Shireen Abu Akleh
“This was fcuking (sic) evil and utterly unacceptable and many voices decrying it are required,” said the emailed message. News had just come through that Shireen Abu Akleh, a veteran journalist with Al Jazeera, had just been shot and killed in Jenin-Palestine on the West bank, and this was a call for a fitting response.
As tragic as the news of this valiant journalist’s assassination is, it would be dishonest for me to mourn her in any personal sense. The truth is that had the Isreali’s not killed Shireen Abu Akleh, I wouldn’t have known her name. And for me, that is the tragedy!
That someone can spend twenty five years of their life reporting on something as horrendous as the creeping genocide being waged on the Palestinians, and all the international duplicity that condones it, yet still remain anonymous to most of us – that is the tragedy.
Shireen Abu Akleh was killed this week doing her job as a witness to a crime of historic proportions, but as far as most people are concerned Shireen might as well have died years ago, when our media determined not to publish what she and so many others like her, were reporting – that’s the tragedy.
That so many small minds, captive to their salaries and the dictates of US imperialism, have over Shireen’s time as a reporter, and longer, been prepared to turn a blind eye to her work, and that of a myriad others, exposing the Israeli state for the rotten corrupt edifice that it is – that’s the tragedy!
That today we can be literally swamped in reporting of all the hideous happenings in Ukraine, amounting to more media coverage since February this year than has been reported over the entire time since the Israeli invasion and murderous suppression of Palestine began in 1948, that is the tragedy!
The tragedy is that if, from the outset in 1948, our media had fairly reported what journalists, like Shireen Abu Akleh, witnessed happening in Palestine then, the western world would been better informed and would have reacted as it is now to events in Ukraine – and Shireen Abu Akleh would be alive today.
That is the tragedy!
Assemble the army.
a minute’s silence
The NZ Army is only for murdering brown people in service of the Americans and their bosses, haven’t you gotten the memo?
It’s not the first time Israel has crossed the line against New Zealand.
Indeed. And you better believe the invaders are still using our passports to commit acts of terrorism around the world. The fact that anyone representing the z**nists, let alone an embassy, is allowed to exist in this nation is a disgrace.
In 1947 the UN determined on a partition of the Palestine mandate area into two areas – one with a Jewish majority and the other with an Arab majority. A number of Arab nations then said they would send their armies into the area should a Jewish state be declared.
Given New Zealand is a nation that is supportive of the UN and the principle of collective security of nations, one can note what should have happened – the UN backed up its decision with peacekeeping to ensure there were two states alongside each other.
Thankfully, we are moving away from the disgusting situation where American war criminals control the world. The lie that ‘israel’ is a ‘country’ will soon be dealt with.
Let’s not forget what Shireen’s many decades of sacrifice meant. She has reported on decades of the zionist attempt to exterminate the legitimate human population of Palestine. To cite just one example, the same refugee camp that the zionists attacked yesterday, murdering her, was attacked by the zionists most egregiously in 2002.
The zionists razed half the camp to the ground, murdering hundreds of Palestinians. Shireen helped mothers dig their children’s bodies out of buildings that zionist bulldozers and tanks had driven over while shooting into. This blood sacrifice of one brave woman by the zionists is reflective of their intention for the entire Palestinian people- nothing but suffering and death.
Malcolm,
I totally agree with you
Her murder by the israeli terrorists is sadly nothing new in the Palestinian struggle against israeli apartheid.
It is woth noting that the usa is now working to exclude .Palestinians from the UNRWA umbrella.
It time for us to rise up within NZ against the israeli apartheid policies.