Israel Firmly Rebukes White House’s Request to Review Policies After Death of American Journalist

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid issued a stern response to a request from the Joe Biden Administration. In response to the murder of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, on Tuesday the State Department asked Tel Aviv to review its rules of engagement in the occupied West Bank. On Wednesday, Lapid fired back saying, “no one will dictate our rules of engagement to us.” 

In May, Shireen and several of her colleagues were in Jenin to report on a raid conducted by the Israeli security forces. The journalists were all wearing bullet-proof vests and helmets marked press when soldiers shot Shireen in the face, killing her. Another reporter was shot as well but survived. 

The narrative from Tel Aviv has changed several times. After the murder, then-Prime Minister Naftali Bennett claimed Abu Akleh was killed by Palestinians. “According to the data we have at the moment, there is a good chance that armed Palestinians, who fired wildly, are the ones who led to the unfortunate death of the journalist,” Bennett’s statement said. 

However, the prime minister’s narrative was quickly disputed by the Israeli human rights monitoring group B’tselem. The group concluded, “documentation of Palestinian gunfire distributed by Israeli military cannot be the gunfire that killed Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.”

Then an Israeli official suggested that the Israeli soldiers fired on the journalists because they were “armed with cameras.” In the weeks following the murder, several Western media outlets and human rights groups concluded that Israeli forces killed the well-known journalist. 

Last week, Tel Aviv released its report on the Abu Akleh killing. Investigators concluded that Shireen was likely unintentionally killed by Israeli forces and there was no need for a criminal inquiry. During his speech at an Israeli naval base on Wednesday Lapid said, he would “not allow them to put an IDF soldier on trial who defended himself against fire from terrorists.”

As Washington is Israel’s most important benefactor and because Shireen is American, the Abu Akleh family and rights groups have pressured the White House to take action. The US provides Israel $3.8 billion annually in military aid. While the Biden administration has called the killing tragic it has not condemned Tel Aviv. 

Last month, Axios reported that the State Department requested Israel review its rules of engagement in the West Bank. In response, an Israeli official denied the request was made. The official added that, if the request was made, it would be ignored. 

The State Department Deputy Spokeswoman Vedant Patel made the request public on Tuesday, “We will continue to press Israel directly and closely at the senior-most levels to review its policies and practices on this to ensure that something like this doesn’t happen again in the future,” she said in reference to the Abu Akleh murder. 

Prime Minister Lapid firmly rebuked Washington for making the request. He said, “no one will dictate our rules of engagement to us, when we are the ones fighting for our lives.” Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz added the “Israeli Defense Force’s chief of the general staff, and he alone, determines, and will continue to determine the rules of engagement in accordance with our operational needs and values of the IDF.”

Tel Aviv security forces have killed scores of Palestinian journalists since 2000. Suppression of the Palestinian voices has been critical in Israel maintaining its international support while being labeled an apartheid state by multiple, well-established human rights groups.