A response to the international turmoil.
Israeli police announced on Saturday that they would open an investigation after the outcry sparked by images showing the intervention of the police at the funeral in Jerusalem of the Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, whose coffin nearly fell to the ground.
“The Israel Police Commissioner, in coordination with the Minister of Public Security, has ordered an investigation into the incident.
The findings of the investigation will be presented to the commissioner in the coming days,” police said in a statement released during the Jewish weekly rest day of Shabbat.
Thousands of Palestinians attend the funeral of Palestinian-American Al Jazeera TV journalist who was shot in the head on Wednesday while covering an Israeli military raid in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, Palestinian Territory occupied by Israel since 1967. She wore a bullet-proof vest marked "press" and a reporter's helmet.
As the coffin was released from St. Joseph's Hospital in East Jerusalem, a Palestinian sector of the city also occupied by Israel, police burst into the facility and attempted to disperse a crowd waving Palestinian flags.
The coffin almost falls to the ground
The coffin almost fell from the hands of the bearers who were hit by police armed with batons but was caught in extremis, according to images broadcast by local television.
In its statement, the police said that its "officers had been exposed to violence from the rioters, which prompted them to use force".
“The police support their officers (…)” but would like to “learn lessons from this incident”.
VIDEO.
Death of Shireen Abu Akleh: violence at the exit of the hospital from the coffin of the Palestinian journalist
"We were deeply disturbed by the footage of Israeli police intruding on the funeral procession," US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.
The European Union for its part condemned "the disproportionate use of force and the disrespectful behavior of the Israeli police against the participants in the funeral procession".
The French representation in Jerusalem, for its part, considered the “police violence” “deeply shocking”, while the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, said he was “deeply disturbed”.
These scenes “shiver in the back”
These scenes, where we see the Israeli security forces bludgeoning the pallbearers of the coffin, to the point of almost knocking it over, “are chilling, recalling the brutality inflicted on mourners at funerals of anti-apartheid activists », Says Mamphela Ramphele, President of the Foundation, regretting « the violence, the feeling of hatred and the contempt for human dignity » displayed.
“As Archbishop Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who died in December at the age of 90 after a life devoted to the fight against the racist regime and then the necessary reconciliation of South Africans, taught us, “ perpetrators of violence and human rights abuses may think they are advancing their goals but in fact are undermining their own humanity and integrity”.
“Violence breeds violence and hatred, which breeds even more violence and hatred,” Tutu pleaded with Israelis in a column published by the newspaper Haaretz in 2014, recalls the text.
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"Members of the Israeli security forces are clearly responsible for the murder" of Shireen Abu-Akleh.
"Further inflaming the situation by attacking his funeral procession is like trying to extinguish the flames with a can of gasoline", denounces Mamphela Ramphele.
Other South Africans, historical supporters of the Palestinians since the end of apartheid, expressed their indignation after the funeral in Jerusalem, also underlining the parallel with scenes belonging to their still recent past.