express themselves and their priorities in such a was as to disgust and repulse the average voter and thus defeat the Left.
Same situation with an otherwise really good news show Democracy Now! They do great reporting on everything but these touchstone hot-button issues where they continue to appeal to the worst in the Left pool.
I am deeply disturbed by the death of Abu Akleh. I am also deeply disturbed by the 100 year old war against the Jews of the region. Is FAIR trouble by the shedding of Jewish blood too? Is this magazine disturbed by the massacres at Ma’alot, Kiryat Shimona, S’barro? By the invasion of Israel by 5 Arab nations in 1948. By the Jordanian invasion in 1967 that lead to Israel’s capture of the West Bank? By the hijackings, suicide bombings, stabbings, car rammings, and rockets? The path to peace is clear as the example of Egypt demonstrates: promise to stop trying to destroy Israel and it will withdraw. The path to continued violence is also clear: seek the annihilation of Israel, and say not a word of protest when Jews are slaughtered.
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/State-of-Terror/Thomas-Suarez/9781566560689
If you say so. Do you really want to sit down and compare the symmetry (or complete lack thereof) in terms of Israeli vs. Palestinian blood and property lost?
“A chronicle of Zionist sins since the beginning of the ‘settler project’ in the 1920s to the 1956 Suez Crisis. London-based professional violinist and author Suárez (Palestine Sixty Years Later, 2010, etc.) is careful to first define Zionist ‘terrorism’ before he launches into his systematic, chronological account of how it played out in the Jewish settling of Mandatory Palestine. If terrorism means the violent targeting of civilians, then the ‘ethno-national movement of Zionism,’ which accomplished the appropriation of non-Jewish land over many decades, even if it meant ‘making life so miserable for [Palestinians] that they [left] “of their own accord,”’ certainly fit the bill. Moreover—and this is where Suárez is most sharply provocative—the early Zionists also targeted Jews themselves, such as pressuring post–World War II displaced persons to settle in Palestine as well as kidnapping Jewish orphans to keep them from being raised Christian. Not surprisingly, the author blames Europe’s Zionist leaders—Chaim Weizmann, David Ben-Gurion et al.—for propounding an extraordinary kind of messianism, a biblical Israel that was ‘not subject to norms applicable to the rest of the world.’ Suárez concentrates on the highly organized violence of Hagana splinter groups Irgun and Lehi from 1939 through the founding of the state: both were anti-Palestinian and anti-British. Yet these terrorist groups also targeted Jewish ‘traitors.’ The author emphasizes the anti-Semitic nature of Zionism in creating ‘a permanent state of emergency’ for which a Jewish state in Palestine was the only answer. Eventually, the book becomes a lengthy litany of Zionist terrorist attacks and the employment of ‘confusion and war weariness’ to push for its political objectives, namely to assume all of Palestine and not just what was granted at Partition in late 1947. The author’s theme is that Partition, and thus statehood, was essentially gained by Zionist terrorism. A relentless, hard-hitting, ultimately one-note polemic.”
> Do you really want to sit down and compare the symmetry (or complete lack thereof) in terms of Israeli vs. Palestinian blood and property lost?
Sorry to butt in here, but …
I don’t. I don’t need to and I don’t think it is relevant, except for a certain kind of thinkings. But you seem ready and willing, so take a stab at it. I’d be interested in reading what you come up with – if it is not a long rambling and obvious confabulation.
However, even if you can create a ledger of plusses and minuses, how you do know who is responsible and account for changes over time? That is why I don’t think it makes sense to do. Like reparations for slavery, it is far too complex and impossible, yet the crime is still there that must be dealt with before the United States can claim legitimacy as a civilized country.
My answer to reparations would be to create a social support system, health care, education, living wage, housing, and to tax the hyper-rich such that no one can threaten the power of the government or bribe it in the US in the name and honor of Native Americans and African Americans that brings America in line with what it should have been all along. I think that is the best that can be done – to in effect equalize everyone. Whether it can actually be done or not, it is what needs to happen.
Same in the Middle East, move on, it’s the 21st century for god’s sake, but the Palestinians are wedged into a closed society that I don’t think either side can escape from. The violence will continue until both sides are ready to move on. I think most Israelis have been there for a long time and are weary of waiting for change in a society that was build precisely not to change.
The Palestinians are “wedged into a closed society” by Israeli apartheid and land grabbing. It’s that simple. Give them a state, stop obfuscating with falsehoods and distortions and and move on. Make the right decision.
Palestinians do not have a state or state autonomy – first, because it is not their priority, and second, because they are not a state, they are not a responsible people. This is not a reflection on individual people, but their culture and leadership. I made plenty of comments, which you chose to ignore and no respond to in favor of basically calling me a liar.
Simple solutions are great on the Internet, which is where yours belong, because there is nothing specific ever in yours or any of the other Palestinians supporters other than criticize and second guess everything Israel does to deal with an impossible situation, and you will never turn your eyes towards or suggest anything the Palestinians could do to move on.
Seems like one thing you might mention that should be at the center of your concerns is that Hamas will not recognize Israel or promise to disarm. But I guess you think it’s reasonable for Isreal to truth a country that has resisted peace for 80 years, does not recognize Israel’s right to exist, will not negotiate, at least negotiation will not accept negotiated agreements and will not follow them – and will not disarm. Are you nuts?
So your solution to the Palestinian people – robbed of their land by Zionist settler-colonists, daily attacked by the IDF, denied full equality – is to demand they give up and accept the racist, apartheid, undemocratic state of Israel.
Not at all. Why is is your side always gets to tell me what my solution is, and then attack it, or make it sound ridiculous, when it is not even anything I’ve ever said? this is the inherent dishonest and weaseliness of the Palestinian side. That dishonesty and lack of transparency is why they are not trusted. Palestinians could start by making some honest good-faith gestures. What would Pals have o care if they have their own state about what Israel does? By their own admission and behavior what they prioritize is still violence and to end the state of Israel.
Why is it you constantly want to distract from that glaring major problem in favor or these rabid claims and wild accusations?
“why they are not trusted”? By whom? As the rapidly growing movements for the Palestinian people are showing, it is the apartheid state of Israel which is clearly dishonest and untrustworthy. A democratic government has no need to spend the many millions of dollars per year that apartheid Israel does on propaganda. Its own actions speak louder than those words, so if they were admirable, we would admire them.
Until a few years ago, as an atheistic Brit, I had little interest or understanding of the Palestinians’ struggle. But as I read and saw more of the history and what is happening now, I had no choice but to take the side of a people being murdered, assaulted and denied basic rights every day. It’s time you took another look at your basic beliefs about apartheid Israel.
A former settler colonial apartheid state is naturally inclined to whitewash the crimes of a current one; even to assist and abet those crimes.
When one ‘Reply’s to their own comment(s) its clearly time to take a time out. Now then, Tom Collins take a chill pill or go have a Tom Collins (over ice).
The word you were looking for is “replies” and if you were trying to make a point, you could have at least made your REPLY under the correct sub-thread.
Horrible job of deflection, though. A person replying to their own comment == whitewashing Israeli settler and IDF violence perpetrated against unarmed Palestinians at a funeral in the world of Hasbara.
Yes, yes doctrinarian teacher. Now go off and take your medicine like a good little boy. Your bizarre response indicates your way past the ‘Tom Collins’ drink part.
did the WH press secretary, or even the state department say nothing about Akleh’s US citizenship? aren’t there supposed to be consequences when a foreign government murders one of ours?
Murders?
Convicted before trial .. is that a hallmark of Palestinian justice?
Maybe one of you good faith supporters of the Palestinians would go look up all the cases where Israel arrested a Palestinian citizen for terrorism or violence, and then gave them over to the Palestinian police, only to see them back committing violence in a short time.
What happens over the long term when Palestinians never admit to any error or tell the truth is that they are not trusted and the cry of victimhood eventually becomes like the boy who cried wolf.
USS Liberty ISIS 911 and Epstein. Nuke scumbag satanic zioNUT P0S slime parasite P0S Israel not Iran
Tell us how you feel, Larry. Haters gonna hate …
Israel is the guilty party. The USA is its partner in crime. The IDF murdered Shireen Abu Akleh in cold blood. Israel has been taking Palestinian land, committing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, using water from their homes to irrigate their farms and claiming to be the most successful country in the world in desert farming, persecuting Israeli Arabs and giving less rights to Sephardic Jews and Black Jews than it does to White Jews.
Israel murders journalists investigating human rights violations in its country. Israel criticizes many countries for human rights abuses but it doesn’t practice what it preaches.
In the West, we are taught the lie that democracies do not threaten other countries and only go to war with them if they threaten other countries or commit genocide. The US has a long history of starting unprovoked wars. The US was a democracy in the 19th Century, neither Japan nor Spain were democracies. The US attacked Japan to make it trade with the US. The US started the Spanish American War although Spain did nothing to the US. The US took its last colonies in the Americas and Pacific, said it would promote democracy in Cuba and crushed a rebellion in the Philippines. During the Gulf War, the US and UK declared war on Iraq although it did nothing to those two countries. The US and UK were democracies and Iraq was not. After the Gulf War ended and before the Iraq War started, the US and UK bombed Iraq and made the UN impose sanctions against Iraq which led to starvation of the people.
The US and UK were democracies when they started the second Iraq War and said they would promote democracy there, win the peoples’ hearts and minds, foil Iraq’ attempt to threaten world peace with WMD’s and provide evidence it was behind the 9/11 attacks in the US. All that proved to be lies.
Biden authorized America’s wars including the one in Afghanistan and says he is helping Ukraine fight against Russian aggression in its country. Zelensky is no saint and persecutes the Russian speakers in his country.
The nice thing about disingenuous “Anti-semite” arguments, is that after all the nonsensical diatribes, you realize neither side actually gives a $#!+ about the Palestinians anyways.
Is this where I say “America First,” or do I need to move a little bit closer to Jerusalem? Oy!
Hey… I’ll be in town all week. Thanks so much! Love the flowers! Bagels with locks!