“This was fcuking (sic) evil and utterly unacceptable and many voices decrying it are required,” said the emailed message. News had just come through that Shireen Abu Akleh, a veteran journalist with Al Jazeera, had just been shot and killed in Jenin-Palestine on the West bank, and this was a call for a fitting response. The truth is that had the Isreali’s not killed Shireen Abu Akleh, I wouldn’t have known her name. Shireen Abu Akleh was killed this week doing her job as a witness to a crime of historic proportions, but as far as most people are concerned Shireen might as well have died years ago, when our media determined not to publish what she and so many others like her, were reporting – that’s the tragedy. The tragedy is that if, from the outset in 1948, our media had fairly reported what journalists, like Shireen Abu Akleh, witnessed happening in Palestine then, the western world would been better informed and would have reacted as it is now to events in Ukraine – and Shireen Abu Akleh would be alive today.

Source: New Zealand Herald May 12, 2022 18:51 UTC