In response, Biden's predecessor, Donald Trump, imposed sanctions on the court, denying staff entry to the US and threatening to seize its assets. The threat extended to anyone offering "material support" to the court - language more normally used in the context of terrorism.
The reality, as all parties understand, is that only an investigation overseen by Israel could ever count as "thorough, independent, credible and transparent" to the US.
The subtext is that an investigation cannot hope to reach the bar of "credible, independent and transparent", as far as Washington is concerned, until the Palestinian Authority agrees to hold a joint inquiry with Israel.
But both Israel and the US know full well that the Palestinian leadership will never agree to such "cooperation" - because Israel's role would not be to arrive at the truth but to engineer a cover-up.
The demand for a "credible, independent and transparent" investigation is the US administration's code for an investigation that will never take place. It is the diplomatic equivalent of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
But more importantly, it is the kind of impossible investigation that, conveniently for the US and Israel, they can blame the PA for obstructing. As long as the Palestinians refuse to "cooperate", Israel's hands are supposedly tied.
Abu Akleh's murder has not just revealed the fact that Israeli soldiers kill Palestinians, any Palestinian, with impunity.
It has revealed too that the Biden administration is not troubled by the killing, or by the impunity of the soldier who executed her. All that bothers the White House is the irritant of having to create the impression it cares about the truth and the impression that Israel is doing its best to investigate.
Until the matter can be swept aside, it will be a little harder for each to get on with business as usual: for the US to give Israel full-throated financial, diplomatic and military support; and for Israel to continue its incremental, decades-long work of seizing control of the Palestinians' entire, historic homeland.
But at least for each of them, with Abu Akleh gone, there is one less fearless witness, to expose quite how hollow their moral posturing is.
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