The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem,
Pierbattista Pizzaballa, on Monday deplored an Israeli police
assault on the funeral of Al-Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh
at the weekend.
The cops were caught on video attacking mourners, even those
carrying her coffin.
Abu Akleh was a Palestinian-American journalist who worked as a
reporter for the Arabic-language channel Al Jazeera for 25
years, and was one of the most prominent names across the Middle
East for her decades of reporting in the Israeli-occupied
Palestinian territories.
Last Wednesday, while wearing a blue vest with "PRESS" written
on it, she was shot and killed while covering an Israeli
military raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. Al
Jazeera, an AFP photojournalist and the Palestinian Ministry of
Health reported that the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) killed her,
which Israel denied.
Pizzaballa, the Vatican's top representative in Israel, said:
"we are shocked by the unjustifiable conduct (of the Israeli
police) and we want to denounce and condemn it in a clear and
unequivocal way".
He said that "security reasons cannot justify an event of this
kind, which strikes the sensibilities of the Christian community
and others, above all at such a delicate time as the one we are
living through".
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