Israel Admits It Might Have Killed Journalist, Attacks Her Funeral

Israeli police attacked the funeral of Shireen Abu Akleh in occupied East Jerusalem on Friday, nearly causing mourners to drop the casket of the renowned Palestinian American journalist.

The Israeli occupation forces attack the funeral of #ShireenAbuAkla pic.twitter.com/RumZvMjZrV

— Zeinobia ???? (@Zeinobia) May 13, 2022

Abu Akleh was fatally shot while covering an Israeli raid on a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday. Fellow journalists who witnessed the shooting said Israeli forces had fired on them. Israel’s prime minister and other senior officials initially said Palestinian militants were “likely” to blame, but the Israeli army admitted on Friday that one of its soldiers might have fired the fatal shot.

The assault on the mourners, who were beaten with clubs at a hospital in East Jerusalem, stunned viewers who watched it unfold on live television, further enraging Palestinians and the dead journalist’s colleagues and fans.

Horrible scenes as Israeli security forces beat the funeral procession for slain journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and the crowd momentarily lose control of her casket pic.twitter.com/DEJF5Ty9tZ

— Emir Nader (@EmirNader) May 13, 2022

Israeli police said they attacked the procession because mourners waved Palestinian flags and chanted nationalist slogans. An official Israeli police account shared drone video to support the authorities’ claim that two of the mourners had thrown rocks at them. But a comparison of that video to ground-level news footage showed that the police video had been edited to remove the initial police charge and slowed down to make it seem as if a man who just waved his arms in frustration had thrown something at the officers.

The @israelpolice claimed this was one of the "stone" throwers that sparked their attack.

I synced their video with press video to prove

1) he had no stone

2) his action was putting his body between them and Shireen Abu Akleh's casket

(thread coming) pic.twitter.com/KesaTsNDYZ

— Rafael Shimunov (@rafaelshimunov) May 14, 2022

The televised assault on the funeral of a beloved figure only intensified the outrage over her death and the images were quickly remixed and shared across social networks.

The closest video of the #Israeli police suppressing the funeral procession of Shireen Abu Aqleh as the coffin was leaving the French hospital towards the cemetery pic.twitter.com/TaOsvCUUCd

— Rushdi Abualouf (@Rushdibbc) May 13, 2022

S. African police in '87 attacking the coffin of Ashley Kriel to seize the ANC flag that draped it; Israeli police attacked the coffin of #ShireenAbuAkleh today, trying to seize Palestinian flags. Apartheid regimes waging war on their victims, even after death pic.twitter.com/oDkMmIoBg1

— Tony Karon (@TonyKaron) May 13, 2022

Waiting for the talking points media will repeat to justify this.
Israel fears a coffin! https://t.co/NFSlhLXi9H

— Abir Kopty (@AbirKopty) May 13, 2022

The videos coming out from the funeral procession of #ShireenAbuAkleh are horrifying. Israeli forces carrying stun grenades and beating up mourners. Even in death we are under Israel’s boot as they try to control our mourning. #FreePalestine

— Diana Buttu (@dianabuttu) May 13, 2022

The sheer obscenity of #Israeli forces storming a hospital, beating up the mourners, & preventing them from carrying Shireen’s coffin to her final resting place is horrendous. Now they’re surrounding the hearse having separated it from the mourners, who themselves are besieged.

— Hanan Ashrawi (@DrHananAshrawi) May 13, 2022

Thousands of people later joined the procession for a beloved national hero before a funeral at a Catholic church in Jerusalem’s Old City.

We arrived to the heart of occupied #Jerusalem from Nazareth Um El Fahem Haifa Acre Jaffa and Naqab, “armed with our cameras”, grief and anger! Rest in power habibti #ShireenAbuAqla we will miss you a lot! Your voice will never be silenced ?? pic.twitter.com/D56fgJBVpS

— Khulood Badawi (@KhuloodBadawi) May 13, 2022

You embodied the best of Palestine, Shireen. Palestine came out for you ??. pic.twitter.com/LKaJZcfz91

— Salem Barahmeh (@Barahmeh) May 13, 2022

The suppression of dissent continued throughout the day.

Israeli forces pulling Palestinian flags off Shireen Abu Akleh's hearse. pic.twitter.com/8qTX9uCPV1

— Barry Malone (@malonebarry) May 13, 2022

At this point, people working at corporate media outlets should be ashamed of themselves for ever referring to this stark asymmetry of power as “clashes.” This is assault. pic.twitter.com/Eya5RCQz5e

— Mohammed El-Kurd (@m7mdkurd) May 13, 2022

Later on Friday, Israel’s army said the results of an interim internal investigation suggested that its soldiers might have fired the shots that killed the Al Jazeera correspondent and wounded her colleague.

That admission marked a sharp retreat from the initial version of events offered by Israeli officials, who responded to anger over the killing of Abu Akleh on Wednesday by quickly distributing video of a Palestinian gunman firing down an alley during the raid. Officials also released statements calling it “likely” that the journalist was killed by a Palestinian militant, not an Israeli soldier.

Later the same day, however, a researcher for the Israeli rights group B’Tselem, Abdulkarim Sadi, recorded video showing that the Palestinian militant had been in a part of the camp that made it impossible for him to have shot Abu Akleh.

Israel’s military then released body camera video of its soldiers retreating from that part of the camp and emerging on a street where armored vehicles were waiting to extract them. Geolocation by the B’Tselem researcher and others showed that the Israeli armored vehicles were parked on the street where Abu Akleh was shot.

The interim Israeli investigation acknowledged that the Israeli vehicles were parked about 200 meters away from Abu Akleh, and said that if she was shot by an Israeli soldier, it must have been because the soldier “fired several bullets from a special slit in the jeep and through a telescopic site at a terrorist … and there’s a possibility that the reporter stood near the terrorist.”

That version of events was flatly contradicted by several other journalists who were with Abu Akleh at the time and insisted that they were nowhere near any of the Palestinian militants in the camp.

Hagai El-Ad, the executive director of B’Tselem, told me by phone on Friday that there is no reason to expect the Israeli army to release any more of the video it collected from soldiers after the incident. The Israel Defense Forces, El-Ad said, has a track record of only releasing video evidence “when it is beneficial to support the Army version of events.”

The rights activist also called it “grotesque” that the United States had called for Palestinian authorities to conduct a joint investigation with Israel, given that Israel had repeatedly used slow-moving investigations to “whitewash” the killing of Palestinian civilians living under Israeli military rule.

The American pressure on Palestinian officials to allow Israel to take part in the investigation of itself shows the “U.S. complicity in what’s going on here,” El-Ad said, even when the victim is, like Abu Akleh, an American citizen.

Updated: May 14, 2022
This article was updated to add an analysis of Israeli police video that was posted online on Saturday night.