Courage seeking truth: Shireen’s lesson for younger journalists

I can never forget Shireen Abu Akleh’s lesson in courage.

It is a lesson I was reminded of when I learned that my mentor and friend had been shot and killed last week, reportedly by Israeli forces, while covering an Israeli military raid in the northern West Bank for Al Jazeera.

There was no point in putting ourselves in danger, Shireen constantly told us younger journalists. Courage in journalism came only through asking for the truth, not in anything else.

She was shot and killed seeking the truth, wearing her press vest and helmet.

According to the journalists who were at her side – as well as Palestinian officials, Al Jazeera, and independent researchers using material from Palestinian and Israeli military sources – she was killed by Israeli military fire during a shootout with Palestinian militants in Jenin, in a raid that followed a string of deadly attacks in Israel.

As I, other journalists, and Palestinians across the political spectrum mourn her killing, I am reminded of the bloody days of the second intifada that began more than two decades of insecurity and turmoil for the Palestinian people that continue to this day. It was an era that catapulted Shireen’s career, making her a trusted voice for Palestinians and Arabs around the world.

Shireen was a pioneer, part of a new generation of female field reporters in the Arab world at the turn of the 21st century. While women were commonly seen as anchors behind a desk, to see a woman reporting from the middle of the action broke stereotypes and led the way for dozens more Arab women to follow.

These past two decades were nevertheless also years in which my friend and colleague guided me and others through the uncertain and dangerous times with warmth.

Her voice was my chaperone

In the early days of the second intifada, which began in late 2000, I attended Birzeit University near Ramallah, studying English literature but harboring dreams of becoming a journalist. The violence between Israelis and Palestinians and the growing number of Israeli military checkpoints made my 5-mile commute dangerous.

Our main live news sources at the time were satellite channels, like Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera. Specifically, we all relied on the tenacious work of Al Jazeera’s Palestinian American correspondent, Jerusalem’s own Shireen Abu Akleh.

Shireen’s hour-by-hour updates allowed me and tens of thousands of others to know how to navigate Israeli military checkpoints, which areas were witnessing violence, and what roads were unsafe that day.

With her voice, Shireen was my chaperone to university.

Shireen’s calm presence, persistence, confidence, and professionalism brought her close to viewers, who trusted her accurate reporting. For many, their lives depended on it.

Her iconic signoff – “Shireen Abu Akleh, Al Jazeera, Ramallah” – became so well known, I would hear Israeli forces occasionally repeat it when announcing a curfew through loudspeakers on Ramallah’s streets.

It may have been meant to mock her, but it solidified her as a pillar of Palestinians’ daily lives.

I knew that if I pursued journalism, I would seek to follow in her footsteps.

Emphasis on safety

Years later, when I finally did become a journalist, I would see her in the field for every event, every incident, every crisis. She took me and many other younger journalists under her wing, and shared her stories of survival and constant lessons on safety and vigilance.

She told us how she utilized fear as an instinct to keep her safe. She drilled into all of us the importance of being alert and in the right place at the right time, of avoiding violence and being safe.

It was a mentorship that continued to her very last moments on earth; when she was shot she was working alongside journalists Shatha Hanaysha and Mujahid Al-Saadi, both in their 20s.

Off-air and away from the cameras, Shireen was a kind and generous soul. Her voice had a Zen-like quality that calmed people around her, and her account of the news was factual and direct. She was always there to lean on.

Shireen also preached the importance of the press holding those in power to account.

Over Shireen’s career, Palestinians saw violence sprawling from within and without. Rounds of peace talks started, sputtered, and collapsed, opportunities missed. Israeli settlements spread across the West Bank. Fatah-Hamas infighting divided the West Bank and Gaza. Elections were postponed, and an undemocratic leadership dug in.

Frustration grew for an entire generation that has grown up in instability, unable to choose their own leaders or their futures.

Shireen was there through it all, reporting it, helping us make sense of it. Until she was not.

Outpouring of gratitude

Her three-day funeral procession from Jenin to Nablus, then Ramallah and Jerusalem, brought people to the streets in a message of gratitude for a woman welcomed into every household like a daily meal.

As if in a state funeral, masses of mourners accompanied her body. People who had never met her stood in the streets and wept, expressing both their anger and sorrow.

In her birthplace and hometown of Jerusalem, a city of the three Abrahamic faiths, thousands of people across all backgrounds, political factions, and religions united behind her on Friday. It was an enormous emotional outpouring, but it was marred by an Israeli police crackdown and the clubbing of mourners carrying her coffin, an event caught on the lenses of the world media.

I followed the ugly scene, emotionally torn, from Jenin, where I was trying to reconstruct the story of her killing. I hadn’t slept in days, but dealing with Shireen’s death as a news story may have given me the distance I needed to focus on my job.

Even in death, Shireen cast light onto the harsh realities of Palestinians’ lives under occupation. The bullet that struck her and the turmoil of her funeral renewed Palestinians’ awareness of their urgent need: to tell their narrative, our narrative.

We shall tell it the way Shireen did, factually and unapologetically.