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 a 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.”