LAST WEEK marked two months since the killing of the Palestinian-US journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in Jenin refugee camp as she, together with colleagues, were covering a raid on a Palestinian house by the Israeli occupation forces.  

For once, the killing of a Palestinian by an Israeli soldier in the West Bank — a territory occupied by Israel since 1967 — drew media attention, possibly because she was also a US citizen. 

We also witnessed the horrifying scenes at Shireen’s funeral cortege where the Israeli police attacked mourners, including the pall bearers, almost causing her coffin to drop.  

After the shock engendered by these scenes, as the question of an inquiry was being voiced the media focus started to decrease.

It was at this point the status quo in relation to Israel and Palestine, which has been in existence for decades, started to become apparent. 

The Israelis claimed initially that the bullet which killed Shireen Abu Akleh came from a Palestinian gunman.  

Then they said she was killed in a shootout between Palestinians and the IDF, so it was possible one of their soldiers may have shot her.  

After witnesses indicated the absence of Palestinians in the area where Shireen and her colleague were standing, Israel admitted that the shot could have come from one of its soldiers.

Having investigated the incident, the UN Human Rights Commission called for Israel to carry out criminal investigations, which Israel refused to do as it regarded the killing as a “combat event.”  

Neither was it going to punish the Israeli police officers’ violent attack on the funeral cortege. A predictable reflection of Israel’s long-standing disregard for United Nations requests and resolutions.

Al Jazeera, Shireen’s employer, determined that the bullet was a US-made green-tipped 5.56mm calibre used in an M4 rifle, routinely carried by the Israeli armed forces.  

Shireen, wearing clear “Press” markings, was shot in a small area of the neck that was not covered by her helmet or her bullet-proof jacket, which would have required an experienced sharpshooter.  

The same gunman shot Shireen’s colleague, Ali Sammoudi, in the shoulder and aimed further shots at an unarmed man who went to carry away Shireen’s body. 

On the strength of these findings, the Palestinian Authority — and also Al Jazeera — requested an investigation into Shireen’s killing by an international organisation: in this instance, the International Tribunal in The Hague.  

Meanwhile, the International Federation of Journalists, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate and the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians approached the International Criminal Court.

The US for its part, ignoring the detailed investigations carried out by the Washington Post and CNN as well as Al Jazeera, refrained from blaming Israel unequivocally for the killing as it claimed the bullet obtained from the Palestinian Authority — clearly identified by Al Jazeera — was too damaged to be able to ascertain who killed Shireen, thus exonerating Israel from unequivocal blame: “The US Security Co-ordinator (USSC) could not reach a definitive conclusion regarding the origin of the bullet that killed Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.

“Ballistic experts determined the bullet was badly damaged, which prevented a clear conclusion.”

They concluded: “Gunfire from IDF positions was likely responsible for the death of Shireen Abu Akleh. The USSC found no reason to believe that this was intentional but rather the result of tragic circumstances.”

At the same time, the US opposed any approach to the International Court for a more conclusive outcome, recalling that country’s opposition to the Palestinian Authority approaching the same court on grounds of Israeli war crimes.  

It also brought to mind the numerous occasions the US has applied its veto to block UN resolutions against Israel. 

When reporting about incidents in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, most of the Western media studiously avoids the context in which they take place: the displacement and forcible transfer of Palestinian communities, house demolitions, military expropriation of Palestinian lands, checkpoints and road blocks around Palestinian towns and villages, Israeli settlement expansion on Palestinian land, army raids and settler attacks, including arson, on farmers, their families and their property in which Israeli soldiers accompany the settlers to support them.  

Instead, media reporting on incidents such as the killing of Shireen are presented to readers as a unique, isolated events.

In fact, Shireen was by no means the only Palestinian journalist to have been killed in recent years.  

In 2018 two Palestinian journalists — Ahmed Abu Hussein and Yasser Mortaja — were killed by Israeli snipers while covering demonstrations in Gaza by the border with Israel. Both were wearing jackets with the word “Press” clearly visible.

Then on June 1, three weeks after Shireen’s killing, Israeli soldiers shot and killed 31-year-old journalist Ghufran Harun Warasneh at a checkpoint near Hebron.  

Ghufran, accompanied by a friend, was on her way to start a new job as a presenter for Dream Radio.  

She was left to bleed for 20 minutes while an ambulance sent to collect her was held up at the checkpoint.  

Ghufran’s funeral cortege, including the pall bearers, was attacked by Israeli soldiers using tear gas, stun grenades and gunshots in a similar way to events at Shireen’s funeral.

This time, the world’s media looked the other way.                   

According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), since 2000, at least 30 journalists have been killed while working in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. The Israeli army has never acknowledged any responsibility.

RSF has also reported that in the occupied West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem since March 2018, 144 journalists have been attacked and wounded, some seriously, by Israeli forces using rubber bullets, live rounds, stun grenades, tear gas or administering baton blows.

If the killing of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli military is routinely considered un-newsworthy, much more so is the killing of Palestinian civilians — in sharp contrast to the reporting of the killing of Jewish Israelis, such as the tragic killing by a Palestinian of five Israelis in Tel Aviv on March 29 this year which made headlines. 

So the killing of another Palestinian on the same day as Shireen passed by unnoticed. Defence for Children International describes how Thaer Khalil Mohammad Maslat, 16, left his school in al-Bireh after his second class owing to a teachers’ strike.

Accompanied by a friend, he approached an area about 200 metres away from the school where confrontations between Israeli forces and Palestinian youth were taking place.   

According to an eyewitness, Thaer arrived and stood next to a building watching the confrontations when an Israeli soldier shot him in the chest with live ammunition.  

Thaer, an aspiring footballer, did not pose any threat to Israeli forces when he was shot. He was transferred to Ramallah Hospital and pronounced dead shortly after.

It is not unusual for Israeli soldiers to prevent ambulances from reaching fallen Palestinians after they have been shot.  

On June 24 this year, 16-year-old Muhammed Abdullah Salah Suleiman was shot by an Israeli soldier from a military watchtower near his village of Silwad “where no events took place,” according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.  

After falling to the ground, Muhammad was left to bleed for about two hours.  

During this time, the Israeli occupation forces “prevented Palestinian ambulances from reaching him and indiscriminately and heavily opened fire to prevent anyone from approaching him as well.”

Israel withheld the body for a number of days before it was released to the family, preventing compliance with the Muslim rite of a prompt burial.  

Other Palestinians have been killed when trying to get to work. On July 5 this year, 32-year-old Ahmad Harb Ayyad was killed by soldiers who beat him to death as he was trying to cross through a breach in the separation wall to get to his place of work in Tulkarem.

So far this year, over 60 Palestinians, including 15 children, have been killed in the West Bank by the Israeli occupying forces. Hundreds more have been injured.

In the case of Israel, Western countries have bigger fish to fry which far outweigh any obligation to exert pressure on the Israeli state to recognise the rights of its Palestinian population and to act in accordance with international law as an occupying force.

In order to safeguard a close strategic and military ally in the Middle East and a profitable commercial partnership, the United States ensures Israel’s impunity on the international stage and supplies aid and funding to the tune of billions of dollars.  

In March this year, the US Senate approved $4.8 billion-worth of military aid to Israel.

For its part, Britain is Israel’s third-largest trading partner worldwide. Although in the case of Britain, ostensibly Israel does not appear to have great importance in terms of trade (it occupies 40th position), a parliamentary debate on January 20 2022 on Britain-Israel trade negotiations brought to light close commercial and military ties existing between the two countries.  

The debate revealed that in January 2019 Britain agreed in principle on a free trade agreement.  

It was stated that there are 500 Israeli companies operating in Britain, more than 300 of them high-tech companies — many producing military equipment used by the British armed forces — and one in six prescription drugs used in the NHS are manufactured by the Israeli pharmaceutical company, Teva.

We learnt also that over the past three years, British arms sales to Israel have amounted to £76 million, the consequences of such sales for Palestinians evidently not worthy of consideration, despite successive governments’ assurances to the contrary. 

Additionally, a pact on trade, defence and technology in November 2021 made Israel a “tier-one cyber partner” to Britain, increasing knowledge in the application of cybersecurity.

During recent years, Israel and Britain have carried out joint, as well as reciprocal, training exercises on land, sea and in the air and engaged in joint cyber and intelligence training. Ten British service personnel are stationed in Israel.

Approved export licences for arms sales from Britain to Israel (30 of them “open licences” which often allow an unlimited amount of equipment to be exported) cover components for small arms, ammunition, night-sight technology and intelligence.  

There has been some publicity about the 15 per cent of components in US-manufactured F-35 warplanes and F-16 fighter jets sold to Israel, bearing “the fingerprints of British ingenuity,” while Britain buys weapons from Israel which are marked “field-tested,” referring to military actions which have prompted the Palestinian Authority to approach the International Criminal Court on account of alleged Israeli war crimes.  

British support for Israel’s military actions appears to be well-nigh unconditional.

To press home his point in the Commons debate, Bob Blackman MP referred to Israel as a progressive liberal democracy.  

Nothing could have been further from his mind, as has been the case for countless Western politicians, company CEOs, diplomats and negotiators in discussions of any nature relating to Israel over the years, than Israel’s brutal treatment of its non-Jewish population living under military rule in a territory suffering a violently repressive and rapacious occupation.  

Israel’s apartheid nation-state law, which denies full citizenship and the right to self-determination to Israel’s non-Jewish population, also conveniently falls off the radar in such discussions in the West’s overweening desire to stand by an ally whose lack of humanity and contravention of international and human rights law is so blatant.

We can be assured that whichever of Israel’s crimes fleetingly makes the headlines, the final result will always be “business as usual.” 

Jenny Kassman is a frequent visitor to the occupied West Bank and a member of the Labour Party, Jewish Voice for Labour and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.