A prominent Palestinian journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, was shot dead by the Israeli forces during their raid on the city of Jenin in the northern part of the West Bank last week. She worked for Al Jazeera since 1997 and was a beloved household name for many Palestinians as she had spent nearly two decades covering the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Al Jazeera claimed the Israelis killed her deliberately as she was wearing a vest labeled “press” and a helmet. Anybody could look at her attire and tell that she was a journalist. Many eyewitnesses have given the testimonies about her being struck by a bullet below her ear, bypassing the helmet.
Israelis first blamed Palestinian gunmen and portrayed themselves as victims as their foreign ministry shared a video on Twitter and said that Palestinians “firing indiscriminately” are likely to have killed her.
However, an Israeli human rights group - B’Tselem - found that the claims of her being killed by Plaestinian gunmen were not backed by evidence because the spot where she was shot was 985 feet away from the spot where the clip was filmed.
When the US State Department spokesperson, Ned Price, was asked why there is no international investigation being carried out - due to the doubts regarding Israel’s investigation, if any, being unbiased - Price referred to the case of Iyad al-Halak, a Palestinian with special needs that the Israeli forces murdered. Although, an investigation was launched by Israel but nobody has been imprisoned or held accountable to this day.
When I say, “ doubts regarding Israel’s investigation being unbiased,” I literally mean it because Israel’s past actions have proved this.
April 2018 - Israel forces killed Yaseer Murtaja, a journalist wearing a vest labeled “Press.” Instead of carrying out an investigation, Israel tried to portray the journalist as a terrorist.
2016, in another example, Israeli soldier killed a Palestinian lying unconscious on the ground. After the incident went viral, the soldier received only 18 months of prison sentence, which was later reduced to 4 months. This was the last time that Israel carried out any investigation against its soldier, but it didn’t mean anything as the punishment was not given to the full extent of the law. Imagine a Palestinian killing the Israeli soldier, do you think the punishment for him will be only 4 months in prison?
Israel itself don’t want to have any independent body investigating what happens on the Palestinian territories as shown by its reluctance to cooperate with United Nationd Special Rapporteur.
The lack of international investigation and the US government’s assertion that Israel will carry a fair investigation, which is highly unlikely, indicates that the illegal occupiers of Palestine can kill any Palestinian and receive no backlash from the “liberal democracies” in the West. It exposes the hypocrite Western media. It exposes all the women rights activists in the West.
Imagine a Russian soldier killing a Ukrainian-American soldier in cold blood. The Western media would be screaming, rightfully so, all day long and the US government would do everything to try the accused Russian soldier before the ICC, again, rightfully so. Then why not do it with Israel that kills innocent Palestinians regularly?
The “defenders of democracy” in the West act like the lives of Palestinians don’t matter. Their hypocrisy gets displayed on the world screen regularly, but due to bad media’s monopoly on the air waves and their ability to control what people think, not many people can actually see the hypocrisy.
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