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Israel Never Targets Journalists
(Wall Street Journal) Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid - Less than two hours after the death on May 11 of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, I contacted Hussein al-Sheikh, the Palestinian minister responsible for cooperation with Israel, and proposed that we hold a joint investigation into her death. The Palestinians refused. Being a journalist in wartime is a dangerous business. I know - I was a journalist for 31 years and covered the First Lebanon War. What happened next can't be excused by the fog of war. Palestinian propaganda used Abu Akleh, accusing Israel of deliberately targeting her. She would surely have known better. If the outrageous claim that Israel targets journalists were true, why would she have worked in the region for more than 20 years? Today hundreds of foreign journalists work in the same place. Al Jazeera, a network run by an Islamist state that is openly hostile to Israel, has permanent staff in Israel. Everything you know about this conflict is the product of hundreds of journalists who work in the field under the protection of a democratic state that believes with all its heart in both freedom of expression and freedom of the press. Missing from the media coverage of Shireen Abu Akleh's death is the reason for the fighting that led to it. Israel conducted antiterror operations around the city of Jenin because terror cells that murdered innocent Israeli civilians came from there.