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US Colonel Who Probed Shireen Abu Akleh's Killing Says Biden Admin Lied About His Findings to Appease Israel
A top Muslim civil rights group applauded retired Colonel Steve Gabavics for "bravely coming forward and confirming what was obvious to everyone: An Israeli sniper deliberately murdered an American journalist."
Oct 27, 2025
Retired US Col. Steve Gabavics went public Monday with an account he had previously only spoken about anonymously—the story of his investigation into an Israeli soldier's killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022 and the unsuccessful attempts he made to ensure the US State Department would accurately report his findings: that Abu Akleh was intentionally shot.
Gabavics previously discussed his experience investigating Abu Akleh's killing just days after it happened in a documentary produced by Zeteo News, but he wasn't named in the film. On Monday, he came forward publicly for the first time in an interview with the New York Times to discuss the case he said has "bothered [him] the most” of any he investigated during his 30-year military career.
In the days after Abu Akleh was fatally shot in the head while reporting on an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) raid on a refugee camp in Jenin in the West Bank in May 2022, Gabavics was assigned to lead an investigation into the killing by the Office of the United States Security Coordinator, where he was chief of staff. The State Department office coordinates with Palestinian and Israeli security officials, and was ordered by the Biden administration to review Abu Akleh's killing.
He traveled to Jenin with three other people from the office to investigate the shooting and concluded "beyond a reasonable doubt" that the Israeli soldier who shot Abu Akleh must have known she was a journalist—and therefore required under international law to be protected from military attacks while reporting on a conflict.
They did not conclude that the soldier was specifically or deliberately targeting Abu Akleh, but they determined that:
- Soldiers were aware of journalists in the area due to records of Israeli military radio traffic on the morning before the shooting;
- There had been no gunfire coming from the journalists’ direction that might provoke the Israeli soldiers to shoot in self-defense;
- There was an Israeli military vehicle stationed down the road from Abu Akleh, from which a sniper would have been able to see the journalists clearly; and
- When Gabavics visited the scene of the shooting hours after it occurred, his colleagues wore blue vests similar to Abu Akleh’s navy-blue "Press" vest and stood where she was when she was killed while Gabavics stood where the shooter's vehicle had been; they were easily visible to Gabavics.
Gabavics told the Times that the claim that the shooting was unintentional, ultimately included in the State Department's report, was "absurd."
The State Department's account of an accidental killing would mean that the "individual popped out of the truck, just was randomly shooting, and happened to have really well-aimed shots and never looked down the scope," said Gabavics. "Which wouldn’t have happened."
Gabavics explained the circumstances that led to the State Department announcing in July 2022 that Abu Akleh had been unintentionally killed: His superior, Lt. Gen. Michael R. Fenzel, who led the Office of the Security Coordinator at the time, disagreed with his assessment and repeatedly refused to publish a report that explained Gabavics' findings accurately.
As Gabavics told Mehdi Hasan at Zeteo News on Monday, Fenzel told Gabavics that he had spoken to an Israeli commander, who called the shooting an accident "that was a matter of tragic circumstances."
"So the US general takes the word of a foreign general over the word of his own officer, who he sent to investigate," said Hasan.
“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 told the Times that Fenzel threatened to fire him as the two disagreed about what the State Department report should say. He included language saying the shooting was intentional in a draft report several times, but Fenzel repeatedly deleted his additions.
He said he and the other three investigators were "flabbergasted that this is what they put out."
Fenzel told the Times in a statement that he stands by "the integrity of our work and [remains] confident that we reached the right conclusions.”
Officials who spoke to the Times on condition of anonymity said Fenzel's office likely aimed to "preserve its working relationship with the Israeli military."
But Gabavics told the Times that the outcome of his investigation “continued to be on my conscience nonstop," and said he continued to clash with Fenzel over the US government's report on Abu Akleh's death until he retired in January.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) applauded Gabavics for "bravely coming forward and confirming what was obvious to everyone: An Israeli sniper deliberately murdered an American journalist and the Biden administration covered it up."
"We call on President [Donald] Trump to investigate Lt. Gen. Michael R. Fenzel and any other officials who were allegedly involved in the cover-up of Shireen Abu Akleh's assassination," the group said.
CAIR urged the State Department and FBI to "pursue a real investigation" into Abu Akleh's killing. The group condemned President Joe Biden and his top foreign affairs officials, including former National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and former National Security Council Coordinator for the Middle East Brett McGurk for "enabling the Israeli government's abuses."
"These individuals must never again serve our government," said CAIR, "and should be fired from the prestigious roles they have secured in academia since leaving office."
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Immigrant Students Need Protection; Instead, Trump Is Leaving Them in Limbo
The administration has ruled that “a juvenile court determination relating to the best interest” of children is not a “sufficiently compelling” reason to protect them from deportation and allow them to legally sustain themselves while here.
Sep 19, 2025
Sonia is 20 years old and dreams of being a nurse. She has lived in the United States since the age of 11. Her father abandoned her at birth, in her home country of Mexico. Here, Sonia learned English. She graduated from high school. She earned a scholarship to college. All while living with the fear of deportation and the feeling she would never fully belong.
When Sonia was in high school, she learned that she qualified for humanitarian immigration relief. (I’m using an alias for Sonia’s protection.) Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS) would allow her to apply for lawful permanent residence and eventually US citizenship. Sonia also discovered that while she waited for permanent relief, she would be protected from deportation and could apply for work authorization. Suddenly, her fear was supplanted by hope.
A 1990 law created SIJS, paving a pathway to citizenship for certain abused, abandoned, or neglected children. US Citizenship and Immigration Services would grant SIJS to kids once a state court judge determined they had suffered maltreatment and that it was not in their best interest to return home. When the law originally passed, SIJS recipients could immediately apply for green cards.
However, after more and more children began to flee parental maltreatment, food insecurity, and other dangers in their homes and entreat the United States government for protection, a backlog developed. Beginning in 2016, these vulnerable youth were pushed into limbo as they waited for years for lawful status.
When she was but days away from being able to enroll in a nursing program, this cruel policy reversal deprived Sonia of the chance to fulfill her life’s goal.
Acknowledging the perversity of identifying these kids as needing protection but then failing to provide it, the Biden administration instituted the SIJS Deferred Action Policy in March of 2022. This policy offered most SIJS recipients protection from deportation and the ability to apply for work authorization. With work authorization came social security numbers, which opened access to driver licenses, healthcare and insurance, higher education, bank accounts and more.
Deferred action allowed these young people to come out of the shadows; to name themselves and be counted; to live with dignity in the country that had become their home.
Many SIJS kids, like Sonia, lived their entire lives dreaming of this kind of freedom, which those of us born in the United States take for granted. They deserve, as all children do, the chance to be children. To worry about getting their homework done, not whether they will be scooped up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on their way to school.
The thing Sonia desperately needed was a social security number. When a teacher in her Certified Nursing Assistant classes noticed her abilities and her commitment to the field, she encouraged Sonia and helped her get a college scholarship so she could continue her education. She took all the prerequisites she could, but there came a point where she could not continue without a social security number.
Sonia was resourceful. She found a local attorney to represent her. Unfortunately, that lawyer delayed filing her petition so long that Sonia aged out of eligibility. Luckily, Sonia lives in Illinois and a change in state law gifted her a second chance. Determined to get status, Sonia traveled across the state in search of a new lawyer. She found me.
I met Sonia in February 2024, when she was 19. Though I have completed close to 80 similar cases since founding the Immigration Law Clinic at the University of Illinois College of Law in 2019, Sonia’s situation was particularly compelling. The circumstances that made her eligible for an immigration benefit were not unique, but the circumstances that brought Sonia to me were.
When I heard what happened to Sonia, I was desperate to end her immigration status roller coaster. My students and I eagerly got to work for her. Finally, in December 2024, we submitted Sonia’s SIJS petition and excitedly waited to hear the government’s decision on her case.
In April, federal immigration authorities granted Sonia SIJS, officially acknowledging that she needs and deserves our country’s protection on a permanent basis. However, her approval notice lacked the language that most SIJS approval notices since March 2022 have included—language granting the recipient deferred action. Sonia later learned that earlier that month, quietly and without explanation, the Trump administration abruptly stopped considering SIJS applicants for deferred action.
For months, the government failed to acknowledge any such change. It was not until June that the administration officially announced the new policy. It stated that “a juvenile court determination relating to the best interest” of children is not a “sufficiently compelling” reason to protect them from deportation and allow them to legally sustain themselves while here.
Sonia was devastated. And she was not alone. If adjudications and approvals maintain pace with the first two quarters of the fiscal year, by the end of this month over 60,000 more SIJS recipients will be officially deemed worthy of our government’s protection… yet simultaneously denied that protection. And many of them will have only made the decision to come forward seeking protection and making themselves all the more vulnerable, because of a belief that doing so would put an end to their fears of deportation, and set them on a path to stability and safety.
In July, the National Immigration Project, with others, filed a proposed class action lawsuit challenging the termination of the SIJS deferred action policy and seeking a court order reinstating it. Oral arguments on a preliminary injunction, which would force the federal government to resume consideration of SIJS youth for deferred action, were held on September 4, and the court could issue a decision at any moment.
But even if the judge orders a reinstatement of deferred action, it will only be a temporary fix. The administration will search for legal routes to strip SIJS youth of the tenuous protection provided by deferred action. We need a legislative change to keep them safe.
Sonia wants to be a nurse so she can heal people. She wants to support her family and make her grandmother proud. She wants to help people in her community who do not speak English by giving them access to effective and responsive healthcare. When she was but days away from being able to enroll in a nursing program, this cruel policy reversal deprived Sonia of the chance to fulfill her life’s goal.
And it deprived her community and our country of a compassionate, dedicated bilingual nurse.
While we wait for judicial or congressional intervention, Sonia’s future and the futures of tens of thousands of other deserving young people hang in the balance.
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Climate Justice Is Under Siege; Help Us Defend It
Why we can’t afford to lose the progress frontline communities have built.
Aug 26, 2025
The climate justice infrastructure dedicated to serving vulnerable communities across the United States took decades to build. And it is now at risk.
After nearly 20 years working in frontline communities on environmental justice and community development, I joined Emerald Cities Collaborative as president and CEO in April 2022. Hope around renewed commitments to climate justice, community resilience, and economic opportunities was palpable, as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act had just been signed into law shortly after my start. With an influx of federal investments and mandates for racial equity, the promise of that moment energized the climate justice and environmental justice movements.
Today, a coordinated attack on the environmental nonprofit sector and diversity, equity, and inclusion threatens to dismantle the physical and social support networks that serve frontline communities. It is imperative that we understand what’s at stake, who benefits from the current infrastructure, and what the consequences of inaction could be.
Climate justice infrastructure provides the framework for implementing equitable climate investments for all that advance racial justice, economic justice, and environmental justice. This infrastructure includes the physical investments—such as green buildings, solar panels, green infrastructure—and the social supports necessary to ensure their equitable implementation. From community organizing to capacity building for grassroots nonprofits and workforce development programs, environmental nonprofits serve as the backbone of this social infrastructure. These efforts address both climate change and the systemic inequality that leads to disproportionate impacts on vulnerable communities.
We must stand up for nonprofits and the future that they help build—a climate future that is not only green but just.
Significant public and private investments in greener, more resilient energy, water, food, and housing infrastructure—driven by the urgency of climate change—created an unprecedented opportunity to address the environmental, income, wealth, and health disparities within low-income communities and communities of color. Realizing the full potential of these rapidly accelerating investments required a coordinated strategy that integrated local coalition building, policy, project, workforce, and small business development support. This is where the environmental nonprofits stepped in. Environmental nonprofits provided their expertise, on-the-ground leadership, capacity building, and connective tissue to support community-led climate projects, advocacy, and policy.
The breadth of organizations building this critical climate justice infrastructure is remarkable—from national nonprofits and statewide advocacy groups to grassroots organizations and volunteer community groups. We are grateful for their commitment! At Emerald Cities Collaborative (ECC), our history, experience, and dedication to climate justice, along with our support for coalitions and partnerships, equity-centered clean energy policies, and economic inclusion efforts, uniquely positioned us to serve as an intermediary within the broader ecosystem. ECC deployed a coordinated strategy of local coalition building, policy education, project implementation, workforce initiatives, and contractor development to connect disadvantaged communities nationally and in our primary regions (Northwest, Northern California, Southern California, DC-Maryland-Virginia, and Northeast) to the growing clean energy economy. We connected federal and state funding to grassroots implementation and translated new federal initiatives into community-accessible dialogue. The overarching goal was to ensure that the climate and economic benefits of the emerging clean economy were reachable to low-income communities and communities of color.
As a result of the efforts of national nonprofits, community-based organizations, and institutions, many organizations and communities historically left out were able to access federal funding for community climate investments, many for the first time. Communities that have borne the brunt of environmental injustice have benefited from stronger leadership, enhanced organizational capacity, and new tools for community education and organizing.
These gains are all at risk due to the growing attack on environmental nonprofits, the rollback of climate policies, and the disintegration of environmental justice funding. Legal and reputational attacks, such as naming Emerald Cities Collaborative in the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Exploring the Green Group Giveaway Behind the Biden-Harris Environmental Justice Programs report, demonstrate how politically motivated attacks are being used to sway public opinion. This, coupled with the outright illegal termination of environmental justice grants, has had a chilling effect on our work.
However, the impacts are not evenly distributed. Grassroots organizations and BIPOC-led nonprofits are disproportionately vulnerable to these attacks compared with large national organizations with greater resources and political capital. Fear and misinformation have caused some philanthropic funders to pull back. Organizations are being forced to divert resources from mission-critical work to legal defense and crisis communications. And this does not include the mental and emotional toll that environmental justice and climate justice leaders are experiencing.
The stakes are high. Without the valuable work of these organizations, climate solutions may revert to top-down, extractive models that center profit over community. The loss of high-road jobs, apprenticeships, and clean energy workforce programs, along with increased vulnerability to extreme climate events, will unduly affect frontline communities already facing the greatest risk. At the same time, the voices of Black, Indigenous, and immigrant-led movements are in danger of being systematically excluded from the climate conversation.
For us to meet our national climate goals and the just transition agenda, we need strong local, community-driven infrastructure. How can we ensure that the momentum for equitable climate investments in frontline communities is not entirely lost? Will we use this moment to accelerate climate justice—or allow fear and misinformation to dismantle it?
Now is the time for philanthropy, government, and the public to stand in solidarity with national and frontline organizations. Philanthropy must fund general operating support and legal protections for national BIPOC-led and frontline nonprofits. We must resist and roll back state-level attacks on nonprofit speech and operations, as well as the easing of climate policies. And we must educate audiences, donors, and lawmakers about the irreplaceable role of climate justice organizations.
The attack on climate justice infrastructure is about PEOPLE, PROGRESS, and PRINCIPLES! We must stand up for nonprofits and the future that they help build—a climate future that is not only green but just. We must stand up for communities that are resilient and thriving, not just surviving. The alternative is not an option.
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