The Trump administration is calling on Israel to probe the killing of Sayfollah Musallet, a 20-year-old, Florida-born Palestinian American citizen who was beaten to death by settlers in the illegally occupied West Bank while visiting family.
Musallet is the 7th American citizen to be killed by Israeli settlers or forces since October 7, 2023.
“There must be accountability for this criminal and terrorist act,” tweeted the U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.
These sentiments were echoed by lawmakers like Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who also called for an Israeli probe.
“The Israeli government must thoroughly investigate this killing and hold any and all settlers responsible for the brutal death of Mr Musallet accountable to the fullest extent of the law,” said Jeffries in a statement.
According to relatives, Musallet was killed while trying to protect his family’s farm from Israeli settlers. The settlers reportedly blocked an ambulance from reaching him for three hours. 23-year-old Razek Hussein al-Shalabi was also killed by the settlers. According to the Palestinian health ministry, al-Shalabi was shot and left to bleed to death.
The killings are just the latest part of an ongoing wave of settler violence that has intensified since October 7.
Just weeks ago, four Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the village of Kufr Malek in the Ramallah area.
“In the evening, settlers began to arrive at the entrance of Kufr Malek in more than 15 vehicles, and others arrived on foot,” a Kufr Malek resident told Mondoweiss at the time. “There were more than 100 settlers, and they began to break into front yards and set fire to houses and cars while throwing rocks at windows, so residents began to come out to confront them, but the Israeli army was close behind.”
In a statement, the Israeli military claimed it was probing the killings, but mentioned that the violence began when the Palestinians began throwing rocks.
Many have pointed out that an Israeli investigation into Musallet’s death is unlikely to yield results, as Israel routinely refrains from holding settlers and soldiers accountable.
“Israel’s government cannot be trusted to investigate the extremist settlers it enables at every turn. Saif was a US citizen,” said the IMEU Policy Project in a statement, referring to Musallet by his nickname. “Our government must conduct its own independent, thorough, and transparent investigation as it would if an American were killed in any other country.”
Some lawmakers have advocated for such a step.
“The State Department must lead an immediate investigation and root out settler violence once and for all,” tweeted Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA). “There must be accountability.”
“As our country’s self-proclaimed peacemaker, Donald Trump has a moral and constitutional obligation to direct the State Department to conduct a thorough investigation and, more importantly, to demand full justice and accountability for those responsible for this heinous act,” said Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) in a statement. “Our country must ensure the protection and safety of Americans abroad.”
Last September, 26-year-old Aysenur Eygi was shot and killed by Israeli forces during a protest in the northern occupied West Bank. At the time, the Biden administration said it had reached out to the Israeli government and asked for an investigation.
After a quick inquiry, Israel declared that Eygi was likely shot by an Israeli soldier, but that it was unintentional. However, video and witness testimony contradict Israel’s assessment.
In a December 2024 Op-Ed, Eygi’s widowed husband, Hamid Ali, compared the case to other Americans killed by Israel.
“If the U.S. had held Israel accountable for the killing of other Americans like Rachel Corrie or Shireen Abu Akleh, perhaps Israeli soldiers would not feel so emboldened to kill Americans, and other civilians, today,” Ali wrote.
At a Florida press conference on Monday afternoon, members of Musallet’s family called on the Trump administration to prosecute his killers.
“Somebody needs to be held accountable,” said his uncle, Hasem Musallet. “He wanted to be a businessman ever since he was young. He was planning on expanding, finding a wife, having a family. That was his dream but it was cut short at 20 years old, cut short unjustly.”
“If Sayfollah was killed by anyone else or in another country, there would already be investigations, there would already be attempts for arrest, and calls for arrest and outrage in Washington,” Hiba Rahim, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Florida chapter told reporters. “Where is the outrage from our government? Where is the accountability?”
Israel gets to kill American citizens without any consequences. 34 people work killed on the USS Liberty in 1967 without any legal action. Many more have been murdered since. No other US “Ally” gets to kill Americans without facing a reprimand. Clearly, this US/Israel relationship is a special one in which the tail wags the dog.
One of the most outrageous aspects of these killings is the way the US “asks” for proper investigations – the assumption being that, under what passes for normal circumstances in the West Bank, there will be none. The West Bank is completely lawless if you’re a Palestinian: no law to stop you from being wronged, no law to help you obtain justice. If you’re a settler, any law prohibiting murder, theft or abuse can be ignored with impunity.
The USA maintains its own FBI office in the Zionist state and could certainly carry out its own investigation of the homicide.
Aparthied Part 1
Re: The term “Apartheid” originated in South Africa. … That’s obviously not the situation in Israel.
That’s just an English term coined during the British Colonial-era in 1929. The British East India Company officially designated walled sections of Madras, India as “White Town” and “Black Town.” In the nineteenth century, European imperial powers laid out separate districts for Europeans and “natives” in hundreds of cities in Africa, South Asia, Australia, and the Americas.
Extreme racial segregation and internecine slaughter of their neighbors were the raison d’etre of the infamous Maccabees. Orthodox Judaism and the related Judeo-Christian Zionist cults of “Christendom” practiced racial segregation, or aparthied, long before the Crown Colony of Britain formed the Union of South Africa in 1910. In Jewish mythology the sages even refused to listen to a “Voice from Heaven”. They settled disputes by murdering their co-religionists, and adopted their own laws that prohibited intermarriage with the other inhabitants, consuming their food and drink, and stepping so much as one foot inside their homes. The Talmud says those laws were never annulled and were just as difficult for Israel as the day they created the idolatrous golden calf and the Levites went through the camp and killing others. Please note:
* פרושים (perushim): This term refers to the Pharisees, meaning “set apart” or “separated ones.” פְּרִישַׁיָּא (pərīšayyā): is the Aramaic equivalent of the Hebrew “parush” and “perushim”, also meaning “set apart” or “separated”.
* The 18 Decrees of Beit Shammai and Did Beit Shamai Murder Some of the Students of Hillel? Swords in the House of Learning and Acts 10:28, “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean.”
So, the Judeans were led by a cult faction whose name reflected the fact they “set themselves apart” and “separated” themselves from contact with others they considered impure and unclean. Their laws prohibited them from entering unclean neighborhoods and required any Gentile be put to death for entering the Temple.
Aparthied Part 2
Re: The term “Apartheid” originated in South Africa. … That’s obviously not the situation in Israel.
It is a mistaken view to assume that apartheid or genocide never existed until those terms were coined and customary norms were finally codified. See for example: Germany officially recognises colonial-era Namibia genocide 28 May 2021 | BBC
Historians, theologians, archeologists, genealogists, and scientists have come to agree that Judeans and Palestinians are descended from the Levantine Cannanites..Their Jewish, Christian, and Muslim mythology reflect cultural differences, not actual biological ones. They were first created and accepted much later than has been previously supposed and are divorced from reality.
* The ancient Pharisees esoteric religious views were not acceptable to modern secular or atheist Jews. So they were substituted with secular beliefs and practices, like 19th century “scientific racial theories” “eugenics”, and “ethnic colonial segregation”. Those were incorporated in “Zionism”, “B’nai B’rith”, “Maccabean societies and organizations”, and modern Hebrew vernacular, e.g. “Hafrada”. Those are all official state apartheid policies that are manifested in myriad laws and regulations against Palestinians both inside Israel and the occupied territory of the State of Palestine.
*An AI program, named “Enoch”, analyzed the handwriting and combined it with radiocarbon dating data to re-date 135 Judean scroll fragments. The study, published in PLOS One, indicates that some scrolls, thought be written in the Herodian era, were actually the same age as the earlier Hasmonean-era of the Maccabees. — Dating ancient manuscripts using radiocarbon and AI-based writing style analysis | PLOS One
* Jonatan Adler notes that Judean laws of purity created a market for stone vessels, but they were never adopted in Samaria or the non-Judean parts of Galilee. See “Archaeologists Find a Stone Quarry from the Time of Jesus in Nazareth” on YouTube
* In particular, Adler traces archaeological imprints of the biblical laws addressing dietary prohibitions, ritual purity, graven images, tefillin and mezuzot, and Sabbath observance. In every instance, the trail of archaeological evidence ends in the mid-second century BCE—moving the origins of Judaism several centuries later than even the most critical scholars previously thought. – The Origins of Judaism – Biblical Archaeology Society