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!).  In the film, a Biden aministration official (given his comments he’s clearly a security figure) explicitly says the US “failed Shireen Abu Akleh.”  Sen. Chris Van Hollen says that Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett “gave the finger” to Biden regarding the case.

In the film’s conclusion, the producer excoriates the Biden administration saying: we found the identity of the shooter and held him accountable. Something Biden refused to do for pure political reasons to preserve relations with Israel.  The documentary adds that the Israeli government told the US the name of the killer within hours of the death. In other words, they knew and did nothing.

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? The murderer was an officer serving in the IDF special forces unit, Duvdevan, 20 year-old Romanian-Israeli sniper, Alon Scagio (some accounts spell his name, “Sacagiu”). He served on a sniper team called Harov.

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. UPDATE: Haaretz has now published a story about the film, without naming Scagio.  But it only appears in the Hebrew edition. I have not been able to find it in the English edition, which I find strange.

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 a friend of Scagio who confirmed he was the killer.  The friend told the interviewers that Scagio “never lost any sleep” over his role.

Another major question Who Killed Shireen? doesn’t answer definitively, is whether the IDF delibaretly targeted her knowing who she was; or whether they only knew they were targeting a journalist. Israel has massive surveillance capabilities (including human and electronic sources) throughout the West Bank, but especially in combat zones like Jenin.  It’s entirely plausible that they knew she was in Jenin and that they were tracking her movements.  Though there is no definitely proof of this.

Given that Scagio could clearly see Shireen’s Press vest thereby knowing she was a journalist, it’s unlikely he would have taken acted on his own in making the decision to shoot to kill.  Undoubtedly, either his commander on the scene approved it; or the rules of engagement made clear that journalists were legitimate targets.  If anyone reading this knows the name of the commander, please contact me.

The Duvdevan source said that after he was killed in combat, members of the unit were so angry that his reputation had been stained by the killing that they used Shireen’s photo for target practice. After the controvery over the killing, Scagio was transferred out.  At his death, he was serving in the Kfir Brigade.  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.

The target practice incident 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, Scagio 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 (Hebrew) traces his life from kindergarten (“he was already a leader” who “all the girls wanted to marry”) through adulthood.  A separate memorial says this:

Alon’s final wish was for us to play Idan Amedi’s “Beautiful Things to See” at his funeral. He asked us to pay close attention to the lyrics, and to carry on with our lives, knowing that there are still many beautiful things to experience.

Apparently, Palestinians, in particular journalists, are not only not entitled to experience beautiful things, they are sentenced to death for their profession.

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 Scagio. 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. UPDATE: days after publication of this post, the media began to publish his name.

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.