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The killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, the 51-year-old Al Jazeera journalist, has increased tension between Palestinians and Israel following allegations that she was shot by Israeli troops.
Videos emerged from her funeral in Jerusalem’s Old City that showed violent clashes between mourners and Israeli police. The officers were seen using batons to pummel mourners as they carried her casket above their heads and into a church.
There were thousands of people present for what The New York Times called one of the “largest Palestinian funerals in recent memory.”
Mourners carried the coffin from the hospital and were immediately met by Israeli forces, CNN reported. A flash bomb and tear gas were fired, the report said.
Israeli police said the clashes occurred after mourners carried the casket instead of putting it into a hearse, which was already agreed upon. Israeli police involved in the funeral clash claimed that they only acted because mourners waved Palestinian flags and chanted nationalist slogans, The Intercept reported.
Abu Akleh was known for her reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and was a popular on-air reporter for the network. She died during an Israeli raid last Wednesday in the occupied city of Jenin.
Tel Aviv asked the Palestinian Authority for the bullet but the request was denied, according to The Wall Street Journal. The group called for an independent investigation and said Israel should not be trusted with the bullet.
Naftali Bennett, Israel’s prime minister, initially said Palestinians were “likely” to blame, but Tel Aviv admitted Friday that one of its soldiers may have pulled the trigger.
The Jerusalem Post ran an editorial that criticized police actions during the funeral.
“While Prime Minister Bennett and his officials struck a mournful tone about Abu Akleh’s death, the whole world has now seen Israeli security servicemen disrespecting the dead by beating pallbearers and removing flags, which makes Bennett’s position seem inauthentic,” the paper wrote.
It continued, “The only way to restore Israel’s legitimacy regarding the Abu Akleh investigation and restore its narrative is to act quickly and decisively on the funeral incident—publicly admonishing the police and punishing those in command.”
TRENDPOST: Israel continues to illegally steal, raid, and sanction Palestinian land while other nations that commit such criminal acts are severely criticized and sanctioned.
And, while Israel calls them “settlements,” they are illegal land grabs under international law. They violate Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 that states, “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
The UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Court of Justice, and the High Contracting Parties to the Convention have all affirmed the Fourth Geneva Convention applies, that this is occupied territory, and Israeli settlements there are illegal. (See “ISRAEL’S NEW ‘SETTLEMENT’ PLAN CONDEMNED BY U.S., EUROPE,” “ISRAEL TO BUILD MORE ‘SETTLEMENTS,’” and “ISRAEL ACCUSED OF APARTHEID BY HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH.”)
And, as we reported, both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch Israel have stated that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians meets the internationally accepted definition of apartheid.
To keep the pressure on Palestinians—and despite cities such as Tel Aviv being the world’s most expensive city to live, Israel ranking among the “10 to 20 richest and most advanced countries in the world,” according to Oppenheimer—back in 2016 The United States, under the regime of Barack Obama, gave Israel a $38 billion package of military aid over the next 10 years.