{"id":8700,"date":"2022-11-25T14:51:39","date_gmt":"2022-11-25T06:51:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/perdana4peace.org\/v2\/?p=8700"},"modified":"2023-07-12T14:00:53","modified_gmt":"2023-07-12T06:00:53","slug":"symbolic-but-significant-the-decision-to-investigate-abu-aklehs-murder-is-unprecedented","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/perdana4peace.org\/v2\/symbolic-but-significant-the-decision-to-investigate-abu-aklehs-murder-is-unprecedented\/","title":{"rendered":"Symbolic but significant, the decision to investigate Abu Akleh’s murder is unprecedented"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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By Dr Ramzy Baroud<\/a>.<\/em><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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The recent\u00a0decision<\/a>\u00a0by the US Department of Justice to open an investigation into the killing in May of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh is not a game-changer, but it is important and worthy of reflection, nonetheless.<\/p>

Based on the long trajectory of US military and political support for Israel, and Washington’s constant shielding of Tel Aviv from any accountability for its illegal occupation of Palestine, we can conclude confidently that there will not be any actual investigation worthy of the name. If there was, it could open up a Pandora’s Box of findings pertaining to Israel’s many other illegal practices and violations of international \u2014 and even US \u2014 law.<\/p>

For example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) would have to look into Israel’s use of US-supplied weapons and munitions, which are used daily to suppress Palestinian protests, confiscate Palestinian land, impose military sieges on civilian areas and carry out other aggressive actions. America’s Leahy Law specifically\u00a0prohibits<\/a>\u00a0“the US Government from using funds for assistance to units of foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights.”<\/p>

Moreover, an investigation would also mean accountability, if it concludes that Abu Akleh, a US citizen, was deliberately killed by an Israeli soldier, as several human rights groups have already\u00a0concluded<\/a>. Holding Israel to account is also implausible. In fact, one of the main pillars that define the US-Israel relationship is that the former serves to protect the latter on the international stage. Every Palestinian, Arab or international attempt to have Israeli crimes investigated has failed decisively simply because Washington has\u00a0systematically blocked<\/a>\u00a0every potential investigation on the pretence that Israel is capable of investigating itself. Attempts to hold Israel accountable, claims the US, is a witch hunt that is tantamount to anti-Semitism.<\/p>

According to\u00a0Axios<\/i><\/a>, the following was the gist of the official Israeli response to the US decision to open an investigation into the murder of the Palestinian American journalist. “Our soldiers will not be investigated by the FBI or by any other foreign country or entity,”\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid. “We will not abandon our soldiers to foreign investigations.”<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Shireen Abu Akleh in Jerusalem. Photo: Shireennasri\/Twitter<\/figcaption><\/figure>

READ: Only Abu Akleh’s US citizenship is of concern to Washington<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Although Lapid’s was a typical Israeli response, it is quite interesting \u2014 if not shocking \u2014 to see it in the context of an American investigation. Historically, such language was\u00a0reserved<\/a>\u00a0for investigations by the UN Human Rights Council, and by international law experts such as\u00a0Richard Falk<\/a>,\u00a0Richard Goldstone<\/a>\u00a0and Michael Lynk. Time and again, such investigations were conducted or blocked without any Israeli cooperation and under intense American pressure to have them stopped.<\/p>

In 2003, the scope of Israeli intransigence and US blind support for Israel reached the point of\u00a0pressuring<\/a>\u00a0the Belgian government to rewrite its own domestic laws to dismiss a war crimes case against late Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Moreover, despite relentless\u00a0efforts<\/a>\u00a0by many US-based rights groups to investigate the murder of an American activist, Rachel Corrie, the US refused to even consider the case, relying instead on Israel’s own courts, which\u00a0exonerated<\/a>\u00a0the Israeli soldier who drove a bulldozer over 23-year-old Corrie in 2003. Her “crime” was simply to urge him not to demolish a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip.<\/p>

Worse still, in 2020, the US government went as far as to\u00a0sanction<\/a>\u00a0International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and other senior prosecution officials who were involved in the investigation of alleged US and Israeli war crimes in Afghanistan and Palestine.<\/p>

With all of this in mind, we must ask questions regarding the timing and motives of the proposed US investigation.\u00a0Axios<\/i>\u00a0revealed that the decision to investigate the killing of Abu Akleh was “made before the 1 November elections in Israel, but the Justice Department officially notified the Israeli government three days after the elections.” In fact, the news was only\u00a0revealed<\/a>\u00a0to the media on 14 November, following both Israeli and US elections on 1 and 7 November respectively.<\/p>

Officials in Washington were keen to communicate the point that the decision was not political, and nor did it seek to avoid angering the pro-Israel lobby in Washington days before the US mid-term elections, nor even to influencing the outcome of Israel’s own General Election. If that is the case, then why did the US wait until 14 November to leak the news? The delay suggests serious backdoor politics and massive Israeli pressure to dissuade the US from making the announcement public, after which it would be impossible to reverse the decision.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Palestinians in Gaza condemn Israel\u2019s targeting is Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh on 10 May 2022. Photo: Mohammed Asad\/Middle East Monitor<\/figcaption><\/figure>

READ: <\/strong>Shireen Abu Akleh’s killing is a ‘possible war crime’, says UN Rapporteur on Palestine<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Knowing that a serious investigation will most likely not take place, the US decision must have been reasoned in advance to be a merely political one. Maybe symbolic and significant, but ultimately inconsequential, the unprecedented and determined US decision was predicated on solid reasoning. For a start, US President Joe Biden had a difficult experience\u00a0managing<\/a>\u00a0the political shenanigans of the then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his time as vice president in the Obama Administration (2009-2017). Now that Netanyahu is poised to return to the helm of Israeli politics, the Biden administration is in urgent need of political leverage over Tel Aviv, with the hope of\u00a0controlling<\/a>\u00a0the extremist tendencies of the Israeli leader and his government.<\/p>

Moreover, the\u00a0failure<\/a>\u00a0of the so-called Republican “Red Wave” to marginalise the Democrats as a sizable political and legislative force in the US Congress further emboldened the Biden administration to reveal the news about the investigation into Abu Akleh’s killing. That is, if we are to believe that the decision was indeed made in advance.<\/p>

What’s more, the strong showing of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian candidates in the mid-term elections \u2014 in both the national and state legislative polls \u2014 further bolsters the progressive agenda within the Democratic Party. Even a symbolic decision to investigate the killing of a US citizen represents a watershed moment in the relationship between the Democratic Party establishment and its more progressive grassroots constituencies. In fact, re-elected Palestinian American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib was very quick to respond to the news of the investigation,\u00a0describing<\/a>\u00a0it as “the first step towards real accountability”.<\/p>

Although the FBI probe into Abu Akleh’s murder is unlikely to result in any kind of justice, it is a very important moment in US-Israeli and US-Palestinian relationships. Put simply, it means that despite the entrenched and blind US support for Israel there are margins in US policy that can still be exploited, if not to reverse US backing of Israel, at least to weaken the supposedly “unbreakable bond” between the two countries.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Source: Middle East Monitor<\/a>. 25 Nov. 2022<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dr Ramzy Baroud. The recent decision by the US Department of Justice to open an investigation into the killing in May of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh is not a game-changer, but it is important and worthy of reflection, nonetheless. Based on the long trajectory of US military and political support for Israel, and Washington’s… Read More »Symbolic but significant, the decision to investigate Abu Akleh’s murder is unprecedented<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":8703,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28,29,1],"tags":[128,39,301,199,49],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/perdana4peace.org\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8700"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/perdana4peace.org\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/perdana4peace.org\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perdana4peace.org\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perdana4peace.org\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8700"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/perdana4peace.org\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8719,"href":"https:\/\/perdana4peace.org\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8700\/revisions\/8719"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perdana4peace.org\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/perdana4peace.org\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perdana4peace.org\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perdana4peace.org\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}