NEW YORK: A new documentary purports to name the Israeli soldier who killed Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh, who was gunned down in the West Bank while reporting in 2022.
Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist known for her coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict, was shot dead in Jenin in the north of the occupied West Bank while she worked, wearing a bulletproof vest marked “press.”
Al Jazeera and witnesses immediately blamed the Israeli army. Then Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett said it was probable the shots had come from Palestinian militants.
In the weeks that followed, several journalistic investigations pointed the blame at Israeli gunfire.
Months later, Israel released an internal investigation that found a “high probability” that Abu Akleh was accidentally shot by the Israeli army, which claimed it was targeting armed Palestinians.
Produced by independent news site Zeteo, the documentary “Who killed Shireen?” names for the first time the suspect as Alon Scaggio, an elite soldier.
“Israel did everything it could to conceal the soldier’s identity, they wouldn’t provide the US with any information. They wouldn’t let the US interview him. They wouldn’t give the US his statement. And they wouldn’t give his name,” said Dion Nissenbaum, a journalist who worked on the film.
Assisted by producer Conor Powell and reporter Fatima AbdulKarim — who worked for The New York Times in the West Bank — Nissenbaum, a former Wall Street Journal correspondent, consulted testimony from two Israeli soldiers present in Jenin on May 11, 2022 as well as top US officials.
The documentary alleges that Scaggio, then 20, had completed training for the elite Duvdevan unit just three months prior.
“He shot her intentionally. There’s no question about that. The question is did he know she was a journalist and did he know she was Shireen Abu Akleh? Was it an order from above?” Nissenbaum told AFP.
“Personally, I don’t think it was an order. I don’t think he knew it was Shireen. Nobody ever has indicated that he could tell that it was Shireen. But she was wearing the blue flak-jacket with the word ‘press’ on it.”
“The evidence (suggests)... it was an intentional killing of Shireen Abu Akleh. Whether or not they knew it was her or not can very well be debated, but they would have absolutely known that it was a media person or a non-combatant at a minimum,” said a senior official from the administration of then US president Joe Biden, speaking in the film anonymously.
Washington did not exert significant pressure on the issue, the documentary claims, for fear of antagonizing its ally.
Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen said he called on Biden to declassify documents about the killing — but went unanswered.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said “it is the first time that a potential suspect has been named in connection with an Israeli killing of a journalist” according to its records dating back to 1992.
Impunity in the case “has effectively given Israel permission to silence hundreds more” journalists, the CPJ said.
Reporters Without Borders estimates around 200 journalists were killed in the past 18 months of Israeli strikes on Gaza.
An Israeli army spokesman condemned the unauthorized disclosure of the suspect’s name despite no “definitive determination” of who shot Abu Akleh.
The soldier in question “fell during an operational activity,” the army added.
Nissenbaum had initially thought Scaggio died in Gaza, but ultimately concluded he was killed in Jenin on June 27, 2024 almost two years after Abu Akleh.

WASHINGTON: India has ordered X to block more than 8,000 accounts, the platform said Thursday, adding that it was reluctantly complying with what it described as government-imposed “censorship.”
The move appears to be part of India’s sweeping crackdown targeting social media accounts of Pakistani politicians, celebrities and media organizations amid heightened tensions and deadly confrontations between the nuclear-armed neighbors.
The order, which X said includes demands to block international news organizations and other prominent users, comes a day after Meta banned a prominent Muslim news page on Instagram in India at New Delhi’s request.
“X has received executive orders from the Indian government requiring X to block over 8,000 accounts in India, subject to potential penalties including significant fines and imprisonment of the company’s local employees,” the site’s global government affairs team said in a statement.
It added that in most cases, the government had not specified which posts from the accounts violated Indian laws, and in many others, it provided no evidence or justification for the blocks.
The Elon Musk-owned platform said it disagreed with the demands but it had begun the process to withhold the specified accounts in India.
“Blocking entire accounts is not only unnecessary, it amounts to censorship of existing and future content, and is contrary to the fundamental right of free speech,” the statement said.
“This is not an easy decision, however keeping the platform accessible in India is vital to Indians’ ability to access information.”
The move comes amid fierce fighting between India and Pakistan, two weeks after New Delhi blamed Islamabad for backing a deadly attack on tourists in the Indian-run side of the disputed Muslim-majority region of Kashmir.
Pakistan rejects the charge.
At least 48 people have been killed on both sides of the border in escalating violence since India launched air strikes on Wednesday that it said targeted “terrorist camps.”
Both countries accused each other on Thursday of carrying out waves of drone attacks.
X said it could not make the Indian executive orders public due to legal restrictions, but it encouraged the impacted users to seek “appropriate relief from the courts.”
It did not name the affected users, but in recent days the Indian media has reported that the country has blocked the X accounts of Pakistani politician Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Pakistan’s former prime minister and cricket captain Imran Khan.
India has also banned more than a dozen Pakistani YouTube channels for allegedly spreading “provocative” content, including Pakistani news outlets.
Pakistani Bollywood movie regulars Fawad Khan and Atif Aslam were also off limits in India, as well as a wide range of cricketers — including star batters Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan and retired players Shahid Afridi and Wasim Akram.
Rising hostilities between the South Asian neighbors have unleashed an avalanche of online misinformation, with social media users circulating everything from deepfake videos to outdated images from unrelated conflicts, falsely linking them to the ongoing fighting.