Israeli settler lynches American teenager in occupied West Bank

An Israeli settler has murdered a 19-year-old from Philadelphia during a raid on Mukhmas, a Palestinian village in the illegally occupied West Bank.

Notably, they murdered Nasrallah Abu Siyam on the first full day of Ramadan. This is the most important month of the Islamic calendar.

Jasper Nathaniel, a journalist with Middle East Monitor, reconstructed the events from eyewitness accounts.

At around 2:35pm on February 19, masked settlers surrounded a Palestinian shepherd grazing livestock near the village and attempted to steal his flock.

He managed to escape and alert other residents. They gathered near the girls’ school and formed a human barrier to prevent the theft of their animals.

One settler, reportedly a security guard at an illegal Israeli settlement, fired his rifle into the air and promised to escort the settlers away. However, more settlers quickly joined them, along with five Israeli soldiers.

Villagers report that the same military unit often appears in the area.

According to Middle East Monitor:

Settlers and soldiers again ordered residents to withdraw, assuring them their livestock would not be touched. But as villagers stepped back, settlers opened the enclosures and began driving the animals away.

Violent thugs in the West Bank

The Israelis then opened fire when a Palestinian man attempted to retrieve their sheep and goats. Settlers and soldiers beat several men, and IDF soldiers fired tear gas and stun grenades into the village. The violent Israeli thugs surrounded another man and beat him unconscious with metal rods.

The Israelis shot at least five other men and drove away over 300 sheep and goats as they fired tear gas and stun grenades into the area.

The attackers shot Nasrallah Abu Siyam, from Philadelphia, in the thigh, which severed his main artery. Settlers then hit him with metal rods.

Another gunman deliberately aimed at anyone attempting to carry the injured to safety.

The settlers were able to walk away with hundreds of animals — all under the watchful eyes of the IDF.

Nasrallah only arrived at the hospital two hours after being shot. An ambulance couldn’t get to the scene due to an Israeli military checkpoint. In the end, men carried him on foot to a waiting ambulance. For four hours, doctors attempted to save him, but he had lost too much blood.

Since October 2023, Israeli settlers and soldiers have murdered at least seven American citizens in the West Bank. Israel has not held any of the perpetrators accountable.

Creating maximum fear

Nathaniel, the journalist who reconstructed the events, compared the conditions in the West Bank to those in which the KKK operated to dispossess black families and enforce segregation.

He told Middle East Monitor:

Lynchings were staged to strike maximum fear into the hearts of entire communities—to enforce racial hierarchy, crush political participation, and drive families from land and livelihoods they had built. The message was unmistakable: you have no protection here, and whatever you have can be taken”.

Nathaniel pointed out that settlers operate:

not with tacit protection from the law, as the KKK did, but with the visible backing of soldiers and a state apparatus.

The West Bank is yet another example of Israeli thugs and their overinflated self-righteousness.

There should be no world in which ambulances cannot reach people with severed arteries because of a system of apartheid. Yet the majority of the West turns away, even when US citizens are killed, because they do not value black and brown lives.

And now we have yet another example of Israel’s lack of moral compass, as they exploit the holy month of Ramadan, when many Palestinians are fasting, to launch even more attacks.

Settlers should not be allowed to settle, Israel should not exist, and the mainstream media should place the same value on black and brown lives as it does on white lives. But as long as the international community continues to allow Israel to get away with committing these atrocious war crimes, nothing is going to change.

Feature image via PBS NewsHour/ YouTube