The far-right One America News Network aired a segment Wednesday on last week’s killing of Palestinian-American Saif Musallet by Israeli settlers in the West Bank, showing a sign of a change in right-wing public opinion in the US surrounding Israel’s actions against Palestinians.
The network’s decision to focus on a phenomenon that was once largely ignored in conservative circles highlighted the shift among a camp of MAGA Republicans that has gradually become more critical of Israel.
The anchor for the segment was former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, who was US President Donald Trump’s original pick for attorney general. Gaetz withdrew his nomination amid mounting scandals.
In the segment, Gaetz notably referred to the West Bank by its biblical name of Judea and Samaria while excoriating the conduct of Israeli settlers who live there.
“The truth is, this isn’t an isolated tragedy. It’s part of a pattern of Israeli settler attacks on Palestinian communities that include the torching of homes, farms, and lives, all while protected by Israeli forces who are funded by US tax dollars,” Gaetz said.
“That’s not even the most troubling part. Israel rarely holds these killers accountable,” he said. “There have been eight unsolved killings of American citizens just since 2022.”
Earlier this week, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, a devout evangelical Christian and longtime supporter of Israel’s settlement enterprise, characterized Musallet’s killing as an act of terrorism and demanded an Israeli investigation. It appeared to be the first time Huckabee had weighed in on the phenomenon of settler violence.
“There must be accountability for this criminal and terrorist act. Saif was just 20 yrs old,” Huckabee wrote in a post on X.
Musallet, a resident of Tampa, Florida, who was visiting family in the West Bank for the summer, was found beaten to death. The body of his friend Mohammed al-Shalabi was found hours later nearby with a gunshot wound and signs of torture, according to his family.
While two Israeli minors were arrested following the attack, neither of them is a murder suspect, and they were subsequently released to house arrest.
Saif’s father, Kamel Musallet, told The Times of Israel this week that his son was “just a kid who wanted to live.”
Before Huckabee’s call for an investigation into the killing, Musallet’s family issued a statement demanding that the “US State Department lead an immediate investigation and hold the Israeli settlers who killed Saif accountable for their crimes. We demand justice.”
Police are investigating the incident alongside the Shin Bet and Military Police, but they do not have access to the bodies of the two Palestinians. The pair have been buried by their families, who have indicated that they don’t trust Israeli authorities.
Law enforcement officials are trying to coordinate with the PA in order to probe the matter, but have not yet received findings from Ramallah “that attest to the two having died a violent death,” said a spokesperson.
Meanwhile, Palestinian media outlets reported that settlers arrived on Thursday night at the village of Al-Malih, a Bedouin community in the northern Jordan Valley, killing 117 heads of livestock belonging to the residents and stealing an additional 400.
The police have yet to issue a response to the report, and the army did not respond to a request for comment.
Veterinarians were called in to treat a handful of sheep that had survived the knife and gun attack on the herd; some of the animals were shaking uncontrollably and in apparent shock.
Rights groups have denounced a rise in violence committed by settlers in the West Bank, which Israel has controlled since it captured the area from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War. The United Nations has said that such attacks against Palestinians are taking place in a climate of “impunity.”
Violence in the West Bank has surged since the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, which sparked the war in Gaza.
Since then, Israeli forces have arrested some 6,000 wanted Palestinians across the territory, including more than 2,350 affiliated with Hamas.
According to the Palestinian Authority health ministry, more than 950 West Bank Palestinians have been killed in that time. The IDF says the vast majority of them were gunmen killed in exchanges of fire, rioters who clashed with troops, or terrorists carrying out attacks.
During the same period, 52 people, including Israeli security personnel, have been killed in terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank. Another eight members of the security forces were killed in clashes with terror operatives in the West Bank.
Also Friday, Palestinians clashed with IDF forces in the West Bank village of Raba during a march protesting a newly established illegal settlement outpost.
“We came to this area to express our protest and say: ‘This land is ours, not yours,'” Ghassan Bazour, head of Raba’s village council, told AFP.
After conducting the Muslim Friday prayer at the base of the hill, people continued toward the outpost until IDF soldiers arrived on the scene and dispersed the crowd with tear gas, according to AFP.
The army did not respond to an AFP request for comment on Friday’s events in Raba.
The Palestinian Red Crescent reported that its teams had provided support to 13 people suffering from tear gas inhalation.
“There is now a settler outpost here (which) will continue to devour the land and empty these areas,” Muayad Shaaban, head of the Palestinian Authority’s Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, told AFP.
Although it was dispersed by the army, Shaaban was enthusiastic about Friday’s march because, he said, violence in recent years has made all protests against settlers dangerous for Palestinians.
“This model of resistance must be applied throughout the West Bank. I call for massive marches… to stop this aggression, this terrorism,” he said.
Separately, police reopened an investigation this week into a settler attack on an Israeli peace activist in the West Bank that took place in May after a report in the Haaretz daily revealed that the probe had been closed due to what officers claimed was their inability to identify suspects, even though the victim provided significant evidence to law enforcement, including the name of one of the assailants.
In the incident, settlers allegedly attacked a group of Palestinians from Mughayyir al-Deir along with a group of Israeli peace activists who were accompanying them. During the attack, the settlers opened fire on the Palestinians and stole cameras, a cellphone, a wallet, a laptop, and other items from activist Avishay Mohar.
Mohar told Haaretz that he filed a police complaint at the Binyamin police station two days after the attack. The complaint included medical documents, a picture of several of the attackers, and the name of one of the assailants.
The computer’s GPS tracker was active in the weeks since the attack, and the victim’s lawyer updated police regarding its location, which moved among a pair of illegal outposts.
Mohar also offered police access to his car to scan it for fingerprints, as the attackers had been inside.
Despite all of this evidence, police decided to close the investigation on the grounds that they had been unable to identify the perpetrators.
The case appeared to highlight the apparent lack of will among law enforcement to probe incidents of settler violence, which go almost entirely unchecked. Ninety-four percent of all probes into settler violence between 2005 and 2024 ended without an indictment even being filed, according to the Yesh Din rights group.
The head of the police’s West Bank division is currently under investigation for intentionally not prosecuting cases of settler violence in order to curry favor with far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, whose office oversees the police. While the commander was initially removed from his post, the police commissioner last month ordered that he be allowed to return to work.
Following Haaretz’s report on the closed investigation, police informed the publication that they had decided to reopen the case in order to locate the suspects and bring them to justice.