Human rights defenders this week accused US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee – who recently endorsed Israel conquering much of the Middle East – of inciting deadly violence after Israeli colonists in the illegally occupied West Bank of Palestine fatally shot a Palestinian-American teenager who was trying to stop settlers from stealing livestock.
Nasrallah Abu Siyam, 19, was shot dead last Wednesday by a masked Israeli settler armed with an M-16 rifle in the village of Mukhmas, where the 19-year-old Philadelphia native had been living and helping his father, Mohammed Abu Siyam, tend the family’s livestock and cultivate their olive trees.
According to eyewitness accounts as reported by independent New York journalist and Palestine specialist Jasper Diamond Nathaniel:
At least four other local Palestinians were wounded by settler gunfire during the invasion of the village, including another young man whose foot may be amputated. Some were shot while carrying the wounded to safety. Many others were severely beaten with metal rods. Israeli soldiers, who accompanied the settlers into the village, responded to the shooting rampage by firing stun grenades and tear gas into the residential area, burning an elderly man. When it was over, settlers walked off with more than 300 of the village’s sheep and goats under the military’s watch. It was the first full day of Ramadan. As of this writing, no one has been arrested.
ICYMI, I spoke to eight eyewitnesses and reconstructed the killing of an American teenager in the West Bank last week. Full story is in the link in the quote tweet. https://t.co/OAyh9ulsFZ pic.twitter.com/1zgaLCbtub
— jasper nathaniel (@infinite_jaz) February 23, 2026
While human rights groups and some Democratic US lawmakers have called for a full investigation into Abu Siyam’s killing, Huckabee has so far been silent. Last July, Huckabee responded to Israeli settlers’ killing of 23-year-old Palestinian-American Sayfollah Musallet, who was beaten to death while visiting relatives in the West Bank, as “a criminal and terrorist act” that Israeli authorities should “aggressively investigate.” As is usually the case when Israeli settlers kill Palestinians, no one has been charged for killing Musallet.
Last Friday, Huckabee – who during his ill-fated 2008 presidential campaign denied the very existence of the Palestinian people – sat for an interview with conservative commentator Tucker Carlson during which he backed the realization of a so-called “Greater Israel” stretching from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates in Iraq, saying that “it would be fine” if Israel “took it all,” as many Jews and Evangelical Christians believe their common deity figure “God” intended them to do.
Numerous observers said the envoy’s remarks inherently endorsed violence and forced displacement akin to what’s happening to Palestinians living under occupation, colonization, ethnic cleansing, apartheid – and in the case of Gaza, genocide.
“Shortly after the lynching murder of an American citizen, footage aired of the US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee justifying the very structure of occupation, and rhetoric of ethnic cleansing, that led to the murder and continuing attacks on the occupied West Bank,” the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) said in a statement Monday.
ADC said Huckabee’s endorsement of Greater Israel “signals permission and the green light for Israeli forces to use violence and empower settlers for further annexation and dispossession.”
The group continued:
The United States continues to fund, shield, and excuse Israeli violence, forced displacement, and mass atrocity across Palestine. Now the US ambassador to Israel is engaging in empowering and allowing for actions that lead to the targeted lynching and killing of US citizens. At the same time, Congress continues to put Israel first by sending American taxpayer dollars to Israel.
Israeli settlers and soldiers have killed at least a dozen Americans since 2022. Time and again, our government refuses to defend the rights, dignity, and safety of its own citizens simply to appease the demands of a foreign government and give impunity to Israel.
“The impunity cannot continue,” ADC added.
Israeli leaders including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – a fugitive from the International Criminal Court wanted for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza – have publicly declared their support for Greater Israel, sparking widespread condemnation throughout the Arab world and beyond.
