Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Israeli security forces shot journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in cold blood when she was out doing the most ordinary of things, namely, her job. It is another name and another atrocity in the face of international tolerance of extrajudicial killings, imprisonment, demolition, displacement, illegal settlements, the harassment of children, the destruction and desecration of sacred olive groves and the murder of young children for the crime of playing football on a beach. I could go on. One might ask what is the shooting of a single journalist in that litany of depravity, but it is a lot. Killing her and knowing they would get away with it meant killing her witness and her power to bring the truth about the treatment of Palestinian people into international focus.

Her funeral was its own witness. No objective person could be unmoved by the scenes. Murder was not enough; degradation and dehumanisation followed. I give particular attention to the pall-bearers, especially one gentleman who, despite being repeatedly beaten to the ground and kicked, rose like a hero to prevent what he saw as the ultimate degradation of Shireen's remains and her coffin hitting the ground. While others run from bombs and gunfire, Shireen and other war reporters run towards the front to bring us the news as it happens.

An Irishman, Pierre Zakrzewski, was killed by Russian forces in Ukraine while doing his job. We owe Pierre a huge debt of gratitude and I underline to his family and friends the high regard in which he is held by all of us here. He will not be forgotten in Ireland. In Ireland, we owe war journalists and photojournalists so much because, without Gilles Peress in Derry, we would not have the iconic photographs of human rights protesters under fire and the white flag held by Father Edward Daly. Bloody Sunday would have been buried as the British Government tried to bury the Ballymurphy massacre that took place a few months earlier. Gilles Peress told the Saville inquiry how amazed his bureau chief in Paris was that he got a picture of an unarmed man shot dead by British forces. We are lucky he was there to capture those moments and that he is still here to remind us what is at stake and at risk through the intransigence, pride and recklessness of some.

Today we remember all journalists who have lost their lives in the job of telling truth to power. We remember and thank them. Ar dheis Dé go raibh siad.

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