BREAKING: Zeteo Documentary Exposes Identity of Israeli Soldier Who Killed Shireen Abu Akleh
The film also reveals a shocking US cover-up, with exclusive interviews with former Biden officials, who say the administration "failed" Abu Akleh to protect its relationship with Israel.
“I can't believe that we can find this information. But the White House, the Biden administration couldn't, the State Department doesn't have this information, but this is all stuff that we were able to put together.”
That’s former Fox News correspondent Conor Powell in the new Zeteo documentary, “Who Killed Shireen?” The investigation, which Powell was part of, reveals who shot and killed Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh three years ago – and how Israel and the US engaged in a shocking attempt to cover it all up.
On May 11, 2022, Israeli forces killed Abu Akleh as she covered an Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. She was wearing a blue vest that was clearly marked “press” – the type adorned by many of hundreds of journalists Israel later killed after Oct. 7, 2023.
She was the first American journalist killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank.
In the immediate aftermath of the killing, Israeli officials blamed Palestinian fighters, and the US demanded justice. “Those responsible for Shireen’s killing should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” then-State Department spokesperson Ned Price said at the time.
Yet, based on interviews with a key Biden administration official, Israeli soldiers, and others, the documentary reveals the Israeli military knew immediately that one of its soldiers likely fired the fatal shots – and communicated that to the US, despite publicly blaming Palestinians.
As it became more apparent that Israeli forces were responsible, the US became much more timid. The Biden administration arrived at the meek position that the killing was simply “unintentional.” It no longer demanded criminal prosecution – instead simply “urging” Israel to “consider additional steps to mitigate risk of civilian harm and protect journalists.”
The case had otherwise been tossed aside – no accountability to be had. And that failure has been deadly. “The failure to change those rules of engagement has meant more people, innocent people have gotten killed, including other American citizens,” Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen says in the documentary.
Israeli forces have killed at least six Americans since a soldier shot dead Abu Akleh: Amer Mohammad Saada Rabee; Dr. Kamel Ahmad Jawad; peace activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi; World Central Kitchen aid worker Jacob Flickinger; Mohammad Khdour; and Tawfic Abdel Jabbar.
“I do believe that if the United States had been more effective and more forceful in insisting that the rules of engagement changed after the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, that we could have avoided the deaths of these other Americans and other civilians,” Van Hollen says. “Prime Minister Netanyahu has given the finger to President Biden.”
Shooter Identified
Even a central Biden administration official admits the killing was intentional, and that “ultimately, I think what it came down to was different pressure within the administration to not try to anger the government of Israel too much by trying to force their hand at saying that they’d intentionally killed the US citizen.”
Meanwhile, Israeli officials refused to allow US investigators to question the soldier, not even sharing his name.
But, Zeteo’s new documentary finally unearths who killed Abu Akleh: Alon Scagio, a then-20-year-old member of the Israeli military's elite special operations Duvdevan unit.
In the same incident, Israeli forces also shot and wounded Abu Akleh’s producer, Ali Samoudi – who was arrested last week by the Israeli military. His family says he was beaten, and he was reportedly transferred to a hospital due to his declining health. The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said Israeli authorities have “not made any clear allegations” to justify the arrest.
“We have been overcome by fear,” Samoudi says in the documentary. “From the moment Shireen was killed, I said, and continue to say, and will continue to say, that this bullet was meant to prevent the Palestinian media from the documentation and the exposure of the occupation’s crimes.”
‘Target Practice’
After a 2022 Israeli military investigation found Abu Akleh may have “accidentally” been hit by Israeli gunfire (or, still, that she could’ve been hit by “Palestinian gunmen”), Scagio was transferred out of the unit, to be a sniper team commander on the Haruv recon unit, also a special operations team.
He was killed in June 2024 by hidden explosives planted by Palestinian fighters in Jenin – the same city where he had killed Abu Akleh two years earlier.
After initially declining to comment, the Israeli military said following the film’s release that “there is no definitive determination regarding the identity of the individual responsible for the shooting that caused the journalist's death.” However, two unnamed Israeli military officials confirmed Zeteo’s findings to the New York Times.
The revelations in Zeteo’s documentary have also made headlines in Al Jazeera, The Guardian, CNN, NPR, the Times of Israel, The New Arab, and other outlets worldwide.
According to an Israeli soldier interviewed in the documentary, members of Scagio’s unit were so upset that his reputation had been spoiled by killing Abu Akleh that they started using her photograph as target practice.
The soldier added that the shooting wasn’t an aberration, saying, “When you open the corner, and you have this second to take a decision, to take a shot, and you see someone who holds a camera or something like, you know, point at you, you don’t need more than that to shoot the bullet.”
Indeed, the shooting was not out of the ordinary – as seen by what Israel has done in Gaza and the rest of Palestine since Abu Akleh was killed. As the US government continues its support for Israel's actions and its deference to Israeli human rights violations, Palestine has only become more dangerous for journalists, with more than 210 Palestinian media workers killed by Israel in just the last 19 months.
“We set out on this journey to find out who killed Shireen, and we did. We did what the US government failed to do. Israeli soldiers told us, Alon Scagio killed Shereen, and the Israeli government covered it up. There was no crossfire. There were no militants near Shireen,” Dion Nissenbaum, a longtime Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent and member of the investigative team, says in the documentary.
“The Biden administration failed Shireen Abu Akleh, and more Americans and many more journalists have died as a result.”
EXCLUSIVE: Watch Our Explosive New Documentary, ‘Who Killed Shireen?’
After a months-long investigation, Zeteo is finally releasing what is undeniably one of our most important works yet, supported and funded by you: our exclusive documentary, “Who Killed Shireen?”
If you would like to watch the full documentary, and support this type of journalism and the work we’re doing at Zeteo, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription.
If you’re already a paid subscriber, but want to help expensive, ambitious, and important journalistic projects like ‘Who Killed Shireen’ even further, you can always donate to us here.
This reminded me of the journalist I.F. Stone who observed that "all governments lie." When it comes to complicity with Israel's colonial project, the US is almost incapable of speaking the truth. Biden and Blinken lied every day for months, providing cover for Netanyahu. The American government simply will not see Palestinians as people deserving of life. Total moral failure.
Thank you for your important work. I hope you don’t mind me raising a concern: is it possible that the anonymous source within the Israeli army intentionally misled investigators by naming someone who was already dead — in order to close the case while the real killer remains at large?