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Slain Al Jazeera Journalist Was Icon of Palestinian Coverage

This handout file picture obtained from a former colleague of Al Jazeera's late veteran TV journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh, shows her reporting from Jerusalem on June 12, 2021. (AFP)
This handout file picture obtained from a former colleague of Al Jazeera's late veteran TV journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh, shows her reporting from Jerusalem on June 12, 2021. (AFP)
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Slain Al Jazeera Journalist Was Icon of Palestinian Coverage

This handout file picture obtained from a former colleague of Al Jazeera's late veteran TV journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh, shows her reporting from Jerusalem on June 12, 2021. (AFP)
This handout file picture obtained from a former colleague of Al Jazeera's late veteran TV journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh, shows her reporting from Jerusalem on June 12, 2021. (AFP)

A veteran Al Jazeera correspondent who was shot dead on Wednesday during an Israeli raid in the West Bank was a highly respected journalist in the Middle East whose unflinching coverage was known to millions of viewers.

News of Shireen Abu Akleh's death reverberated across the region. The 51-year-old journalist became a household name synonymous with Al Jazeera’s coverage of life under occupation during her more than two decades reporting in the Palestinian territories, including during the second intifada, or uprising, that killed thousands on both sides, most of them Palestinians.

Described as "the face of Al Jazeera in Palestine" by the network, Abu Akleh's name trended across Twitter in Arabic on Wednesday, setting social media alight with support for the Palestinians. Her image was projected over the main square in the West Bank city of Ramallah as mourners flooded the Al Jazeera offices there and her family home in east Jerusalem.

Abu Akleh's coverage of the harsh realities of Israel’s military occupation was inextricably linked with her own experiences as a Palestinian journalist on the front lines. Her death underscores the heavy price the conflict continues to exact on Palestinians, regardless of their role as journalists.

Although she was also a US citizen who often visited America in the summers, she lived and worked in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, where those who knew her said she felt most at home. A Palestinian Christian whose family was originally from Bethlehem, she was born and raised in Jerusalem. She leaves behind a brother and her parents.

In an Al Jazeera video released last year, Abu Akleh recalled the scale of destruction and "the feeling that death was at times just around the corner" during her coverage of the second intifada, from 2000-2005. "Despite the dangers, we were determined to do the job," she said.

"I chose journalism so I could be close to the people," she added. "It might not be easy to change the reality, but at least I was able to communicate their voice to the world."

Abu Akleh joined Al Jazeera in 1997, just a year after the groundbreaking Arabic news network launched. Among her many assignments were covering five wars in Gaza and Israel’s war with Lebanon in 2006. She reported on forced home evictions, the killings of Palestinian youth, the hundreds of Palestinians held without charge in Israeli prisons and the continuous expansion of Jewish settlements.

Her longtime producer, Wessam Hammad, said Abu Akleh possessed an incredible ability to remain calm under pressure. "Shireen worked all these years with a commitment to the values and ethics of our profession," he said adding: "Shireen is considered an icon of Al Jazeera."

He and Abu Akleh were often caught in Israeli cross-fire during the many stories they covered together, he said. On one assignment, their car filled with tear gas and they struggled to breathe. When they would think back on these moments, he said Abu Akleh would laugh and marvel at how they managed to survive.

Images of the moments after Abu Akleh was shot in the head in the West Bank town of Jenin circulated online and were broadcast on Al Jazeera and other Arabic news channels. Wearing a helmet and a vest clearly marked "PRESS," Abu Akleh’s body was shown lying face down in a patch of sand. A Palestinian man jumped over a wall to reach her as gunshots rang out, dragging her motionless body to a car.

In video from the West Bank hospital where Abu Akleh was pronounced dead, a male colleague was seen weeping at her hospital bed as others choked back tears. A female correspondent for Al Jazeera in the Gaza Strip wept on air as she reported from a vigil for the journalist.

Later Wednesday, Abu Akleh’s body, draped in a Palestinian flag and covered by a wreath of flowers, was carried through downtown Ramallah on a red stretcher. Hundreds chanted, "With our spirit, with our blood, we will redeem you, Shireen.”

An outpouring of condemnation came from governments around the world. The US State Department called her death "an affront to media freedom."

Al Jazeera and witnesses, including her producer who was shot in the back Wednesday, said Israeli forces killed her. Israel said it was unclear who was responsible, calling it "premature and irresponsible to cast blame at this stage."

It had started as another routine assignment for Abu Akleh. She'd emailed colleagues that she was heading to the Jenin refugee camp to check on reports of an Israeli military raid. "I will bring you the news as soon as the picture becomes clear," she wrote.

"Generations grew up seeing her work," producer Hammad, said. "People listened to Shireen’s voice and were influenced by her to study journalism so they could be like her."

Abu Akleh's niece, Lina Abu Akleh, described her as a "best friend" and "second mom".

"She is someone that I was looking up to since I was a kid, watching all of her reports," she told journalists from the family's home. "I never thought this day would come where the news would be about her."

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The 911 Presidency: Trump Flexes Emergency Powers in His Second Term

FILE PHOTO: US President Donald Trump attends a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (not pictured) at the White House in Washington, D.C., US, June 5, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: US President Donald Trump attends a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (not pictured) at the White House in Washington, D.C., US, June 5, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
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The 911 Presidency: Trump Flexes Emergency Powers in His Second Term

FILE PHOTO: US President Donald Trump attends a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (not pictured) at the White House in Washington, D.C., US, June 5, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: US President Donald Trump attends a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (not pictured) at the White House in Washington, D.C., US, June 5, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo

Call it the 911 presidency.
Despite insisting that the United States is rebounding from calamity under his watch, President Donald Trump is harnessing emergency powers unlike any of his predecessors.
Whether it’s leveling punishing tariffs, deploying troops to the border or sidelining environmental regulations, Trump has relied on rules and laws intended only for use in extraordinary circumstances like war and invasion.
An analysis by The Associated Press shows that 30 of Trump’s 150 executive orders have cited some kind of emergency power or authority, a rate that far outpaces his recent predecessors.
The result is a redefinition of how presidents can wield power. Instead of responding to an unforeseen crisis, Trump is using emergency powers to supplant Congress’ authority and advance his agenda.
“What’s notable about Trump is the enormous scale and extent, which is greater than under any modern president,” said Ilya Somin, who is representing five US businesses who sued the administration, claiming they were harmed by Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs.
Because Congress has the power to set trade policy under the Constitution, the businesses convinced a federal trade court that Trump overstepped his authority by claiming an economic emergency to impose the tariffs. An appeals court has paused that ruling while the judges review it.
Growing concerns over actions
The legal battle is a reminder of the potential risks of Trump’s strategy. Judges traditionally have given presidents wide latitude to exercise emergency powers that were created by Congress. However, there’s growing concern that Trump is pressing the limits when the US is not facing the kinds of threats such actions are meant to address.
“The temptation is clear,” said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program and an expert in emergency powers. “What’s remarkable is how little abuse there was before, but we’re in a different era now.”
Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., who has drafted legislation that would allow Congress to reassert tariff authority, said he believed the courts would ultimately rule against Trump in his efforts to single-handedly shape trade policy.
“It’s the Constitution. James Madison wrote it that way, and it was very explicit,” Bacon said of Congress’ power over trade. “And I get the emergency powers, but I think it’s being abused. When you’re trying to do tariff policy for 80 countries, that’s policy, not emergency action.”
The White House pushed back on such concerns, saying Trump is justified in aggressively using his authority.
“President Trump is rightfully enlisting his emergency powers to quickly rectify four years of failure and fix the many catastrophes he inherited from Joe Biden — wide open borders, wars in Ukraine and Gaza, radical climate regulations, historic inflation, and economic and national security threats posed by trade deficits,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.
Trump frequently sites 1977 law to justify actions
Of all the emergency powers, Trump has most frequently cited the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, to justify slapping tariffs on imports.
The law, enacted in 1977, was intended to limit some of the expansive authority that had been granted to the presidency decades earlier. It is only supposed to be used when the country faces “an unusual and extraordinary threat” from abroad “to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States.”
In analyzing executive orders issued since 2001, the AP found that Trump has invoked the law 21 times in presidential orders and memoranda. President George W. Bush, grappling with the aftermath of the most devastating terror attack on US soil, invoked the law just 14 times in his first term. Likewise, Barack Obama invoked the act only 21 times during his first term, when the US economy faced the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression.
The Trump administration has also deployed an 18th century law, the Alien Enemies Act, to justify deporting Venezuelan migrants to other countries, including El Salvador. Trump's decision to invoke the law relies on allegations that the Venezuelan government coordinates with the Tren de Aragua gang, but intelligence officials did not reach that conclusion.
Congress has ceded its power to the presidency
Congress has granted emergency powers to the presidency over the years, acknowledging that the executive branch can act more swiftly than lawmakers if there is a crisis. There are 150 legal powers — including waiving a wide variety of actions that Congress has broadly prohibited — that can only be accessed after declaring an emergency. In an emergency, for example, an administration can suspend environmental regulations, approve new drugs or therapeutics, take over the transportation system, or even override bans on testing biological or chemical weapons on human subjects, according to a list compiled by the Brennan Center for Justice.
Democrats and Republicans have pushed the boundaries over the years. For example, in an attempt to cancel federal student loan debt, Joe Biden used a post-Sept. 11 law that empowered education secretaries to reduce or eliminate such obligations during a national emergency. The US Supreme Court eventually rejected his effort, forcing Biden to find different avenues to chip away at his goals.
Before that, Bush pursued warrantless domestic wiretapping and Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the detention of Japanese-Americans on the West Coast in camps for the duration of World War II.
Trump, in his first term, sparked a major fight with Capitol Hill when he issued a national emergency to compel construction of a border wall. Though Congress voted to nullify his emergency declaration, lawmakers could not muster up enough Republican support to overcome Trump’s eventual veto.
“Presidents are using these emergency powers not to respond quickly to unanticipated challenges,” said John Yoo, who as a Justice Department official under George W. Bush helped expand the use of presidential authorities. “Presidents are using it to step into a political gap because Congress chooses not to act.”
Trump, Yoo said, “has just elevated it to another level.”
Trump's allies support his moves
Conservative legal allies of the president also said Trump’s actions are justified, and Vice President JD Vance predicted the administration would prevail in the court fight over tariff policy.
“We believe — and we’re right — that we are in an emergency,” Vance said last week in an interview with Newsmax.
“You have seen foreign governments, sometimes our adversaries, threaten the American people with the loss of critical supplies,” Vance said. “I’m not talking about toys, plastic toys. I’m talking about pharmaceutical ingredients. I’m talking about the critical pieces of the manufacturing supply chain.”
Vance continued, “These governments are threatening to cut us off from that stuff, that is by definition, a national emergency.”
Republican and Democratic lawmakers have tried to rein in a president’s emergency powers. Two years ago, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House and Senate introduced legislation that would have ended a presidentially-declared emergency after 30 days unless Congress votes to keep it in place. It failed to advance.
Similar legislation hasn’t been introduced since Trump’s return to office. Right now, it effectively works in the reverse, with Congress required to vote to end an emergency.
“He has proved to be so lawless and reckless in so many ways. Congress has a responsibility to make sure there’s oversight and safeguards,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who cosponsored an emergency powers reform bill in the previous session of Congress. He argued that, historically, leaders relying on emergency declarations has been a “path toward autocracy and suppression.”