IDF Murderer of Shireen Abu Akleh Exposed

הצנזור הצבאי אוסר לפרסם את זהותו של אלון סקאג’יו, שרצח את העיתונאית האמריקאית-פלסטינית שירין אבו עאקלה

Medhi Hassan’s Zeteo premiered its new documentary, Who Killed Shireen? this week. It’s a deep-dive into the targeted killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, one of the Middle East’s most popular journalists, who worked for Al Jazeera. Her voice and image were known throughout the Arab world. She was also a US citizen.

As if her murder wasn’t heinous enough, hundreds of Israel’s thuggish Border Police rushed the funeral procession, fired teargas, even causing pallbearers to drop her casket. They doubly desecrated her in life and in death: her journalism and her funeral.

After her murder, the US offered bromides about the incident. It initially sought to defuse controversy by assuring there would be an (Israeli) investigation. Her family were enraged. Then Biden and Blinken promised a US investigation, which never materialized (what a surprise!).

Over the past few years, Israel has “relaxed” the few restrictions it had on targeting Palestinians. Among those who became new targets were journalists. As an example, nearly 200 Palestinian journalists have been murdered by the IDF in Gaza since 10/7. In some cases, the IDF killed a journalist’s entire family as in the case of Al Jazeera Gaza bureau chief, Mahmoud al Dahdouh. They worked almost entirely for Arab media outlets; which tells you how poorly the mainstream media is reporting from and about Gaza. Such murders of journalists and humanitarian aid workers is a war crime.

Abu Akleh’s killing came at the outset of these new rules of engagement. For that reason, it came as even more of a shock than the subsequent killings described above. The global outrage sparked at least five in- depth media investigations of the murder (CNN, Washington Post, New York Times, Al Jazeera, Forensic Architecture) employing audio, video and other forms of forensic analysis.

Each one contradicted the multiple flimsy Israeli claims, and found that she was deliberately murdered by an IDF sniper. Israel’s investigation cleared anyone of any culpability (surprise!). The murderer even received a promotion to the rank of Captain. The Zeteo documentary finally resolves one of the key mystery’s of the crime: who killed her? Now we know it was an officer serving in the IDF special forces unit, Duvdevan, 20 year-old Romanian-Israeli sniper, Alon Sacagiu.

Israeli media are prohibited by military censorship from reporting his name and role in her killing.  An Israeli journalist I consulted did find a single, highly biased article about the film.

Duvdevan is known for disguising its soldiers as Palestinians (mistarvim–literally “to make oneself Arab”) to undertake targeted killings and other “counter-terror” operations. The film interviewed sources within his unit who said that after the murder and ensuing uproar, Sacagiu was transferred out.  He appeared to be a sacrificial victim to tamp down the pressure, and make it clear that the IDF higher-ups were engaging in some (minor) form of accountability.  As a result, his comrades, who complained about Sacagiu’s “harmed reputation,”  took revenge on the murdered journalist, using her photo for target practice.

This recalls the aftermath of the murder of the Dawabsheh family by settler arsonists.  At a wedding shortly thereafter, the guests danced in paroxysms of bloodlust stabbing knives in the air, pointed at the photo of the little baby they murdered in his bed.

In a dose of cosmic karma, Sacagiu was later killed during a military raid in Jenin, the same town in which he murdered Abu Akleh.

The Talmud offers a parable of the skull of a drowned murder victim floating down a flooded river:

The Aramaic saying…means: Because you murdered a man and caused his skull to float in the river – the same thing will happen to you, and your fate will also be like this [to be murdered]. This saying is a parable, which means that nothing happens by chance, and a person who does evil receives his punishment, “measure for measure.

Or in other words: karma’s a bitch.

After his death, he was feted as a national hero. An IDF memorial page traces his life from kindergarten (“he was already a leader” who “all the girls wanted to marry”) through adulthood.

In a touch of irony, in high school he served as chair of the “ethics-legal” committee. He was described as having warmth and a strong sense of values; and a person who had a “smiling, polite and respectful” personality.

Curiously no mention in his memorial of committing war crimes or murdering journalists. It’s ironic “martyred” IDF killers are war heroes to Israelis but murderers to Palestinians. While Hamas fighters are heroes to the Palestinian people and terrorists to Israel and much of the rest of the world. The stench of moral hypocrisy rises to high heaven.  It confirms the success of the Israel Lobby and its media accomplices in pumping the Israeli narrative through the veins of their consumers.

It’s odd that most of the mainstream media has refused to name Sacagiu. When Democracy Now queried the IDF, it requested he not be named at the behest of the family. It ignored the request as any real journalist would. The other outlets proved derelict in their journalistic responsibilities. They acceded to the request; or did not name him due to their editorial guidelines. They could, of course, have published it and added a statement saying they had not verified the information independently.

This minimizes Israeli accountability. It leaves the killer, his unit, and the entire army in the shadows, where it prefers to be in the midst of such scandals. Yet another example of the pass Israel gets in reporting its crimes.