Latest news with #FatmahMuhammad
The Guardian
2 days ago
- The Guardian
Relatives mourn Palestinian American beaten to death by Israeli settlers: ‘He made everyone feel loved'
When Fatmah Muhammad thinks about her younger cousin Sayfollah Musallet, affectionately known as Saif, she pictures him behind the counter of his ice-cream shop in Tampa Bay, Florida, carefully decorating her knafeh with the same effort he brought to everything else. She makes the dessert from scratch, and would sometimes ship it from California, where the 43-year-old baker lives, so the family legacy could grow nationwide. Saif would sell the Palestinian dessert in his little Amish-style ice-cream shop that carried international treats from the world over. The inventive 20-year-old would record videos for her, making sure each portion of knafeh was flawless, each layer was positioned exactly right. 'Make sure you get it perfect,' she would tease him from 2,000 miles away. He would go above and beyond, she says. Now, less than a year after opening that shop with dreams of expansion, Saif is dead – beaten to death by Israeli settlers on his family's farm in the occupied West Bank while he was visiting relatives. His death has left a family shattered and a community demanding answers. Zayed Kadur, a close family friend whom Saif called 'uncle', wrestled with all the ways that made his nephew by love special. 'He was just a very rare soul,' he says. 'He made everyone feel important. He made everyone feel loved.' Saif's eldest uncle, Hesam Musallet, said the impact his nephew had on the people closest to him was palpable. 'He would walk into a room and the room would light up,' he says. 'If people were sitting down, he would shake hands with everybody when he walked in, acknowledge them. Old, young – to him, it was all the same.' Customers at the ice-cream shop told Fatmah how if someone came in short on cash, Saif would quietly cover their tab without making them feel embarrassed. 'He really made everyone feel like family,' Fatmah remembers. 'No matter the race, no matter the background, no matter the age. That's just who he was.' Born in Port Charlotte, Florida, Saif was the oldest of four children. His parents had moved the family to Palestine for his elementary and high school years before he returned to the US to live and work. A few years later, the ice-cream shop came to fruition, almost by accident. Saif and his cousins noticed that an ice-cream store near their uncle's coffee shop by the University of South Florida was struggling. When the owner mentioned he might move on from it, Saif called his family immediately. 'That business, when he got it, was a failing business,' Hesam says. 'But he went in there, he turned it around. He had a passion for it … People would just come back for his customer service. He was phenomenal.' For Saif, this summer trip back home to the West Bank village of Baten al-Hawa near Jerusalem was routine – a chance to reconnect with extended family before returning to his shop and the life he was building in Florida ahead of his 21st birthday. His father had swapped places with him, taking his shifts at the ice-cream shop so Saif could hang out with the family. The family Saif was visiting represents generations of connections between Palestine and America. His uncle Hesam, who was born in the United States, explained how his father – Saif's grandfather – had come to the US in the early 1960s. His grandfather first arrived in New York in the early 1900s, spending a few years stateside before returning to the West Bank. 'There's so many people in our town that are American citizens,' Hesam says of their village. 'Most of their children and grandchildren all born here. So they go back and forth, summer vacations there. Everybody goes for summer vacations, weddings. It's just typical.' But on the day he was killed, Saif was at his family's farm in Baten al-Hawa, in Area B of the West Bank – officially under Palestinian administrative control but also under Israeli security control. According to witnesses, settlers had come to the land, chopping down olive trees and burning crops. 'It was a Friday. People will go out and sit around with friends,' Hesam says. 'And that's our land. If there's nobody there, the Israeli settlers, they would just like to come and just put up a tent so they can say it's basically stealing that part of that land.' The confrontation escalated, and Saif was beaten with clubs and bats. His friend Mohammed Nael Hijaz was the first to reach him. 'He was not moving when I got there and he could barely breathe,' Hijaz said. 'There was time to save him.' But ambulances were blocked by Israeli forces for three hours, his family said in a statement. During that time, Saif remained conscious, gasping and vomiting, held in the arms of his younger brother. Another young man, 23-year-old Razek Hussein al-Shalabi, was shot and left to bleed to death in the same attack. When ambulances finally reached them, they too were attacked by settlers. Saif was pronounced dead before reaching the hospital. The Israeli military claimed the altercation developed after stones were thrown at Israelis and said it was looking into the incident. More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the territory since the Hamas attack on Israel of 7 October 2023, and at least 9,000 have been injured. Israeli settlers seeking to empty the West Bank of Palestinians have grown increasingly emboldened since then, displacing dozens of communities through violent intimidation campaigns. The family's devastation is compounded by what they see as indifference from the US government. The US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, posted on social media on Tuesday that Israel must 'aggressively investigate the murder' and that 'there must be accountability for this criminal and terrorist act'. But the family is well aware that the prospect of arresting violent settlers is rare. In his first days in office, the Trump administration rescinded Biden-era sanctions on Israeli settler groups accused of attacking Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Still, the family is calling on the state department to conduct its own investigation into Saif's killing. Saif's death isn't the family's only nightmare: Saif's 15-year-old cousin, an American citizen named Mohammed Zaher Ibrahim, has been in Israel's Megiddo prison for four and a half months. His family says he has been accused of throwing rocks, which they deny. He is believed to have lost nearly 30 pounds and developed a severe skin infection while imprisoned, with no family visits or phone calls allowed. 'We have a saying in Arabic,' Kadur says. 'Two hits on your head will hurt. And our family cannot take another blow.' The office of the family's Florida congressman, Republican Mike Haridopolos, confirmed to the Guardian that it had been contacted about Ibrahim. 'We have shared the information we received from his family with the state department and have been informed that the US embassy in Israel is following standard procedures,' his office said. The Israel Defense Forces did not respond to a query about the charges against Ibrahim, directing questions to the Israel prison service instead. The Guardian has contacted that agency for comment about Ibrahim's current condition. For those who knew Saif, the tragedy lies not just in how he died, but in everything he will never get to do. Nearing his 21st birthday, Saif told his father that he was ready to find a wife and settle down. 'He was not just a number,' Fatmah says. 'He was a friend to everyone, a cousin, a son, a grandson. I just don't want him to be forgotten.'
Al Jazeera
3 days ago
- Al Jazeera
‘The love he gave': Family vows to keep Sayfollah Musallet's memory alive
Sayfollah Musallet was a brother, a son and an ambitious young man who was just at the beginning of his life. That is the message his family has repeated since July 11, when the 20-year-old United States citizen was beaten to death by Israeli settlers in the village of Sinjil in the occupied West Bank. That message, they hope, will prevent the Florida-born Sayfollah from becoming 'just another number' in the growing list of Palestinian Americans whose killings never find justice. That's why his cousin, Fatmah Muhammad, took a moment amid her grief on Wednesday to remember the things she loved about Sayfollah. The two united over a passion for food, and Muhammad, a professional baker, remembers how carefully Sayfollah would serve the delicate knafeh pastry she sold through the ice cream shop he ran in Tampa. 'Just in the way he plated my dessert, he made it look so good,' Muhammad, 43, recalled. 'I even told him he did a better job than me.' 'That really showed the type of person he was,' she added. 'He wanted to do things with excellence.' 'The love he gave all of us' Born and raised in Port Charlotte, a coastal community in south central Florida, Sayfollah – nicknamed Saif – maintained a deep connection to his ancestral roots abroad. He spent a large portion of his teenage years in the occupied West Bank, where his two brothers and sister also lived. There, his parents, who own a home near Sinjil, hoped he could better connect with his culture and language. But after finishing high school, Sayfollah was eager to return to the US to try his hand at entrepreneurship. Last year, he, his father and his cousins opened the dessert shop in Tampa, Florida, playfully named Ice Screamin. But the ice cream shop was just the beginning. Sayfollah's ambition left a deep impression on Muhammad. 'He had his vision to expand the business, to multiply it by many,' she said, her voice at times shaking with grief. 'This at 20, when most kids are playing video games.' 'And the crazy thing is, any goal that he set his mind to, he always did it,' she added. 'He always exceeded everyone's expectations, especially with the love he gave all of us.' Sayfollah's aunt, 58-year-old Samera Musallet, also remembers his dedication to his family. She described Sayfollah as a loving young man who never let his aunts pay for anything in his presence – and who always insisted on bringing dessert when he came for dinner. At the same time, Samera said he was still youthful and fun-loving: He liked to watch comedy movies, shop for clothes and make late-night trips to the WaWa convenience store. One of her fondest memories came when Sayfollah was only 14, and they went together to a baseball game featuring the Kansas City Royals. 'When we got there, he could smell the popcorn and all the hot dogs. He bought everything he could see and said, 'We're going to share!'' she told Al Jazeera. 'After he ate all that junk food, we turned around, and he was sleeping. I woke him up when the game was over, and he goes: 'Who won?'' 'I really want to get married' Another one of his aunts, 52-year-old Katie Salameh, remembers that Sayfollah's mind had turned to marriage in the final months of his young life As the Florida spring gave way to summer, Sayfollah had announced plans to return to the West Bank to see his mother and siblings. But he confided to Salameh that he had another reason for returning. 'The last time I saw him was we had a family wedding, and that was the weekend of Memorial Day [in May],' Salameh told Al Jazeera. 'I asked him: 'Are you so excited to see your siblings and your mom?' He said, 'Oh my god, I'm so excited.' Then he goes, 'I really want to get married. I'm going to look for a bride when I'm there.'' To keep the ice cream shop running smoothly, Sayfollah had arranged a switch with his father: He would return to the West Bank while his father would travel to Tampa to mind the business. But that decision would unwittingly put Sayfollah's father more than 10,000 kilometres away from his son when violent Israeli settlers surrounded him, as witnesses and his family would later recount. Israeli authorities said the attack in Sinjil began with rock-throwing and 'violent clashes … between Palestinians and Israeli civilians', a claim Sayfollah's family and witnesses have rejected. Instead, they said Sayfollah was trying to protect his family's land when he was encircled by a 'mob of settlers' who beat him. Even when an ambulance was called, Sayfollah's family said the settlers blocked the paramedics from reaching his broken body. Sayfollah's younger brother would ultimately help carry his dying brother to emergency responders. The settlers also fatally shot Mohammed al-Shalabi, a 23-year-old Palestinian man, who witnesses said was left bleeding for hours. 'His phone was on, and he wasn't responding,' his mother, Joumana al-Shalabi, told reporters. 'He was missing for six hours. They found him martyred under the tree. They beat him and shot him with bullets.' Palestinians cannot legally possess firearms in the occupied West Bank, but Israeli settlers can. The Israeli government itself has encouraged the settlers to bear arms, including through the distribution of rifles to civilians. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has recorded the killings of at least 964 Palestinians at the hands of Israeli forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank since October 7, 2023. And the violence appears to be on the rise. The OHCHR noted that there was a 13-percent increase in the number of killings during the first six months of 2025, compared with the same period last year. 'Pain I can't even describe' An Al Jazeera analysis also found that Israeli forces and settlers have killed at least nine US citizens since 2022, including veteran reporter Shireen Abu Akleh. None of those deaths have resulted in criminal charges, with Washington typically relying on Israel to conduct its own investigations. So far, US President Donald Trump has not directly addressed Sayfollah's killing. When asked in the Oval Office about the fatal beating, Trump deferred to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. 'We protect all American citizens anywhere in the world, especially if they're unjustly murdered or killed,' Rubio replied on Trump's behalf. 'We're gathering more information.' Rubio also pointed to a statement issued a day earlier from the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. The ambassador called on Israel to 'aggressively investigate' the attack, saying 'there must be accountability for this criminal and terrorist act'. It was a particularly jarring sentiment from Huckabee, who has been a vocal supporter of Israel's illegal settlements in the West Bank and has even denied the very existence of a Palestinian people. Nevertheless, no independent, US-led investigation has been announced. According to Israeli media, three Israeli settlers, including a military reservist, were taken into custody following the deadly attack, but all were subsequently released. It has only been four days since Sayfollah's killing, and his family told Al Jazeera the initial shock has only now begun to dissipate. But in its place has come a flood of grief and anger. Muhammad still struggles to accept that he 'died because he was on his own land'. She sees Sayfollah's death as part of a broader pattern of abuses, whether in the West Bank or in Gaza, where Israel has led a war since 2023. 'I see it on the news all the time with other people in the West Bank. I see it in Gaza – the indiscriminate killing of anybody in their way,' she said. 'But when it happens to you, it's just so hard to even fathom,' she added. 'It's pain I can't even describe.'
The Guardian
3 days ago
- The Guardian
Relatives mourn Palestinian American beaten to death by Israeli settlers: ‘He made everyone feel loved'
When Fatmah Muhammad thinks about her younger cousin Sayfollah Musallet, affectionately known as Saif, she pictures him behind the counter of his ice-cream shop in Tampa Bay, Florida, carefully decorating her knafeh with the same effort he brought to everything else. She makes the dessert from scratch, and would sometimes ship it from California, where the 43-year-old baker lives, so the family legacy could grow nationwide. Saif would sell the Palestinian dessert in his his little Amish-style ice-cream shop that carried international treats from the world over. The inventive 20-year-old would record videos for her, making sure each portion of knafeh was flawless, each layer was positioned exactly right. 'Make sure you get it perfect,' she would tease him from 2,000 miles away. He would go above and beyond, she says. Now, less than a year after opening that shop with dreams of expansion, Saif is dead – beaten to death by Israeli settlers on his family's farm in the occupied West Bank while he was visiting relatives. His death has left a family shattered and a community demanding answers. Zayed Kadur, a close family friend whom Saif called 'uncle', wrestled with all the ways that made his nephew by love special. 'He was just a very rare soul,' he says. 'He made everyone feel important. He made everyone feel loved.' Saif's eldest uncle, Hesam Musallet, said the impact his nephew had on the people closest to him was palpable. 'He would walk into a room and the room would light up,' he says. 'If people were sitting down, he would shake hands with everybody when he walked in, acknowledge them. Old, young – to him, it was all the same.' Customers at the ice-cream shop told Fatmah how if someone came in short on cash, Saif would quietly cover their tab without making them feel embarrassed. 'He really made everyone feel like family,' Fatmah remembers. 'No matter the race, no matter the background, no matter the age. That's just who he was.' Born in Port Charlotte, Florida, Saif was the oldest of four children. His parents had moved the family to Palestine for his elementary and high school years before he returned to the US to live and work. A few years later, the ice-cream shop came to fruition, almost by accident. Saif and his cousins noticed that an ice-cream store near their uncle's coffee shop by the University of South Florida was struggling. When the owner mentioned he might move on from it, Saif called his family immediately. 'That business, when he got it, was a failing business,' Hesam says. 'But he went in there, he turned it around. He had a passion for it … People would just come back for his customer service. He was phenomenal.' For Saif, this summer trip back home to the West Bank village of Baten al-Hawa near Jerusalem was routine – a chance to reconnect with extended family before returning to his shop and the life he was building in Florida ahead of his 21st birthday. His father had swapped places with him, taking his shifts at the ice-cream shop so Saif could hang out with the family. The family Saif was visiting represents generations of connections between Palestine and America. His uncle Hesam, who was born in the United States, explained how his father – Saif's grandfather – had come to the US in the early 1960s. His grandfather first arrived in New York in the early 1900s, spending a few years stateside before returning to the West Bank. 'There's so many people in our town that are American citizens,' Hesam says of their village. 'Most of their children and grandchildren all born here. So they go back and forth, summer vacations there. Everybody goes for summer vacations, weddings. It's just typical.' But on the day he was killed, Saif was at his family's farm in Baten al-Hawa, in Area B of the West Bank – officially under Palestinian administrative control but also under Israeli security control. According to witnesses, settlers had come to the land, chopping down olive trees and burning crops. 'It was a Friday. People will go out and sit around with friends,' Hesam says. 'And that's our land. If there's nobody there, the Israeli settlers, they would just like to come and just put up a tent so they can say it's basically stealing that part of that land.' The confrontation escalated, and Saif was beaten with clubs and bats. His friend Mohammed Nael Hijaz was the first to reach him. 'He was not moving when I got there and he could barely breathe,' Hijaz said. 'There was time to save him.' But ambulances were blocked by Israeli forces for three hours, his family said in a statement. During that time, Saif remained conscious, gasping and vomiting, held in the arms of his younger brother. Another young man, 23-year-old Razek Hussein al-Shalabi, was shot and left to bleed to death in the same attack. When ambulances finally reached them, they too were attacked by settlers. Saif was pronounced dead before reaching the hospital. The Israeli military claimed the altercation developed after stones were thrown at Israelis and said it was looking into the incident. More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the territory since the Hamas attack on Israel of 7 October 2023, and at least 9,000 have been injured. Israeli settlers seeking to empty the West Bank of Palestinians have grown increasingly emboldened since then, displacing dozens of communities through violent intimidation campaigns. The family's devastation is compounded by what they see as indifference from the US government. The US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, posted on social media on Tuesday that Israel must 'aggressively investigate the murder' and that 'there must be accountability for this criminal and terrorist act'. But the family is well aware that the prospect of arresting violent settlers is rare. In his first days in office, the Trump administration rescinded Biden-era sanctions on Israeli settler groups accused of attacking Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Still, the family is calling on the state department to conduct its own investigation into Saif's killing. Saif's death isn't the family's only nightmare: Saif's 15-year-old cousin, an American citizen named Mohammed Zaher Ibrahim, has been in Israel's Megiddo prison for four and a half months. His family says he has been accused of throwing rocks, which they deny. He is believed to have lost nearly 30 pounds and developed a severe skin infection while imprisoned, with no family visits or phone calls allowed. 'We have a saying in Arabic,' Kadur says. 'Two hits on your head will hurt. And our family cannot take another blow.' The office of the family's Florida congressman, Republican Mike Haridopolos, confirmed to the Guardian that it has been contacted about Ibrahim. 'We have shared the information we received from his family with the state department and have been informed that the US embassy in Israel is following standard procedures,' his office said. The Israel Defense Forces did not respond to a query about the charges against Ibrahim, directing questions to the Israel prison service instead. The Guardian has contacted that agency for comment about Ibrahim's current condition. For those who knew Saif, the tragedy lies not just in how he died, but in everything he'll never get to do. Nearing his 21st birthday, Saif told his father that he was ready to find a wife and settle down. 'He was not just a number,' Fatmah says. 'He was a friend to everyone, a cousin, a son, a grandson. I just don't want him to be forgotten.'
