Murder in Jenin: UN Whitewash/West’s Complicity

Date: 14 May 2022 - 22:10

News ID: ۱۰۲۵۶۲

NEW YORK/BERLIN (Dispatches) – The UN Security Council has unanimously condemned the assassination of Palestinian journalist, Shireen Abu Aqleh, without mentioning the occupying regime of Israel.

In a rare unanimous statement, the Security Council also called for “an immediate, thorough, transparent and impartial investigation into her killing”.

According to diplomats who spoke on the condition of anonymity, negotiations on the statement were particularly arduous.

China successfully pushed the U.S. to remove paragraphs generally denouncing abuses committed against the media around the world without referring specifically to the Israeli murder in Jenin, according to diplomatic sources.

The final text merely says “journalists should be protected as civilians” and does not mention violence during Abu Aqleh’s funeral on Friday.

The EU said it was “appalled by the violence in the St Joseph hospital compound and the level of unnecessary force exercised by Israeli police throughout the funeral procession”.

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, was also “deeply disturbed” by the violence, according to a spokesperson.

Television footage showed pallbearers struggling to stop Abu Aqleh’s coffin from falling to the ground as Zionist police officers charged at them, grabbing Palestinian flags from mourners.

Abu Aqleh, a prominent journalist for Al Jazeera, was killed as she covered unrest in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. The Qatar-based network said she was deliberately targeted by the occupying regime of Israel.

The Zionist prime minister, Naftali Bennett, initially said armed Palestinians were “likely” responsible, but Israel has since rowed back and said it was investigating.

Germany Bans Vigil for

Abu Akleh

Police in Berlin have banned a vigil in memory of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh who was shot dead by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank.

The event is one of a number of gatherings that have been forbidden by the authorities under an unprecedented and wide-ranging ban on pro-Palestinian protest in the German capital, Al Jazeera reported.

The gathering in memory of Abu Akleh had been organized by Jüdische Stimme, a Jewish group that supports Palestinian rights. But police told the group that the event – planned to take place on Friday evening – fell under the ban on

protests in the run-up to Nakba Day.
Nakba Day is marked by Palestinians every year on May 15, the anniversary of the founding of the occupying regime of Israel, which led to the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians and the continuing occupation.
Police argued the protests presented an “immediate risk” of anti-Semitic chants, intimidation and violence.
Last month, reports in German media said Jewish people had been subject to anti-Semitic insults at a pro-Palestine protest in Berlin.
But Wieland Hoban, chairman of Jüdische Stimme, said the earlier incident was being used as a pretext: “The Berlin Senate wants to prevent Palestine solidarity as much as it can.
“They’ll take a handful of teenagers saying anti-Semitic things and use that to discredit thousands of people who want to demonstrate peacefully,” he said.
Hoban, a music composer who lives in Frankfurt, said the clampdown on pro-Palestinian protest was part of a wider tendency by the German state to show unqualified support for the Zionist regime.
“The killing of Palestinian journalists is an attempt to kill information, to kill truth, which is exactly what the Berlin police are doing by suppressing demonstrations,” Hoban added.
The protest ban also affected five other rallies and marches that had been planned for this weekend, including events organized by Palestine Speaks, a group representing the Palestinian community in Germany.
Nizar Haddad, a member of Palestine Speaks, said that the ban exceeded all previous measures against the Palestine solidarity movement in Germany.
“This is an act of repressive violence against Palestinian people in Berlin. We have never faced this level of repression before. It’s really a new level of authoritarian state measures against minorities,” Haddad said.
“It’s a huge attack on the human rights and the freedom of Palestinians, to prohibit us from commemorating the Nakba and also the assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh,” he said.
An application by Palestine Speaks to overturn the ban in court was rejected on Friday afternoon.
Last year, more than 10,000 people demonstrated in Berlin to mark Nakba Day and protest the latest Israeli attacks on Gaza.