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Retired US colonel says Washington pushed Israeli narrative on Shireen Abu Akleh’s killing
A retired US colonel who worked on a report on the Israeli military’s killing of Al Jazeera journalist and US citizen Shireen Abu Akleh says he was threatened to be relieved of his duties for pushing back against the report’s watered-down narrative.
Steve Gabavics told Al Jazeera that he and his team were “very upset” at the State Department’s position that Abu Akleh’s killing in May 2022 was “the result of tragic circumstances” and accused the Biden administration of ignoring his team’s account of the incident in favour of Israel’s narrative.
“My entire team was [very upset], as were many others, because what we had presented the entire time was that this was not an accident, it was not a fog of war incident,” he said.
“Basically what [the Biden administration] decided to do was go along with what the IDF [Israeli army] had proposed to them, which was that it was a tragic accident.”
Gabavics said he “argued for literally two years on this”, being taken off his role in working on a report of the killing and even being “threatened to be relieved” of his duties if he did not stop pushing back.
Abu Akleh, a prominent Palestinian American journalist, was killed by Israeli forces as she covered a raid on the Jenin refugee camp.
UK government urged to act after pro-Palestine journalist suffers health emergency in ICE detention
The family of British-Tunisian commentator and journalist Sami Hamdi has urged the UK government to take action after he suffered a health emergency in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention in the US.
“In a phone call with his wife Soumaya this weekend, Sami shared that he was experiencing excruciating pain on his left side and needed to be seen by a medical professional immediately,” the family said in a statement. “He has now been able to access medical attention, but we remain deeply concerned that his continued detention is damaging his health.
“We demand the UK government intervene immediately to ensure Sami is immediately returned home to us before his health suffers any further.”
On October 26, Hamdi was detained by US authorities as he was on a speaking tour discussing Israel’s war on Gaza. Sami was stopped at San Francisco International Airport. His visa had been revoked by US authorities two days earlier after a pressure campaign by anti-Muslim and pro-Israel social media influencers.
