As the Israeli military kills two more Palestinian journalists in Gaza, a new documentary by Zeteo has uncovered critical details about Israel’s killing three years ago of the acclaimed Palestinian American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. The film, Who Killed Shireen?, identifies for the first time the Israeli soldier who allegedly shot Abu Akleh. We get response from two members of Abu Akleh’s family — her brother Anton and her niece Lina — as well as the documentary’s executive producer, Dion Nissenbaum, and Zeteo founder Mehdi Hasan.

“We’ve always known that it was an Israeli soldier who killed Shireen,” says Lina Abu Akleh, who says the “entire chain of command” must be held accountable, including elected officials.

“The Biden administration and the Israeli government essentially were doing everything they could to cover up what happened that day to Shireen Abu Akleh,” says Nissenbaum, who is also the correspondent in the documentary.

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We begin today’s show looking at Israel’s ongoing targeting of Palestinian journalists. A recent report by the Costs of War Project at Brown University described the war in Gaza as the, quote, “worst ever conflict for reporters” in history. By one count, Israel has killed 214 Palestinian journalists in Gaza over the past 18 months, including two journalists killed on Wednesday, Yahya Subaih and Nour El-Din Abdo. Yahya Subaih died just hours after his wife gave birth to their first child.

Meanwhile, new details have emerged about the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, the renowned Palestinian American Al Jazeera journalist who was fatally shot by an Israeli soldier three years ago, on May 11th, 2022. She was killed while covering an Israeli army assault on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. Shireen and another reporter were against a stone wall, wearing blue helmets and blue flak jackets clearly emblazoned with the word “press.” Shireen was shot in the head. Shireen was known throughout the Arab world for her decades of tireless reporting on Palestine.

AMY GOODMAN: Israel initially claimed she had been shot by Palestinian militants, but later acknowledged she was most likely shot by an Israeli soldier. But Israel has never identified the soldier who fired the fatal shot, or allowed the soldier to be questioned by U.S. investigators. But a new documentary just released by Zeteo has identified and named the Israeli soldier for the first time. This is the trailer to the documentary Who Killed Shireen?

DION NISSENBAUM: That soldier looked down his scope and could see the blue vest and that it said “press.”

ISRAELI SOLDIER: That’s what I think, yes.

SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: U.S. personnel have never had access to those who are believed to have committed those shootings.

DION NISSENBAUM: No one has been held to account. Justice has not been served.

FATIMA ABDULKARIM: She is the first American Palestinian journalist who has been killed by Israeli forces.

DION NISSENBAUM: I want to know: Who killed Shireen?

CONOR POWELL: Are we going to find the shooter?

DION NISSENBAUM: He’s got a phone call set up with this Israeli soldier that was there that day.

CONOR POWELL: We just have to go over to Israel.

DION NISSENBAUM: Did you ever talk to the guy who fired those shots?

ISRAELI SOLDIER: Of course. I know him personally. The U.S. should have actually come forward and actually pressed the fact that an American citizen was killed intentionally by IDF.

FATIMA ABDULKARIM: The drones are still ongoing, the explosions going off.

CONOR POWELL: Holy [bleep]! We’ve got a name.

DION NISSENBAUM: But here’s the twist.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: The trailer for the new Zeteo documentary Who Killed Shireen? The film identifies the Israeli soldier who allegedly killed Shireen Abu Akleh as Alon Scagio, who would later be killed during an Israeli military operation last June in Jenin, the same city where Shireen was fatally shot.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined right now by four guests, including two members of Shireen Abu Akleh’s family: her brother Anton, or Tony, and her niece Lina. They’re both in North Bergen, New Jersey. We’re also joined by Mehdi Hasan, the founder and editor-in-chief of Zeteo, and by Dion Nissenbaum, the executive producer of Who Killed Shireen?, the correspondent on the documentary, longtime Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent based in Jerusalem and other cities, a former foreign correspondent. He was twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Dion, we’re going to begin with you. This is the third anniversary, May 11th exactly, of the death of Shireen Abu Akleh. Talk about your revelation, what you exposed in this documentary.

DION NISSENBAUM: Well, there were two things that were very important for the documentary. The first thing was we wanted to find the soldier who killed Shireen. It had been one of the most closely guarded secrets in Israel. U.S. officials said that if they wanted to determine if there was a crime here, if there was a human rights violation, they needed to talk to this soldier to find out what he was thinking when he shot her. And we set out to find him. And we did. We did what the U.S. government never did. And it turned out he had been killed, so we were never able to answer that question — what he was thinking.

But the other revelation that I think is as significant in this documentary is that the initial U.S. assessment of her shooting was that that soldier intentionally shot her and that he could tell that she was wearing a blue flak jacket with “press” across it. That assessment was essentially overruled by the Biden administration, which came out and said exactly the opposite. That’s a fairly startling revelation, that the Biden administration and the Israeli government essentially were doing everything they could to cover up what happened that day to Shireen Abu Akleh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, let’s go to a clip from the documentary Who Killed Shireen?, in which Dion Nissenbaum, our guest, speaks with former State Department official Andrew Miller. He was deputy assistant secretary of state for Israeli-Palestinian affairs in 2022 when Shireen was killed.

ANDREW MILLER: It’s nearly 100% certain that an Israeli soldier, likely a sniper, fired the shot that killed or the shots that killed Shireen Abu Akleh. Based on all the information we have, it is not credible to suggest that there were targets either in front of or behind Shireen Abu Akleh. The fact that the official Israeli position remains that this was a case of crossfire, the entire episode was a mistake, as opposed to potentially a mistaken identification or the deliberate targeting of this individual, points to, I think, a broader policy of seeking to manage the narrative.

DION NISSENBAUM: And did the Israelis ever make the soldier available to the U.S. to talk about it?

ANDREW MILLER: No. And the Israelis were not willing to present the person for even informal questioning.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was State Department official — former State Department official Andrew Miller, speaking in the Zeteo documentary Who Killed Shireen? He was deputy assistant secretary of state for Israeli-Palestinian affairs in 2022 when Shireen was killed.

I want to go to Shireen’s family, whom we have as guests, Anton Abu Akleh and Lina, who are joining us from New Jersey. You both watched the film for the first time last night when it premiered here in New York City. Lina, if you could begin by responding to the revelations in the film?

LINA ABU AKLEH: Hi, Amy. Hi. Thank you for having........

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