{"id":124769,"date":"2026-02-27T03:34:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T03:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/124769\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T03:34:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T03:34:15","slug":"josh-shapiro-doesnt-care-if-you-kill-a-pennsylvania-citizen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/124769\/","title":{"rendered":"Josh Shapiro Doesn\u2019t Care if You Kill A Pennsylvania Citizen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nasrallah Abu Siyam was just trying to save his neighbors\u2019 goats. He was 19 years old, and he was living in the small village of Mukhmas<\/a> in the occupied West Bank, northeast of Jerusalem. On February 18, the first day of Ramadan, Israeli settlers stormed into the town wearing masks and carrying assault rifles. Among them were several IDF soldiers. The settlers tried to steal the Palestinian community\u2019s small herd of goats and sheep, its main economic lifeline; the people of Mukhmas objected, and were met with \u201ctear gas and stun grenades.\u201d Some of the settlers threw rocks; some of the villagers threw rocks back. Then, as the BBC reports<\/a>, the Israelis opened fire, shooting \u201cat least three of the villagers, including Abu Siyam, who was struck fatally.\u201d Independent journalist Jasper Nathaniel has spoken to several eyewitnesses<\/a>, who confirmed the details: \u201cNasrallah was shot in the thigh, the bullet severing his main artery. Settlers crowded around him after he fell, striking him with rods.\u201d As the raiders left with the animals, an ambulance was called, but it was delayed by IDF checkpoints. When it finally arrived, \u201cNasrallah was bleeding heavily in the back seat, his pulse fading.\u201d He lost so much blood that doctors couldn\u2019t save him, and he died that night.<\/p>\n

This was just one incident in an escalating series of deadly raids by Israeli settlers, who displaced more than 37,000 Palestinians<\/a> from their land in the West Bank in 2025 alone. Just a few days later, the New York Times reported that another settler gang had been successful in driving Rezeq Abu Naim<\/a> and his family out of their home near Al Mughayir, after a two-year campaign of harassment ranging \u201cfrom vandalism and violent threats to beatings.\u201d By one estimate, there are as many as 700,000 Israelis<\/a> living in illegal settlements in Palestine, in blatant violation of the Geneva Conventions which forbid transferring the population of an occupying power into an occupied territory. The colonists have been attacking Palestinians for decades, with the full support<\/a> of Israel\u2019s apartheid government. But the violence has escalated dramatically in the past year, emboldened by a Trump administration that openly approves of the settlements, even offering passport services<\/a> to Israelis living in them. There\u2019s really no other term for it but ethnic cleansing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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In Nasrallah Abu Siyam\u2019s case, though, there\u2019s another factor: he was a United States citizen. His bereaved father, Mohammed Abu Siyam<\/a>, told the New York Times his son had lived for most of his life in the West Bank, \u201chelping him tend to his livestock and cultivate his olive trees,\u201d but Nasrallah was born in Philadelphia. He still has family<\/a> living there, and he had every right to vote in U.S. elections, if he chose to mail in a ballot. Somewhere in his effects, he probably had a blue passport with an eagle on it. Morally, of course, citizenship makes no difference. If he\u2019d been born right there in Mukhmas, his life would be just as important, and his killing would be just as indefensible. But as an American, he also had elected officials sworn to represent him: Pennsylvania\u2019s Governor Josh Shapiro and Senator John Fetterman. He was their constituent, gunned down by foreign criminals. But Pennsylvania\u2019s top elected leaders still can\u2019t be bothered to say a word about it. <\/p>\n

Other U.S. leaders have condemned Siyam\u2019s murder. In a statement on February 23<\/a>, Representative Rashida Tlaib called for \u201cJustice for Nasrallah Abu Siyam,\u201d saying that \u201cthe Israeli apartheid regime and its settler gangs have murdered yet another U.S. citizen in the West Bank, and our government does absolutely nothing.\u201d She\u2019s right about that: Siyam is actually the sixth Palestinian American<\/a> murdered in the West Bank in the last two years, either by settlers or the IDF itself, and it hasn\u2019t resulted in any serious action being taken against the settler movement. In a TV appearance on MSNOW, Representative Brendan Boyle<\/a> of Philadelphia has also called for an \u201chonest and open investigation\u201d into his constituent\u2019s killing, saying that \u201cour own government needs to have the backs of its own citizens, regardless of where the killing takes place.\u201d Representative Ro Khanna, too, is reportedly \u201coutraged<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not so, apparently, for Shapiro and Fetterman. At the time of writing, if you scroll through Governor Shapiro\u2019s press releases<\/a>, you\u2019ll find no mention of Nasrallah Abu Siyam, although Shapiro has announced an update to railway safety regulations<\/a> and flags at half-staff for the death of Jesse Jackson<\/a>. Likewise, you\u2019ll search in vain for anything on Shapiro\u2019s Twitter page about the killing, though he has tweeted about Olympic hockey<\/a> and the trend of kids using AI friend simulators<\/a>. It\u2019s the same with Fetterman: nothing in his official press releases<\/a>, and nothing on his social media<\/a>, though he has time to go on Fox News and condemn Hasan Piker<\/a>. Now, a delay of a few days would be understandable: as a public figure, you want to get all the facts before you comment on something like this. But it\u2019s now been more than a week, and there\u2019s been plenty of reporting on the case. Yet as far as Fetterman and Shapiro are concerned, the raid and the shooting might as well not have happened. <\/p>\n

But it did happen, and whether they like it or not, Fetterman and Shapiro have a responsibility to address it. In fact, the single most basic responsibility any politician has is to protect the lives of their citizens, no matter where they go in the world. If a leader doesn\u2019t do that, they are very literally useless. What kind of a message does it send, when the whole world sees that someone can gun down a Pennsylvanian in the course of violating international law, and neither Pennsylvania\u2019s governor nor its most prominent senator will lift a finger to oppose the crime? By staying silent, they\u2019re creating an expectation of impunity that will only endanger more Americans. Even Pete Hegseth<\/a> understands this basic concept. When two U.S. soldiers were killed in Syria last December, he loudly announced<\/a> that \u201cif you target Americans\u2014anywhere in the world\u2014you will spend the rest of your brief, anxious life knowing the United States will hunt you, find you, and ruthlessly kill you.\u201d But it\u2019s always been clear that this principle comes with an asterisk: \u201c…unless you\u2019re Israeli, and it\u2019s a Palestinian American.\u201d That\u2019s no less true for Democrats like Shapiro and Fetterman. <\/p>\n

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At this point, John Fetterman being a total disgrace shouldn\u2019t be surprising. Fetterman has been cheerleading Israeli war crimes for more than two years now, from the exploding pager attacks<\/a> that killed and maimed Lebanese children to his loud applause during Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s addresses<\/a> to Congress. Partly because of it, his approval ratings with the Democratic voters who elected him are now in the toilet<\/a>, and he\u2019s vulnerable to a primary challenge in 2028. But some people actually think Josh Shapiro could be a presidential contender<\/a>. They keep saying so, in the various power rankings<\/a> of 2028 hopefuls. But the case of Nasrallah Abu Siyam reveals the problem with that: he\u2019s ghastly on Palestine, the defining foreign policy issue of our time. <\/p>\n

As Seraj Assi wrote for Jacobin in 2024<\/a>, Shapiro has a long track record on this issue, and it\u2019s all bad. In college, he wrote opinion pieces about the Oslo Accords that were simply racist, saying that Palestinians as an ethnic group were \u201ctoo battle-minded to be able to establish a peaceful homeland of their own.\u201d As Pennsylvania\u2019s attorney general, he went out of his way to support West Bank settlements exactly like the one Siyam was killed over, invoking anti-BDS<\/a> laws to punish Ben and Jerry\u2019s for refusing to sell ice cream there. As governor, he compared anti-genocide protesters who wear keffiyehs and other head coverings to the hoods of the KKK<\/a>\u2014though he also says you mustn\u2019t compare ICE to Nazis<\/a>. It\u2019s obvious that he has an ideological commitment to Israel that clouds his judgment on the most basic moral and political issues, up to and including war crimes. So his shameful abandonment of his own dead constituent isn\u2019t an aberration; it\u2019s exactly who he is, and what he stands for. <\/p>\n

Shapiro might make a statement, eventually, if enough people pressure him into it. Right now, Jasper Nathaniel is trying<\/a> to get as many people as possible to call Shapiro\u2019s office and yell at him, and it may work. I can pretty much predict which platitudes he\u2019d use: that political violence anywhere is unacceptable, that it\u2019s all a great tragedy, that his thoughts and prayers are with Siyam\u2019s family. Politicians just swap out the names in these statements, like Mad Libs. But it would all be hollow and meaningless, because he didn\u2019t actually care when it counted, the way Rashida Tlaib or even Brendan Boyle did. And that callous disregard for life where Israel is concerned, more than his stupid Obama impression<\/a> or the lingering questions about the alleged suicide of Ellen Greenberg<\/a>, are why it\u2019s so alarming to see Shapiro discussed as a potential president. <\/p>\n

As long-time readers of Current Affairs will know, I\u2019m from Pennsylvania myself<\/a>. It really is a great state, full of extraordinary people. But politicians like John Fetterman and Josh Shapiro give us all a bad name. In their cowardice, they\u2019ve put the word out: you can kill their constituents and get away with it, provided the victim is a Palestinian American and you\u2019ve got a blue star on your flag. Compared to keeping Israeli colonists and their allies happy, Nasrallah Abu Siyam\u2019s life means nothing to them. Every American should keep that in mind, the next time they open their mouths.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nasrallah Abu Siyam was just trying to save his neighbors\u2019 goats. He was 19 years old, and he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":{"0":"post-124769","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-pennsylvania","9":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","10":"tag-pennsylvania-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}