- A memorial service for Shireen Abu Akleh in London this week provided yet another reminder that despite a large and growing body of evidence regarding Israel’s culpability for the Al Jazeera correspondent’s death, no one has yet been held accountable.
The service was held at the St Bride’s Church in Fleet Street. Due to its location, on a central London road traditionally home to the UK’s print media, the church has long been associated with journalists.
The service followed a separate memorial event in the occupied West Bank on 19 June, 40 days after her slaying.
In between, the United Nations became the latest body to conclude that Abu Akleh, a veteran Palestinian American journalist, was killed by Israeli gunfire.
On 24 June, the UN’s Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights announced that “all information we have gathered – including official information from the Israeli military and the Palestinian attorney-general – is consistent with the finding that the shots that killed Abu Akleh and injured her colleague Ali Samoudi came from Israeli security forces.”
That statement also described it as “deeply disturbing” that Israel had not yet conducted a criminal investigation into Abu Akleh’s killing.
Israel has ruled out a criminal investigation. Its authorities have decided that the killing was a “combat event.”
In the US, 24 senators have called for the US to take an active role in that investigation, but so far, the US State Department has rejected such calls and maintains that Israel can conduct its own probe.
Such faith in Israeli due process is puzzling.
On 20 May, Yesh Din, an Israeli rights group, published data it had collected on Israel’s military law enforcement system.
The findings were damning: Only 2 percent of complaints received in 2019-2020 resulted in prosecution.
Of the investigations opened, only 7.2 percent resulted in indictment in what the group said amounted to a system designed to “grant soldiers near total immunity from prosecution.”
(📸 Ahmed Ibrahim / APA images)
From “Israeli impunity intact despite Abu Akleh killing” by Omar Karmi. Read the full article at electronicintifada.net.1
