It wasn't because she was a journalist. 53 journalists were killed in 2022, and none of them received even one percent of the coverage that Abu Akleh did.
But at the time, those who obsessed over Abu Akleh claimed they did so because she was an American citizen.
That isn't true either. And we can know that by predicting the future.
On Monday, Elan Ganeles - a dual US-Israeli citizen - was shot and killed in an ambush while driving his car. He was not voluntarily covering a war zone. He was simply driving to visit the Dead Sea while visiting Israel for a wedding.
Here's what won't happen in the coming weeks and months:
There will be no multi-reporter investigation into his death by the New York Times. And not by AP. And not by the Washington Post or any independent forensics organizations.
There will be no 5-10,000 word articles in US media about his death, looking for eyewitnesses, digging up security camera footage, trying to do open-source forensics. No one gathering thousands of photos and videos from the scene, putting together computer models and diagrams for the trajectory of the bullets, in the name of "justice" for the death of an American citizen.
And certainly no articles tracking down the people who celebrated Elan's death by handing out sweets.
There will be no insistence that Palestinians investigate the death impartially and to share their results with the US.
There will be no calls for an FBI investigation to track down the murderers. For Ganeles' murder, Israel's own investigation - not trusted last year - will be considered fine.
There will be no insistence that Palestinians take responsibility for the crime. And no insistence that Palestinians apologize. Indeed, there will be no apology by the Palestinian Authority.
No one will investigate whether Iranian funding indirectly helped fund the murder of an American citizen. No teams of accountants from the media will trace down the money trail, or even point out that the large number of new armed groups in the West Bank coincides with the de facto loosening of Iran sanctions enforcement by the Biden administration.
Major US officials like Secretary of State Blinken will not host heavily promoted visits by Ganeles' family in Washington, and the family will not have a free forum in major media to insist that justice be pursued for the death of a US citizen. They will not be on TV as anything other than a grieving family - they will not politicize their grief to pressure the US to respond to them, taking multiple trips to Washington and hiring PR experts. There will be no anguished articles a hundred days from now demanding "accountability."
None of this will happen - because Palestinian Arabs are expected to kill innocent Jewish civilians and instead of the media being outraged, it will try to recognize their pain that prompted them to riddle any cars with Israeli license plates with bullets.
Shireen Abu Akleh didn't dominate coverage because she was American and not because she was a journalist and not because she was a woman. She dominated coverage because blaming Jews for a murder is a good way to get ratings, to sell newspapers, to get awards and to strengthen the "narrative" of an Israeli "occupation" that is the source of all evil..
Researching Palestinians killing Jews and publicly pressuring the PA would do none of those things.
