Nakba Day: Iran pays tribute to slain Palestinian journalist

Yusef Jalali

Press TV, Tehran

First Nakba day without Shireen . This year's anniversary of the illegal creation of Israel comes a few days after the Israeli forces shot dead Palestine-based Al Jazeera journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, while she was reporting on Israeli atrocities in Palestine.

In Iran, government officials and representatives of Palestinian resistance groups gathered to pay tribute to Shirin while marking Nakba Day. Abu Akleh was a dual Palestinian-American national working as a correspondent for Al Jazeera.

She was killed on Wednesday while covering Israeli army raids in the city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank. She was clearly wearing a press vest when she was shot dead. In her funeral procession, Israeli forces attacked mourners carrying her coffin.

Every year on May 15, Palestinians mark Nakba Day or the day of misery, which coincides with the creation of Israel in 1948. On that time, some 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly evicted out of their lands by Israeli forces and took refuge mostly in the occupied Wes Bank, the Gaza Strip and Palestine’s neighboring states. Today, around 5 million Palestinians are still displaced and are denied the right to return to their homeland.

A bitter reality that Israel is not willing to be talked about, and that's why Shirin is no longer among us. We learn from Shirin's tragedy that Israel stops at nothing to mask its crimes in Palestine, even if it takes killing a journalist.

But on the contrary, Shirin's death spilled the beans on Israel's atrocities, because now the world knows her name was and why she's no longer among us.

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.ir