The funeral of 14-year-old Palestinian-American Amir Mohammed Rabee was held Monday in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, one day after the dual national from New Jersey was shot and killed there.Two other teenage boys, one whose family told CBS News he is also U.S. citizen, were shot but survived.
Rabee’s father told CBS News on Monday that his son’s siblings live in the U.S., but that Amir and his parents were living in Turmus Ayya, in the central West Bank, where the teenager was attending school.
The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement that IDF soldiers had “identified three terrorists who hurled rocks toward the highway, thus endangering civilians driving. The soldiers opened fire towards the terrorists who were endangering civilians, eliminating one terrorist and hitting two additional terrorists.”
Along with its statement, the IDF released a 10-second video clip that appears to show three people throwing items. The people are not identifiable in the grainy video.
Rabee’s father said his son cannot be identified in the video, and he believes the three teenage boys were shot while throwing stones at an almond tree.
“The video they [IDF] published is not right, and no one can prove my son was there,” Rabee’s father told journalists on Monday. “Unfortunately, the U.S. embassy believed the Israeli narrative based on unclear video, but the U.S. embassy turns a blind eye on videos filmed by people and journalists of settler violence — killing, burning and stealing, guarded by the IDF.”
CBS News asked the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem about the incident and Rabee’s father’s claim that American officials had accepted the Israeli military’s explanation of the shooting. The embassy said it had referred the query to the U.S. State Department, which would respond. CBS News had not received a response at the time of publication.
Rabee’s father said it appeared his son had been shot with two different guns, and that two bullets had entered his heart, two had struck his head, two had hit his shoulders, and then five others had hit his body.
“It was a field execution,” Rabee’s father said.
Asad Ayub Ahed, the other 14-year-old U.S. national who was shot alongside Rabee and al-Rahman, was still in a hospital in serious condition on Monday.
The incident came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Washington with plans to meet at the White House on Monday with President Trump.
“We have to… send a message for President Trump to at least stop this situation,” Rabee’s father told CBS News. “Stop sending weapons to kill.”
Another American, U.S.-Turkish dual national Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, was killed in the West Bank in September. Witnesses, her family, and the group Eygi had joined at a protest in the occupied Palestinian territory said she was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper as she stood under a tree in the West Bank city of Nablus. The IDF said an initial inquiry into Eygi’s death “found that it is highly likely that she was hit indirectly and unintentionally by IDF fire which was not aimed at her.”
Saed Hawari and Omar Abdulkader contributed to this report.
