Shireen Abu Akleh, icon of Palestinian journalism fallen under the bullets

The death of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh on Wednesday deeply shocked her colleagues at Al-Jazeera TV. These all describe a “pioneer” and a great professional, whose journalistic rigor was unanimous. Journalist for the pan-Arab television channel Al-Jazeera, Shireen Abu Akleh, shot dead on Wednesday May 11 while covering an Israeli army operation in the occupied West Bank, was a renowned Palestinian reporter, hailed for her courage and professionalism. Born in 1971 into a Christian family in occupied East Jerusalem, this Palestinian, who also held American citizenship, had studied journalism at Yarmouk University in Jordan before co-founding the Voice of Palestine radio station based in Ramallah. joined Al-Jazeera in 1997, a year after the launch of the channel, of which she has become one of the star reporters. For Hoda Abdel-Hamid, one of her colleagues contacted by telephone in Ukraine by AFP, “she was definitely a very brave journalist. “I asked him: ‘Don’t you ever get tired?’ She was always there, as soon as something happened. She was much more daring than me. (…) But she was also a very experienced journalist, not the type to take stupid risks just to take them .”>> To read also: “An Al-Jazeera journalist killed during an Israeli army operation in the West Bank”In a recent interview with a local news agency, Shireen Abu Akleh did not hide being frequently afraid when she was in the field. “I’m looking for a safe place to stand and find a way to protect my team before worrying about the images,” said this journalist, who had no children. Shireen Abu Akleh, who wore a helmet and a protective vest – bullets flanked by the word “Press”, was killed Wednesday in Jenin, a Palestinian city where the Israeli army, which has occupied the West Bank since 1967, has recently multiplied operations. It is from this city in the north of the West Bank and the adjacent Palestinian refugee camp from which several assailants hailed from deadly anti-Israeli attacks in recent weeks, amid escalating violence. writes in the journal This Week in Palestine that Jenin did not represent “a fleeting story in (his) career or even in (his) personal life”. “It’s the city that can lift my morals,” she said, because Jenin “embodies the Palestinian spirit that sometimes trembles and falls but, beyond all expectation, rises to pursue its struggles and its dreams.” .Having covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for two decades, she was an icon for many Palestinians. In the eyes of her colleague Mohammad Daraghmeh, also a close friend of hers, she was “one of the strongest journalists in the Arab world”. She “was one of the first Arab women to be a war correspondent at the end of the 1990s, when the traditional role of women in television was to present (the news) in a studio”, underlined on Twitter Dima Khatib, another journalist of Al-Jazeera, calling her colleague a “pioneer”.>> See: “Freedom of the press: ‘Journalists have become targets in the field of war'””Shireen was a courageous, kind journalist with great integrity, and with whom millions of Palestinians and I grew up watching it,” said Fadi Quran, one of the directors of Avaaz, an NGO based in the United States. His television channel paid tribute to him on Wednesday. She was supposed to open the newspaper “but she never showed up”: choking back tears, Mohamed Moawad, editor of the Qatari channel, recalls his last exchanges with the journalist. “Our last communication had took place 20 minutes before this heinous crime. She sent an email saying: ‘Hello, there is an Israeli intervention in Jenin and I am going there now. I am almost there. I will send you the details'”, recounts – he told AFP. “She went everywhere to give a voice to those who do not have one” During the minute of silence observed on the air, journalists could not prevent the tears from rolling down their play. At the chain’s offices in Doha, her colleagues hug each other, clutching portraits of the journalist and sheets on which is written: “Journalism is not a crime”. Behind them, on screens, the images of clashes in the Palestinian Territories parade. “She went everywhere to give a voice to those who have no voice. There are so many videos showing Shireen being attacked by Israeli , being shot and other things,” Mohamed Moawad recalled. responsible for her death. The Jewish state said it was investigating her death but denied that the reporter was deliberately touched. After saying that she had “probably” succumbed to fire from Palestinian fighters, Israel then claimed that it did not rule out that the bullet was fired by its soldiers. an intentional act because the bullet hit the exact area under her ear, where there is no protection,” retorted Mohamed Moawad, criticizing “irresponsible” comments in Israel on the reporter’s death. independent investigation The United States called for a “transparent” investigation, preferably joint between Israelis and Palestinians, while the UN and the European Union urged an “independent” investigation. The group of Arab countries at the UN has called for “an independent international investigation” into the “assassination” of the journalist. On Wednesday evening, Palestinians laid wreaths as the vehicle carrying her body passed by in the West Bank, then a crowd gathered to carry his body, placed on a stretcher and wrapped in a Palestinian flag, to the local office of Al-Jazeera. An official tribute ceremony is scheduled for late Thursday morning in Ramallah in the West Bank , at the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority, in the presence of President Mahmoud Abbas and representatives of the press, before her funeral on Friday in a church in Jerusalem, the city where she grew up. With AFP