Veteran journalist Abu Akleh remembered at CDFJ event

AMMAN — “People have always been the story, that is what Shireen taught us,” said Al Jazeera reporter Givara Budeiri on Tuesday.

Budeiri’s remarks came during a remembrance event organised in honour of veteran Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh by the Centre for Defending Freedoms of Journalists (CDFJ) at the Royal Cultural Centre in Amman.

“Shireen sought to embed the humanitarian element in each story, and to serve people in the most profound way possible,” added Budeiri, who knew Abu Akleh for more than two decades, noting that “all the laws in the world do not protect journalists”.

During Abu Akleh’s funeral, the bells of seven churches in Jerusalem rang in harmony for three hours and 45 minutes. Her funeral, being “exceptional as she was”, brought together people from all over Palestine, she said.

In his opening address, President of the CDFJ Nidal Mansour said: “‘The coverage continues’, this is what she [Abu Akleh] used to say and this is what we will carry forward.”

“The Palestinian journalist was killed, however the truth was not,” he stressed, adding that “the perpetrators were known even before the sniper’s bullet was fired at Abu Akleh on the morning of May 11”.

Recalling her personal and professional relationship with Abu Akleh, Najwan Simri, Abu Akleh’s friend and colleague, said that “Shireen’s absence is of as great an impact as her presence”. 

“The killer is not one person. Rather, the killer is the one who gave the order, the one who instigated the assassination. The assassin is the Israeli occupation,” she noted.

Simri pointed out that occupation is much more than what people see on television screens, as it impacts the smallest details of Palestinians’ daily lives.

“From the same alleys where Abu Akleh’s funeral passed, people will be celebrating the liberation of Jerusalem,” Dima Tahboub, a political analyst, former MP, and wife of Al Jazeera correspondent Tareq Ayoub, who was killed in Iraq when a US air strike hit Al Jazeera’s Baghdad bureau in 2003, said on Tuesday.

Immediately after the assassination of Abu Akleh, Al Haq, an independent Palestinian human rights organisation, started gathering evidence that proves Israeli war crimes that are committed each and every day, according to Tahsin Eliyan, the organisation’s programme director.

Eliyan added that from the very beginning, the type of bullet used clearly indicated Israeli occupation forces’ involvement.

Journalist Jihad Abu Baydar also joined the event’s dialogue session, during which he read a letter addressed to his late colleague Abu Akleh.