Family of US citizen beaten to death by Israeli settlers calls on Trump administration to prosecute killers
The 20-year-old from Tampa was visiting his family in an area near Ramallah, and died last week trying to protect their farm from invaders, they said at an emotional press conference in Florida on Monday afternoon.
His uncle Hasem Musallet paid tribute to the 'loving, respectful' boy who loved baseball and had just opened an ice-cream business in Tampa with several of his cousins. He decried what the family saw as indifference from the US government over the murder of one of its citizens.
'Somebody needs to be held accountable,' he said.
'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.'
Musallet was beaten with clubs and bats, and died in the same attack that killed a 23-year-old Palestinian man. Razek Hussein al-Shalabi was shot and left to bleed to death, the Palestinian health ministry said.
Hasem Musallet said the settlers prevented ambulances from reaching the injured men, and that a brother watched Sayfollah take his last breath.
Hiba Rahim, deputy executive director of the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair), said Musallet's family wanted Donald Trump, and the departments of justice and state, to prosecute his killers under US law.
She also condemned a statement from the state department that said it had no comment on Musallet's death 'out of respect for the privacy of the family and loved ones during this difficult time'.
Rahim said: 'We're not asking, and his family is not asking for silence. We're asking for accountability.
'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.
'Where is the outrage from our government? Where is the accountability?'
Hasem Musallet broke down in tears as he remembered his nephew as 'just a very rare soul' who would help anybody in need. He said Musallet was on a trip with family members from Florida, and enjoying time in the mountains and barbecuing with friends in the West Bank in the days before his death.
'He was very loving, caring. Just like any other 20-year-old he would go out with his friends after work, he'd watch comedy, he'd go out driving, he'd go to the beach. He would come to my house always, and come to his grandmother and give her a hug and kiss her hand,' Hasem said.
Rahim dismissed an Israel Defense Forces account of Musallet's killing suggesting there was an altercation between groups of settlers and Palestinians.
'There were no clashes. These are the same lies we hear every time a guilty party is guilty of monstrous activity like what we saw with Sayfollah's death,' she said.
'This is not an isolated tragedy. There's a devastating pattern of Americans being killed in Israel, brutalized and murdered with impunity by Israeli forces and settlers.'
Musallet's death is part of a growing wave of violence by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Israeli forces and settlers have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in the territory and injured at least 9,000 since the Hamas attacks on Israel in October 2023.
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