Shireen Abu Akleh was an American citizen. She is now dead. I do not wish death on any fellow American citizen. I believe that the loss, especially under tragic conditions, of any American should sadden us all. But the treatment of her death by the United States government of Joe Biden shows that not all Americans are created equal.
Abu Akleh was killed by a bullet during IDF activities in Jenin. Since her death, there have been conflicting opinions as to the source of that bullet: Palestinian terrorists or active Israeli forces. The US, after some forensic work, believes that the bullet was Israeli but that she was shot unintentionally. The Palestinians are furious, as always: it was an assassination! The Israelis are irked that the US concluded that it was their bullet when both sides use the same caliber of bullets for their rifles.
The point is almost irrelevant.
Shireen Abu Akleh was a correspondent for Al-Jezeera. She went to Jenin to cover an armed conflagration between Palestinian terrorists and Israeli soldiers. She put herself into harm’s way to do her job. Hundreds of journalists have been killed in the line of duty since World War 2, when they were inserted with front-line troops. Last year, 45 journalists died on the job. This is part of the job description if you don’t want to do weather or cover local sports. Her routinely being where the action was hot and heavy made her a successful journalist. Yet, though she was killed doing her job in a very dangerous firefight in Jenin, Tony Blinken invited her family to meet him in Washington to discuss the situation regarding how she died. Joe Biden raised the issues of her death during his visit to Israel. Again, I am sorry that an American was killed, even though we probably did not agree on very much. But why does this American get special State Department treatment?
When my son and I were blown up in downtown Jerusalem on 21 March 2002, nobody from the State Department invited us to Washington for meetings, though the bombing was orchestrated by official elements of the Palestinian Authority (PA) intelligence services. I tried to meet every Secretary of State since Colin Powell and not one has answered my request. The current and previous US ambassadors have also not responded to any mail that I sent them whereas their predecessors met with me. In the case of the bombing in which we were injured and three Israeli citizens were killed, the one who provided the bombing material—according to written confessions of the members of the terror cell behind the blast—was the head of the PA’s intelligence services. The CIA trained the PA’s intelligence services. After the FBI opened a file on our case, it threw out all of the material I sent them (around 60 pages total), including indictments, confessions and newspaper clippings. I know this from someone who saw the empty file. Tony Blinken, the one and the same, came in on the side of the Palestinians against us and ten other American families in Federal court in New York. His goal was to undo our $650 million jury judgment, and he succeeded. Instead of using the judgment against the PA and the PLO as a starting point to negotiate an agreement for the benefit of American citizens, his only interest was in harming us and getting his Palestinian friends off the hook. Just as the only reason the Abu Aklehs are invited to Washinton is that they are Palestinians and not Jews. If it had been a Jewish American reporter killed in the gunfire, the US would have sent its condolences and forgotten about it. Gas may be expensive in the US but spilled Jewish blood is still cheap in the eyes of US administrations.
During that trial in New York, there was a very curious sequence of events. The Palestinian Authority had two flacks sitting in the trial to represent their employers. We had several families in our case whose children were murdered at the Hebrew University cafeteria by a bomb placed by a Palestinian worker. One of the fathers of the murdered students related a very strange story after his testimony. The fellow in question is not Jewish. When he finished testifying about his daughter’s murder and headed back to the gallery, the female PA rep came up to him, hugged him, and said how sorry she was for his loss. The only other non-Jewish plaintiff said that the same thing had happened to him. I testified but she did not console me—or any other Jewish person who testified about their loss or injuries. Oh, so when a non-Jew was blown up, that was in the PA’s mind a tragedy; when a Jew sitting next to her was also killed, well, that was okay. So Tony Blinken thinks like his Palestinian friends—Abu Kaleh is killed in a war zone. Get her family on the plane to Washington! Jews are blown up, stabbed, and shot by Palestinians in safer places like at cafes, in buses, or on sidewalks, well that’s okay. Open another file. To date, no Palestinian terrorist has ever been prosecuted by the US for the death and injury of hundreds of American citizens in and around Israel. But each has a file! If you are Jewish and harmed by Palestinian terrorists, then you are an annoyance to the peace process in the eyes of the State Department. If it’s a Palestinian-American who is harmed, then all the levers of government will move to seek justice and compensation. The US will no doubt pressure their friends in Jerusalem to pay the Abu Aklehs a couple of million dollars “to do the right thing”.
We have never sought favors from the State Department or the Department of Justice. We only asked for fair treatment in our pursuit of justice for our loved ones. While the DoJ cannot be bothered to prosecute Palestinian terrorists, the State Department does everything it can—including suggesting lawyers to the PA for their defense in the US—to help the bad guys and harm the interests of their fellow Americans. The Sbarro mastermind sits in Amman and the US can use its vast financial and military leverage over Jordan to get Ahlam Tamimi on a flight to the US to stand trial. But she knows that it will never happen. She’s on the US’s side. And for the State Department, her victims are not.
