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palestinian rights
The All Too Ordinary Death of Nasrallah Abu Siyam
What happened to Nasrallah was not unusual; in fact, it was entirely predictable. It reflects a pattern Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank have been forced to live with for decades.
Feb 26, 2026
I’ve grown accustomed to the violence in Palestine; to seeing my brothers and sisters stripped from their homes and taken away from life itself. That violence has always felt close. And yet, with Nasrallah Abu Siyam, it became unmistakable.
Not only was he my age, he was born just miles from my hometown. An American citizen. Living an ordinary life. Dreaming of ordinary things. And still, he was shot and killed by Israeli settlers, simply for helping guard his fam ily’s livestock in the occupied West Bank.
In nearly every way, his life mirrored mine. The only difference was where he stood. And that difference, it seems, was enough.
What happened to Nasrallah was not unusual; in fact, it was entirely predictable. It reflects a pattern Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank have been forced to live with for decades—one in which violence is routine, accountability is absent, and loss is absorbed without consequence.
Nasrallah Abu Siyam lived an ordinary life. He should have been afforded the ordinary right to keep it.
That pattern is clearest in how these moments of violence unfold. In Mukhmas, the village where Nasrallah was killed, a resident described what happened plainly:
“When the settlers saw the army, they were encouraged and started shooting live bullets.”
In other words, the presence of the occupying forces did not interrupt the violence; it emboldened it. This is a reality Palestinians have long understood— that the forces ostensibly tasked with “maintaining order” often function instead as a mechanism for enabling and inflicting violence.
Time and time again, Palestinians are left to bury the result.The scale of that violence is not abstract, nor is it disputed.
Between October 2023 and October 2025 alone, more than 1,100 Palestinians were killed in the occupied West Bank by Israeli forces and settlers—229 of them children. That means more than 1 in 5 of those killed were children. In that same span of time, over 10,900 Palestinians were wounded and nearly 21,000 were detained.
And yet, none of this devastation takes place on a battlefield. There is no armed group to point to, no battle to cite. What remains is an occupied territory where civilian death, injury, and detention occur as a matter of policy and practice—not as rare or exceptional events.
By this point, it may sound like a broken record—not just from me, but from years of warnings repeating what the international community has recorded and then promptly ignored. But repetition becomes inevitable when impunity is preserved at every level.
Impunity—that, I must say—does not exist in a vacuum. It is sustained through material support, political protection, and deliberate silence. All of which the United States is deeply embedded in: in the weapons supplied, in the cover extended, and in what goes unsaid. When Americans like Nasrallah Abu Siyam—at least six of them in the past two years—are killed under an occupation supported by US authority, and little is said and less is done, that silence becomes a statement in itself.
Put simply, it is a statement of how Palestinian life—American or not—is weighed, and how little that weight has meant in the political world.
No power should have the authority to dictate which lives are expendable—and which are not. Nasrallah Abu Siyam lived an ordinary life. He should have been afforded the ordinary right to keep it. But again, that failure is not abstract. It has a name, a place, and a date.
This piece was originally published on Substack.
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Wall of Carnage: Gazans, Olive Trees, and Mosques
Pro-Israel advocates complain that younger people are being exposed to too many violent images of the Gaza genocide, but in fact the Western press underreports the death and destruction caused by the war.
Feb 25, 2026
In the small town of Berkeley Springs, West Virginia where I live, during Israel’s destruction of the Gaza Strip, a Democratic Party activist hung a flag of the state of Israel across the way from the only grocery town in town—so that almost every member of the community would see it.
As if to say—“we stand with the genocide.”
But it’s not just small town Democrats who are clueless.
Take DC Democrats, like former Obama speechwriter Sarah Hurwitz.
Was any of this destruction of mosques and olive trees reported in the mainstream news in the United States? Not that we could find. (If you find it, we’d like to know.)
Speaking before the Jewish Federations of North America annual meeting in Washington, DC in November 2025, Hurwitz waved her rhetorical Israeli flag in a speech that went viral on the internet, but pretty much stayed out of the mainstream media.
“So you have TikTok just smashing our young people’s brains all day long with video of carnage in Gaza,” Hurwitz said. “And this is why so many of us can’t have a sane conversation with younger Jews because anything that we try to say to them, they are hearing it through this wall of carnage. So I want to give data and information and facts and arguments and they are just seeing in their minds carnage and I sound obscene.”
Yes you do, Sarah. You sound obscene. But since this is a TikTok free zone, let’s go to the “data and information and facts” you say you want.
On January 29, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz ran an article under the headline "IDF Accepts Gaza Health Ministry Death Toll of Over 71,000 Palestinians Killed During the War."
“The Ministry’s tally includes only those killed directly by Israeli military fire in its tracking, not people who died of starvation or from diseases exacerbated by the war,” the paper reported.
This after years of Israeli officials saying the Hamas figures were unreliable, untrustworthy, and unbelievable.
And former British Labor Party leader and current Independent Member of Parliament Jeremy Corbyn pointed out the obvious Sarah—“There’s only one reason the IDF accepts this figure—they know the real number is much, much higher. Palestinians tried to tell the world. Shame on all those who discredited them. By hiding the genocide, you fueled the genocide.”
As we have pointed out repeatedly over the last year in the Capitol Hill Citizen, Israel has killed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza since October 7, not the tens of thousands as now both Hamas and the IDF say. (See for example, "The Vast Gaza Death Undercount: Hamas Says 66,000, It’s More Like 600,000" by Ralph Nader, November/December 2025 Capitol Hill Citizen, page 30.)
As we go to press, Zeteo is publishing a three-part investigation by California surgeon Dr. Feroze Sidhwa titled "The Truth About Gaza’s Dead."
On direct deaths from violence, Sidhwa writes that “the number is likely between 120,000 and 215,000, representing 1 out of every 10 to 18 people in Gaza, but may be significantly higher. It is extremely unlikely that fewer than 120,000 Palestinians have been killed, and it is unlikely that more than 437,000 have been killed directly by US-Israeli military violence.”
Sidhwa is working on a final paper that looks at indirect deaths—deaths from unsanitary conditions, disease, lack of medical facilities, malnutrition, starvation, and exposure to the elements. Epidemiologists often use a ratio of 4 indirect deaths for every 1 direct death in such conflicts, which would place the toll much higher than current reported figures—somewhere in the neighborhood of the more than 600,000 Nader has estimated.
Nor will you see reporting on the fact that Israel has destroyed the vast majority of mosques and olive trees in Gaza.
According to Fayyad Fayyad, the head of the Palestinian Olive Council, Gaza’s olive sector is “almost completely destroyed.”
“There is no olive season this year,” Fayyad told Drop Site News. “We estimate that nearly 1 million of Gaza’s 1.1 million olive trees have been destroyed.”
In 2022, Gaza produced about 50,000 tons of olives. This year, Fayyad said, the total will be well under a thousand.
“The destruction is deliberate,” Fayyad told Drop Site. “Israel aims to eliminate the agricultural sector, including olives. What remains are scattered trees—not groves, not production.”
“The olive trees have become firewood now,” 75-year-old farmer Hajj Suleiman AbdelNabi told Drop Site. “I feel pain with every cut—not just for the loss, but because these trees are life itself. For Palestinians, they are a symbol of steadfastness. When they die, it feels like another disaster.”
According to the Gaza Ministry of Endowments, Israel has also destroyed more than 800 mosques in Gaza—or 79% of the mosques in the Gaza Strip—and completely demolished three churches. More than 150 mosques have been partially damaged.
“The targeting of mosques and places of worship by the occupation forces is a clear violation of all sanctities, international law, and human rights law,” the ministry said. The Israeli army has also targeted 32 of Gaza’s 60 cemeteries, completely destroying 14 and partially damaging 18, the ministry said.
Was any of this destruction of mosques and olive trees reported in the mainstream news in the United States? Not that we could find. (If you find it, we’d like to know.)
And what happens when a Westerner tries to bring this to light?
Let’s take the case of Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur for Palestine.
Last year, the Trump administration placed Albanese on the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) list—usually reserved for terrorists and money launderers—six days after the release of her report that documents US corporate support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
It was this report—fingering as it does the powerful American corporations and institutions—including Palantir Technologies, Lockheed Martin, Alphabet Inc., Amazon, International Business Machines Corporation, Caterpillar, Microsoft Corporation, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—that led to the Trump administration sanctioning Albanese.
“Far too many corporate entities have profited from Israel’s economy of illegal occupation, apartheid, and now, genocide,” Albanese wrote in the report. “The complicity exposed by this report is just the tip of the iceberg—ending it will not happen without holding the private sector accountable, including its executives. International law recognizes varying degrees of responsibility—each requiring scrutiny and accountability, particularly in this case, where a people’s self-determination and very existence are at stake. This is a necessary step to end the genocide and dismantle the global system that has allowed it.”
The independent journalist Chris Hedges reports that as a result of the sanctions, Francesca’s assets in the US have been frozen, including her bank account and her US apartment.
“The sanctions cut her off from the international banking system, including blocking her use of credit cards,” Hedges writes. “Her private medical insurance refuses to reimburse her medical expenses. Hotel rooms booked under her name have been cancelled. She can only operate using cash or by borrowing a bank card.”
“Institutions, including US universities, human rights groups, professors, and NGOs, that once cooperated with Francesca, have severed ties, fearful of penalties established for any US citizen who collaborates with her. She and her family receive frequent death threats. Israel and the US have mounted a campaign to get her removed from her UN post.”
“Francesca is proof that when you stand steadfastly with the oppressed, you will be treated like the oppressed.”
“She is unsure if her book—When the World Sleeps: Stories, Words, and Wounds of Palestine—which has been translated into English and is expected to be released in April, will be distributed in the US.”
Sarah Hurwitz’s obscene narrative?
Or Francesca Albanese’s justice narrative?
You choose, America.
This article ran in the February/March 2026 print edition of the Capitol Hill Citizen. To get a copy of the print newspaper, go to capitolhillcitizen.com)
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Remembering What Rev. Jesse Jackson Did for Palestinian Rights
Jackson was the first American political leader to recognize and incorporate into his movement my community of Arab Americans and our domestic and foreign policy concerns.
Feb 23, 2026
Rev. Jesse Jackson, who passed away last week, was a larger-than-life figure who made enormous and consequential contributions to American life. He registered millions of voters laying the groundwork for a substantial increase in the number of Black elected officials across the country. He also succeeded in pressing major corporations to increase economic opportunities for Black Americans thereby significantly increasing the Black middle class.
As part of the younger generation of Black leaders who had developed a global consciousness, his agenda moved beyond civil rights to make support for movements for social justice and liberation part of the mainstream of American politics. Because of this, he was the first American political leader to recognize and incorporate into his movement my community of Arab Americans and our domestic and foreign policy concerns.
I first began working with Rev. Jesse Jackson in the late 1970s. His staff approached me to discuss his plans for a visit to Palestine-Israel to see for himself the situation in the occupied lands. The injustices he witnessed left an indelible impression, leaving him committed to addressing the centrality of Palestinian rights to Middle East peace.
In 1979, when US Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young was removed from his post for speaking with the Palestine Liberation Organization’s United Nations representative, many Black leaders, Reverend Jackson included, were outraged. It wasn’t just that Andy Young had been a colleague in the civil rights movement. Jackson could not accept that the US had committed itself to a “no talk” policy with the Palestinian leaders.
In all the years I worked with Rev. Jackson, I witnessed not only his commitment to justice and courage in the face of challenges, but also the extent to which he recognized that his personal power could make a difference on the world stage.
He resolved to visit Beirut to meet directly with PLO chief Yasser Arafat and demonstrate that “a no talk policy is no policy at all.” Before leaving, he asked to address my Palestine Human Rights Campaign convention, taking place at that time. His presence and his remarks were electrifying and drew national and international media coverage.
In 1983 Rev. Jackson approached me at a dinner and asked me to leave what I was doing and join his campaign for president. When I replied, “I’ve been organizing my community of Arab Americans for the last four years and I’m not sure I can leave what I’m doing,” he said, “You will do more for your community in the next four months than you’ve done in the last four years.” He was right.
Up until that point, Arab Americans had never been welcomed in American politics as an ethnic constituency, mainly because of our support for Palestinian human rights. Candidates had rejected our contributions and endorsements. No campaign had ever included an Arab American committee. And no candidate had raised the issues about which our community cared deeply.
Rev. Jackson changed all that, and the response from Arab Americans was overwhelming. In fact, we were so moved by that 1984 campaign, that we launched the Arab American Institute to focus on lessons we’d learned: increasing voter registration, encouraging candidate engagement, and the importance of bringing our concerns into the electoral arena.
Because Rev. Jackson had made it possible to speak about Palestine, we built coalitions around the issue during the 1988 presidential campaign. We elected a record number of delegates across the country, and built coalitions with Black, Latino, progressive Jewish delegates, and others. We passed resolutions supporting Palestinian rights in 10 state Democratic conventions. And at the national convention in Atlanta, we’d earned enough delegates to call for a minority plank on Palestinian rights.
There had never been a discussion about Palestine at a Democratic convention. In negotiations with the presumptive winner Michael Dukakis’s campaign, they were adamant that the issue would not be raised. In fact, Madeleine Albright, representing the Dukakis people, said if the “P word” was even mentioned at the convention, “all hell would break loose.” I told them not to play “chicken little” with us and insisted that the issue be discussed. Rev. Jackson asked me to present our plank from the podium of the convention and I did. It was a heady experience to be able to address the National Convention calling for “mutual recognition, territorial compromise, and self-determination for both Israelis and Palestinians.” My speech was preceded by a floor demonstration of more than 1000 delegates carrying signs calling for Israeli-Palestinian peace and a two-state solution and waving Palestinian flags. It was the first (and unfortunately, the last) time that that issue was raised at a party convention.
The backlash was intense. While Rev. Jackson had secured a position for me on the Democratic National Committee, party leaders told me I should withdraw because my presence would make me a target for Republicans and for some Jewish Democrats, who would use an Arab American in a DNC leadership role to attack Dukakis. Incoming Party Chair Ron Brown thought it best that I withdraw but promised to make it up to us. And he did. He became the first party chair to host Arab Americans at party headquarters, to meet with Arab American Democrats around the country, and to address our national conventions. A few years into his term, he appointed me to fill a vacancy on the DNC where I’ve been ever since.
In 1994 in the months after Oslo Accords signing, Rev. Jackson accepted an invitation to be keynote speaker at an international peace conference the Palestinians were convening in Jerusalem. Once there, the Israelis said that we could not meet in Jerusalem or hold a political meeting with Palestinians. Rev. Jackson was determined to go forward. We spoke with Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Perez urging them to allow the event to go forward. Even though they were unrelenting, Jackson convened the meeting and then announced that we’d march from the hotel to the Orient House, the Jerusalem headquarters of the Palestinians. The Israeli military surrounded the hotel and told us we could not leave.
True to form, Rev. Jackson announced that we’d march anyway and so we left the hotel walking through the lines of Israeli soldiers. To be honest, I was frightened, but what happened surprised us. Because of the power of his personality and his work, Jackson’s presence was formidable on the world stage. Once the Israelis soldiers saw him leading this peaceful march right up to their blockade, they parted and not only allowed him through, but many gathered around, wanting to touch or shake his hand, asking to have their pictures taken with him. The Israeli commanders were furious and continued barking orders to their troops to back away. The soldiers ignored them. We marched to Orient House and had our meeting.
In all the years I worked with Rev. Jackson, I witnessed not only his commitment to justice and courage in the face of challenges, but also the extent to which he recognized that his personal power could make a difference on the world stage. He freed prisoners. He opened doors to negotiations. He gave hope to the hopeless and voice to the voiceless. He also challenged the Democratic Party to be principled and consistent in its commitment to human rights and justice. He will be missed, but his legacy lives on in the progressive movement for domestic and foreign policy change that he helped shape.
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