You may think you know the story of the first Palestinian-American journalist to be killed by Israeli forces, but you probably don’t.
For much of the world, Shireen Abu Akleh was the voice of Palestine, a brave, seasoned Al Jazeera journalist who repeatedly put her life on the line to cover the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.
On 11 May 2022, Shireen strapped on her helmet and blue body armor with the word “press” emblazoned across her chest and set out for what she expected to be another tense day covering an Israeli military raid in the West Bank city of Jenin. It turned out to be her last: Shireen was shot in the back of the head by an Israeli soldier.
Her death became a polarizing flashpoint between Israel and the US. After falsely blaming Palestinian militants for killing Shireen, the Israeli military begrudgingly admitted – four months later – that one of their own soldiers almost certainly shot the 51-year-old journalist.
No one was ever held to account for Shireen’s killing. Israel objected to an FBI investigation into her death and rejected US calls for the Israeli military to revise the rules of engagement to try to prevent more innocent people from being killed.
Israel refused to let the US interview the soldier who fired the fatal shots. Israel refused to give Americans the soldier’s statement about what he had been thinking when he shot Shireen. Israel wouldn’t even tell the US the soldier’s name. Without that information, US officials said, they couldn’t determine whether the Israeli military was guilty of any human rights violations for killing Shireen.
So I and a team of journalists set out to find out who killed Shireen – and why.
Our months-long investigation uncovered some disturbing revelations. First, it became clear that Israel knew right away that one of its soldiers had probably killed Shireen – even though Israeli leaders were falsely blaming Palestinian militants for her death.
Hours after Shireen was killed, current and former US government officials told me, the top Israeli general in charge of the West Bank told American officials that one of his soldiers had probably killed Shireen. From the beginning, Israeli and American officials knew the truth. But Israel spent months denouncing a series of independent investigations by journalists that concluded an Israeli soldier had shot Shireen.
Our reporting also reveals that an initial American assessment determined that the Israeli soldier intentionally shot Shireen – and that he should have been able to tell that she was a journalist because she was wearing the blue body armor marked “press”.
A keyBiden administrationofficial familiar with the examination told us that the soldier who had killed Shireen probably could have been convicted of murder in an American courtroom. But the initial finding was rejected. Instead, the Biden administration did a 180. The US concluded that it found no reason to believe her killing was intentional and blamed it on “tragic circumstances”.
It is difficult to find a news story on Shireen’s death that clearly lays out what happened that day, so let me lay out the facts: an Israeli soldier inside an armored vehicle saw Shireen walking up the street 200 meters away and intentionally shot her. The Israeli military’s own investigation concluded that the soldier had falsely identified Shireen as a militant and killed her. The Israeli military’s own investigation found no evidence to back up its initial claims that Shireen might have been killed in crossfire. The Israeli military’s own investigation documented no Palestinian militants near Shireen when she was killed.
To be clear: Israel’s own investigation concluded that it was almost certain that its soldier intentionally killed Shireen. The only lingering question is: why? Since the US government failed to find the shooter, we decided to track him down ourselves.
We spoke to seasoned Israeli military soldiers and American investigators who told us that they would not have opened fire on Shireen. They told us it was an example of poor training or poor discipline.
One Israeli soldier who knew the shooter also defended his comrade by telling us that if “you see someone who holds a camera or something that … point at you, you don’t need more than that to shoot the bullet”.
That perspective has long been present in the Israeli military. In 2002, an Israeli sniper shot the Boston Globe journalist Anthony Shadid in the shoulder while he was wearing blue body armor in the West Bank capital, Ramallah. In 2008, an Israeli tank in the Gaza Strip fired a tank round from 700 meters away at 24-year-old Reuters journalist Fadel Shana’a, who was wearing blue body armor and filming with a camera set on tripod; Israel said the tank unit thought the camera was a weapon and absolved the soldiers of any wrongdoing. In October 2023, an Israeli tank opened fire on a group of journalists on a distant hillside across the border in southern Lebanon, killing the Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah; Israel has never admitted any fault.
Israel has long rejected accusations that it intentionally targets journalists. But the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack in southern Israel appears to have changed the nation’s calculus. Since then, the Israeli military has changed its tune. Israel has deliberately killed journalists in Gaza it has accused of being “combat propagandists” working for news outlets affiliated with Palestinian militant groups. The Israeli military’s top international spokesperson sent a clear message that wearing blue body armor with the word “press” on it does not provide any level of protection for journalists.
“Wearing a vest that says ‘press’ doesn’t turn a terrorist into a journalist,” Lt Col Nadav Shoshani tweeted last year . So it’s no surprise that Israel has now become the most dangerous country for journalists. Israel has killed more than 175 journalists since 7 October 2023, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. More journalists were killed in 2024 than in any other year since the committee began documenting such deaths more than three decades ago. Israel killed nearly two-thirds of the 124 journalists who died around the world in 2024.
Israeli soldiers and settlers have also killed at least six more Americans since Shireen’s death. The country has held no one to account for any of the killings. Sen Chris Van Hollen, who has repeatedly called on the US government to investigate these deaths and press Israel to change its rules of engagement, told me that Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly given the US the middle finger when it comes to these killings.
Israel has continued its crackdown on Palestinian media. Ali Samoudi, Shireen’s producer, was shot and injured by the same Israeli soldier who killed Shireen. A documentary team met Samoudi in Jenin while he was covering an ongoing Israeli military operation.
“We have been overcome by fear,” Samoudi says in the documentary. “From the moment Shireen was killed, I said, and continue to say, and will continue to say, that this bullet was meant to prevent the Palestinian media from the documentation and the exposure of the occupation’s crimes.”
In late April, Israeli forces arrested Samoudi and accused him, without providing evidence, of being “identified” with the militant group Islamic Jihad. His family said that he was beaten by Israeli soldiers and handcuffed to a hospital bed. Samoudi remains in detention.
Earlier this year, we did what the US failed to do and found Shireen’s killer. It turned out that the Israeli soldier who shot Shireen in Jenin was himself killed last year in the same West Bank city. The soldier, Alon Scagio, had been quietly transferred to a different unit after the Israeli investigation into Shireen’s death. He was buried as a hero for rescuing other Israeli soldiers injured in a Palestinian militant attack. The Israeli soldier who knew the shooter told me that his comrades had been so incensed that Scagio’s reputation had been tarnished by his killing Shireen that they started using Shireen’s picture for target practice.
Our reporting made one thing clear: the Biden administration failed Shireen Abu Akleh. Our Biden administration source told us that the US allowed Israel to get away with murder. Scagio’s death makes it harder to find out what he was thinking that day. The Israeli military could help provide some answers by releasing Scagio’s statement.
Congress could bring key witnesses to Washington for hearings into why the US investigation’s findings were changed. The Israeli military could revise the way it trains its soldiers so that they kill fewer innocent people. And Israel itself could change course and make it clear that it does not see journalists as the enemy.
Until that happens, more journalists, more Americans, and more innocent civilians are likely to keep dying at the hands of the Israeli military.
Dion Nissenbaum was a longtime Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent based in Jerusalem, Beirut, Kabul and Istanbul over the course of two decades. He is the executive producer of Who Killed Shireen? and a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist for international reporting