By Chris Hedges / Special to ScheerPost
Shireen Abu Akleh, the Al Jazeera reporter with more than two decades of experience covering armed conflicts, knew the protocol. She and other reporters remained last Wednesday in the open, clearly visible to Israeli snipers about 650 feet away in a building. Her flak jacket and helmet were emblazoned with the word “PRESS.”
There were three shots fired in her direction. The second bullet hit the Al Jazeera producer Ali al-Samoudi in the back. The third shot, al-Samoudi remembered, hit Abu Akleh in the face below the rim of her helmet.
There were a few seconds when the Israeli sniper saw profiled in his scope Abu Akleh, one of the most recognizable faces in the Middle East. The 5.56 mm bullet from the M-16, designed to spin end over end upon impact, would have obliterated most of Abu Akleh’s head. The accuracy of the M-16, especially the M16A4s equipped with the Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight (ACOG), a prismatic telescopic sight, is very high. In the fighting in Fallujah so many dead insurgents were found with head wounds that observers at first thought they had been executed. The bullet that killed Abu Akleh was deftly placed between the very slim opening separating her helmet and the collar of her flak jacket.
I have been in combat, including in clashes between Israeli and Palestinian forces. Snipers are dreaded on a battlefield because each kill is calculated. The execution of Abu Akleh was not an accident. She was singled out for elimination. Whether this killing was ordered by commanding officers, or whether it was the whim of an Israeli sniper, I cannot answer. Israelis shoot so many Palestinians with impunity my guess is the sniper knew he or she could kill Abu Akleh and never face any consequences.
The shooting, Al Jazeera said in a statement, was “a blatant murder, violating international laws and norms.” Abu Akleh, the network added, was “assassinated in cold blood.”
Abu Akleh, who was 51 and a Palestinian-American, was a familiar and trusted presence on television screens throughout the region, revered for her courage and integrity and beloved for her careful and sensitive reporting on the intricacies of daily life under the occupation. Her reporting from the occupied territories routinely punctured Israeli narratives and exposed Israeli abuses and crimes, making her the bête noire of the Israeli government. She was a heroine for young Palestinian women, as Dalia Hatuqa, a Palestinian-American journalist and friend of Abu Akleh’s, related to The New York Times.
“I know of a lot of girls who grew up basically standing in front of a mirror and holding their hair brushes and pretending to be Shireen,” Hatuqa told the paper. “That’s how lasting and important her presence was.”
“I chose journalism to be close to the people,” Abu Akleh said in a clip shared by Al Jazeera after she was killed. “It might not be easy to change the reality, but at least I was able to bring their voice to the world.”
In a 2017 interview with the Palestinian television channel An-Najah NBC, she was asked if she was worried about being shot.
“Of course, I get scared,” she said. “In a specific moment you forget that fear. We don’t throw ourselves to death. We go and we try to find where we can stand and how to protect the team with me before I think about how I am going to go up on the screen and what I am going to say.”
Her funeral attracted thousands of mourners, the largest in Jerusalem since the death in 2002 of the Palestinian leader Faisal Husseini. Israeli police in full riot gear disrupted the procession, confiscating and ripping down Palestinian flags. The police fired stun grenades and pushed, clubbed and beat mourners and pallbearers, causing them to lose their grip on the coffin. Thousands chanted: “We sacrifice our soul and blood for you, Shireen.” It was another example of the daily humiliation meted out to Palestinians by their Israeli occupiers. It was also a moving tribute to a reporter who understood that the role of journalism is to give a voice to those the powerful seek to silence.
I covered the Israeli occupation for seven years, two years with The Dallas Morning News and five with The New York Times, where I was the paper’s Middle East Bureau Chief. One of the chief objectives of the Israeli army was to prevent our reporting from the occupied territories. If we were able get past Israeli checkpoints, not always possible, to document murderous assaults by Israeli soldiers on unarmed Palestinians then Israel’s well-oiled propaganda machine was rolled out to obscure our reporting. Israeli officials swiftly issued counter narratives. The Israeli Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, Defense Minister and Israeli Defense Force (IDF) spokesperson, for example, immediately blamed the killing of Abu Akleh on Palestinian gunmen until video footage examined by B’Tselem Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories exposed the falsehood.
When Israel is caught lying, as it was with the murder of Abu Akleh, it immediately promises an investigation. The narrative shifts from one of blaming the Palestinians to the outcome of an inquiry. Impartial investigations into the hundreds of killings by soldiers and Jewish settlers of Palestinians are rarely carried out. Perpetrators are almost never brought to trial or held accountable. The pattern of Israeli obfuscation is pathetically predictable. So is the collusion of much of the corporate media along with Republican and Democratic politicians. US politicians decried the murder of Abu Akleh and dutifully repeated the old mantra, calling for a “thorough investigation” by the army that carried out the crime.
The dramatic footage captured in September 2000 at the Netzarim junction in the Gaza Strip by France 2 TV of a father trying to shield his 12-year-old son Muhammad al-Durrah from the Israeli gunfire that killed him resulted in a typical propaganda campaign by Israel. Israeli officials spent years lying about the killing of the boy, first blaming the Palestinians for the shooting, and later suggesting that the scene was faked, and Muhammad was still alive.
One thing is certain, the Israeli military knows which one of its snipers killed Abu Akleh, although the name of the soldier will probably never be made public. Nor will, I expect, the sniper be reprimanded.
“With all due respect to us, let’s say that Israel’s credibility is not very high in such cases,” Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs Nachman Shai said of an Israeli investigation into the killing. “We know this. It is based on the past.”
Israel has a long history of blocking investigations into the plethora of war crimes it commits in Gaza, the world’s largest open-air prison, and the West Bank. It refuses to cooperate with the International Criminal Court (ICC) into possible war crimes in the occupied territories. It does not cooperate with the U.N. Human Rights Council and prohibits the United Nations Special Rapporteur (UNSR) for Human Rights from entering the country. Israel revoked the work permit for Omar Shakir, the Director of Human Rights Watch (Israel and Palestine), in 2018 and expelled him. In May 2018, Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy published a report calling on the European Union (EU) and European states to halt their direct and indirect financial support and funding to Palestinian and international human rights organizations that “have ties to terror and promote boycotts against Israel.”
Israel relies on campaigns of terror, with random and indiscriminate killings, to beat back Palestinian resistance. Israeli strategists describe the tactic as “mowing the grass,” part of an endless war of attrition. Israeli terror keeps Palestinians perpetually off-balance, fearful, and living at a subsistence level. This state terrorism also contributes to Israel’s main goal, a slow-motion ethnic cleansing of Palestinian land.
The 2014 bombing and shelling of Gaza, which lasted 51 days, killed more than 2,250 Palestinians, including 551 children. Israel’s use of its military against an occupied population that does not have mechanized units, an air force, navy, missiles, heavy artillery, and command and control, not to mention a US commitment to provide $38 billion dollars in defense-aid to Israel over the next decade, is not justifiable under international law. Israel is not exercising the right to defend itself. It is carrying out mass murder. It is a war crime. The attacks are designed to degrade civilian infrastructure, destroying power plants, water and sewage treatment facilities, residential high-rises, government buildings, roads, bridges, public facilities, agricultural lands, schools and mosques.
Israel used state terror to crush the International Solidarity Movement that saw activists come to the occupied territories from around the world, often using their bodies to block Israel from demolishing Palestinian homes, as well as filming and recording human rights abuses.
As the author and journalist Jonathan Cook writes:
But Abu Akleh’s US passport was no more able to save her from Israeli retribution than that of Rachel Corrie, murdered in 2003 by an Israeli bulldozer driver as she tried to protect Palestinian homes in Gaza. Similarly, Tom Hurndall’s British passport did not stop him from being shot in the head as he tried to protect Palestinian children in Gaza from Israeli gunfire. Nor did filmmaker James Miller’s British passport prevent an Israeli soldier from executing him in 2003 in Gaza, as he documented Israel’s assault on the tiny, overcrowded enclave.
All were seen as having taken a side by acting as witnesses and by refusing to remain quiet as Palestinians suffered – and for that reason, they and those who thought like them had to be taught a lesson.
It worked. Soon, the contingent of foreign volunteers – those who had come to Palestine to record Israel’s atrocities and serve, when necessary, as human shields to protect Palestinians from a trigger-happy Israeli army – were gone. Israel denounced the International Solidarity Movement for supporting terrorism, and given the clear threat to their lives, the pool of volunteers gradually dried up.
Israel has a deep hostility to the press, especially Al Jazeera which has large viewership throughout the Arab world. Al Jazeera reporters are routinely denied press credentials, harassed, and blocked from reporting. Israeli warplanes in May 2021 destroyed the al-Jalaa building in Gaza that housed dozens of international news agencies, including the Gaza offices of Al Jazeera and the Associated Press.
At least 144 Palestinian journalists have been wounded by Israeli forces in the occupied territories since 2018 and three, including Abu Akleh, have been killed in the same period, according to Reporters Without Borders. Palestinian reporters Ahmed Abu Hussein and Yasser Mortaja, also clearly identified as press, were shot dead by Israeli snipers in Gaza in 2018. At least 45 Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israeli soldiers since 2000, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Information.
“Abu Akleh was most likely shot precisely because she was a high-profile Al Jazeera reporter, known for her fearless reporting of Israeli crimes,” Cook writes. “Both the army and its soldiers bear grudges, and they have lethal weapons with which to settle scores.”
Israel does little to hide its callous disregard for the lives of Palestinians, international activists, and journalists.
“Suppose that Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by Israeli army fire,” Avi Benyahu, a former IDF spokesperson stated. “There’s no need to apologize for that.”
Reporters and photographers, in Israel’s eyes, are responsible for their own deaths.
“When ‘terrorists’ fire at our soldiers in Jenin, the soldiers must retaliate in full force even in the presence of journalists in from Al Jazeera in the area—who usually stand in the army’s way and impede their work,” said Knesset member Itamar Ben Gvir.
Israeli forces have killed at least 380 Palestinians, including 90 children, during the past year, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA). This includes at least 260 Palestinians killed in Gaza during Israel’s latest assault in May 2021. The pace of Israeli killings of Palestinians has been steadily increasing in the wake of armed Palestinians murdering 18 people in cities across Israel since the end of March. In March, Israeli forces killed 12 Palestinians, including three children. In April, Israeli forces killed at least 22 Palestinians, including three children. Abu Akleh was covering an Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp where army units said they were hunting for Palestinian attackers.
The killing of Abu Akleh would have been treated very differently if she was killed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine. There would have been no equivocations about who carried out the murder. Her death would have been denounced as a war crime. No one would have acquiesced to let the Russian military carry out the investigation.
The world is divided into worthy and unworthy victims, those who deserve our compassion and support and those who do not. Ukrainians are white and largely Christian. We see the struggle against the Russian occupier as a battle for freedom and democracy. We provide $40 billion in weapons and humanitarian aid. We impose punishing sanctions on Moscow. We make the Ukrainian cause our own.
The 55-year-long fight for Palestinian freedom is no less just, no less worthy of our support. But Palestinians are occupied by our Israeli ally. They are not white. Most are not Christian, although Abu Akleh was Christian. They are not deemed worthy. They suffer and die alone. The war crimes carried out by Israel go unheeded and unpunished. The Palestinians doggedly refuse to give up. This makes them as heroic, maybe more heroic, than Ukrainian fighters. We are on the wrong side of history in Israel. Abu Akleh’s blood is on our hands.
NOTE TO SCHEERPOST READERS FROM CHRIS HEDGES: There is now no way left for me to continue to write a weekly column for ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show without your help. The walls are closing in, with startling rapidity, on independent journalism, with the elites, including the Democratic Party elites, clamoring for more and more censorship. Bob Scheer, who runs ScheerPost on a shoestring budget, and I will not waver in our commitment to independent and honest journalism, and we will never put ScheerPost behind a paywall, charge a subscription for it, sell your data or accept advertising. Please, if you can, sign up at chrishedges.substack.com so I can continue to post my now weekly Monday column on ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show, The Chris Hedges Report.
What could I say that hasn’t been said a hundred times before….and ignored.
I watch Israel’s behavior with a kind of morbid fascination: there is no country better at committing a slow genocide, while claiming to be victims of one themselves (and victims of Palestinian “terrorists”, aka unarmed protestors and journalists).
The Israelis are a brilliant people, and it is such a waste of human potential for them to commit apartheid on the Palestinians. Their farming techniques and technical prowess could help the world mitigate climate change, and buy our societies time to become stewards, rather than destroyers, of nature.
The Israelis are even hedging their bets with their benefactor, the United States, by limiting sanctions against Russia (see for example: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/10/world/middleeast/israel-ukraine-russia-oligarchs.html). They must also see the writing on the (western) wall, that the US is a declining hegemony and it might be wise to keep good relations with Russia and China.
I apologize, as my comment about Palestinian “terrorism” was unkind and incomplete, because the reality is more complicated (for example, suicide bombings). My intent was to say that Israel uses the media and perception management to justify its apartheid, and minimize the misery and deaths this causes, as well as malign anyone critical of Israel as being racist against the Jewish people.
Is Israel not guilty of a slow holocaust against the Palestinian people, repeating the cycle of abuse the Jews experienced under Nazi Germany? Would there be such fear of violence, if Israel had become a multi-cultural country, committed to the wellbeing of both Muslims and Jews?
Both of your comments were spot on – thanks.
Menachem Begin, the sixth Prime Minister of Israel, was the preeminent Middle Eastern terrorist of his day, until David Ben-Gurion surpassed him. As the leader of the Irgun, he targeted Arabs, Brits and even other Jews for assassination. Begin planned the destruction of the King David Hotel (91 deaths) and the massacre of Deir Yassin (100 to 260 deaths, including women and children). The Irgun’s acts of terror were financed by demanding money from Jewish merchants and engaging in insurance scams in the diamond industry. In 1948, Albert Einstein and other prominent Jewish intellectuals wrote a strongly-worded warning to the New York Times, in which they called Begin a racist, fascist and terrorist. In 1970, Ben-Gurion told Begin’s biographer that Begin was “responsible for the assassination of innocent Jews, Arabs, and British.”
Menachem Begin once described a massacre as “a splendid act of conquest.”
They’re Terrorists till they win then freedom fighters
Do not apologize.
The surviving leader of Warsaw ghetto uprising of 1943 Marek Edelman (the other leader was Mordechaj Anielewicz who died in uprising) under duress of Polish government anti Semitic political campaign in 1968 following 1967 Arab Israeli war, when asked if, after he lost his position as director of large medical clinic and was demoted, he was planing to emigrate to Israel he said in the interview with western press agency that he would never emigrate but would gladly visit if Israel would stop its apartheid and fascist policies regarding Palestinians.
He was in fact opposing Israel statehood set up by Zionists who, he as a leftist, a member of ruling Polish United Workers Party, fought throughout his life.
He described Israeli Palestinian conflict as tragic and senseless train of provocations set up by British colonial powers empowering unrepresentative of people extreme political factions including promoting terrorism on both sides bringing miserly to both nations.
No need to continue.
Israelis are no smarter than any other group on Earth. We give them billions a year.
What they are is cunning group of racists committing genecide.
@ cynical rex
well, on the topic of israel i am in full agreement with all ye said…. no other army on this planet gets away with murder of civilians as a daily routine while claiming ‘self-defense-… now there is a country that oughta have the shit sanctioned out of it. instead, in the U.S. ye can get fired for supporting BDS movement, [free speech, for some obscure reason, does not apply in this case?]
@arvo
Wow, a comment from you that I can agree with! Must be good drugs, can I have some?
Even though I’m totally opposed to the existence of the modern state of Israel and everything it does, and have Jordanian/Palestinian friends, I take no side in the overall conflict. This idiocy started thousands of years ago when two brothers couldn’t get along, and both sides are stupid for continuing this conflict. The problem for the past 75 or so years is that the U.S. and western Europe stuck their piggy noses into this by stealing Palestinian land and homes, and giving them to European Jews in order to create what is now Israel. Then these western powers armed Israel to the teeth so that no other country in the Middle East could even begin to compete with it militarily, and the west supports everything Israel does, leading Israel to act with impunity in their killings of Palestinians, their theft of land from Syria, etc.
So the problem here is really the U.S. and western Europe, because without them meddling where they don’t belong, the modern state of Israel wouldn’t exist.
Violence begets violence. So if the Israeli response isn’t the solution, and the Palestinian response isn’t the solution, what’s the solution to a peaceful resolution of the conflict?
What’s the Chris Hedges’ response to “armed Palestinians murdering 18 people in cities across Israel since the end of March”?
@sheldon gitis: i can only tell ye my response, but methinks Chris would agree: how about the ISRAELIS STOP STEALING LAND, WHICH THEY HAVE DONE, EVERY YEAR, FOR MANY DECADES? how would ye react if yer neighbor sez: oh , i want peace! let’s have peace! and while he says so, he steals yer cattle, yer orchards, yer ANCESTRAL LANDS?
my response to armed victims of my ongoing decades-long THEFT OF THEIR LAND who are fighting back, would be [assuming i want peace] to MEBBE STOP STEALING THEIR LAND? i guarantee my response would most definitely not be to shoot random journalists. ye sem to think there is some ‘symmetry’ there? some “justice”
i don’t know if these connections are very difficult to understand for ye. they seem fairly simple to me.
excellent article as always. my only minor qualm is the “55 years” number. i’d personally count it from 1948 and the naqba.
the comparison to ukraine is apt for obvious reasons. also as the lines between IDF and azov are increasingly blurred.
I don’t want to diminish the unwarranted suffering of the Palestinian people. Now perhaps I missed it in my slight haste this afternoon trying to prepare for work, but it seems disingenous of Mr. Hedges to not apparently discuss the unwillingness of Palestinian authorities to turn over the bullet for forensic exam (if it passed completely through Ms. Shireen Abu Akleh on its brutal path) although he does link to an AP article through the highlighted term ‘sniper’ but for which he does not allude in his text to the bullet thus far censored by Palestinian authorities. In truth, the crime scene should not have been disturbed and early recordings of the scene should have been made in order to more certainly establish that this was indeed the leathal weapon in question. This kind of evidence collection is the gold standard and possibly everything else is hearsay. Granted it is not always possible to acheive the gold standard in the real world but not providing the bullet for ‘more independent’ analysis, falls more than far short.
The IDF / Israel knows who fired the bullet and are satisfied that it hit the intended target.
How do you know this?
@ Ronen ye gotta be kidding, right? even a 7-year old googling the I”D”F ‘s history of investigating and convicting their own of the deaths of civilians [which have a uncommon frequency of happening around them], would conclude that turning evidence over to them would be insanely stupid… ye just want to throw a smoke screen, why don’t ye rather address the fact that multiple witnesses [fellow reporters] state that the israeli fucking “defense” forces did all the shooting???
hearsay my ass. ye shilling for israel….
So, I see your ad hominim argument. I also see what seems to be your self contradictory argument that you can’t trust the Israelis to conduct a sufficiently disinterested investigation when any 7 year old on the internet, of all places (!), can find evidence that Israelis have acted against their own reputational interests by convicting their own soldiers of crimes. It may be true that fellow reporters (you should cite your source here) make the claims that you say that they do but there might be the “fog of war” to see through or they too may have biases. The Daily Mail has reported that the IDF are saying that it may have been one of it’s own soldiers that killed the reporter but even that possibility in your favor needs to be tested against the evidence. This is why forensics is considered a science. Facts are not interchangable with opinions. Your saying that my putting up a ‘smokescreen’ is just your rationalization for being put off by my insistence of basing judgements on a facts-based epistimology. You can improve.
I don’t know why my response to you was not uploaded here last night around 11pm EST. I’ll be generous and assume there was some problem with Google. I’ll keep a photo record this time to report to Google’s legal support service should I need to. I thought I could trust this site. I guess Chris Hedges may not be the only victim of algorithms (some lower tech than others). Anyway, here’s my earlier response again, from memory:
Avro, I see the ad hominem argument. I also see what seems to be a self-contradictory argument where you seem to be saying that you can’t trust the Israelis with the physical evidence of this case but that any 7 year old could look on [of all place known for its ‘reliability'(!)] the Internet and find that Israel has convicted its own soldiers of crimes despite not being in their reputational interest. The latter obviously implies, contrary to your screed, the capacity of the Israeli authorites for disinterestedness. Can you say the same about your sources (which you should provide references for by the way)? They could be wrong due to the fog of war or some bias they may share. As Chris would say, “Facts are not interchangable with opinions”. The Daily Mail, I believe, has reported that Israeli authorities (I believe on the 13th) have said that the leathal weapon (i.e. bullet) may have come from one of its soldiers. Although this would support your viewpoint, it is not sufficient to establish the truth of the matter. All of these theories have to be tested against the facts. That’s why forensics is considered a science. As Richard Feinman once said, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts”. My so-called smokescreen may be the pejoritive moniker you use to console yourself for not thinking too hard about the subject. You can do better next time. “Go thou and sin no more”.
@Ronen – the israeli “defense” forces just announced that they would not even hold a criminal inquiry……mebbe now ye understand me point better…. they have no interest in looking deeper, one wonders why… needless to say, i would very much be in favor of an international inquiry, but decades of watching israelis get off scot-free in just about every instance of a murdered palestinian has made me deeply cynical…
ISRAEL WON’T CHANGE AS LONG AS THE USA CHRISTO-FASCISTS SUPPORT THEM….
So, the War on Terror, Neocons, the Jewish cabal, all those Mossad before 9-11? That “country” going to investigate their own murders? Hows the USS Liberty celebrations going for mid-June?
It’s more than about a reporter. It’s about that event, The 9/11 attacks have been interpreted by several commentators, including former Reagan administration official Barbara Nonegger,
as the 21st century equivalent of the 1955 Reichstag fire, by which the Nazis imposed their dictatorship after Hitler had been appointed Chancellor by president Hindenburg.
https://www.academia.edu/38701130/Academic_Corruption_the_Israel_Lobby_and_9_11_or_Why_I_have_resigned_from_my_emeritus_status_at_the_University_of_Sussex?email_work_card=title
I suppose they might press charges if they had access to that bullet.
I agree with you about the Christian fascists being a huge problem, witness what happened with the terror in Buffalo this past weekend.
As Dr. Cornel West would say – “Keep bearing witness, Brother Chris!”
but he wouldn’t say bear false witness! Be the truth-guy not the loyalty-guy. The first guy could easily be an oligarch.
The last line in the reply above should have read. “The last guy could more easily be an oligarch.”. I suppose the oligarch could be both guys but usually trust, I think, is in shorter supply in such institutions
@Ronen: mebbe ye ain’t an israeli shill, in which case i apologize… there is, after all, another explanation which is ye are just horribly undereducated and misinformed… may i suggest ye study the ‘gaza flotilla raid’ in which israel attacked civilian ships IN INTERNATIONAL WATERS and executed some 9 [a tenth died later] turkish and turkish-american citizens…. look at their wars, like on Lebanon and Gaza, where hospitals, schools, water purification plants. power stations get wiped out, A;LWAYS ” BY ACCIDENT” and where for each israeli child killed by some random rockets and other ‘terror acts’ SEVERAL HUNDRED LEBANESE OR PALESTINIAN CHILDREN DIE…
i could go on for several pages, but mebbe ye a shill, so won’t waste my time.
let me leave ye with a quote by Chris Hedges, from the ‘Gaza Diaries’:
“Children have been shot in other countries I have covered – death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo – but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport,”
those words speak for themselves. if the I”D”F forces had an actual process to weed out murderers from their ranks, like ye claim, then why does the problem persist, nay get worse? i rest me case…. just study, THEN post!
Avro, I don’t know why my posts end up different than how I sent them or how I remember yours but, in any case, I believe you were saying that the ‘Christian’ Right is a problem because they influence the U.S. Government to give Israel carte blanche. I affirm that the Buffalo terrorist is a particularly ugly example of what White ‘Christian’ fascists can do. I did read Sacco’s chapter and it did expand my empathy for both sides (more on the Palestinian side as I’ve been exposed to the Israeli more). The chapter quoted an IDF member saying that they behave better than other ‘control’ Country groups (if this brutal ‘data’ were written up as a scientific paper). As Mr. Hedges has often implied, the goal should be to prevent the “atrocity producing conditions” in accord with (and this I’d my addition. I believe) truth and justice.
ISRAEL CONCLUSIVELY KILLED AL-JAZEERA JOURNALIST SHIREEN ABU AKLEH
https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/israel-conclusively-killed-al-jazeera-journalist-shireen-abu-akleh/
Palestinian Flag Is Raised in Jerusalem as American Journalist Is Laid to Rest
https://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001iKsLxwy0DqfHvTYlsgKc_DfIqazCAN2S4dXrv41kOvuUlBruwutIZOyKzjXmCGQUde1uweM0nxoEStZOkWCwfaoTSE-ZW2PN6zHYCwQADBXcquXKhK6XOJg61zeiBBpNZWq9u7PcxY0CtZKTYZYEfjvKGG4N7osYAAULfzlF-3AxMRpgjamTUJy1X3ywJCVJTFNbIV51c3hqBkuKOj71sTL582yCCeB1tuqOyMvYj5wkDv8-UkuPb_jWuODHQoX-&c=IS6ivgvHTEGeikBBDfvsdc0IKiFNJkiCORs_gGcbEhh-CDyKBIfV_g==&ch=VTgPrOFhGT3fiHjP8qlX3-GXSwgll4ksFj5_BC9p1x7hkmeEopRevg==
So where exactly in the Last American Vagabond article is this ‘conclusive’ proof?
Thank you for your reporting on this issue. These reports should be block chained for posterity as I imagine the powers that be will want these facts and observations erased. Perhaps there is a business model involving NFTs or another form of crypto token that can help support your effort. I have a media and production background and will put a few hours into exploring this…
Khashoggi was a worthy victim, who betrayed his country Saudi Arabia for US benefit.
Shireen Abu Akleh was unworthy, because she stood for her People and was killed by the US’s ally.
Ukraine is possibly even more corrupt and murderous than Israel? Let’s see what more they can get away with under Viceroy Biden.
The US is not the country I grew up in.
@michael888 why, thanks for bringing a number of unrelated, false statements to this discussion. i will just point out that Khashoggi was murdered for reporting on the obscene corruption of the ruling cleptocracy in saudi arabia, which must be the middle east’s worst kept secret. how this purportedly equals ‘betraying’ his country’ is yer madness – most would consider him a patriot…. small hint: at times patriots are the ones OPPOSING their government! yes, i know, politics is sooooo difficult!
Thank you. I do have a copy of Joe Sacco’s Journalism in front of me, which I am due to read and which does have some chapters on Palestine which I will endeavor to engage with this Sabbath, as a start. Thanks also for your helpful direction. BTW, I’m assuming we both have some significant connection to Canada.
Brings a whole new meaning to ‘shooting the messenger’
A ruthless, sadistic, cold blooded meaning.
But then what else would we expect from the Israeli hierarchy?
@jonny: and as long as the USA, driven by the fascist religious right, will support them no matter what, things won’t change…. still, the BDS movement needs to be pursued, it worries the israelis and it pisses them off. [two good reasons]
What does the Israeli apartheid have to do with Putin’s colonial wars?
While Hedges ‘execution’ quip might be plausible or even true, the pretense that it was has absolutely no evidence whatsoever!!! Worse still, Hedges doesn’t even bother to present one!
@democracy: what can i say? “Israel, which shoots hundreds of Palestinians a year, routinely includes reporters and photographers on its target lists.” Israel is on Chris’s shit list, and do they deserve to be on it.
Russia, which shoots tens of thousands of Ukrainians this year, routinely including reporters and photographers on its target lists as well as torturing, raping and executing random civilians. does not exist for Chris. big blind spot there. ukrainian kids dying provokes no response in Chris. Palestinian kids, different story… kinda a reverse racism?
i have mentioned before how much i admired Chris’s work like the ‘gaza diaries’… but it is hard to believe these days that his deafening silence on the illegal Ukraine war has nothing to do with where his paycheck is coming from?
@arvo: NATO wanted this war.
And what NATO wants, NATO gets.
After all, a trillion dollars a year in what amounts to corporate welfare for the military industrial complex is easy money, isn’t it ?
@Jonny… calling BS here,…. Putin started that war. sez Ukraine not even a real country, but rightfully part of russia ….yer shilling won’t change that.
don’t even try. waste of yer time…..
Eerie parallel to US replacement theme:
‘Arabs are taking over the country’: Likud aims next campaign at far-right voters
https://www.timesofisrael.com/arabs-are-taking-over-the-country-likud-aims-next-campaign-at-far-right-voters/
Key excerpt:
“The Arabs are taking over the country. We see it every day. They abuse Jews. They do what they want. They go out to violent demonstrations that sometimes lead to lynchings. They trample on Israeli flags,” Zohar charged. “This will be the hot topic in the elections and the public will be with us.”
This would not be the first time Likud has deployed anti-Arab sentiment in order to woo votes. On election day in 2015, Netanyahu infamously said, “The rule of the right is in danger. Arab voters are coming in droves to the ballot boxes.”
The hollowness of the Israeli “democracy” matches that of the US.
US replacement fascists have it exactly backwards: the US is not run by Zionists, Zionism has evolved into a feature of American foreign policy.
Israel is — actually — the American Mini-Me.
Both nations present themselves as being appointed by “God” and given rights that supersede anyone else on the planet.
Both nations hold this incurable delusion as a core belief, which shapes all their interactions with others.
Both nations are founded on replacing other people: the US on ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population, Israel on basically same idea — being implemented right in front of our eyes.
Both states were settled and shaped by desperate, violent people.
The US was seeded with religious fanatics, criminals, debtors, groups feeling economic collapse. Same for the rest of the “New World.” And Australia.
Israel was populated with Jews being expelled from Europe: first by the Balfour Declaration and then at the end of WWII, The European idea was to get as many Jews as feasible off its soil, send them to some place they might or might not survive.
Exile to Palestine was Hitler’s original plan. Same as Lord Balfour.
One key difference: there are not enough Jews in the world to do in Palestine what the European invaders did in the Americas..
The US is a rogue, criminal state. If it were a person, it would be jailed and likely executed for its sociopathic crimes.
So is Israel, it’s little sibling.
@baba: eerie parallel to putin’s ‘war on Ukraine theme’ here… putin say NAZIS ARE TAKING OVER [never mind the right wing gets miserable results in elections, and a PEW poll found the lowest level of antisemitism in all of the eastern european countries… ye too brainwashed to believe me? the JERUSALEM POST wrote [i quote]: Ukraine today boasts the lowest rate of antisemitic sentiment in eastern Europe and probably most of western Europe too.]
so in reality, there is no Nazi problem in Ukraine.. it is an excuse for putin, like the arab voters and ‘terrorists’ for israel… funny ye can’t see these parallels…. mebbe a bit blind in one eye?
Yep, a quick history of Occupied Palestine:
https://www.academia.edu/38701130/Academic_Corruption_the_Israel_Lobby_and_9_11_or_Why_I_have_resigned_from_my_emeritus_status_at_the_University_of_Sussex?email_work_card=title
Don’t let the Wish I Was a Rothschild Arvo get you down!
From the actual poll:
Across the European countries surveyed, half or more express favorable views of Jews in their country. This includes roughly nine-in-ten or more in the Western European nations of the Netherlands (92%), Sweden (92%), the UK (90%) and France (89%).
*******
In Ukraine and Russia, at least three-quarters of the population has a favorable view of Jews in their country – increases of 15 and 16 percentage points since 2009, respectively.
OOPSies!
The Azov Battalion and Zalensky’s constant repetition of the Bandera slogan shred your argument.
The Nazis don’t run the government, but they are an important force in the country. We can hope that the Russians will execute every one of them they capture.
Putin is a Slavophile mystic and a blunderer: decisive action should have been taken before NATO was able to arm and train the Ukrainians: their armed forces could have been decisively shredded without starting a major war and killing so many people.
Hoping for a military coup that re-installs Communist government, and a real alliance with China. Regime change to believe in. Cutting Ukraine off from the Black Sea is what’s necessary now, possibly Russia can confiscate Ukrainian grain and ship it to nations that need it. A little tax for the new Kulaks.
That’s all those Jewish people in Occupied Palestine do is kill kill kill, with support from USA-Klanada.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/documentary-trailer-gaza-fights-back-dan-cohen/280494/
Take a look at Israelis targeting civilians. How many sancitons against the Jews of Occupied Palestine? Six, sixty, six hundred, six thousand?
+–+
The documentary features intimate interviews with survivors, many of whom lost family members in the Israeli bombardment.
Among them is Omar Abu al-Ouf, who lost 22 family members in the bombing of his family’s house in al-Remal, Gaza’s main thoroughfare.
“The first missile came down on us in the street with no prior warning or call,” he recounted.
Among those killed was Omar’s father, Dr. Ayman Abu al-Ouf, one of the most senior physicians in all of Gaza.
Others, like 11-year-old Amal Ramzi Muhammed Nasir, fled amid the bombardment to take shelter in United Nations-run schools.
“We were trying to sleep. At exactly 1 a.m., there were sounds of explosions and airstrikes nearby. The house was shaking due to the intensity of the explosions.”
What a wacky crazy country Israel is.
@paul and haider… my, if only the tens of thousands of innocent Ukrainians killed in this brutal, needless attack had yer sympathy, too…. what is this, racism? them Ukrainians aren’t real human beings, but Palestinians are? Chris Hedges appears to concur….
but don’t let me stop ye, carry on with yer selective moral outrage.
[israel is a worthy target.]
Ahh, Arvo, wish he was a Rothschild. Arvo, Aussie for afternoon? Bot boy
So, the War on Terror, Neocons, the Jewish cabal, all those Mossad before 9-11 doing their fun stuff? That “country” going to investigate their own murders? Hows the USS Liberty celebrations going for mid-June Arvo?
It’s more than about a reporter. It’s about that event, The 9/11 attacks have been interpreted by several commentators, including former Reagan administration official Barbara Nonegger,
as the 21st century equivalent of the 1955 Reichstag fire, by which the Nazis imposed their dictatorship after Hitler had been appointed Chancellor by president Hindenburg.
Learn, read, shut up and suck that big Ukraine double-dipped cone.
https://www.academia.edu/38701130/Academic_Corruption_the_Israel_Lobby_and_9_11_or_Why_I_have_resigned_from_my_emeritus_status_at_the_University_of_Sussex?email_work_card=title
ye thoroughly lost me. i don’t even know if ye are trying to insult me at this point… just be it known that if ye calling me a ‘rothchild’ ye are mistaken. [more of a moonchild, me.]
and if ye mean to indicate a pro-israeli bias here, why re-read my posts. hire a ‘reading and understanding’ mentor if doubts persist, for pro-israel i am so obviously not. i have ethics.
shalom!
I expect that now it’s clear that Nazis in Ukraine can be handed tens of Billions of dollars just for the asking that US aid and arming of Israel will increase commensurately.