Blinken Invites Abu Akleh Family to Washington

The Abu Akleh family continues to rage against the American government for refusing to conclude that Shireen Abu Akleh was deliberately killed by an IDF soldier. Antony Blinken has now invited the family to meet with him in Washington. That is a very big mistake. A report on this invitation, and how the Palestinians will use that visit to blacken Israel’s, and America’s image, is here: “Blinken invites family of Abu Akleh to DC, will raise her killing during Biden visit,” by Jacob Magid, Times of Israel, July 13, 2022:

The Biden administration has invited Shireen Abu Akleh’s family to Washington to “engage directly” with the slain Palestinian-American reporter’s relatives, who have expressed outrage over the US determination that she was not intentionally killed by the IDF during a raid in the West Bank.

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Israel on Wednesday that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke recently on the phone with members of the Abu Akleh family and extended the invitation.

The administration, at the president’s direction, has been very much engaged in helping try to determine what exactly happened around the tragic circumstances of her death,” Sullivan said, adding that “this subject will be one of the subjects at play in this visit.”

Abu Akleh was killed on May 11 while covering clashes between IDF soldiers and Palestinian gunmen. The Palestinian Authority said its investigation proved that the Al Jazeera journalist was intentionally targeted and killed by the IDF. Israel flatly rejected that claim as a blatant lie and also says there is not enough evidence to draw a definitive conclusion about who fired the fatal bullet.

There is not enough evidence because the Palestinians, who had sole possession of the fatal bullet for two months, made it available to the American investigators only after having smashed the back part of the bullet, so that there would be no way to match the bullet to the make of gun that fired it.

After nearly two months, the PA agreed to hand over the bullet that killed Abu Akleh to US authorities, who proceeded to conduct a forensic examination. On July 4, the State Department announced that the probe had been inconclusive because the bullet was too badly damaged.

Washington added that it had reviewed the separate investigations by Israel and the Palestinian Authority, concluding that she was likely struck by Israeli fire, though it found “no reason to believe that this was intentional.”

Sullivan added Wednesday that “there will have to be efforts made and accountability [in] making sure that we find a way to conclude this chapter justly.”

For their part, the Abu Akleh family said after the July 4 statement that “all available evidence” suggested she was deliberately killed by an Israeli soldier and that the administration had “thoroughly failed to meet the bare minimum expectation” of a credible, independent investigation.

That condemnation of the American investigation, described by the Abu Akleh family as having “thoroughly failed to meet the bare minimum expectation” of a “credible, independent investigation,” is outrageous. But instead of a stern American reproof, Antony Blinken has decided to try to win over the Abu Akleh family by inviting them to meet with him in Washington. There is nothing he can say that will cause them to halt their baseless charges; only a revised American report, concluding that Abu Akleh was deliberately killed by the Israelis, will satisfy them.

While they are on their State-Department funded trip to Washington, the Abu Akleh family will appear on as many news programs as CAIR , or a PR firm working for the Palestinians, can book them into. They will be all over the place – on radio and television, print journalism, suitably anguished, all too ready to discuss “the murder of our sister and daughter Shireen, an American citizen who was doing nothing more than report on the Israeli soldiers attacking the civilians of Jenin.” Interviewers will be uniformly sympathetic; any consideration of why it would have made no sense for the IDF to “deliberately” kill Abu Akleh will not be possible in such a biased atmosphere, and credulous American audiences will be deeply moved by their loss, and ready to blame IDF “killers” as the Abu Akleh family wants.

Instead, the United States has been skulking toward the erasure of any wrongdoing by Israeli forces,” they [the Abu Akleh family] said. “It is as if you expect the world and us to now just move on. Silence would have been better.”

US lawmakers have also pressed the administration for an independent investigation into the killing of Abu Akleh, a veteran on-air correspondent for Al Jazeera’s Arabic language service who was widely known and respected across the Arab world.

On their whirlwind of appearances on television, radio, and in the print media, the Abu Akleh family will have been well prepared by Palestinian propagandists as to how best to win over their American audience. They will be asked to address groups – Students For Justice In Palestine, CAIR, Muslim Students Association, BDS supporters, Jewish Voice For Peace — to hear their tale of woe, and of how the American government, in the pocket of the Zionists, refused to arrive at the obvious conclusion: that an intentional murder of a civilian had been committed by an Israeli soldier.

While Israel may have hoped the chapter could be put behind it after the US released its findings, that has proven to not be the case, with Blinken raising the matter with Prime Minister Yair Lapid in a phone call last week, urging Israel to ensure accountability over the incident.

Blinken’s telephone comment to Lapid was insulting. What does he mean by insisting that Israel should “ensure accountability”? Israel has been doing everything it can to complete a thorough investigation, but the crushing of one side of the fatal bullet, by the Palestinians, has made it impossible to determine from whose gun – an Israeli or a Palestinian – the bullet was fired.

Nonetheless, the Israelis are doing their best with what evidence they have, including video and audio recordings of the incident to figure out where all the parties were located when the bullet was fired.

What Blinken has done with his invitation to the Abu Akleh family is provide them with a platform in Washington, including appearances on news and talk shows, and interviews to the press, to present the aggrieved, wounded, human face of the Palestinians who “once again,” credulous audiences will be told, have been the victims of an Israeli atrocity.

What Blinken ought to have done, as the Abu Akleh family continued to complain about the American conclusion that absolved Israel of any criminal intent, is to have reiterated the conclusions, told the Abu Akleh family, without apologies or invitations to Washington, that he saw no reason to change that conclusion, which had been “the result of a thorough investigation by our investigators,” and in particular, he should have said that “I must repeat that there is not the slightest evidence that any Israeli soldier deliberately targeted your sister and daughter. It was, as we have repeatedly said, a tragic accident.”

Now his invitation to the Abu Akleh family will be interpreted as prompted by American uncertainty about that conclusion, and many will assume that the invitation to come to Washington had been prompted by a sense of having wronged the Abu Akleh family in not accusing Israel of willful murder. Blinken will have provided the Abu Akleh family, and its supporters, including such Squadrettes as ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Cori Bush, as well as nearly 80 other “progressive Democrats” who have signed a letter expressing their “concern” over the Abu Akleh investigation, with grist for their anti-Israel mill.

Blinken was hoping with his invitation to show goodwill to the Abu Akleh family, to patiently explain why the Americans concluded there was no “intention” by Israel to kill Abu Akleh, and that the matter should be laid to rest. The very opposite will now happen. The family will arrive in Washington, and meet with Blinken, who will not convince them to drop the matter In light of the American findings. The family will then be invited by the major media outlets to tell their anguished tale, which they will be glad to do. And so they will deplore the murder, and then the “cover-up by the Americans to protect the IDF killers.” And thus the Abu Akleh story will be kept very much alive, and the family given a platform in Washington from which to disseminate its calumnies against both Israel, and the United States.

Blinken, some say, is clever. But this was a very dumb move.