US Covered Up This Israeli War Crime – And The Scandal Just Exploded

Right, so it turns out the supposed “tragic accident” wasn’t tragic and it wasn’t an accident. The United States knew exactly what happened to Shireen Abu Akleh — because its own investigator told them. Colonel Steve Gabavics, the man Washington sent to examine the evidence, concluded an Israeli soldier intentionally shot her, then watched as his findings were edited into the official lie. The State Department’s line — “no reason to believe it was intentional” — didn’t come from the field; it came from the diplomatic shredder. For three years, that sentence has held up an entire fiction: that a journalist’s killing was too murky to judge. Now the official who wrote the original assessment has exposed the edit that kept Israel safe and the truth buried. The cover-up has blown up, and the word they deleted — “intentional” — is the one that will define them now instead.
Right, so the sentence “no reason to believe it was intentional” has been propped up by Washington for the last three years now. It turned the killing of a US-Palestinian journalist into a diplomatic inconvenience. It held until Colonel Steve Gabavics, the US military policeman who helped conduct the review, said plainly that an Israeli soldier intentionally shot Shireen Abu Akleh and that the State Department softened his findings before the report went public. The entire cover story rested on that one line. When he broke it, the logic of the last three years of US defence of Israel in relation to this case fell apart. The United States had not been cautious; it had been complicit. The “tragic accident” line that officials repeated to protect Israel now exposes the deliberate edit that has now blown up in their faces.
Shireen Abu Akleh was shot in Jenin on 11 May 2022. She was reporting for Al Jazeera, wearing a helmet and a blue vest marked PRESS. Her network and other journalists on site recorded deliberate fire toward a clearly identified press group. Independent investigations by Al Jazeera, CNN, The Washington Post, Bellingcat, other outlets and several human-rights organisations reconstructed the scene, synchronised video, measured the distance and direction of fire, and concluded that Israeli bullets killed her. None found evidence of militants shooting toward the journalists at that moment. Israel’s explanation shifted from blaming Palestinian gunmen to admitting there was a “high possibility” one of its soldiers fired the fatal shot. It stopped short of intent, and no criminal case followed. The US State Department echoed that language on 4 July 2022: Israeli fire likely, no reason to believe it was intentional. That wording froze the case where Washington needed it frozen. If intent stayed out of the record, then so would the law.
Intent is the dividing line between negligence and a war crime, proving it is the difference isn’t it? Once Washington declared none, every mechanism of accountability then became optional. Israel’s army closed its file. The US avoided an independent inquiry. The Department of Justice opened a review that has produced no public findings. Israel’s leaders said their soldiers would not be interrogated by outsiders and repeated that position when a US probe was discussed. Washington accepted the refusal. Israel is allowed to apparently. In effect, the ally’s sovereignty over its troops outweighed everything else, certainly the right to justice.
The pattern remained stable there, case closed it seems, until May of this year, when a documentary released by Zeteo and widely covered in Arab and Western outlets named a soldier from the Israeli Duvdevan unit as the shooter. The film used on-camera testimony and footage to place him at the site and to show that the group of journalists was clearly visible. Israel dismissed the film’s claims and repeated its prior conclusion, because of course they did. But the documentary undermined Washington’s 2022 statement. If open-source journalists could identify a probable shooter, why had the official US review not been able to do that?
Well speed up to the here and now and the answer has been made public. Gabavics, now retired after thirty years in the Military Police and former commandant of the notorious US military prison at Guantánamo Bay, told multiple outlets that his team’s conclusion was that an Israeli soldier intentionally fired at Shireen Abu Akleh. He said senior officials “soft-pedalled” the language to appease Israel. Reporting confirmed that at least five current or former US officials who worked on the case shared his view that the shooting was intentional. Those statements directly contradict the State Department’s published line. They also explain its wording: the finding was intent, and intent was deleted.
From that point, the case is not complicated. Shireen was part of a small group walking toward a known Israeli position. They wore visible press markings. There was no crossfire at that instant. The shots were single and spaced. The ballistic evidence and the investigations all pointed to deliberate fire. Israel admitted likelihood but denied intent. Washington took that denial, erased the investigator’s word, and built its public message around the edit. That is not ambiguity; it is management. The management served the alliance, not the facts.
Israel’s refusal to permit external questioning is documented. Its opposition to ICC jurisdiction in Palestinian territories is constant. The United States shares that opposition all the way, every time. Together those positions guarantee that no independent judicial forum will hear the case. The same pattern appeared when Israel rejected cooperation with an FBI review. Israeli officials called that request interference. Washington did not push back. The pattern is what matters: sovereignty used as a shield, and the partner state accepting that shield because it protects its own political arrangement. Sovereignty versus power becomes sovereignty for power.
Gabavics’ testimony shows how language was turned into policy. “Intentional” would have required legal and diplomatic consequences. “Unintentional” required none. The substitution made all the difference between justice and immunity and now there’s uproar as you can imagine. The State Department’s 2022 statement said its team “found no reason to believe” the shooting was intentional. Gabavics now says his team found every reason. Total contradiction on the official record therefore. One of them represents the facts; the other represents politics. The softening was not an accident of phrasing. It was a decision about what Washington could live with and they decided denial of justice over tricky dealings with an unstable ally was their pick it seems.
The defenders of that decision point to confusion in the field, chaos of operations, and dangers journalists accept. These explanations all collapse against the evidence. The journalists were identifiable. The distance and direction were known. Multiple analyses confirmed a consistent firing origin. Israel’s own military said its soldier “likely” fired the fatal shot. No credible evidence of militant crossfire exists. The cumulative record leaves very little room for doubt. The only uncertainty remaining was political, and Washington resolved it by writing doubt into the record.
This is not a case of governments misunderstanding each other. It is an example of how they coordinate impunity. The US and Israel operate a shared doctrine that treats their combined sovereignty as a closed system, immune from external jurisdiction. When violations occur, responsibility is recycled within that system until it evaporates. The death of a journalist becomes a question of “tragic” circumstance rather than deliberate act because admitting the act would tear down their façade.
The motive for doing this, if we follow what should have happened to its logical conclusion becomes all too clear therefore. Recognising intent would activate the US War Crimes Act and raise domestic legal obligations. It would demand confrontation with an ally and expose the contradiction between America’s stated defence of journalists and its protection of Israel. Shireen Abu Akleh was an American dual national but that meant nothing compared to ongoing relations with Israel, frankly nothing seems to matter more does it? It should be a wake up call to all Americans that both main parties, as proven by this Trump administration and the then Biden administration are as sold out to Israel as each other. Removing intent removes the trigger for the War Crimes Act. The price is public credibility. The consequence is structural. Every future US statement about press freedom will now carry the imprint of this case. Governments that kill or jail reporters will cite it as precedent. They will say Washington has no moral standing to lecture anyone. And they will be right.
The timeline confirms that this was a deliberate containment strategy, not a bureaucratic delay. May 2022: the killing. July 2022: the soft statement. September 2022: Israel’s own report closing the file. November 2022: Israel refusing cooperation with a US investigation. May 2025: a documentary naming a shooter. October 2025: the investigator saying intent was deleted. Every step matches a political choice. None can be described as oversight, there’s too many stages to possibly believe that here. They did not fail in their duty. They chose to.
The core of the issue is sovereignty. It’s a point I’ve come back to again and again it seems of late. Shireen Abu Akleh’s right to justice as a US citizen was subordinated to Israel’s right to protect its soldiers from scrutiny. Washington’s sovereignty over its own laws was subordinated to the alliance that overrides them. Press sovereignty—the right of reporters to operate under protection of international law—was subordinated to military convenience. In every layer, power decided which sovereignty mattered. The journalist lost every time.
When the Zeteo film appeared, the Israeli government dismissed it as speculation. The US remained silent. Then Gabavics spoke and the story entered a new phase. Now the State Department faces its own words as evidence against it. The claim that “no reason to believe” existed is contradicted by the investigator who says he wrote the reason. The denial that intent was found is contradicted by the official who found it. The soft phrasing that once maintained calm now reads as confession. The cover-up has become the scandal now.
The function of euphemism in state language is to absorb public outrage before it hardens into demand. “Tragic accident” is a classic case. It tells the audience that nothing could have been done differently and that further inquiry is pointless. When the euphemism is later exposed as a lie, it discredits every official who used it. That is where Washington now stands. It faces a record that can no longer be reconciled with its own rhetoric on accountability. The credibility damage is self-inflicted.
This is not the first time the United States has shielded Israel from legal consequence, but it is the clearest instance in which the victim carried a US passport and the evidence was public from day one. It shows the hierarchy of interests plainly: alliance first, citizen second, principle last. It also demonstrates how control of language substitutes for control of facts. The investigation’s findings were not rewritten because they were uncertain. They were rewritten because they were clear.
The implications reach beyond this case. When the State Department warns other governments against targeting journalists, those governments can cite Shireen Abu Akleh. When Washington demands respect for international law, its adversaries can point to the ICC stance and the edited report. When the US asks the world to trust its word on human-rights investigations, the precedent of this deliberate softening will stand in the way. Power used this way – abused this way - erodes itself.
Nothing in this record is speculative. The date and place of the killing are established. The convergence of independent investigations is documented. Israel’s admission of “high possibility” is public. Israel’s refusal to allow external questioning of its soldiers is recorded. The State Department’s 4 July 2022 language is verifiable. The Zeteo documentary and its reception are public. Colonel Gabavics’ role and statements are documented. Reports that other officials agreed the shooting was intentional are public. The US and Israeli opposition to ICC jurisdiction is longstanding and stated policy. These facts are sufficient to support the conclusion that Washington altered its own findings to protect an ally and that the alteration undermines every principle it claims to uphold.
The consequences are now plain to see as a result. A journalist’s killing remains unprosecuted. A family waits for justice. Two governments have destroyed their credibility on press freedom. The system designed to manage fallout has produced more of it. The euphemism is dead. The facts are not. The word “intentional” will now follow every mention of Shireen Abu Akleh because the man who investigated her death has said it publicly. The only remaining question is whether Washington believes the public will accept the lie after the lie has been proven.
The US and Israel built their defence on ambiguity. That defence has collapsed. They could correct the record, acknowledge intent, and act on it. They could reopen the files and allow the legal process they obstructed before to take place. They could treat a journalist’s life as worth more than an alliance’s convenience. They have not. Until they do, every claim they make about a “rules-based order” is a slogan covering a hierarchy where law stops at Israel’s border. The public knows it. The world sees it. The edit that once protected them has now exposed them.
It isn’t just in the US that such two faced law and order is on display, it’s here in the UK too. Donald Trump sycophant to the point he’s so far up his backside he can probably taste his teeth, Keir Starmer has seemingly decided an outspoken British Palestinian doctor cannot be permitted to do her healthcare duties, for calling out Israel and standing up for Palestine, but British soldiers fighting in the IDF can be ignored. A life saver criminalised and soldiers participating in genocide are not. Well a civilian led legal group isn’t having it as it happens, so get all the details of that story in this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch.
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