US senator again demands a report on nine Americans killed in the West Bank

Senate speech and the list of the victims

Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen has once again called for accountability for the deaths of nine American citizens who, according to him, were killed by Israeli settlers or Israeli security forces in the occupied West Bank since 2022. In a Senate floor speech, distributed as a video on his X account, he listed the victims: Omar Assad (78), Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh (51), Tawfic Abdel Jabbar (17), Mohammad Khdoir (17), Turkish-American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi (26), Amer Rabee (14), Sayfollah Musallet (20), Khamis Ayyad (40) and Nasrallah Abu Siam (19).

Circumstances of individual cases

Van Hollen gave details of several incidents. According to him, in January 2022 Israeli soldiers stopped Omar Assad at a checkpoint, pulled him out of his car, bound his hands behind his back, gagged him, blindfolded him and left him lying on the ground; he died of a stress-induced heart attack. Shireen Abu Akleh was shot in the head by Israeli security forces near the Jenin refugee camp in May 2022 — at the moment of her death, the senator emphasized, she was wearing a bright blue vest marking her as a journalist. Aysenur Eygi, who grew up in Seattle, was wounded by a shot to the head fired by an Israeli soldier from roughly 200 meters in September 2024. Amer Rabee, according to Van Hollen, was struck by 11 bullets from two different types of weapons. The senator also cited US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who called Musallet's killing a 'criminal and terrorist act' and said accountability was necessary — 'so why is there no accountability?' Van Hollen asked. After each case he repeated: 'No one has been held accountable.'

The blocked resolution

One of the practical tools the senator had used has already been rejected: last month the Senate voted 47 to 51 to block Van Hollen's resolution. It would have required the Secretary of State to submit a report within 30 days on Israel's human rights practices, including the killings of US citizens by Israeli forces or occupiers since January 2022 and the status of investigations into them. Thus, the reporting requirement was not adopted, and Van Hollen himself concludes that there has been a complete absence of accountability in all nine cases — this is his assessment, voiced in the speech, not the conclusion of an official investigation.