[From the persecution of Chevron opponent Steven Donziger to the
murder of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, the US
government disregards free speech in situations where corporate allies
stand to benefit.]
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IF THE US VALUES FREE SPEECH, IT WILL INVESTIGATE THE MURDER OF
SHIREEN ABU AKLEH  
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Majeed Malhas
June 7, 2022
Jacobin
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_ From the persecution of Chevron opponent Steven Donziger to the
murder of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, the US
government disregards free speech in situations where corporate allies
stand to benefit. _

Tributes are paid to murdered Palestinian American journalist Shireen
Abu Akleh at a protest and vigil at the BBC, May 12, 2022., Guy
Smallman / Getty Images

 

On May 11, 2022, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) shot and killed
veteran Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh while she
was covering a military raid on a refugee camp outside the West Bank
city of Jenin. Dressed in labeled “PRESS” jackets and helmets, Abu
Akleh’s Al Jazeera colleagues filmed the moments after she was shot,
during which the sniper continued firing at other reporters attempting
to retrieve her body.

After Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem debunked
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Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s claims
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stray bullet fired by Palestinians struck Abu Akleh, the Israeli
government called for a joint probe into the journalist’s murder
with the Palestinian Authority (PA), requesting the handover of the
bullet and Abu Akleh’s body to conduct an autopsy. The PA has
refused
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citing the historic lack of transparency and accountability in
investigations of other
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civilian murders
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and the illegal occupation of the IDF in the Palestinian territories.
The PA instead chose to conduct an independent probe.

The PA’s investigation concluded that the bullet matched a weapon
regularly used by the IDF, the Ruger Mini-14
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Al Jazeera correspondent Nida Ibrahim reported that the bullet that
killed Abu Akleh “was 5.56mm, and it corresponds with Mini Ruger
sniper fire weapon.” The Israeli probe has made no progress.

The US State Department has made clear that it will rely on the
findings from Israel’s investigation. The government’s nominal
commitment to free speech, it appears, is less important than
placating its allies, ranging from foreign governments to
multinational corporations.

Silence From the States

A small number of Congressmen, led by Representatives André Carson
(D-IN) and Lou Correa (D-CA), have penned a letter
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requesting the Biden administration conduct an independent
investigation of the Palestinian American journalist’s murder. “We
. . . request the US Department of State determines whether any US
laws protecting Ms. Abu Akleh, an American citizen, were violated,”
reads the letter. “As an American, Ms. Abu Akleh was entitled to the
full protections afforded to US citizens living abroad.”

Despite the extrajudicial murder of an American citizen and journalist
by a foreign government, the Biden administration has refused
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to conduct its own independent investigation. Instead, Secretary of
State Antony Blinken intends
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to rely on the results of the Israeli probe, which refuses to proceed
without Abu Akleh’s buried body.

This is not the first time the US federal government has refused to
investigate the death of an American citizen at the hands of the IDF.
In 2003, it left the murder of activist Rachel Corrie in Gaza to be
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by Israeli courts.

The call for US-led investigations into IDF war crimes in Israel’s
illegally occupied Palestinian territories has fallen on deaf ears for
many years. The IDF receives $3.8 billion in American public money
annually [[link removed]] in military aid, as per
the renewed ten-year Memorandum of Understanding signed
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by the Obama administration in 2016. Demanding a US-led investigation
into the murder of Abu Akleh opens legal avenues for Palestinian and
American activists and politicians alike to challenge this continued
financial support to the IDF.

The United States absolutely has the power to conduct such
investigations. The freedom “to seek, receive and impart information
and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in
writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of
choice” is protected
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by Article 19(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights, of which the US and Israel are ratified signatories.

And should the investigation reveal war crimes, the United States’
financial support for the IDF would come under automatic scrutiny. As
per Leahy Law
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the US federal government is prohibited from providing “assistance .
. . to any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the
Secretary of State has credible information that such unit has
committed a gross violation of human rights.”

A US-led investigation is critical not only to attaining
accountability for the IDF’s murder of Abu Akleh and eighty-six
other journalists
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reporting from the Palestinian territories since 1967, but for
challenging Israel’s taxpayer-funded illegal occupation of the
Palestinian territories. And that’s precisely why the State
Department is uninterested in pursuing it.

The Military-Industrial Complex

Given the United States’ long history of providing diplomatic
immunity to Israel, having vetoed
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at least 53 UN Security Council resolutions critical of Israel in the
past five decades, the United States’ lack of interest in
accountability for the murder of Abu Akleh comes as no surprise.
However, outside the well-covered geopolitical reasons the United
States has in historically giving Israel impunity, one underreported
facet of the human rights abuses in the occupied Palestinian
territories is the vested interest of the American military-industrial
complex
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in arming the IDF.

The sniper rifle used to murder Abu Akleh, the Ruger Mini-14, is
manufactured and sold by American weapons manufacturer Sturm, Ruger &
Co., which has a distribution dealership [[link removed]] in
Israel and promotes [[link removed]]
its firearms by highlighting the IDF’s use of them.

Israel is the fourteenth-largest importer of weapons globally, with 92
percent of its imports coming from the United States. Effectively, US
military aid to Israel subsidizes purchases from American weapons
manufacturers and defense contractors. As sociologist Max Ajl writes
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“‘US ‘military assistance,’ more accurately understood as a
circular flow through which US weapons firms profit off the
colonization of Palestinian land and Israeli destabilization of the
surrounding states, is a long-term structuring element of the
U.S.-Israel ‘special relationship.'” In other words, the
neoliberal economic orientation that tasks the government with
promoting the interests and profits of private-sector firms above all
else extends to US foreign policy.

According to Open Secrets
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between 2001 and 2021, American defense contractors and weapons
manufacturers directed “$285 million in campaign contributions and
$2.5 billion in lobbying spending to influence defense policy.”
These companies include Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman,
Raytheon Technologies, and General Dynamics.

Among the most prominent lobbyists for both domestic and foreign arms
sales are the infamous
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Association and the lesser-known
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National Shooting Sports Foundation, which spent
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$1.2 million in lobbying expenditures in 2021. The NSSF’s president,
Steve Sanetti
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was a chief executive and later president of Sturm, Ruger & Co. —
the manufacturer of Abu Akleh’s murder weapon.

Neoliberal Censorship

The insinuation that American defense contractors and weapons
manufacturers condone the killing of American journalists may invite
disbelief. But a reflection on the case of human rights lawyer Steven
Donziger
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attests to its plausibility.

Donziger successfully represented the indigenous Ecuadorian group the
Amazon Defense Coalition in its legal battle against American oil
company Texaco, holding them accountable for 16 billion gallons of
toxic waste dumped into the Lago Agrio region of the Amazon rainforest
between 1972 and 1992. Since then, Donziger’s professional and
personal life have been under attack by Texaco’s parent company, the
American multinational oil giant Chevron.

In 2011, Chevron refused to pay the $9.5 billion settlement for the
pollution carried out three decades prior, and launched a countersuit
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against Donziger accusing him of bribery and fraud. The company
claimed that Donziger embellished the extent of the pollution and
Texaco’s accountability, having been bribed by Ecuadorian officials
to scapegoat the oil company for the state’s role in failing to
mitigate the pollution in Lago Agrio. Chevron’s claim has been
thoroughly debunked
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Leaked Chevron documents
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from 2009 reveal that company officials made it an explicit long-term
strategy to “demonize” the human rights lawyer to turn the tide of
the legal battle against him. Meanwhile, the Amazon Defense Coalition
has not received any of the agreed settlement.

Chevron filed a “racketeer influenced and corrupt organizations”
(RICO) suit, usually levied against organized crime rings, against
Donziger. The federal court judge who presided over Donziger’s case
was Lewis A. Kaplan, a former corporate lawyer for the tobacco
industry
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who held investments
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in Chevron. Kaplan found Donziger guilty of the RICO charges in 2014.

The district attorney’s office in New York refused to prosecute
Donziger despite Kaplan’s ruling. Kaplan then took an unusual action
for a federal court judge: he invoked Rule 42
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federal judge to appoint a private law firm to prosecute on behalf of
the courts if prosecutors refuse to. Kaplan appointed the law firm
Seward & Kissel, of which Chevron is a regular client
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to represent the US government and ensure that the criminal charges
would be brought against Donziger.

Leading up to the trial against Donziger by Seward & Kissel, in
another unusual move, Kaplan skipped the standard random assignment
process for choosing a judge and directly appointed
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senior District Judge Loretta Preska to preside over the case. Preska
has served
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on the advisory board of the Federalist Society, to which Chevron is a
significant financial contributor.

In August 2019, Preska confiscated
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Donziger’s passport and sentenced
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him to house arrest for the trial’s duration. On October 1, 2021,
after two years of house arrest, Preska found Donziger guilty of all
charges and sentenced him to six months in jail, the maximum sentence.

“Corporate influence over our federal judiciary has increased
dramatically in recent years,” said Donziger during the trial.
Chevron “has captured an element of power from the government and
deployed it against a human rights activist.”

The Corporate War on Free Speech

In the Steven Donziger’s case, the United States took direct action
on behalf of the oil and gas industry. In Shireen Abu Akleh’s case,
the US is pursuing _inaction, _at least partly on behalf of arms
manufacturers and the broader military-industrial complex.

Donziger was released
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from prison April 26 and is finally free of persecution. But Abu Akleh
is dead and, due to the United States’ refusal to launch an
independent investigation, is unlikely to have justice.

In both cases, the US government has sided with corporate interests
over the value of free speech, including journalists’ right to
report without fear of harassment and violence and the public’s
right to information from a free press. Abu Akleh and Donziger’s
cases reveal the cold, calculated pragmatism with which multinational
corporations rope the US government into their project of maintaining
global economic hegemony.

Our news cycles are dominated by talk of “cancel culture,” and yet
average people pay little attention to cases like Abu Akleh’s and
Donziger’s. If the mainstream conversation is going to center on
free speech, it should highlight the blatant collusion between
neoliberal governments and multinational corporations to silence
journalists and activists challenging exploitation and injustice
around the world.

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Read the original article at Prospect.org.
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* Shireen Abu Akleh; US Journalist death; Freedom of the Press;
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