The life of Shireen Abu Akleh – a Palestinian journalist known for exposing the dark crimes of Israel's occupation and settler colonialism project – was cut short by an Israeli sniper's bullet in her head as she covered the military raids of the occupation forces while wearing her blue press vest in the West Bank city of Jenin early on Wednesday.
As if that was not already an outrage, Israeli police on Friday went ahead to interfere with her mourning by brutally attacking the pallbearers and those in the funeral procession such that her body nearly fell down.
Palestinian lawyer and analyst Diana Buttu said: "They try to control your happiness and they try to control your mourning."
Far from the perception that the Israeli-Palestinian issue is a "dialogue problem", the reality unambiguously shows that the issue at hand is the long-running system of Israeli military occupation and apartheid that spares no one as long as they are Palestinians.
Shireen, for example, was a Palestinian American and she was also a Catholic who had dedicated her life to the public duty of revealing the truth as a professional journalist.
Jewish Voice for Peace, who are 'Jews organising for Palestinian liberation and Judaism beyond Zionism' on Friday wrote: "Today, Israel police violently deprived Palestinians of the right to mourn Shireen Abu Akleh, the iconic and beloved journalist murdered by an Israeli sniper two days ago. What kind of a state is threatened by the collective grief and pride of a people? Only a state operating on fear and weakness despite its weaponry and walls. Only settler-colonial state that must negate the native's existence in order to exist itself. Only a Zionist state that views Palestinian and Jewish self-determination as mutually exclusive and has always required the suppression of the former".
Silencing the truth is for that reason part of this big agenda to maintain military occupation power and extend the settler-colonial infrastructure to the detriment of Palestinians and their rights.
This explains why journalists, besides the ordinary natives, are consistently obstructed, beaten and even killed, and why also just a few months ago Israel launched an air raid that flattened the building in Gaza that housed Aljazeera and the American-owned Associated Press news organisations.
This Israeli apartheid system has been officially confirmed and documented by credible human rights bodies such as the Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and B'Tselem.
The famous Israeli historian and social activist Ilan Pappe wrote the following tribute for Shireen:
"The only way to know the crimes of occupation, unless you witness them with your own eyes, is to be informed by an honest and professional journalist. You cannot trust biased and timid Western media and alternative media does not always have the resources to be everywhere. This is what was so unique about Shireen Abu Akleh's place in our lives since 1997 - bringing to our homes the horrors of the occupation and the courage of those resisting it. Her reports debunked, indeed ridiculed, the official Israel narrative about the daily human rights abuses in the West Bank and in Israel. No wonder she was targeted while doing what she always did, speaking truth to power. Her reports will be an essential part of the archives of Palestine in general and that of the occupation in particular; this they will not be able to kill or erase. May she rest in peace!!!"
Journalism is not a crime and the life, death and media legacy of Shireen that contributed in exposing the apartheid crimes of Israel must be given urgent meaning and purpose by comprehensively holding Israel to account and ensuring that the self-determination right of Palestinians is given due consideration because that is the only way to guarantee a lasting solution going forward.
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