Shireen Abu Akleh
=================

Shireen Abu Akleh was a prominent Al Jazeera journalist, an American citizen, and a Greek Orthodox Christian. John Kiriakou describes her killing in the West Bank: standing behind a tree in a bulletproof vest and helmet marked PRESS, she stepped out and was shot in the face by an Israeli sniper, dying instantly. Kiriakou adds that the IDF then entered the hospital where her body was being carried out, beat the pallbearers until they dropped the coffin, and fired rubber bullets and smoke grenades into the Greek Orthodox church during her funeral service, with, he says, "not a single word from the American government." He gives a closely matching account elsewhere, again describing her as shot instantly in the face by an Israeli sniper while wearing marked press gear, after which the IDF beat her pallbearers and fired rubber bullets and smoke grenades into the church during her funeral.

The broader toll on journalists in Gaza

Kiriakou places Abu Akleh's killing in the context of a much larger death toll: he says roughly 240 journalists were killed in Gaza over the course of just 60 to 90 days, more, he says, than all of the journalists killed in every other country of the world combined since World War I.

A retelling, and the American silence

Kiriakou returns to the killing repeatedly as his single clearest illustration of what American citizenship is worth in the case. In a July 2026 telling he sets out the facts as a sequence: an American citizen, the top journalist at Al Jazeera, covering fighting in the West Bank, wearing a vest marked press and a helmet marked press, taking cover behind a tree, shot in the face by an Israeli sniper and killed instantly. He then describes the funeral, held days later at a Greek Orthodox church in the West Bank, being raided by Israeli forces who beat the pallbearers until the coffin was dropped. His interviewer's response was disbelief; Kiriakou's own was the observation that the United States said nothing.

Named from the stage

Speaking on John Kiriakou's programme in 2026, Roger Waters said he had recited Abu Akleh's name during the song The Powers That Be on his 2022,2023 tour, describing her to audiences as a Palestinian-American journalist murdered on the outskirts of Jenin. He listed her with an American protester crushed by an Israeli bulldozer while trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home, and with Anne Frank, and said it was the juxtaposition of those names that "drove them crazy" and prompted attempts to have his tours cancelled. Waters described the passage as "a list of martyrs."

He returned to the same roll of names in a newer song, Sumud, named for the Arabic word he glossed as "steadfast perseverance, particularly in resistance to the occupation of your homeland", which he read aloud to Kiriakou before its release.

See also

- Taybeh
- Church of Saint Porphyrios
