Shireen Abu Akleh
Shireen Abu Akleh (reporter) | |
---|---|
Born | 3 April 1971 |
Died | 11 May 2022 (Age 51) |
Interest of | "Philip Cross" |
Palestinian-American journalist who worked as a reporter for the Arabic-language channel Al Jazeera for 25 years, before being shot dead by an Israeli soldier |
Shireen Abu Akleh was a prominent Palestinian-American journalist who worked as a reporter for the Arabic-language channel Al Jazeera for 25 years, before being shot dead by an Israeli soldier while covering a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.
Shireen Abu Akleh was one of the most prominent names across the Middle East for her decades of reporting in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, and as a leading journalist in the Arab world, she was seen as a role model for many aspiring Palestinian and Arab journalists, particularly women.[1]
Al Ahli Hospital bombing
Palestinian officials blamed the explosion at the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital on one of the many Israeli bombs dropped on Gaza since the October 2023 Gaza−Israel conflict began on 7 October 2023.
Israel, meanwhile, has predictably claimed that a misfired Palestinian rocket was responsible for the massacre at the hospital.
Israel’s response to the hospital bombing – a war crime under international law – is consistent with its usual post-atrocity routine.
The routine goes something like this: Israel commits a human rights atrocity, immediately denies having anything to do with it, says it has solid evidence that Palestinians committed the crime, and then just waits to see if someone manages to prove what really happened. If it eventually becomes clear that Israel did indeed carry out the atrocity, it silently accepts responsibility, but by then, the world’s focus has already moved on to other matters.
Israel performed this exact routine just last year, after it murdered Palestinian-American journalist and Al Jazeera veteran Shireen Abu Akleh.[2]