The Rush to Judgment Over the Death of Shireen Abu Akleh

Where is the bullet? That is the question asked by the Israeli Defense Force in a tweet this morning. The occasion is a United Nations human rights commissioner’s office report that determined that an Israeli bullet killed an Al Jazeera reporter, Shireen Abu Akleh. In its report the Geneva-based body berated the IDF for failing to launch a “criminal investigation” into the case.Yes, that is the same UN office headed by Commissioner Michelle Bachelet, who failed to spot any concentration camps while visiting Xinjiang, and went on to praise Communist China’s advancement of human rights. The failure to notice Beijing’s real crimes against humanity, while zeroing in on the minutiae of an incident that happened in the heat of battle between the IDF and terrorists at Jenin, is all too typical of the UN’s rights body.It is also a staple of the press. The New York Times this week joined the Washington Post, CNN, and Al Jazeera in concluding, based on obscure, faux-scientific methods, that Abu Akleh was killed by an Israeli soldier. Such studies of the May 11 shootout use video footage and still photographs, testimony from Arab witnesses present at the Jenin battle, and sound examination to gauge the bullet’s velocity and distance.The UN probe claims to rely also on visits to where the shooting took place. It “found no information suggesting that there was activity by armed Palestinians in the immediate vicinity of the journalists,” according to the commission’s spokeswoman, Ravina Shamdasani, which leaves the IDF as the only possible culprit. The Israeli army reckons that the fatal shot could have come from one of its rifles or from a Palestinian weapon. Either way, the Israeli investigation has already reached one conclusion: “Abu Akleh was not intentionally shot by an IDF soldier,” a spokesman said today. Not so the UN, which berates the Israelis for declining to conduct a “criminal investigation.” So was a crime — namely the deliberate targeting of a journalist — committed? Al Jazeera, in a hasty judgment, aired that conclusion on day one.The Times, in contrast, said it was “unable to determine whether the shooter saw that she and her colleagues were wearing protective vests emblazoned with the word Press.” The American envoy to the UN, Linda Greenfield-Thomas, said in an interview recently that the world recently was “just horrified by the killing of Shireen,” adding that “attacks on journalists have become more prevalent over recent years.”Attacks on journalists? We don’t even know yet who killed Abu Akleh, let alone whether she was killed as a result of an “attack” on her, or just got caught in crossfire. Which brings us back to the bullet. A Palestinian pathologist who conducted an autopsy, Dr. Ryan al-Ali, had said the bullet he removed from the reporter’s body was a 5.56×45mm NATO round, used by both Israelis and Palestinians. He couldn’t determine which side fired it.IDF officials insist that its ammunition database would enable them to determine whether the bullet that Dr. al-Ali removed from Abu Akleh’s body originated from an Israeli weapon. Were the bullet handed over, the Israelis say, the army could make that finding, adding that the examination could be done in the presence of Palestinian and American witnesses. Yet the Palestinian Authority is refusing to hand over the evidence.No, it prefers to hand the bullet to the International Criminal Court. Our State Department sides with Israel on this head. It urges that “the two sides share their evidence with one another,” according to the State Department spox, Ned Price. The IDF this morning tweeted that the “Palestinian refusal to hand over the bullet and hold a joint investigation indicates their priorities.”Far be it from us to decide from New York what happened. We don’t mind saying, though, that we doubt that any Israeli soldier would deliberately kill a reporter, even one for a hostile outlet like Al Jazeera. Even as so many are eager to condemn the IDF, though, it seems obvious that a just-the-facts-ma’am approach to the incident is in order. Which is why we keep asking: Where is the bullet?

The Rush to Judgment Over the Death of Shireen Abu Akleh

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