No sooner had the first images of the murder of Shireen Abu Akleh begun circulating on the morning of May 11 then the Israeli leadership rushed to accuse anonymous “Palestinian gunmen” of responsibility. Referencing a video filmed in a part of Jenin far from where Abu Akleh had been stationed, military authorities and many leading elected officials repeated the same talking points with rather remarkable consistency. They all claimed that as she reported from the ground, Abu Akleh had become caught up in the crossfire between Israeli army personnel and Palestinian militants. She was tragically killed, it was claimed, after a bullet fired by one of her own, reckless countrymen struck her in the head.

The reality was that these statements were made in order to muddy the waters around what Israeli leadership already knew to have happened — and to cast doubt upon eyewitness testimony from a number of Abu Akleh’s colleagues. Contradicting the official line, those on the ground all attested that there had been no exchange of fire between Palestinian armed groups and Israeli soldiers when Abu Akleh, wearing a helmet and bulletproof vest with “PRESS” printed in bold letters on the chest, was shot. Rather, they detailed a scene of relative quiet in the moments preceding Abu Akleh’s shooting — with only the Israeli snipers two hundred meters away threatening the calm.