Farewell, hero: On this land, we carry on

Shireen is calm no matter how loud the injustice around her is. She conveys this calm to us, sitting behind the screen, in our 20s, our blood pulsing in our veins to the beat of the Second Intifada. Shireen is steadfast. She does not chant. She does not pacify. Maintaining beautiful poise, she shows us that the truth is as evident as the sun, that oppression is as clear as blood, that one is entitled to be angry. In fact, she supplies the evidence necessary for screams to grow even louder, but to remain resolute on the land is the heart of the cause.

The assassination of Shireen is an admission to us that the occupier’s fear of this steadfastness is as strong as the fear it has of an armed campaign against it. Shireen told the story that confirms this. She asked for a statement from the woman that they want to erase, along with her house in Sheikh Jarrah. She told everyone how the martyr was killed and will answer definitively and beyond a doubt this disgusting question: Was, as the enemy says, the martyr asking for it?

She wasn’t a reporter of pulpits and interviews, of political and armed leaders, the stars of the screen. Her commitment was clear in her work, no matter how seasoned she became, how many promotions she got all the way up until she became a “senior correspondent.” Her work remained focused on the street, among the people and about them, among us and about us. She became a university professor, and she must have received a lot of praise, positions and opportunities. The flattery she received would have been enough to make any person lose their poise, but, with her magical resoluteness, she stayed where she had the most effect: in the occupied land. She stayed with her main cause: the people of the occupied land. She never stopped confronting explicit lies with the truth from the land, challenging with the same calmness, the same resoluteness. She even went on to teach this at university, passing it on to other generations as she had learned it, but adding her experience of being on this land.

As she conveyed the mood in Al Jazeera’s office to the public, journalist Nedaa Ibrahim said that many of the women in her generation — and she seems to be in her late 20s — studied journalism at Birzeit University because they were influenced by the work of Shireen Abu Akleh and Givara Budeiri during their coverage of the Second Intifada on Al Jazeera. Their closeness to people amplified the effect of the news and made it a tool for both knowledge and impact. And they did precisely that for us all, in this region, when we became addicted to Al Jazeera during the intifada.

I loved Givara a lot, but Shireen was my hero. Givara was strong and defiant, but Shireen’s resoluteness cast a spell on me. I trusted her as a mediator of news. I trusted what she said with absolute certainty, and I loved how the occupation hated her. They’ve always harassed her, and she’s always repelled their harassment with a high degree of professionalism, without chants, and with resoluteness. The source of this resoluteness, I think, is Shireen’s trust that she is in possession of the simple and absolute truth that the land is occupied and its people are oppressed.

I was a journalist in my 20s when I met Shireen on the screen. I used to look at her as someone who embodied journalistic perfection to me. She outperformed the usual men who had dominated coverage from the ground, that is until Palestinian women said: “We are here too.” And after that it became: “We are here.” We are not an extension of anything. We are not competing with anyone. We see her among the resistance, standing shoulder to shoulder with them. We see her among the women, one of us. We see her before the enemy, presenting a front that encourages our own fronts. Shireen helped make “women too” drop away from considerations of coverage and gender equality. She made it “women, definitely,” without a doubt, with absolute proof and without mediation.

Just as she was assassinated, with absolute proof and without mediation.

The brave photographer who kept filming, showed us the crime with the same clarity as Shireen had when she gave us news. This is the crime. This is how it happened. This is the killer. This is the criminal. This is the victim. She lived with clarity and resoluteness, and she was killed in cold blood. This is how the stories of heroes go.

I have been unable to move since hearing the news on Al Jazeera. I don’t know what to do with my anger and sadness. Israel kills Palestinians every day, which keeps the sadness and anger constant. But, in the moment that it kills a journalist, it has killed many more people. It has killed the people whose deaths Shireen reported on. It has killed those she reported were removed from their houses. It has killed every eyewitness whose truth Shireen conveyed. The killing of a journalist whose name and face we know, a journalist we watched grow and grew up watching, a journalist we trusted, is a special wound that affects us all, alone and together. It is a personal sadness and a public anger.

I remain fixated in front of the screen. I see her become the news, not its bearer. I see her body draped in the Palestinian flag and the press jacket, roaming about the Jenin camp in her place. I hear young men from different backgrounds calling out to carry the coffin, wanting to say goodbye.

During her adult life, Shireen reported the complete news as it happened from the ground. And when she became the news, we also received it completely, accurately, with no doubt about it, and as it happened on the ground.

Goodbye, hero. From you, we have learned. And, on this land, we carry on.