Why the World Believes We Killed Shireen Abu Akleh

On May 24, AP News reported, “Review suggests Israeli fire killed reporter,” but “no final word.” Two days later, CNN echoed AP News, declaring, “Shireen Abu Akleh was killed in targeted attack by Israeli forces.” The Palestinians refuse to allow forensic examination of the slug that killed Abu Akleh, and Israel already stated that no Israeli soldiers were firing any shots at the time of her death, but the world has made up its mind.

Following the reports, and in view of Israel’s stance, a student asked me this: “The most amazing thing to me is that they determined that Israel shot her on purpose, that Israeli soldiers killed a journalist deliberately! I know that an Israeli soldier would never deliberately shoot a civilian because it contradicts everything that every soldier is taught before he is allowed to take the first practice shot,” he protests. “So how can it be that the world is certain that we did it, that Israel deliberately killed a civilian?”

My answer to him was simple: The world wants it to be this way. The whole world wants to adopt this version because this is how it wants it to be. The whole world wants to accuse Israel of more and more crimes until the very existence of the Jewish state is delegitimized.

This is why not only CNN and AP, but almost the entire world media is against Israel and gives false accounts of what is happening. Worse yet, even if Israel could examine the slug that killed Abu Akleh and prove that it did not come from an Israeli gun, no one would believe it. In fact, no one would even bother to read Israel’s report; they would assume that we are lying even before they read the first word.

Trying to confront the Palestinian arguments on their level is a lost cause. We can say whatever we want, but the world will not listen to a single word, and cheer instead for every word that comes from the Palestinians.

If we want legitimacy, we need to take a completely different approach. We will earn the world’s legitimacy to live in the State of Israel when we begin to live like the people of Israel, and stop trying to live like the rest of the world. Subconsciously, this is what the world expects from us.

The world blames us for everything that is bad in this world because they feel, even if they do not admit it to themselves, that we have the power and the obligation to make the world good. And since the world is not good, it is our fault.

Humanity does not believe that anyone has that capability but us, Jews, and does not expect anyone else to help the world emerge from its crises. They expect this only from us, and resent us for not doing so. This is the real reason why antisemitism intensifies every time there is trouble.

The Palestinians are attacking us not because they want the land back, although this is how they feel, but because we are not using the land for the purpose that the world entrusted it in our hands. We are the nation that was told that if we do not unite as one man with one heart, God will turn the mountain on us like a vault. We are the nation that committed to loving others as much as we love ourselves, and we are the nation that was commanded to be the light of the nations, to be a model of unity for the entire world.

We are also the nation that broke our oath time and time again, until we were exiled from the land precisely for hating one another. 75 years ago, the League of Nations gave it back to us, but since we have not built a model society, the world wants to take it back from us.

The press merely reflects the sentiment of the world. If we restore our unity, the world will change its attitude toward us and the reports will change accordingly. Until we do so, we should not expect any positive coverage from the media.

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You will find more on the link between Jewish unity and hatred of Israel in The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism, Historical facts on anti-Semitism as a reflection of Jewish social discord, and Like a Bundle of Reeds: Why unity and mutual guarantee are today’s call of the hour.