Lynching of Palestinian U.S. citizen exposes Washington hypocrisy

There are no limits to the hypocrisy of U.S. imperialism.

This has been demonstrated once again by the failure of the U.S. government to investigate the lynching of 20-year-old Sayfollah Musallet. A U.S. citizen of Palestinian descent, Musallet was beaten to death on July 17 near Sinjil in the Israeli-occupied West Bank by masked Zionist settlers while he attempted to protect his family’s farm from them. Israel Occupation Forces blocked ambulances from reaching Musallet for three hours; he died on the way to the hospital.

Musallet is the fifth U.S. citizen killed in the West Bank by fascist Israeli settlers or the IOF since October 7, 2023. The others are Palestinian Americans Tawfic Abdel-Jabbar and Mohammed Khdour, World Central Kitchen worker Jacob Flickinger and Turkish American Ayşenur Eygi. The Justice Department has taken no meaningful action in their cases.

Last year Eygi’s father, Mehmet Suat Eygi, asked: “What is the reason for this double standard? We do not know. Is it because Ayşenur had dual citizenship? Or is it that the criminal, the country that is corresponding to this crime, is Israel?” (Oregon Public Broadcasting, Oct. 17, 2024.)

This contrasts sharply with the attention paid to the roughly 40 U.S. citizens among those taken prisoner or killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood. In November 2023, then-U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland made it clear that the U.S. Justice Department would take action on their behalf. Garland announced charges against six Hamas leaders, saying, “We are actively investigating the deaths of the Americans using all the tools available to us.” (NPR, Oct. 13, 2024)

Current Attorney General Pamela Bondi has not taken any action thus far on behalf of Musallet or any of the Palestinian Americans killed in Palestine by Zionists. Democrats and Republicans have demonstrated the same inaction.

The U.S. has a long history of feigning concern for its own citizens when it suits its imperialist interests. In 1983, under U.S. President Ronald Reagan, the Pentagon invaded the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada, citing the need to protect U.S. medical students studying there. The true motivation for the U.S. invasion was to seize control of Grenada, whose government had been anti-imperialist and had a socialist orientation.

Likewise the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panamá, misnamed “Operation Just Cause,” had “to safeguard the lives of Americans” as one of its “objectives.” This was after just one member of the Marine Corps was killed and another wounded. (gao.gov)

“The U.S. invading forces destroyed 20,000 homes and killed hundreds of innocent Panamanians, dumping bodies into mass graves,” according to the North American Congress on Latin America. (Sept. 4, 2024)

Yet nothing is being done to protect Palestinians and solidarity activists who visit Palestine!

This is outrageous, but it should surprise no one in the anti-imperialist movement. The capitalist state carries out wars that serve their class interests. It won’t support even its own citizens when they are killed by forces like the Zionists, who are tools of imperialism.

That’s the class basis of the very glaring hypocrisy we are looking at. Workers World declares: “Palestinian lives matter!”