American journalist killed by Israeli military

"Truth is stranger than fiction, but stranger still are lies" is a quote from Philip Roth's Great American Novel.

I think about that quote often when researching anti-Israel propaganda.

A group of actors and other entertainers signed an open letter for "Artists for Palestine UK" that says, in part:

We are deeply disturbed by the Israeli occupation forces’ killing of the highly respected Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, as she arrived, wearing a clearly marked press vest, to report on an Israeli incursion in the occupied city of Jenin last Wednesday. As we grieve her loss, we call for full accountability for the perpetrators of this crime and everyone involved in authorizing it.
The killing of Shireen Abu Akleh is a grave breach of international humanitarian law and an attack on journalism and freedom of expression. UN and international human rights experts have said that it may constitute a war crime and should be subject to an independent, transparent international investigation.
Who needs facts? Hollywood stars - including Susan Sarandon, Tilda Swinton, Mark Ruffalo, Kathryn Hahn and Steve Coogan, along with film directors, authors and musicians - have declared that the Israeli government authorized the murder of Shireen Abu Akleh, and insist that an investigation take place - but only an investigation that will reach the same verdict that they already reached.

Israel's already doing an investigation and has already shown a willingness to accept responsibility if it is at fault? Irrelevant!

Palestinians refusing to cooperate in a transparent investigation? Who cares?

Israeli sniper rifles have a different caliber than the bullet that killed Shireen? Hasbara!

Video with audio of sprays of gunshots at the time she is hit, knowing that the IDF only shoots single rounds at a time? Please, that's just Zionist propaganda!

Not only don't the celebrities care about the facts - they are confident that their fans don't, either, and that they won't be embarrassed by their obvious lies.

Lies are indeed strange. People are conditioned to believe those who speak earnestly and passionately. They are in general not going to bother to fact-check a famous actor or author - what incentive do they have to lie so egregiously, so nakedly?

And yet, they do. I don't know if they lie as easily about global warming or racism, but they sure lie about Israel, and knowing that should cast doubt on everything that comes out of their mouths.

In a world that values truth.

That is no longer the world we live in, if it ever was.

The people who tell the truth are at a disadvantage.The world audience prefers newsmakers to be either wearing black hats or white hats, and they are forced to judge between the truth-tellers speaking in shades of grey who say "we don't have enough information yet" and the liars who confidently say, "GUILTY!"

"The truth will come out" may be correct in some cases but by the time it does, the audience for the truth has already moved on, having decided for themselves who is right based on how earnest and photogenic the debaters are. And they are a bit more antisemitic.

Which is, of course, the goal.



 
Debate On Social Media On Whether It Is Permissible To Call Abu 'Akleh A Martyr

As stated, immediately following Abu 'Akleh's death, and after many referred to her as a martyr, a heated debate arose on social media, and especially on Twitter, about whether this term can be applied to a Christian and whether it is permissible to pray for a Christian's soul.

Islamist, Salafi Elements: Non-Muslims Who Die Remain Infidels, Even If They Were Murdered By The Forces Of Evil

Islamist and Salafi elements insisted pointedly that the Christian journalist could not be termed a martyr, because this titled is reserved for Muslims, and that it is forbidden to beseech Allah to have mercy upon her soul or to pardon her.

For example, Siraj Al-Din Zureiqat, spokesman for the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Abdallah 'Azzam Brigades, tweeted on May 11, 2022: "Shireen Abu' Akleh was murdered by the criminal Zionists… She was murdered out of evil and aggression, and was a journalist who sacrificed [her life] for the Palestinian cause. However, she is not a martyr. It is forbidden to beseech Allah to forgive her or to say 'May Allah have mercy upon her,' for she is not a Muslim, and the [Islamic] religion is not a matter of popular opinion. A non-Muslim dies an infidel, even if he was a victim of injustice or was murdered by evil creatures. This injustice does not make him a Muslim, because politics has no effect on the well-established rules of the shari'a."[1]

SD9974_0.jpg

Siraj al-Din Zureiqat's tweets

A similar position was expressed by 'Abd Al-Muhsin Zain Al-Mutairi, head of the Exegesis and Hadith Department at Kuwait University's Shari'a Faculty, who tweeted that, despite the deep sorrow over her death, Abu 'Akleh was not a Muslim, and the shari'a therefore forbids praying for her soul and wishing Allah's mercy upon her. "[Even] the gravest crime in the world should not cause us to forget the principles of the religion," he added.[2]

In an audio address posted to YouTube on May 16, Mauritanian cleric Al-Hassan Ould Al-Dadou Al-Shanqiti, a member of the International Union of Muslims Scholars (IUMS), addressed the issue and stated that non-Muslims are not admitted into Paradise and that Muslims must not wish Allah's mercy or pardon upon them.[3] Libyan Islamic scholar Sheikh Zain Khairallah made similar claims on his YouTube channel, as shown in the MEMRI-TV clip below.

(full article online)

 
Originally saw this on NBC. The anchor stated that their organization's efforts to verify a video released by the Israeli government that attempted to paint Palestinian militants as the culprits revealed that the Israeli government's video did not depict the same location as the incident, did not match Al Jazeera footage that caught her death live, and did not even show the shooting. In other words, it's fake.

So first Saudi Arabia kills an American journalist, now Israel kills an American journalist. Perhaps this is a deeply troubled region of the world and the United States should be loathe to maintain close relationships with these countries.


"We were going to film the Israeli army operation and suddenly they shot us without asking us to leave or stop filming," Al Jazeera cited Mr Samoudi as saying. "The first bullet hit me and the second bullet hit Shireen.
"There was no Palestinian military resistance at all at the scene," he added.


Al Jazeera reporter killed during Israeli raid in West Bank
She wasn’t a real American, she was “Palestinian“.
 
According to the International Federation of Journalists, between 1990 and 2020, 2,658 journalists were killed while reporting in war zone, including 12 from Al Jazeera, says actress Noa Tishby.

(vide video online)

 
Mackey claims that "Israel’s military was refusing to conduct the thorough investigation it had committed to just a week ago." It is a lie.

As I reported, Israel is definitely still investigating Abu Akleh's death, and the Haaretz article said so. It is not a criminal investigation, because there is no evidence of criminal activity from any soldier. But Mackey doesn't care about truth, but truthiness, and pretending that Israel is quashing investigations fits in with his worldview, truth be damned.

The only people standing in the way of a full investigation is the Palestinian Authority which will not let anyone else examine the bullet that killed Abu Akleh. Who is engaging in a coverup again?

I also recently mentioned that The Intercept claimed, bizarrely, that there is a "shareholder revolt" at Google against their contracts with Israel. In fact the percentage of shares that these revolting [pun intended] shareholders own is a whopping 0.00013% of all Alphabet (Google) shares. It is a joke - but a joke that The Intercept is more than willing to pretend is a story, because they simply hate Israel enough to lie.

Now comes this article by Daniel Boguslaw that says, in its subhead, "Documents show that in 2021, arms made and funded by the United States destroyed UNRWA schools, USAID projects, and a Coca-Cola plant" during last summer's Gaza war (that was initiated by Hamas, a fact not to be found in the article.)

I know that when Israel targets specific terrorist targets that even Hamas admits are purposefully placed among civilian areas, sometimes civilian buildings are inadvertently hit. Israel never targets these civilian objects deliberately - there is no military advantage to do so, and lots of publicity damage. Anyone who is the slightest bit familiar with how wars are fought knows this.

The "USAID projects" seems to mean an industrial zone that USAID contributed some money to (along with the EU) a while ago. But did Hamas or Islamic Jihad have a rocket factory there, or a command and control center? Did they build a tunnel underneath used to stockpile rockets? Hate to break it to The Intercept, but if they did - and they almost certainly did - Israel's bombing of such targets is perfectly legal under the laws or armed conflict. Perhaps the aptly named Mr. Boguslaw doesn't know anything about international law but he happily makes it up.

I also know that Israel buys weapons from the US - as does most of the world. Over a billion dollars a year's worth. There is nothing the least bit problematic, legally or morally, to use weapons that you buy during a war, unless there is an agreement that says otherwise.

Which brings us to the main accusation, that Israel used arms funded by the US to destroy civilian objects. How does Boguslaw know which arms that Israel used are funded by the US, and which ones were purchased?

He has documents!

He doesn't link to these documents. He doesn't name where they are from. He doesn't say how they were vetted. He didn't answer my query asking him for any information on these unnamed, unknown "documents." For all we know, his documents came from Islamic Jihad or from "news" reports in Hamas newspapers.

But they are documents, and they were reviewed - by him! So they must be legit!

We should trust a news source that we have already seen has absolutely no regard for the truth, right?

The truth is that Israel does have restrictions on how it can use weapons funded by the US. US aid is audited. I've researched this, unlike Boguslaw. If any US funded weapons were used in the war, it was under an agreement that allowed it - one example is Iron Dome, which is largely funded by the US.

Based on what Boguslaw writes, there is no indication that anything illegal, immoral or violating US/Israeli agreements occurred. It is a story built out of nothing but the usual Intercept desire to demonize Israel.

The rest of the article is filled with more lies about how Israel acts in wars. I suggest anyone interested in actual facts read this Rand Corporation analysis of Israel's conduct in the 2009, 2012 and 2014 wars in Gaza, written by actual military experts, desiring to apply Israel's experience to help US military strategy for similar styles of conflicts. In no way does anyone think for a second that Israel targets civilians, as Boguslaw claims.

The upshot of the story: You cannot trust anything The Intercept writes.


(full article online)

 
In this video at least, IDF soldiers shoot about one round a second. The shots heard in the video of the reporters are all faster than that, at least two per second. And some of them are clearly automatic fire.

Both the witnesses and the analysts are primed to blame the IDF, and therefore they accept "evidence" that points to their predetermined conclusions.

The IDF assertion that it is possible that troops were shooting towards militants to the north of them, between them and Shireen, and that bullets shot north might have ricocheted towards the reporters, is still a possibility.

But there is no doubt that the automatic weapons fire heard in the first video above comes from Palestinian militants. There is little doubt that they were aimed northward at the IDF positions, in the direction of Shireen Abu Akleh.

Another possibility, that Bellingcat and AP did not seem to consider, is whether the Jenin militants who were on roofs might have had a line of sight to Abu Akleh. At least one video shows that some were positioned on roofs in Jenin, although I have not seen any videos showing them definitely in line of sight.

Yet the "analysis" from AP and Bellingcat discount the possibility that shots from militants that were aimed northward could have killed her. They are more willing to accept that a few Israeli bullets were either aimed at Abu Akleh, or that several IDF bullets aimed at militants in the same direction as Abu akleh all ricocheted in the same direction, than that scores of bullets definitely coming from the south and towards Abu Akleh could have made it to her.

Both analyses are based on the idea that the IDF, out of the blue and not during a firefight with the militants they went to Jenin to engage, decided to shoot reporters - reporters who have been in hundreds of similar battlefields and who themselves implicitly trusted the IDF to stay away from them. In other words, their analyses only make sense if you assume the IDF is evil. If you factor in the fact that the IDF is a professional army that does not target civilians, none of the analysis makes any sense. (And especially when you understand that IDF snipers don't use the types of bullet that killed Abu Akleh.)

There is an underlying bias behind these analyses against Israel. And a careful reading of these "expert analyses" proves it.

(full article online)

 

Mustafa Barghouti condemns killing of Al Jazeera's Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli forces​


 


Ground-level photos of the area are not complete. The ones I have seen show a wall, one reason I didn't look closer at this yesterday, and also because I assumed that they would be firing towards the IDF convoy directly to their west - a very visible target. The audio analysis did not support that scenario.

However, that video is only a point in time. Further north, for example, there is an opening in the wall to the north and there are very possibly others. And sometimes there are holes in the walls of the area that can be used for firing positions.

Furthermore, we know from other video that at least some militants were firing from roofs. There are plenty of buildings there that could be used as a firing position, either from a roof or from windows. The video above, after all, was clearly made from an upper floor or a roof.

The point is that the area of the militants in this video are at the correct distance to fit the audio analysis.

Jon C. makes a very salient point:
I have been extremely curious about the possibility that Palestinian gunmen could have mistaken Abu Aqleh and her team for IDF soldiers. If they saw helmets just above the wall, from the side, through the brush, it could be easy to mistake them for soldiers.
We know that the militants from the south shouted out that an IDF soldier was down. They might have themselves seen Abu Akleh fall from the roof, but they might have also heard it from a cellphone or walkie talkie from the militants we are looking at.

This is what the scene looks like from where Abu Akleh was towards the southeast. The tarp and brush across from her would seem to allow lots of partial views of her and the reporters - reporters that made sure the IDF knew where they were but who didn't tell the other side.





From a distance of 170 meters, without a scope and in the heat of battle, and with bushes and trees partially obscuring the view, it is very plausible that trigger happy Palestinians were shooting at anything that looked vaguely military - meaning reporters in flak jackets with helmets. And if they were convinced that they shot a soldier, then they would also want to shoot at anyone who went to help that downed soldier.

This is exactly what Palestinian terrorists would do. This is not what the IDF would do.

(full article online)

 
Two days ago CNN produced a report that claimed that Israel deliberately targeted Shireen Abu Akleh, the Al Jazeera journalist. The facts themselves are very simple and you won’t find many of them in the CNN report. Given everything we know about the events – and what we do not – we cannot know for sure who fired the shot.

It is not about denial. Truth-seekers like me, most balanced people, and I expect the Israeli government as well, are perfectly willing to accept that in the crossfire between the terrorists and the IDF, the Al Jazeera journalist was accidentally killed. Mistakes and tragedies do happen. It is not about denial – it is just about knowing the truth.

We just do not know. And until either a video shows up which shows the shooting itself – or the bullet is matched to the gun – that will remain the case. The doubt this leaves is a perfect arena for antisemitic conspiracy theorists to jump in and fill in all the blanks. That is exactly what CNN have just done.

The backdrop to the shooting and CNN report​

The entire backdrop to the shooting of Shireen Abu Akleh has been set aside. Israeli blood ran through the streets of Be’er Sheva, Hadera, Bnei Brak, Elad and Ariel. 19 citizens murdered. This led to a firefight in Jenin as Israel hunted down terrorists. This is the underlying cause of what then occured. Somehow that has all been forgotten.

Suddenly, with the accidental death of a journalist, even with 19 citizens brutally slaughtered by terrorists, Israel is the devil again.

There is much to learn from the anti-Israel propaganda machine.

CNN – the ‘honest brokers’​

Forget those CNN employees in the UK or US, who can do nothing but deal with what their information supply chain presents to them. They may or not have bias, but I cannot prove it is there. What matters are only those nearer to ground zero.

For example, a key CNN “witness” is Fatah lawmaker and former PNA Jenin Sec Jamal Huweil who said he “believed the shots were coming from one of the Israeli vehicles”. Here he is praising a recent terrorist attack in which four innocent Israelis were slaughtered:

CNN Jamal Huweil,

Would you trust him? In fact, all of those ‘witnesses’ who contributed evidence were Palestinians. A reminder too that for some reason they all must have been near the site of an exchange of fire between the terrorists and the IDF. Maybe some even held guns at the time.

Then there are those who put the story together.

Zeena Saifi is a CNN Producer based in the UAE. According to her Facebook bio she is from Jordan. Her Twitter feedis full of negative news about Israel.

She never misses an opportunity to push news about Israel ‘storming Al Aqsa’, or ‘shooting’ someone. And there is not one single item that goes the other way. Not a single piece of positive news about Israel. EVER. Whilst her timeline is full of news about the shooting of the Al-Jazeera journalist, she never felt the need to tweet anything about the 19 dead Israelis who were butchered in the street. In fact, in a region with Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Qaeda and ISIS – the word ‘terrorist’ appears nowhere on her feed:



(full article online)

 

New Topics

Forum List

Back
Top