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Palestinians are holding a state funeral in Ramallah for Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh, a veteran journalist who was one of the best-known television journalists in Palestine and the Arab world. Abu Akleh, who was a U.S. citizen, was wearing a press uniform and covering an Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank when she was fatally shot in the head on Wednesday. Israel initially claimed she may have been shot by a Palestinian gunman, but later said it was unclear who shot her, after witnesses, including other journalists, said she was shot dead by Israeli forces. “People are shocked all over Palestine, all over the Arab world, actually,” says Rashid Khalidi, professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University. Israel’s “colonial army” has “systematically targeted” Palestinian journalists, says Khalidi. “It’s really important to Israel that nobody see what’s going on in the Occupied Territories.”
AMY GOODMAN: Palestinians are holding a state funeral in Ramallah for the Palestinian American Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh a day after she was fatally shot in the head while covering an Israeli military raid on a Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. Witnesses, including other journalists at Al Jazeera, said she was shot dead by Israeli forces. At the time of her death, she was wearing a helmet and a vest marked “press.” Ali al-Samudi, a Palestinian journalist, was wounded alongside Abu Akleh.
ALI AL-SAMUDI: The occupation is murderous and criminal. They shot us for no reason. We, a group of journalists, were there wearing our full press uniforms, in addition to the helmets with the word “press” written on them in large letters, as big as the whole world. We were obvious.
AMY GOODMAN: Shireen Abu Akleh was a U.S. citizen. She worked at Al Jazeera for a quarter of a century. She was one of the best-known television journalists in Palestine and the Arab world. Israel initially claimed she may have been shot by a Palestinian gunman, but later said it was unclear who shot her. Palestinian authorities accused Israel of committing the, quote, “crime of execution” and rejected an offer from Israel to carry out a joint probe into her death. On Wednesday, Ala’ Salameh, the head of the Palestinian Media Association, spoke out against the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh and other Palestinian journalists.
ALA’ SALAMEH: [translated] Our protest today confirms that the occupation must be pursued, to pursue the Israeli leaders and war criminals who were involved in these crimes, the crimes which led to the death of those journalists, and their last was the journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by the acclaimed Palestinian American Middle East historian Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University, the author of a number of books, including The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine.
Professor Khalidi, welcome back to Democracy Now! If you can talk about what happened to Shireen, the significance of what has taken place, the latest we know about her death, and even where she was, covering an Israeli raid in a Jenin refugee camp?
RASHID KHALIDI: Right. Well, this is a terrible shock to people all over the Arab world and to anybody who has followed events in Palestine, because she was probably the most prominent reporter covering what is happening there for the last, as you said, quarter of a century.
What she was covering was yet another raid on the Jenin refugee camp. Jenin is the site, among many other things, of a very serious battle that took place during the Second Intifada in 2002, when a large number of Israeli soldiers, perhaps as many as 24, were killed and 50 Palestinians were killed, including both resistance fighters and civilians in the camp. And ever since then, Israel has basically imposed collective punishment on the refugee camp and the region.
All of this takes place against a background of increasing anger and frustration all across the Occupied Territories at the unending nature of the occupation, at the fact that there is no political horizon whatsoever. Israel refuses to change an occupation that has been in place for 55 years, and, in fact, is tightening it in many respects. And so there have been attacks on Israelis. There have been all kinds of outbreaks of violence.
And the Israeli response has been the response of every colonial army, which is collective punishment and vengeance. What has been happening all over the Occupied Territories in response to horrific attacks on Israeli civilians inside Israel is essentially sanctioned — state-sanctioned murder — in many cases, of unarmed civilians, and, yesterday, of an unarmed journalist who was clearly marked as a journalist, wearing a protective vest with “press” across the front and a helmet with “press” on her head. This is what colonial armies do. They believe that only force, and nothing but force, is understood by the lesser peoples whom they rule. And that’s the kind of attitude that the Israeli military has.
Their lying — their systematic lying and cover-ups, in this case, fell apart when the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem showed that Israeli claims that there was gunfire from the Palestinians, in fact, related to someplace that was hundreds of meters away, and that where Shireen and her colleagues were targeted was an area where there was no shooting going on, except by Israeli snipers, who killed her, wounded one of her colleagues.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Professor Khalidi, could you also speak about the significance of the fact that she was Palestinian American?
RASHID KHALIDI: Right. Well, I have a sense that if an American journalist were killed by the Russians in Ukraine, we would be hearing even more about it. I have to say that this is a person who was widely known throughout the Arab world. But the fact that this is the second American killed by Israelis in the space of a couple of months — I think three months — has not gotten the kind of outrage that it would have gotten in another situation. However, it has to be said, the fact that she is an American citizen, the fact that she is well known to her colleagues of the press, I think, has affected the coverage in a positive way. Nevertheless, the systematic lying and cover-ups that the Israeli government is so adept at doing were wheeled out almost immediately, claims that they’ve, in fact, been forced to back down from.
But perhaps the fact that Shireen was an American will lead to a little more concern about the systematic brutality that the occupation is wielding all over the Occupied Territories. This case is egregious, but young men are being shot down almost every day, unarmed young men, demonstrators, whatever. In some cases, yes, there are clashes, but in many cases what is happening is that people who are either totally innocent or are involved in demonstrations are being murdered by Israeli snipers. And this is what seems to have happened in this case.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Professor Khalidi, who was the first American? You said she was the second American to be killed in recent months. Who was the first?
RASHID KHALIDI: There was an elderly Palestinian American who was stopped at an Israeli checkpoint and then put facedown on the ground in the middle of the night, and he died, presumably of a heart attack, because of maltreatment by the Israeli forces. I don’t recall his name.
AMY GOODMAN: I think his name was Omar Abdelmajid As’ad.
RASHID KHALIDI: Exactly. I believe that was about three months ago — I mean, it might have been February — that he was arrested, detained, taken to an empty building in the middle of the night — it was a very cold night; he was on his way home after a family visit — and, with other detainees, put facedown in the dirt and then was found lifeless very soon thereafter. He was an elderly man with a heart condition.
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