A new documentary claiming to have discovered the name of the Israeli soldier responsible for shooting the correspondent of Tel Aviv Tribune, Shireen Abu Akleh, was published online.
Abu Akleh, an American Palestinian who had been with Tel Aviv Tribune since 1997, was killed while he reported Jenin in the West Bank occupied in May 2022.
Shortly after her death, Israeli officials and media suggested that she had been killed by Palestinian gunshots.
However, the subsequent reports of human rights organizations and press agencies have shown that the Palestinian fighters initially accused by Israel were at a certain distance from the murder of Abu Akleh and, in September, Israel conceded that there was a “high probability” that his forces had “accidentally” killed the correspondent.
Contributors to the documentary, who killed Shireen? Released Thursday by Zeteo, suggested that the murder of Akleh contributed to encourage more feeling of impunity among Israeli soldiers, who has since contributed to the murder of more than 200 journalists by the Israeli army and the settlers in the West Bank.
Here are four of the main points to remember from the investigation:
Biden administration knew that Israel was responsible for the murder of Abu Akleh
According to numerous testimonies presented in the film, the officials of the Biden administration knew or suspected that Abu Akleh had been shot by an Israeli soldier, but continued to support the Israeli claims that she had been killed by the Palestinians.
The filmmakers also claim that US officials had been informed by an anonymous Israeli general responsible for the West Bank in the hours after the murder of Abu Akleh that one of his soldiers had probably shot him.
Despite this, American officials continued to support the public Israeli accounts of the murder of Abu Akleh who tried to change the blame, then, when Israel publicly admitted the probable guilt of one of his soldiers, that the murder was not intentional.
US officials did not publicly challenge this story and rather declared that they were unable to determine whether a crime had been committed without access to the shooter, which Israel refused to authorize.
The United States refused to take the question later
Addressing journalist Dion Nissenbaum, an anonymous staff member in the former administration of President Joe Biden said that the officials had refused to press the Israeli administration to kill one of their citizens for fear of “anger (ING) the Israeli government”.
This despite the officials who concluded, said the same source, that the murder of Abu Akleh had been an intentional act.
Interviewed in the documentary, Eyal Hulata, who was Israel’s national security advisor at the time of the murder, defended Israel’s decision not to release the alleged soldier for interrogation by the United States, saying that Israel had a “very good and good investigation mechanism”.
When he was asked if he could remember the subject of the murder of the American journalist on the discussions between President Biden and Naftali Bennett, who was the Israeli Prime Minister at the time, Hulala replied: “It was not a subject between the Prime Minister and the President.”
Other requests from the Biden administration according to which Israel modifies the rules of engagement which, according to some, had led to the death of Abu Akleh, according to an interviewed person, “the brush”.
The failure of the Biden administration to take an Israel to report or bring a change to its rules of engagement after the murder of Akleh A, said American senator Chris Van Hollen to filmmakers, contributed to “the death of … other Americans and other civilians”.
The soldier blamed for having killed Abu Akleh is now dead
The film reports that, according to active soldiers that day, Abu Akleh was killed by Alon Scagio, a sniper with the elite unity of the Israeli army “Duvdevan”.
Speaking of his response to having killed the journalist, despite his identity as a member of the press being clear, a friend of Scagio says that he remembered anything special about the murder of Abu Akleh, “so it was not, like, a problem. He was not happy, like” hey, I killed a journalist “, of course, but he was not … eating inside.”
The filmmakers’ surveys show that Scagio was moved from the Duvdevan to a commander’s position in another unit, the distant of any investigation, consequently, the filmmakers become, to have killed Abu Akleh.
Scagio was then killed in June 2024 by a bomb by the road in Jenin, the same city of West Bank in which he is accused of having killed Abu Akleh.
Following the fallout from the murder of Akleh, Scagio’s friend affirms that the Duvdevan unit took its image for a target practice.
The support of the United States government in Israel is unshakable
The murder of Abu Akleh occurred during what was at the time considered an intense phase of Israeli raids on the occupied West Bank. She was one of at least 145 Palestinians killed during the raids in 2022.
But since then, Israel has only accelerated its violence in the West Bank and Gaza.
Israel has killed more than 52,000 Palestinians since he launched his war against Gaza in October 2023, decimating the territory and refusing the entry of food since March, hungry the local population.
And in the West Bank, Israel has increased the gravity of its attacks, using heavy weapons and air strikes and forcing the Palestinians to leave their homes. Over 900 Palestinians were killed there.
Despite this, the United States – both under the former president Joe Biden and the current president Donald Trump – have maintained his support for Israel, even largely of the rest of the world criticized his actions.
In the United Nations, the United States regularly vote alongside Israel, while the majority of member states seek to use the international organization to put pressure on Israel to stop. And the United States has threatened the International Criminal Court for trying to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for committing war crimes.
It is therefore not surprising that, even if Abu Akleh was a journalist doing her job when she was killed and an American citizen, the United States was willing to look in the other direction.
