https://arab.news/8jzrm
- Relatives of Khamis Ayyad call for US investigation
- ‘Lack of accountability has led to continued Israeli terrorism,’ state representative tells Arab News
CHICAGO: The relatives of an American Palestinian who moved with his five children and wife in 2020 to the West Bank are calling on the US to investigate the circumstances of his death.
Relatives in Chicago told Arab News that Khamis Ayyad, 40, had died of smoke inhalation on July 31 when he entered a home that was engulfed in flames to save people.
State Rep. Abdelnasser Rashid, who represents the southwest suburbs of Chicago in the Illinois legislature and is of Palestinian descent, met with Ayyad’s relatives.
He said the fires were started by Israeli settlers who have been rampaging through West Bank villages.
“This wasn’t random. It’s part of an ugly pattern of Israeli government-sponsored brutality from settler terrorism in the West Bank to the genocide unfolding in Gaza — enabled by US military funding and political support for Israel,” Rashid told Arab News.
“I’ve seen this violence firsthand. I was in Palestine in June 2023 when settlers invaded my family’s village in broad daylight. They killed a young man. There was no accountability, no justice.
“That lack of accountability has led to continued Israeli terrorism against Palestinians fighting for survival and liberation, including the murder of Palestinian American Khamis Ayyad.”
Rashid’s district represents a region of the southwest suburbs of Chicago called Little Palestine because of its large concentration of American Palestinians.
Relatives said the village of Silwad, where Ayyad lived, was hit with several arson fires in recent months by settlers, including homes, farmland and vehicles.
Ayyad is the second American Palestinian to be killed in July, and the fifth since the war on Gaza began in October 2023, ABC News reported.
On July 11, 2025, 20-year-old American Palestinian Sayfollah Musallet was murdered by a gang of Israeli settlers in the family’s farmlands located near Ramallah.
Israeli soldiers prevented Musallet’s family from reaching him while he was alive but wounded, relatives told Arab News.
Soldiers also prevented an ambulance from reaching him for more than two hours after the attack. He died as paramedics were placing him in the ambulance to take him to a nearby hospital.
Musallet is the cousin of Muhammad Ibrahim, who was arrested in the middle of the night by 20 soldiers wearing black masks in February and has been detained in the notorious Megiddo Prison without access to his parents or legal representation.
Ibrahim has not been charged with a crime, his family told Arab News, adding that he is suffering from an illness caused by the unsanitary conditions at the prison.
“Who will speak up for these Americans?” a relative of Ayyad asked.