The Socialist Labour Network is launching a
national Can’t Pay Won’t Paycampaign with a public meeting this Friday
at 6.30 p.m. Speakers include Tommy Sheridan, the
former Scottish Socialist MSP, Paula Peters of Disabled
People Against the Cuts and Ian Hodson, the
President of the Bakers Union, who was expelled
from the Labour Party by Starmer last year.
30 years ago a mass non-payment
campaign defeated
Thatcher’s Poll Tax and forced Thatcher out of office. Why? Because people
could not afford to pay the tax and furthermore they refused to pay a tax that was
the same for a Duke and a Dustman.
Tommy Sheridan led the Poll Tax Campaign
Today people can’t afford their
energy bills. Even before the next massive rise in prices in October one-third
of people are
unable to afford to heat their homes. By the end of the year this is going
to rise to over half the population.
Even before the current price rises
1 in 4 people were
forced to live in cold conditions. What this means quite simply is that thousands
more people, the sick and elderly, will die for the sake of the massive profits
that the energy producers make. Thousands
are already dying each year because they can’t afford to heat their homes.
According to The
Telegraph energy bills are set to pass £3,000 per annum by next January. In
October 2021 they stood at £1,278. Last April prices rose by 54% to £1,971 per year. In October the
price cap on annual bills will go up to £2,980. In other words a rise of 133%
in 1 year.
Yet the railworkers are being
savaged by the Government and the Tory Press for demanding 7% wage increases. The
nurses who the Tories were happy to clap for are being offered just 3%. The
unemployed and claimants have had their benefits increased by just 3%.
Rishi Sunak’s Windfall Tax (which
was more
generous than Starmer’s proposals) is just sticking plaster. Most people
will get a £400 rebate in October and that will be it. Claimants will get £650
in two stages and disabled claimants an extra £150 or £300 if they are
pensioners. Pensioners will also receive an additional £300 on top of the
existing winter fuel payment. For details see here.
The strange thing is that gas
prices are
falling yet prices are rising. Why?Because of the nature of our privatised energy market which is divided
into those who generate the energy, those who transmit it and those who sell
it.
Massive profits are being made by
the energy sector at the same time as prices are going sky high. That is why
the French company EDF can increase prices by just 4%
in France because Macron has forced them to cut their profits. Boris
Johnson of course is in hock to his friends in the City.
This waste of space has nothing to say but opposes the rail strike
Privatisation in the 1980s meant giving
away assets built up by the tax payer over succeeding generations to the City
for a pittance. Billions have been made at the consumers’ expense and with the
latest price rises billions more will be made.
In March 1991 John Major, for instance, was asked by the
Soviet defence minister, Marshal Dmitry Yazov, about eastern Europe’s interest
in joining Nato. Major, according to the diaries of the British ambassador to
Moscow, Rodric Braithwaite, assured
him“nothing of that sort will ever
happen”.
Ironically Russia has also benefitted
from the sanctions that have been imposed because of the increase in prices. It
has been impossible for Europe to cut its dependence on gas and this has led the
ruble to hit an all-time high, contrary to predictions in February that their
economy would tank. According
to CBS News the ruble is the strongest currency in the world this year!
The sanctions which have been imposed only benefit the United
States energy market whose extraction of shale oil is far more expensive than
Russia’s gas and oil. The other beneficiary is US arms manufacturers such as
Raytheon and Lockheed Martin who have seen massive increases in profits as Jo
Biden has handed them $40 billion in arms orders on top of previous orders.
Of course the United States can’t afford to fund a National
Health Service or waive student debt but there is always money to fight NATO
wars, be it in Ukraine or Afghanistan. Similarly in Britain. There isn’t enough
money for things like free school meals but every time Johnson visits Zelensky
in Ukraine, usually when things become too hot for him at home, he comes with
promises of hundreds of millions of pounds of arms supplies. That is capitalism
and the system we live under.
Our demands are simple.
ØFreeze energy prices at what they were before April
2022.
ØNationalise the energy companies without compensation.
ØAbolish pre-payment meters. One of the more outrageous
feature of the present crisis is that those on pre-payment meters, the poorest
people in society, are paying the highest prices.
Machover looks
back on life since his childhood under the Palestine Mandate and describes both
his own family and political background
There are not many people who can justly be described as
legends in their own lifetime but Moshe Machover is one such person. An indefatigable
optimist he was the ‘one who got away’. Targeted by the Zionists and expelled
summarily by the Labour Party’s discredited Sam Mathews, there was such a
groundswell of opposition both within and without the Labour Party, that Moshe
was reinstated
within a month after Corbyn’s office had been forced to intervene with the
Compliance Unit.
Unlike the cowards of the Socialist Campaign Group, Dianne Abbot et al, Moshe was proud to appear in Zoom meetings alongside expelled members like myself and Chris Williamson, the only MP who did not subscribe to the false 'antisemitism' narrative
Moshe has subsequently been suspended by Starmer as part of
his purge of anti-Zionist Jews (its official name, as befitting such
doublethink, is ‘rooting out anti-Semitism’).
The first pamphlet that I read, at the age of 18 when I was
coming out as an anti-Zionist, was by Moshe Machover and two fellow members of
Matzpen, Akiva Orr and Haim Hanegbi. Up to then my opposition to Zionism was
largely instinctive rather than theoretically worked out. This was a time when
the very word ‘Palestinian’ was disputed. I had been brought up to consider Palestinians
as just ‘Arabs’. It is as if Romanians or Swiss nationals were referred to as Europeans.
Golda Meir, the Israeli Prime Minister famously declared that
there was no such thing as the Palestinians.
Moshe as a child
‘The Class Nature of Israeli society’ was published by New Left Review in January/February 1971
although I read it in a pamphlet published by the International Socialists (SWP).
It helped me to clarify my intuitive feelings about Zionism, that it was an exclusivist
and chauvinist project that rejected the basic ideas of Socialism. The pamphlet
helped me to jettison many of the ideas that I had grown up with in a Zionist
environment.
A Young Moshe Machover & Jabra Nicola
Matzpen (Compass), which Moshe helped form in 1962, was the
first Israeli anti-Zionist organisation. In the film Moshe describes briefly
the origins of the organisation and the influence of the Palestinian Marxist
Jabra Nicola over him and others. Nicola saw the solution to the dispossession and
oppression of the Palestinians as being a regional one involving workers and
peasants struggle in the Arab East to overthrow the corrupt and repressive
regimes which dot the landscape.
The Israeli Communist Party, from which Matzpen broke, never
rejected Zionism. Indeed it has never had any analysis of Zionism worthy of the
name. It sees Zionism as largely irrelevant and doesn’t see the Israeli working
class as a settler working class.
The Irgun, a terrorist militia which perpetrated the massacre at Deir Yassin in April 1948 before the declaration of independence
By way of contrast Matzpen developed an understanding of
Zionism and Israel as a settler-colonial ideology and movement or what Moshe
describes, using Kautsky’s terminology a ‘work’ or ‘exclusion’ colony as
opposed to an ‘exploitation colony’.
In my view these categories are too rigid, as some colonies
like South Africa could be both exploitation and exclusion colonies. Hence South
Africa’s Bantustan policy.
Jabra Nicola
Rakah, the Israeli CommunistParty believed and still believes that the Israeli state can be reformed
and that Israeli Palestinians can achieve equality within it. They never
understood that it was Zionism which ensured that Israel could never become a
state of its own citizens. Rakah was a Stalinist party that went along in 1948 with
Stalin’s support for the establishment of a ‘Jewish’ state, a policy which all
but destroyed the Arab Communist Parties in the region.
The idealised image of the Kibbutzim and Jewish Labour - what wasn't shown were the evictions of Arab peasants with the help of the British army to make way for the Kibbutzim
Today the Palestine solidarity movement and academia takes it
for granted that Israel is a settler colonial state, but for many years people
saw Israel as either a liberal democracy or a social democratic, if not socialist
society, with the Kibbutzim as their idea of socialism in practice. The idea 60
years ago that Israel was a settler colonial state was ground breaking.
I freely confess that Moshe has been an enormous influence
over my own political development although, as often happens with one’s mentors,
we disagree on certain issues. I don’t for example accept Moshe’s belief that
the Israeli or Hebrew people constitute a nation in their own right with a right
to self-determination as a Hebrew state in the future. In my view such a state
would inevitably contain within it forces seeking to reconstitute themselves as
a Zionist and Jewish Supremacist state with all that entails. Hebrew culture in
Israel is inevitably a culture of oppression.
Zionist 'socialism' was a strictly Jewish only affair and thus it negated the basic principle of socialism, the unity of the working class whatever its ethnic or religious origins. Today that has played out in the presence in a far-right coalition of the Israeli Labor Party and Meretz
Unlike Moshe I also believe that the idea or concept of a unitary
democratic secular state is one that the Palestine solidarity movement should
adopt. Why? Firstly because it negates the concept of a Jewish State, which the
two state solution does nothing to challenge. But also because a solidarity
movement that is unable to present a vision of what it is striving for will in
the end succumb to partial solutions such as a repartition. How such a goal will
be achieved is a separate question.
I also have less faith in the future potential of the Israeli
working class than Moshe because experience has shown that in settler colonial
states, be it South Africa or Ireland, the settler working class is to the
right of its own bourgeoisie. Their support for an ethno-supremacist state
means that they are incapable of acting as a class for itself.
The ethnic cleansing of Jaffa - the only people driven into the sea were the Palestinians
I see no progressive or socialist potential in the Israeli Jewish
working class because its identity wrapped up in the super oppression of the Palestinian
working class.
Today the idea of Israel as an Apartheid State has become widely
accepted. This idea, that Israel is a state in which racial oppression is not a
side effect or by-product of its other policies but inbuilt into the state
itself, has gradually taken hold. Ideologically Israel and its defenders are in
a weaker position now than they have ever been.
The flight of the Palestinians was necessary to create an artificial Jewish majority in Israel
This development has taken place at the same time as Israel
is militarily and economically stronger than it has ever been although still dependant
on its benefactor, the United States.
Where I agree with Moshe is that the Question of Zionism or
Palestine cannot be solved within the borders of Palestine. The great mistake
of the Palestinian leadership, the PLO, was to believe that they could become yet
another corrupt Arab leadership in a Palestinian state of their own side by
side with the Israeli state. The PLO leaders desired nothing more than the
right to oppress their own people, as the Palestinian Authority today
demonstrates.
Tel Aviv, a Jewish only city in its early days in British Palestine
It was this that led to the disaster that is the 1993 Oslo
Accords. At the time those of us who opposed Oslo were very much in a minority.
Fateh activists were enthusiastic about its prospects and their prospects. This
enthusiasm derived from the belief that Zionism could be confined within pre-1948
borders and could live alongside a Palestinian state. Unfortunately the
Palestinian leadership never understood the nature of Zionism and how it is an
inherently expansionist and colonisatory project. Or if they did understand it
rhetorically they never incorporated it in their theory and practice. Today it
is very clear that the Israeli state cannot be reformed and Zionism cannot
change its spots.
An artist's view of Tel Aviv
The other mistake of the PLO was, in exchange for subsidies to
finance their operations, to establish uncritical relationships with the very Arab
regimes which oppressed their own people. These regimes paid lip service to the
Palestinian cause whilst in practice abandoning them. Today we can see this
clearly with the Abraham
Accords, which follow on from the 1978 Camp David Accords
whereby Egypt recognised Israel. Following Oslo, Jordan also established diplomatic
relations with Israel.
The Arab regimes fear, despise and oppress their own peoples.
They are the junior allies of imperialism. Regimes such as that in Saudi Arabia
and Egypt are some of the most brutal on the planet. They are jealously guarded
by the Zionist regime in Tel Aviv yet the Palestinian movement has largely been
uncritical of these regimes. The role of Israel is to ensure that radical Arab
nationalism never triumphs in the region.
Where I disagree with Moshe is that I don’t accept that it is
necessary for a socialist revolution to take hold in the Arab world before
Zionism can be overthrown. If only because the establishment of socialism has
proved rather more difficult than Marx and the early socialists envisaged. I
think it is possible for nationalist revolutions to overthrow the ancien
regimes in the Arab world and in that way to threaten the very imperialist
interests that Israel is paid to watch over.
The original advert in Ha'aretz
Moshe has lived through the entire period of the Israeli state.
He recalls how, in September 1967, Matzpen was the first group to place an
advert in Ha’aretz decrying the Occupation of Gaza and the West Bank which an
Israeli Labor not Likud Government, presided over. Moshe also recalls the
hostility and calls of ‘traitor’ that greeted this advert. The advert met with
unbridled hostility and threats to the individual signatories.
Moshe tells how, at the age of 3, his first definite memory
was the day that World War 2 broke out. He describes the bombing of Tel Aviv by
the Italian airforce and says that by 1944 it was clear that something
horrendous had taken place in Europe in respect of the Jews.
This is in itself instructive because the Zionist leadership
in Palestine were well aware that the Holocaust was taking place from at least mid-1942
if not earlier but they did their best to play such reports down. The Hebrew
press even whilst it reported on what was happening in Europe also cast doubt
on its own reports. Zionism, which has fashioned the Holocaust into an
ideological weapon, was at that time more concerned with state building than
rescuing Jewish refugees.
Moshe emigrated to Britain in 1968. Many others in Matzpen also
emigrated to the West because life was made very difficult for those who were seen
as traitors to Zionism. Moshe became a Professor of Mathematical Logic and
Philosophy at King’s College in London. Far from being a democratic society
Israel has always been extremely intolerant of Jews who dissent from the
Zionist narrative.
Moshe describes in some detail how, in the wake of the Nakba between
1947 and 1949, he and other children would hike into the Galilee and see the
ruins of the Arab villages. They saw the artifacts and belongings left after the
Zionist militias had looted much of what remained when the original owners had
been forced to flee from Palestine. The Zionist myth that people like Israeli Ambassador
Tzipi Hotoveli still propagate is that the Palestinians voluntarily left.
It was the Israeli Labor Party that presided over the 6 Day
War and the conquest of the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai and Golan Heights. I
remember very well how Israeli propaganda portrayed the situation as a possible
new holocaust. We really believed that Israel might well suffer defeat and that
the Jews would be driven into the sea. Of course this was a lie meant to fool
not only Israeli Jews but the wider Jewish communities world-wide. We now know
that this was, as Moshe says, ‘poppycock’.
The ILP was also responsible for the establishment of the
first settlements. It was an Israeli Labor Government which launched a pre-emptive
war on Syria, Jordan and Egypt with the intention of completing what was they
considered unfinished business in 1947-9, namely the conquest of the whole of what
was Palestine under the British Mandate. In 1956 Israel had launched the Suez
War, in conjunction with Britain and France, against Egypt following Nasser’s
nationalisation of the Suez Canal. At that time Israel had been forced to
withdraw after the US Administration of Eisenhower had made its displeasure
clear.
The remains of the Arab villages after they had been looted and their inhabitants expelled or massacred
Moshe explains how one of the cardinal beliefs of the Zionists
is that Jews don’t merely constitute a religious community but a nation in its
own right. That is integral to the Zionist claim on what they call Eretz Yisrael (The Land of Israel). The
basis of this claim is that God gave the land to the Jews. Given that the early
Zionists were atheists, we have the absurdity that Zionism based its claim to Palestine
on the promise of a god who doesn’t exist!
I hope you find this interview as illuminating and
interesting as I did.
First CNN and
then the Washington Post have conducted investigations which contradict Israel’s
‘explanation’ that she was killed by a Palestinian gunman
Israel has conducted
extra-judicial executions throughout the Occupation of Palestine and it has
never hesitated to murder its political opponents, be they in Palestine or, as
in the case of Ghassan Kanfani, in exile.
Palestinian revolutionary
and novelist Ghassan Kanafani was assassinated
by Mossad 50 years ago, when he was killed in a car bomb explosion along
with his teenage niece in Beirut. Mossad later claimed responsibility for the
attack.
Kanafani was a novelist
who first deployed the notion of “resistance literature” in the context of
Palestine. He was also a leading member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Shireen’s
reporting was a thorn in Israel’s side as are all journalists who convey what
is happening in Occupied Palestine. Being Palestinian was an extra reason for
her murder.
Forty-five journalists,
the Palestinian Journalist Union claim 55, have been murdered
by Israel since 2000. That is the context for Shireen’s killing.
What is remarkable is
that despite the best efforts of the Biden Administration, Israel has not been
able to get away with murdering yet another journalist.
For one thing Shireen was
a US citizen. Another reason is that people today are far more aware of Israel’s
military occupation and the repression than they were 50 years ago.
Fifty-seven Democrat members
of the US House of Representative have called
for an FBI and State Department Inquiry. In addition two US
senators, Mitt Romney and Jon Ossoff have also added
their voice to calls for an inquiry. Romney is a former Republican Party
Presidential candidate.
Shireen Abu-Akleh
Equally
unprecedented is that two major US news outlets, CNN and now the Washington
Post have investigated the killing of Shireen and found Israel’s explanation to
be wanting. CNN titled its coverage
‘They were shooting directly at the
journalists': New evidence suggests Shireen Abu Akleh was killed in targeted
attack by Israeli forces.’
Anyone
who reads both articles cannot but conclude from the evidence that Shireen’s
death was deliberate.
The
Washington Post’s investigation
concludes that an ‘ analysis of available visuals,
audio and witness statements shows an Israeli soldier likely fired the fatal
shot’. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that the killing
was not random or accidental.
There
are a number of reasons why the Israeli version of events cannot be believed
(apart from the fact that the IDF routinely lie until video evidence contradicts
their version of events).
Israel’s
military has not released any evidence showing the presence of the mythical
gunman who Israel suggests killed Shireen. The first video put out by Israel’s
Foreign Ministry was recorded sometime before 6:41 a.m., the earliest instance that
the Washington Post found it had been shared on social media. A Palestinian
fighter fires two shots down a stairwell, before turning to move down the
street. As they observe:
Open-source
investigators, including B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, were quick to identify the location where this video was recorded, noting the geography alone —
including high walls and no sightline to Abu Akleh’s position — makes it
impossible that these shots are the same as those that struck the journalist.
The IDF has
refused to give details of any Israeli footage of the incident be it from
drones or from body cameras.
The IDF
did not say how it arrived at the conclusion that its soldiers did not know
journalists were present, or that they were not deliberately targeted when they
were wearing large visible signs saying ‘Press’.
Despite
this the IDF said it wasn’t investigating because “there is no suspicion of a criminal act.”Which
in one sense is true. Killing Palestinian
civilians is not a criminal offence for Israeli soldiers.
Omar Abdalmajeed As'ad murdered by Israel in January
In
January the Israeli military killed an 80 year old Palestinian/ American
citizen Omar Abdalmajeed As'ad of
Jiljilya. In this case there was no dispute as to who was responsible. As Ha’aretz
reported, ‘Israeli Soldiers Bound, Gagged
80-year-old Palestinian for Over an Hour Before He Died’.
In the case of Omar a
military investigation founda grave "moral
lapse" by the soldiers involved in the incident.
So grave were their moral lapses that one commander was rebuked, and two subordinate commanders
were dismissed. Now imagine that Palestinians had killed an Israeli in the same
way. Their family house would have been demolished and they, if they survived,
would be sentenced to 30+ years in prison.
This in a nutshell demonstrates not only Zionism’s
racism but the callous disregard for Palestinian life. But as the Jerusalem Post
said, ‘As’ad’s death is horrible.
Sadly, it reflects a tragic reality where surprise checkpoints are a harsh and
bitter necessity.’‘A harsh and bitter necessity’ if ‘terrorism’
for which read Palestinian resistance to occupation, it to be minimised.
In their defense, the abusers claimed that they
didn’t notice the signs of distress of the man they had turned into a sack of
potatoes, threw to the ground and left there for over an hour, choked and
cuffed. But what signs of distress can a bound man whose mouth is sealed shut
and whose eyes are covered show? For his ears to shake?
In Omar’s case too Biden and his mouthpiece
Anthony Blinken were content to leave things to Israel.Israel after all is America’s strategic watchdog
in the Middle East. The fact that they killed American citizens was secondary.
One wonders whether, if the Russian military
had murdered an American journalist whether Blinken and Biden would be content
to leave the investigation to Russia?
Tony Greenstein
A memorial now sits at the location where veteran journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot and killed. (Osama Hasan/The Washington Post)
How Shireen Abu Akleh was killed
A Washington Post
analysis of available visuals, audio and witness statements shows an Israeli
soldier likely fired the fatal shot
“We are now at the doors of
the Jenin refugee camp,” Ali al-Samoudi, an Al Jazeera news channel producer,
said as he began a
live stream on Facebook early on May 11,
during an Israeli military operation in the camp. Sounds of gunshots rang out
in the distance. “Heavy clashes,”
could be heard, Samoudi said in the video, which was recorded shortly after 6
a.m.
Less than 30 minutes later, the scene was quiet enough that
Samoudi, along with three other journalists, felt safe inching toward a column
of Israeli military vehicles that was involved in one of the early morning
raids. Among the group was Palestinian American journalistShireen Abu Akleh, a veteran correspondent for Al Jazeera who had covered
countless similar operations in a career spanning decades, colleagues said.
The journalists wore helmets and protective vests labeled “PRESS”
in large white letters. They paused for about five minutes in a location where
they thought the Israeli convoy could identify them clearly as members of the
press, Samoudi later said in an interview with The Washington Post.
“We were very sure there were no armed
Palestinians, and no exchange of fire or clashes with the Israelis,” said Samoudi. Then, the journalists headed up
the street, toward the Israeli convoy. “It
was totally calm, there was no gunfire at all.” Suddenly, there was a
barrage of bullets. One struck Samoudi. Another hit and ultimately killed Abu Akleh, as
their colleagues scrambled for cover.
The shots seemed to come from the military vehicles, Samoudi
recalled.
The Washington Post examined more than five dozen videos, social
media posts and photos of the event, conducted two physical inspections of the
area and commissioned two independent acoustic analyses of the gunshots. That
review suggests an Israeli soldier in the convoy likely shot and killed Abu
Akleh. The Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, has said it is possible one of its
soldiers fired the fatal shot, but claimed any gunfire was directed toward a
Palestinian gunman who was standing between the Israeli soldiers and the
journalists, and that the reporters might have been shot unintentionally.
Israel’s military has not released any evidence showing the
presence of a gunman. The available video and audio evidence disputes IDF
claims there was an exchange of fire in the minutes before Abu Akleh was killed
and supports the accounts of multiple eyewitnesses interviewed by The Post, who
said there was no firefight at the time.
The audio analyses ofthe gunfire that likely killed
Abu Akleh point to one person shooting from an estimated distance that nearly
matches the span between the journalists and the IDF convoy. Based on video The
Post filmed in Jenin, Abu Akleh and other journalists identified as press would
likely have been visible from the IDF convoy’s position, which was roughly 182
meters (597 feet) away. At least one soldier in the convoy was using a
telescopic scope, the IDF said later in a news release. A live
stream on TikTok filmed seven minutes before the shooting shows a relatively
calm scene with people milling about. Distant single gunshots are heard on
occasion but there are no signs of a firefight.
Video filmed by The Post from the vantage
point of where the Israeli convoy stood shows the IDF had a largely
unobstructed view of Shireen Abu-Akleh on May 11. (Osama Hasan/The
Washington Post)
The IDF,
in written responses to questions and a summary of The Post’s findings,said
it
“will
continue to responsibly investigate the incident, in order to get to the truth
of this tragic event. The bullet is vital to reaching a conclusion as to the
source of the fire that killed Ms. Abu Akleh, and it is an important source for
reaching an evidence-based conclusion. The Palestinians continue to refuse the
IDF’s offer to conduct a joint forensic examination of the bullet, with
American representation.”
The statement, quoting Lt. Gen. Aviv
Kohavi, the IDF chief of the general staff, repeated Israel’s previous
contention that it was investigating whether the bullet was fired by the IDF or
a Palestinian gunman.
“There
is one thing that can be determined with certainty: no IDF soldier deliberately
fired at a journalist. We investigated this. That is the conclusion and there
is no other,” he said.
The IDF
did not say how it arrived at the conclusion that its soldiers did not know
journalists were present, or that they were not deliberately targeted. An IDF
spokesman directed Post reporters toward statements made by an Israeli military
official, Col. Arik Moel, in a television interview, in which he says there was
a “better chance” Abu Akleh was killed
by Palestinian fire than by “one of the
five bullets” shot by an Israeli soldier who had been present that day. No
evidence was provided for the assertion.
The IDF
did not respond to a question about what, if anything, Israeli footage of the
incident — from drones or body cameras — may show.
The shooting
Shortly
after 6 a.m. Abu Akleh sent
an email to the Al Jazeera assignment desk
saying “occupation forces are breaking
into Jenin’s camp and besieging a house in Jabriyat neighborhood,”
referring to two operations being conducted by the IDF. She wrote that she
would update the network on the situation once she reached the camp. By the
time she arrived around 6:15 a.m., other journalists, including Shatha
Hanaysheh and Samoudi, had gathered at a roundabout at the entrance of the
camp.
“The main road was pseudo living a normal life, there were
vehicles driving by with people going to work, there was normal foot traffic,” Hanaysheh recalled.
Saleem
Awaad, a 27-year-old resident of Jenin, started a live stream on TikTok at
roughly 6:24 a.m. In the video, which was obtained by The Post, someone tells
Awaad that IDF forces are positionedjust to the southwest. At the
same time, the journalists can be seen standing aroundwearing
helmets and protective vests labeled “PRESS.”
In a TikTok live
stream a local man runs past a gaggle of journalists to film an Israeli Defense
Forces convoy in the Jenin refugee camp on May 11. (Saleem Awaad)
“I’m going to film them [the Israeli soldiers],” Awaad is heard saying, as he rushes past the journalists.
As he
approaches an intersection, three rounds of gunfire are heard in the distance.
Roughly two minutes later, he points the camera south revealing Israeli
military vehicles about 182 meters (597 feet) away, according to The Post’s
analysis of the footage. “There’s the
Israeli army,” he says. The vehicles are in the same location and formation
as those seen in body-camera footage of the raid later released by the IDF.
(Israeli Defense Forces) – note that this official video has no
sound.Why would that be?
In
a TikTok live stream, Israeli Defense Forces military vehicles are visible
about 600 feet from where Shireen Abu Akleh was killed on May 11 in
Jenin. (Saleem Awaad)
Over the
next three minutes, the video records distant single gunshots from time to
time, but the scene is relatively calm and the gaggle of people gathered at the
corner seem relaxed, joking and milling about. At about 6:31 a.m., the
journalists start to walk toward the military vehicles. “We decided to move through that street slowly to get closer toward the
army to cover the news,” Samoudi later told The Post.
In the
video, less than 30 seconds after the journalists walked toward the military,
six gunshots erupt. People who were recording the scene scatter.
In a TikTok live stream recorded May 11, 2022, in Jenin, Shireen
Abu Akleh and other journalists walk toward IDF military vehicles before
gunfire erupts. (Saleem Awaad)
A
different video obtained by The Post shows Samoudi moving hurriedly, but
carefully, toward a silver car stopped at the intersection. Just as he reaches
the road, a second burst of seven gunshots comes. The group again scrambles
away from the corner. Someone calls out, “Who
was hit?” Hanaysheh yells for an ambulance, because Abu Akleh had been
shot, she told The Post.
Three more
shots ring out. Then someone shouts,“Shireen! Medic, medic! Stay
where you are, don’t move, don’t move.” The camera pans to show Hanaysheh
crouched behind a tree near Abu Akleh, who is on the ground,facing
down.
A group of
men attempt to reach the two journalists by crossing the street for nearly a
minute, as a fourth burst of at least nine gunshots erupts in rapid fire. One
man, who is already across the street, climbs over a crushed wall to reach Abu
Akleh and Hanaysheh. As the man grabs Abu Akleh’s arm, in what appears to be an
attempt to move her, another shot goes off. He runs back against the wall and
crouches down. He ushers Hanaysheh away from the scene, back over the crumbled
wall before helping to carry Abu Akleh’s body from behind the tree into the
back seat of a car.
The Post
has decided to publish the 8-minute video recorded by Awaadit in
its entirety below.
A TikTok live stream shows the minutes before Shireen Abu Akleh,
an Al Jazeera news channel correspondent, was killed in Jenin on May 11,
2022. (Saleem Awaad)
At The
Post’s request, Steven Beck,an audio
forensic expert who consulted for the FBI for more than a decade, conducted an
analysis on the gunfire heard in the two separate videos. Beck found the first
two bursts of gunfire, 13 shots in total, were shot from between 175-195 meters
(574-640 feet) away from the cameras that recorded the scene — almost exactly
the distance between the journalists and the Israeli military vehicles.
The sound
wave produced by the gunshots for both bursts of gunfire was remarkably
consistent, suggesting a single person “pulling
the trigger of a rifle that fires supersonic bullets almost as fast as they
can,” Beck said, referring to bullets moving faster than the speed of
sound.There are two slight deviations from the pattern of fire,
Beck explained, but the deviations — involving two rounds — are likely causedby
someone re-aiming. Everything else aboutthe audio signature of the
shots is consistent, he added.
It is
likely Abu Akleh was killed by one of these first two bursts of gunfire.
Hanaysheh, who was next to Abu Akleh, can be heard calling for an ambulance
immediately after the second burst of gunfire. She told The Post her call was
for Abu Akleh. The audio analysis of the first two bursts also indicates that
the bullets were fired in the direction of — and very close to — the
journalists. The analysis could not, however, determine the exact point of
origin of the shots.
Palestinian
authorities, who are in possession of the bullet that killed Abu Akleh, said it
was a 5.56x45mm round. Beck said he used a number of different weapons that
fire that caliber of round in his analysis, but there is little significant
difference between them in determining the distance between Abu Akleh and the
shooters.
There are
two subsequent bursts of gunfire after the one believed to have killed Abu
Akleh, but their origin was harder to determine, experts said.
The
bursts, of at least 12 shots in total, point to a shooter in a different
location from the first two bursts, Beck said, estimating they may have been
fired from roughly 10-30 meters (32-99 feet) away from the journalists. The
shooter was firing in the general direction of the journalists, but could have
been shooting at something else because the bullets pass further away from the
group than the first two bursts.
“The gunshot signatures,
the echo signatures, and the timing of these bursts were very different from
the burst that likely killed the journalist, indicating a firing location that
was different and much closer,” Beck told
The Post in an email. “Without knowledge
of the type of round, a more accurate estimate of the shooter distance is not
possible.”
A second
analysis, conducted by aphysics-based computer model built by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University,
similarly found the first two bursts of gunfire were fired 233 meters +/- 46
meters (765 feet +/- 150 feet)from the camera — roughly aligning
with Beck’s analysis and the position of the Israeli military vehicles. The
model did not determine if the first two bursts were fired by one or two
shooters — only that the distance between the gunman and the camera stayed
consistent.Similar to Beck, researchers also used a number of
different weapons in their analysis that could have fired a 5.56x45mm or
similar round.
The
Carnegie Mellon researchers said the third and fourth bursts indicate a second
shooter, but they could not determine this person’s distance from the
journalists because of the videos’ poor audio quality.
The Investigation
An
investigationby the Palestinian Authority concluded that Abu Akleh
was hit by a bullet fired by an Israeli soldier. The Palestinian attorney
general, Akram Al-Khateeb, said at a press briefing last month that she was
shot “directly and deliberately,” a
conclusion he said was based in part on the fact that Abu Akleh and Samoudi
were shot in the upper part of their bodies, and gunfire, he said, continued
after they were shot.
Khateeb
said a decision had been made not to hand over the bullet to the Israelis — or
even to disseminate an image of the round — “to
deprive them of a new lie, a new narrative,” he said, adding that the
Palestinians were capable of conducting a thorough investigation on their own.
The IDF
says its investigation is ongoing, but said it had already concluded that there
was no criminal conduct in Abu Akleh’s killing.
Shifting explanations from
the IDF about the source of gunfire that killed Abu Akleh emerged from the
beginning. IDF spokesperson Ran Kochav first acknowledged the incident in a
tweet at 7:45 a.m., “The possibility that
journalists were injured, possibly by Palestinian gunfire, is being
investigated.” Later in the morning, he told Army Radio that it was “likely” that a Palestinian gunman was
responsible. The Israeli Foreign Ministry tweeted
an edited version of a video filmed hours
earlier with the caption, “Palestinian
terrorists, firing indiscriminately, are likely to have hit Al-Jazeera
journalist Shireen Abu Aqla.”
A video posted to Telegram early May 11 shows a gunman firing down
a stairwell a couple of blocks southeast of where journalist Shireen Abu Akleh
was killed. (Telegram)
The
original video shared by the Israeli Foreign Ministry was recorded sometime
before 6:41 a.m., the earliest instance The Post found the video shared on
social media. A Palestinian fighter fires two shots down a stairwell, before
turning to move down the street. Open-source investigators, including B’Tselem,
an Israeli human rights group, were quick to identify the location where this video was recorded, noting the geography alone —
including high walls and no sightline to Abu Akleh’s position — makes it
impossible that these shots are the same as those that struck the journalist.
The
Israeli government walked
back itsinitial statement on
the incident that Abu Akleh was “likely”
killed by a Palestinian gunman. An Israeli government news release said they
are investigating two possibilities. In one scenario, Abu Akleh was struck by a
stray bullet while Palestinian gunmen shot at Israeli military vehicles from a
number of different directions.
Available
visuals The Post reviewed of armed Palestinian men in Jenin show they were not
between Abu Akleh and the IDF, nor did they have a line of sight to the
journalistsat the time of the shooting.The timestamp
on one photo, labeled No. 6, shows it was taken 14 minutes beforeAbu
Akleh was shot and was recorded far away. Two videos showing Palestinian
gunman,in the same area asNo. 7,were
captured more than 10 minutes after Abu Akleh was shot. The Post could not
confirm the exact time of the video labeled No. 7.Gunshots heard
in one video to the south of the convoy, labeled No. 5, do not match those
heard when Abu Akleh is shot, indicating the video was most likely recorded at
a different time, however, The Post could also not confirm the exact time.
A video posted to
social media on May 11 shows a group of men, some armed, standing south of an
IDF convoy in Jenin. (Twitter)
A Palestinian gunman sits atop an alleyway in the Jenin neighborhood of
the West Bank on May 11, 2022.
Another
possibility presented by Israeli authorities suggests Abu Akleh was hit with a
bullet from a soldier firing at a Palestinian gunman who was positioned
somewhere in the approximately 200 meters (656 feet) between the journalist and
the military vehicles. According to The Post’s analysis of available footage,
the IDF convoy stretched roughly 182 meters to 243 meters (597 feet to 797
feet) away from the group of journalists including Abu Akleh. The IDF declined
to comment on whether the convoy The Post identified was the same one under
investigation.
The IDF
said in a statement that the gunman
fired “multiple barrages” toward the
convoy, before the IDF soldier returned fire. The Post’s analysis, however,
found no evidence of a firefight in the moments before Abu Akleh was killed.
Additional
videos of the convoy were filmed from about halfway between the location of Abu
Akleh and themilitary vehicles. The Post was not able to identify
who recorded these videos or determine precisely when they were recorded.
In a video posted to
Telegram, an IDF convoy is stationed on the same street and south of where
journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed on May 11 in Jenin. (Telegram)
“I went to cover the news,” Samoudi
said. “The news and the story, whatever
it is, is not more precious than my life. So when I take precautions, I take
them for the sake of my life.”
Those
precautions, he said, included ensuring that there was no one around him that
could have left the journalists caught in a gunfight — either militants, or
even youth throwing stones at the Israelis. Samoudi, who was released from the
hospital but is still recovering from a bullet wound to his shoulder,called
on the IDF to release any footage it had filmed during the raid.
“We went to cover news,” he said. “Not to die.”
About this story
Editing by Elyse Samuels, Kareem Fahim and Reem Akkad. Video
editing by Sarah Cahlan. Graphics editing by Atthar Mirza. Copy editing by
Jamie Zega. Design editing by Junne Alcantara. Design and development by Irfan
Uraizee.
Osama Hasan in Jenin, Shira Rubin in Tel Aviv, Ellen Francis in
London, Sarah Dadouch and Nader Durghamin Beirut, and Sufian Taha
in the West Bank contributed to this report.
Jerusalem bureau chief Steve Hendrix has written for just about every
section of the paper since coming to the Washington Post 20 years ago,
reporting from the Middle East, Europe, Africa, Asia and most corners of the
United States. Twitter
