DUBAI. (May 31, 2022). Another journalist consumed by the Israel-Palestine conflict! This time it was none other than Shireen Abu Akleh the veteran in the field of journalism in the Middle-East! Courage does not see the gender! As an invisible spirit it can enter anyone’s body frame!
-‘In fiction, the writer’s voice matters; in reporting the writer’s authority matters, It is very simple … All we need to do is insist on two rules: the writer of fiction must invent. The journalist must not invent!’ This was the golden principle that Akleh followed’
-She was the champion of bearing witness so that even if no one stopped the wars, they could never say they had not known what was happening!’
-‘Whatever I have read about Shireen makes me out-rightly come to the conclusion that she had an eye for detail, the ability to conjure a scene, and scant regard for her own safety were to become trademarks of her journalism! That perhaps was the reason for her death too!
-‘Palestinian youths used stones and marbles, often in slingshots, to taunt young Israeli soldiers, who shot back with tear gas and live fire. The Palestinians always came off worse. Funerals would turn into protests and so it would roll on, violence ebbing and escalating, the world transfixed by the desperation of a Palestinian generation who saw no future.’ This I made out from her writings and presentations as I browsed through the web to get some interesting details of the lady whose thematic undercurrent of working was that courage does not see the gender!
-‘She might have been one of the main targets of the regime, but she wasn’t listening. She was only focused on human suffering, on children dying. I thought I could work with this person because she has no ideology, she’s just concerned with human beings.’
-‘An architecture student who joined the fledgling Qatar-funded channel in 1997, the 51-year-old Palestinian-American’s fame grew along with al Jazeera’s influence in the Arab world. Her signoffs even became part of the soundtrack to the early days of the Second Intifada, mocked by Israeli soldiers using megaphones in West Bank cities such as Ramallah, according to her friend and fellow journalist Dalia Hatuqa.’
-‘As crowds surged to the ceremonies for Abu Akleh in Ramallah and Jerusalem, her friends mourned a woman who loved to shop, party and travel and nursed a sweet tooth. ‘She had a constant smile, loved to dance — covering Israeli atrocities never broke her spirit,’ said Hatuqa, who met her when she was 30.
-‘ Shireen Abu Akleh was a Palestinian-American journalist who worked as a reporter for the Arabic-language channel Al Jazeera for 25 years, and was one of the most prominent names across the Middle East for her decades of reporting in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.’
-‘For a quarter of a century Palestinians tuning in to Al Jazeera news grew accustomed to reassuring, clipped sign offs from a star correspondent, an Arab woman and veteran journalist who was a household name across the Middle East. Shireen Abu Akleh, Al Jazeera, she would say, followed by a dateline that traced the arc of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from Ramallah to Jericho, Bethlehem to Jerusalem.
-‘Abu Akleh died in Jenin on Wednesday May 11, 2022 from a gunshot to the head. Her killing has thrown the issues she spent her career exploring — the brutality of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the challenges Palestinians face in holding the Israeli army accountable — back under the spotlight.
