Joe Conway (Independent)

I wonder if many in the House are familiar with the name Saif Musallet. Unfortunately, that young man’s name has been in the news quite prominently over the past few days, I suspect because he has dual nationality. He is Palestinian but he is also a citizen of the United States. He is a young man from Florida aged 19. He went in the springtime to visit his family in the West Bank and to express solidarity with them. Last Friday, he was the victim of a series of assaults by settlers and he was beaten to death. The fact that he has been in the news is largely attributable to the fact he is an American citizen. There was also an unlikely intervention by Mike Huckabee, who is the ambassador from the United States to Israel, who spoke up for him, unusually, considering some of his utterances in the past. He was not, however, the only one who murdered by the settlers; there was another young man, a 23-year-old, whose name escapes me at the moment. When he was seriously injured from a series of beatings, the West Bank mob gathered around and would not allow the first responders or ambulances to get to him.He died without getting to hospital. It is indicative of the skulduggery going on in the West Bank. For people to suggest that when we draw attention to this in our Legislature that we are somehow antisemitic is a bit rich. Yesh Din is a group in Israel that monitors these things. A little statistic is that 93% of crimes reported by West Bank people go uninvestigated or non-indicted. Of the remaining 7% that are investigated, only 3% end up in convictions. It is statement of the way things are out there.