Hollow Security Council Condemnation of Israel's Murder of Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh

by Stephen Lendman

In response to indisputable evidence of Israeli responsibility for assassinating Palestinian-American journalist Abu Akleh, Security Council members unanimously called for an "immediate, thorough, transparent and independent (probe) to ensure accountability (sic)."

Permanent SC members Russia and China genuinely stand by the above statement — including that "journalists should be protected as civilians."

Clearly not hegemon USA, Britain and France.

Their history shows one-sided support for apartheid Israel, including its history of war crimes, related atrocities and targeted assassinations to silence truth-telling journalists and others it wants eliminated.

The UN's Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner is also on the wrong side of history more often than the other way around.

Instead of condemning Israel's assassination of Abu Akleh, it said her killing might constitute a war crime.

There are no ifs, ands, buts or maybes about what happened.

Marked by Israel for assassination, Abu Akleh was willfully and maliciously gunned down by an Israeli sniper with orders to silence her once and for all.

Statements by the Bennett regime and IDF aimed to unjustifiably shift blame to Palestinians for what happened.

According to the IDF's reinvention of reality on Friday, Palestinians fired hundreds of live rounds at an Israeli military vehicle close to where Abu Akleh was standing (sic), adding:

Israeli forces returned fire, but it's "unable to determine who's responsible for her death (sic) — a bald-faced Big Lie.

As a separate article explained, Israeli forces raided the Jenin refugee camp pre-dawn on May 11.

They attacked Palestinians with live fire and stun grenades — on the phony pretext of seeking to arrest "wanted" individuals.

Palestinians responded by firing in self-defense, their right under international law.

Abu Akleh and other Palestinian journalists were on the scene, covering what happened to report on it accurately.

There's no ambiguity about Israeli responsibility for initiating violence — nor about assassinating Abu Akleh to silence her.

On Friday as expected, the Biden regime failed to condemn Israel for indisputable cold-blooded murder.

Making a bad situation worse, the State Department backs the notion of Israel investigating itself — to whitewash murder and avoid accountability.

Calling for an independent probe on Friday, Haaretz editors minced no words, saying:

"You can't expect anyone to trust the IDF's own investigation of itself."

Indeed not!

The Biden regime opposes investigations able to uncover evidence of Israeli war crimes or human rights abuses.

The same goes for US/Western ones.

Time and again, hegemon USA is complicit with Israeli killings and other abuses committed against Palestinians, Syrians and others in the region.

According to IfNotNow's Elias Newman:

"There's deep, deep hypocrisy and irony to US officials calling for an investigation when what they really need to do is look in the mirror," adding: 

"When it comes to hawkish politicians who support unconditional support for Israeli (regimes), unconditional (US) funding is a big factor in enabling (Israel) to act with impunity and carry out these human rights abuses."

Like most of its predecessors, the Biden regime unconditionally supports US political, financial and military aid for Israel.

American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) national organizer, Jinan Deena — a Palestinian American — stressed the following:

"We are Americans and we are paying taxes, and that money is literally going not just to abuse our families back home and Palestinians back home, but also us now," adding:

The US "is complicit and is a perpetrator of Israeli war crimes because of the aid that they give them, the unconditional support, the blank cheques."

"The US is 100 percent hand in hand with Israel when it comes to these abuses that are happening."

"A lot of us are very afraid to go" to Occupied Palestine for good reason.

Separately, Arab American Institute (AAI) executive director, Maya Berry, stressed that on all things related to Israel, the US one-sidedly supports its ruling regimes — no matter the gravity of its "abuses."

Israel's assassination of Abu Akleh has drawn widespread condemnation because of her prominence.

What about countless thousands of other Palestinians killed by Israel since before it self-declared statehood in 1948.

Law Professor Francis Boyle earlier stressed the following:

"The Palestinians have been the victims of genocide as defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide," adding:

For "decades, the Israeli government and its predecessors in law – the Zionist agencies, forces, and terrorist gangs – have ruthlessly implemented a systematic and comprehensive military, political, religious, economic, and cultural campaign with the intent to destroy in substantial part the national, ethnical, racial, and different religious group (Jews versus Muslims and Christians) constituting the Palestinian people."

In 2009, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine stressed the following:

"The (Israeli) occupation of (Palestine) is illegal and cannot be made legal." 

"All that has derived from (it) is illegal and illegitimate and cannot gain legitimacy." 

"The facts are incontrovertible. What are the consequences?"

"Peace, stability and democracy in (Palestine) are impossible under occupation." 

"Foreign occupation is opposed by nature to the interests of the occupied people, as proven" by:

The forced diaspora.

Many other Palestinians internally displaced or in refugee camps for decades.

Harsh military subjugation.

A regimented matrix of control.

The genocidal Gaza siege.

State-sponsored mass incarceration, violence, and torture.

Israeli flaunting of international law and dozens of UN resolutions with impunity.

Its history of targeted assassinations.

Its responsibility for many tens of thousands of Palestinians killed, injured, or otherwise grievously harmed.

Theft of their homeland to make way for exclusive Jewish development.

The absence of judicial redress.

The systematic denial of rights to non-Jews, especially long-suffering Palestinians.

Israeli reign of terror against defenseless Palestinian civilians has gone on for decades with no end of it in prospect — notably because of one-sided US/Western support.

That's the reality of what life in Occupied Palestine is all about.

The late Edward Said condemned the Oslo process, what culminated on the White House lawn in September 1993.

Calling Oslo "an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles," the same reality applies to the 1978 Camp David Accords, what came out of 2000 Camp David talks and virtually all other talks between Palestinians and Israel.

Peace, equity and justice never followed.

For countless decades, Palestinians have been subjected to virtually every imaginable indignity and human rights abuses of every shape and kind.

Why? It's because of their faith, ethnicity and presence, because they're not Jews, because they pray to the wrong God.

It's been their fate since the infamous 1917 Balfour Declaration — the beginning of the end of historic Palestine by calling for a Jewish state on stolen Palestinian land.

Endless conflict, occupation, dispossession, and repression, along with social and cultural fragmentation of beleaguered Palestinians followed – over 100 years of suffering with no end of it in sight.

The world community remains dismissive of their rights because they're non-Jews on land that Israel wants for exclusive Jewish development.

Historian Ilan Pappe explained what he called the "urbicide of Palestine" – attacking and ethnic cleansing the country's major urban centers, slaughtering and displacing Palestinians, making way for Jewish occupation and development.

What Balfour began is the curse of millions of long-suffering Palestinians today.

As long as the Jewish state has one-sided US/Western support, no justice will be afforded them, endless misery alone at the hands of a ruthless occupier.