[News] Shirin Abu Aqleh - The facts are there, the videos are clear, but the Israeli lies, and fabrications are everywhere

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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Yet Another Journalist Gunned Down by Israeli Soldiers[image: image.png]

By Saed Bannoura - May 12, 2022
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After the Israeli occupation soldiers deliberately targeted journalist
Shirin Abu Aqleh, we started hearing various condemnations around the
world, which is, in fact, the very least that can and should be done.
However, the calls for “investigating her death” are possibly the worst
response to this injustice, for this crime, for this atrocity.

And of course, I know some might ask, “Why not? Let them investigate and
reach a conclusion…” but let’s call things what they really are. The
Israeli soldiers saw her, they saw her colleagues, and they chose to open
fire, disregarding the press vests, international law, and humanity itself.

Those calling for an investigation are mainly those who want, once again,
to acquit Israel and absolve it from its constant and escalating crimes.

The facts are there, the videos are clear, but the Israeli lies, and
fabrications are everywhere. Simply put, the soldiers, especially the
murderer — that criminal, that Israeli military sharpshooter, knows he made
a clear choice to kill her although he could clearly see she is a
journalist.

But, why not? Let’s kill her, and the world might get angry, but then they
will forget, and others will start fabricating reports criminalizing the
victim and praising the killer.

Shireen Abu Aqleh was a prominent, well-known journalist, news anchor,
educator, and eloquent speaker who exposed Israel and its crimes throughout
her career and exposed the true racist nature of this criminal occupation
and its apartheid regime.

Israel can falsely claim that the bullet that killed Shirin might not have
been fired by its army, but there is nothing new here. Israel’s standard
procedure is to whitewash its crimes. Every time the Israeli occupation
soldiers have killed a child, a woman, an elder, a journalist, a physically
challenged Palestinian… etc., they always have a textbook response.

“It wasn’t us; it was them [the Palestinians]. We had to kill him, we had
to kill her, we had to kill them because we were defending ourselves.”

Yet, they are the occupiers, the oppressors, and the murderers, and they
are the offenders; the mere existence of any occupation army is an
offensive in itself, and the people, the occupied, have the right to defend
themselves and resist this occupation by all means possible.

But let us talk about the new/old Israeli lie this time around, this
“claim”, this “possibility” that Shirin may have been killed by a
Palestinian. The Israeli army started justifying their crime – as they
always do, trying to sow the seeds of uncertainty by making preposterous,
false claims that are then repeated by the media. In this case, their
‘damage control’ was a demonstrably false claim that a Palestinian was in
the area and opened fire at their soldiers and that he might have been the
one who killed her.

The problem with this lie is that the Israeli army claims a Palestinian
“opened fire at the soldiers” – but the soldiers were invading an area that
had no clear line of sight, no clear line of fire, between the Palestinian
resistance fighter and the area where Shirin and her fellow reporters were
standing.

The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
(B’Tselem), investigated the location and clearly documented how the
Palestinian fighter, in the location he was as shown in the video released
by the army itself, could not have possibly been the one that killed
Shireen.

The other issue with this lie is that Shirin and another journalist were
ducking behind a wall and were in clear line of sight of the Israeli
soldiers who chose to ignore their press vests, and chose to ignore
humanity (if they had any humanity to start with), and decided to take aim
with the sniper scope and fire.

Every journalist who was there, every witness, knows and saw how the area
was calm, no protests, no exchanges of fire, nothing, just calm, calm that
preceded the storm which started after the soldiers decided to take aim and
kill her.

Ali Sammoudi, who was the first to be shot and injured before the army
decided to execute Shirin, described the Israeli allegations as total lies.

“There was calm in the area where we stopped, our press vests and equipment
and our presence clearly identified us as journalists. There were no
Palestinian fighters, not even protesters throwing stones, and then Shirin
collapsed and began bleeding heavily when the Israeli army sniper shot her
in the head.” Sammoudi added.


It is as simple and as horrific as it sounds, and what might be even worse
is that Israel, its politicians, and soldiers, know too well that the worst
that will happen will be condemnations, nothing else, no sanctions, no
accountability, and above all the ever-present American Veto to protect and
shield it from prosecution, and a constant flow of billions of dollars in
American aid to Israel and its racist, criminal occupation.

Shirin is not the first journalist to be murdered by Israel, not the first
to be injured, and unfortunately, and as much it saddens me to say, she
won’t be the last.

Shirin lived for the truth, justice, and the freedom of the press.

One of her most recent words in a spontaneous interview on the steps of Bab
al-Amoud in occupied Jerusalem sums up her humanity: “I am the daughter of
Jerusalem, and I love seeing it happy.”
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