Dear John,

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution articulates a vital protection for journalism that our government has rarely, if ever, honored in practice. It exists as a protection for We the People to prevent tyrannical government.

That’s why it’s not just the lives of journalists at stake when Washington—or its proxy powers—murders journalists.

Al-Jazeera’s Shireen Abu Akleh was among the most prominent journalists of the Arab world. And the attack that killed her also sent her producer to the hospital. But it was not the first time that journalists have died at the hands (or perhaps the tentacles) of the Pentagon.

Can you stand with us to fight for transparency in Washington by defending whistleblowers and strengthening the Freedom of Information Act?

First, the death of Al-Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh was a state assassination. No claim to the contrary has proven plausible.

Due largely to U.S. subsidies, the Israeli armed forces are among the best trained and equipped in the world. Akleh was wearing a helmet and a flak jacket, and died from a gunshot wound to the head just below her ear.

It was nearly 20 years ago that Gary Webb, the former investigative journalist from the San Jose Mercury News right here in the Bay Area, died from a supposed “suicide” entailing two gunshot wounds to the head. Why would anyone want to kill a reporter?

Gary Webb had previously authored Dark Alliance, the book exposing in fine detail what the CIA ultimately admitted several years later: that the agency ran crack cocaine into cities including LA and Miami for years in order to fund its rogue foreign policy in Nicaragua, where it waged a separate battle to undermine human rights and democracy.

It wasn't just in Nicaragua where communities paid the price for corruption. Millions of Black and brown-skinned Americans ultimately ended up legally enslaved in prisons, driven there by a predatory war on drugs that continues to ravage low-income communities across the country.

Gary Webb’s legacy invites solidarity, in the form of institutional accountability that remains absent a generation later. Can you join us today so that I can stand in the footsteps of Sen. Mike Gravel and fight the Pentagon on your behalf?

It’s hard to think about murdered journalists without remembering Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi Arabian journalist dismembered in 2018 after writing columns critical of the ruling regime. Saudi Arabia has enjoyed bipartisan support from Washington since the 80s, and I’ve been publicly critical of that support since my appearance on the FOX News Hannity & Colmes program in January, 2005.

One of the few times I’ve been to my native country, Pakistan, was for an investigation with the National Lawyers Guild after a Pentagon-backed coup in 2007 that sacked the country’s judges and journalists, silencing broadcast news for days.

As far as I know, thankfully, no journalists died during that episode. But it reflects the same pattern of attacks targeting not only particular people, but ultimately the public’s right to know.

Do you want a voice in Congress committed to forcing the executive branch to release improperly classified information into the public domain? This was an object of my advocacy far earlier than my political campaigns.

The assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh should alarm us for many reasons.

First, she was reporting on her home. She was born and raised in Jerusalem.

Second, her death defies the myth that the Israeli occupation of Palestine has anything to do with religion. Shireen was from a Christian family, as were many victims of state violence with continuing impunity.

Third, Israel’s attempts to misdirect the international response by blaming a scapegoat was predictable, but also thankfully dismissed by independent observers. We should recognize that pattern as consistent across contexts, repeated whenever the U.S. government vilifies whistleblowers who expose government secrets.

Finally, what should most alarm us is the continuing bipartisan support in Washington for a proxy power whose human rights abuses range from forced expatriation to collective punishment, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and heirloom crops such as olive trees, and now the assassination of journalists.

Shireen was no rookie reporter. She had covered the Palestinian resistance to the occupation for over 20 years. And her life was ended without charge, without trial, for the crime of informing the public. That mission, for which she gave her life, now falls to others.

We know her counterparts in the U.S. lack anything resembling her conviction. That’s why it falls to the voices of dissidents and challengers to hold accountable power, including the political xxxxxxs of the bipartisan consensus in Washington enabling Israeli, Saudi, and other countries’ human rights abuses.

Thank you for standing with us!

Your voice,
Shahid