WEST BANK (Al Jazeera) – The family of murdered Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh is demanding U.S. President Joe Biden meet with them during his visit to the Israeli-occupied territories next week, and accused his administration of “skulking toward the erasure of any wrongdoing by Israeli forces,” following a U.S. assessment that the killing was unintentional.
“We, the family of Shireen Abu Akleh, write to express our grief, outrage and sense of betrayal concerning your administration’s abject response to the extrajudicial killing of our sister and aunt by Israeli forces on May 11, 2022, while on assignment in the occupied Palestinian city of Jenin in the West Bank,” the family said in a letter, which was also addressed to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“Your administration has thoroughly failed to meet the bare minimum expectation held by a grieving family - to ensure a prompt, thorough, credible, impartial, independent, effective and transparent investigation that leads to true justice and accountability for Shireen’s killing.
“Meet with us during your upcoming visit and hear directly from us about our concerns and demands for justice.”
Abu Akleh, a veteran Palestinian-American journalist for Al Jazeera Arabic, was killed on 11 May while covering a military raid by Zionist troops in the Palestinian city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank. Her death sparked Palestinian outrage and widespread international condemnation.
Since the killing, several investigations by The Washington Post, The New York Times, as well as international bodies and the United Nations, concluded that Zionist troops had in fact likely killed Abu Akleh.
On Monday, the U.S. State Department released a carefully worded statement regarding its assessment of the killing of Abu Akleh, saying that gunfire from Israeli positions “was likely responsible for the death of Shireen Abu Akleh”. However, it dismissed the incident as the unintentional “result of tragic circumstances”.
The statement was rebuked by the family, as well as Palestinian activists who accused Washington of trying to bury the issue by releasing its assessment on 4 July, a public holiday in the U.S.
In their letter, the family, including Abu Akleh’s brother Anton and his children, called on the State Department to retract their Monday statement, saying it is “not based on any credible assessment”.