This week, five American families made a historic visit to Washington, DC, to demand justice for their young loved ones who have been victims of Israeli violence. Prem sat down with the relatives of three of those US citizens in an exclusive interview on Capitol Hill.
Kamel Musallet, whose 20-year-old son, Sayfollah, was killed by Israeli settlers while visiting Palestine from Florida in July, said he hasn’t gotten “any answers” despite US Ambassador Mike Huckabee calling for justice over the “criminal and terrorist act.”
Huckabee’s comments were essentially “the end of it” from the US, Kamel told Prem. “Has there even been a true investigation? I haven’t seen nothing, nothing at all.”
That lack of information has decades-old precedent. In March 2003, an Israeli soldier crushed Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old peace activist from Washington, to death with a bulldozer, as she protected a Palestinian family’s home from demolition.
Her mother, Cindy Corrie, told Prem that even decades later, there has “not been a thorough, credible, and transparent investigation” into the killing of Rachel.
It wasn’t just the truth and accountability they had been after, Cindy explained, but also to ensure that what happened to her daughter would not happen again to someone else. “I really believe that if there had been some actual consequence to Israel in Rachel's case, then it might have helped these other families, and could even have changed things for people in Gaza, in the West Bank, inside Israel, if there had been some consequence,” she said.
Prem also spoke to Zeyad Kadur, whose 16-year-old nephew, Mohammed Ibrahim, was abducted by Israeli soldiers in the middle of the night in February and has remained in Israeli detention since.
“That’s not an evil person, that’s a loving child,” Kadur told Prem of Ibrahim, who hails from Florida. “An innocent minor in prison, [who] has no court dates.”
The delegation’s trip to Capitol Hill came as Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Israel, where he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and inaugurated an Israeli settler-run archaeological site in Jerusalem. As Israel expanded its genocidal ground offensive in Gaza City, Rubio suggested there may not be a diplomatic solution to ending the war.
Watch the full, touching conversation above to hear directly from the families of these victims.
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