The investigating officials agreed that the Israeli soldier who shot Abu Akleh “must have known that he was shooting a journalist,” the report stated.

US officials who investigated Israel’s killing of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022 “were deeply divided” over the State Department’s final assessment of her death, with some officials “convinced that the shooting was intentional,” according to The New York Times.

The probe noted that shots fired from Israeli military positions on the day in the occupied West Bank town of Jenin were “likely responsible,” but “found no reason to believe that this was intentional,” the paper reported. The shooting was “the result of tragic circumstances,” it said.

The New York Times has revealed that US officials softened internal findings regarding the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.

According to the report, a retired US military officer involved in the investigation concluded that an Israeli sniper… pic.twitter.com/xq0kG2n6tW

— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) October 27, 2025

Five current and former US officials who worked on the case, however, believed that the Israeli soldier “must have been aware” he was targeting a journalist, even though there has been no conclusive evidence, the report stated.

‘Favoritism toward Israelis’

One of the officials, Colonel Steve Gabavics, is a retired military officer who was an official at the Office of the US Security Coordinator, which conducted the US review of the shootings.

GabavicsSteve Gabavics said he and his colleagues “were just flabbergasted” that the State Department had attributed the killing to “tragic circumstances.”

He said this conclusion “continued to be on my conscience nonstop.”

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Gabavic highlighted that his experience working in the office was that the “favoritism is always toward the Israelis, adding, “Very little of that goes to the Palestinians.”

According to the paper, the 2022 State Department statement concluded that “extensive damage to the bullet made it hard to draw a definitive conclusion about which gun it was fired from.”

The US team also reviewed separate Israeli and Palestinian investigations into the killing, but “did not conduct interviews with witnesses or perform its own tests.”

Several Factors

Gabavics said he and others on the investigating team agreed that the Israeli soldier must have known he was shooting at a journalist, “though they did not believe that the shooter was targeting Ms. Abu Akleh specifically.”

This conclusion was based on several factors, including, he said, that “Records of Israeli military radio traffic on the morning before the shooting showed that soldiers were aware of journalists in the area,” and that there “had been no gunfire coming from the journalists’ direction that might make the Israeli soldiers likely to shoot toward them in self-defense.”

“My findings were beyond reasonable doubt that this was an intentional killing of Shireen Abu Akleh.”

Retired Army Colonel Steve Gabavics tells @mehdirhasan that the killing of Palestinian-American journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, was intentional according to his findings. pic.twitter.com/9TbbNWboE4

— Zeteo (@zeteo_news) October 27, 2025

Gabavics also noted that there was “an Israeli military vehicle down the road from Ms. Abu Akleh that morning.”

“A sniper watching the road from inside the vehicle would have been able to see the journalists clearly,” he said.

Gabavics also noted that when he visited the scene of the shooting hours after it occurred, “his colleagues, wearing blue vests similar to Ms. Abu Akleh’s navy-blue protective vest marked ‘Press,’ positioned themselves where she had fallen.”

Position ‘Visible’ to Shooter

He emphasized that “They were visible to him from where the shooter’s vehicle had been.”

“Colonel Gabavics said he and others on the team agreed that the Israeli soldier who shot Ms. Abu Akleh must have known that he was shooting at a journalist”

“This was the one that probably bothered me the most” of any case in his career, he said.

“we had everything there.” https://t.co/GQyHoLw9KJ pic.twitter.com/XuPL2jQahJ

— Adil Haque (@AdHaque110) October 27, 2025

Gabavics also said that “the precision of the shots, hitting Ms. Abu Akleh’s head and a carob tree near her, did not suggest an uncontrolled spray of gunfire.”

“That, together with the fact that the shooter fired first at Ms. Abu Akleh’s producer, then at her, then at a passerby who tried to help, indicated to him the shooting was deliberate,” he said.

‘Internal Tug of War’

Gabavics said he shared his findings orally with his senior Lt. Gen. Michael R. Fenzel, as well as “wrote them into a draft of the office’s report on the shooting.” Fenzel, however, disagreed, the report stated, “and shared his assessment with the State Department, which publicly deemed the shooting unintentional.”

The disagreement turned into an “internal tug of war” with Gabavics and three of the former officials saying he repeatedly included stronger language into the draft, which General Fenzel repeatedly deleted.

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Eventually, Fenzel ordered Gabavics off the case, the official reportedly said.

Gabavics told the paper that “This was the one that probably bothered me the most” of any case he dealt with during his career, adding “Because we had everything there.”

The report stated that Gabavic’s assessment was in line with that of Palestinian officials.

Israel, however, said that Abu Akleh “was hit by either an Israeli soldier or a Palestinian gunman firing indiscriminately during clashes with Israeli soldiers, and insisted its soldiers would not intentionally hurt a journalist.”

The paper said Fenzel declined to comment on the assertions from Gabavics.

(PC, NYT)