The family of a New Orleans-area teenager who was reportedly shot dead by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank on Friday mourned the high schooler this weekend while also criticizing US military support for Israel.
“They are killer machines – they are using our tax dollars in the US to support the weapons to kill our own children,” Hafez Ajaq, the father of late 17-year-old Tawfiq Ajaq, said of Israel’s forces, according to the Associated Press.
Speaking on Saturday during his son’s funeral, he added: “How many fathers and mothers have to say goodbye to their children? How many more?”
In the summer of 2023, Tawfiq’s parents brought him and his four siblings to the village of Al-Mazra’a ash-Sharqiya, in the West Bank, so the family could reconnect with their Palestinian roots.
The circumstances of his killing remain under investigation. A relative has said he was barbecuing in a village field before Israeli authorities claimed an encounter with an off-duty police officer, a soldier and a civilian left him dead.
Tawfiq (also identified in some reports as Tawfic Abdeljabbar) grew up in Gretna, Louisiana, a suburb of New Orleans on the west bank of the Mississippi River, according to local NBC affiliate WDSU. His family said he attended Muslim Academy in Gretna as well as the local Catholic college preparatory Brother Martin and planned to enroll at the University of New Orleans after finishing high school in Palestine.
An uncle of Tawfiq said the teen passionately supported New Orleans’s National Football League franchise, the Saints, and enjoyed beignets, French doughnuts covered in powdered sugar that are popular in the city. He also often played basketball with friends outside their mosque in Harvey, near Gretna, the local news outlet NOLA.com reported.
“[He was] a New Orleans native – a New Orleanian just like me and you,” Mohammad Abdeljabber told WDSU.
The vice-principal of Gretna’s Muslim Academy, Sherean Muran, told NOLA.com that Ajaq was “a good kid … certainly a dreamer and always the center of attention”.
The White House said it is “seriously concerned” by reports about the Palestinian American’s killing east of Ramallah. On Monday, a US state department spokesperson told reporters that the US government was “devastated about the killing” and had “called for an urgent investigation to determine the circumstance of his death”.
A relative of Tawfiq, Joe Abdel Qaki, told the Associated Press that the teen and a friend were having a barbecue in a village field when Israeli bullets struck him in the head and chest.
Abdel Qaki said he helped load Tawfiq on to an ambulance once he arrived at the field shortly after the shooting. He described being briefly detained alongside other Palestinians by Israeli forces who demanded IDs.
Tawfiq died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, he added.
Israeli police said Tawfiq was shot dead during an encounter “ostensibly involving an off-duty law enforcement officer, a soldier and a civilian”. They did not say who shot Tawfiq, adding the case was under investigation and saying the gunfire was meant for people “purportedly engaged in rock-throwing activities”.
Investigations surrounding the deadly shootings of Palestinians by Israeli police and military members are usually slow and rarely result in criminal charges.
Nonetheless, Mohammad Abdeljabber said he hoped his nephew’s killers “are brought to justice”.
“They say it’s under investigation – they’re trying to gather more information, but we’ve heard that plenty of times before, never seen any results from it,” Abdeljabber told WDSU. “I hope this one changes that.”
Nabil Abukhader, the president of the Harvey mosque which Tawfiq attended, also said: “We lost a good kid, an American citizen.”
Tawfiq’s death occurred on the same day that leading progressive and Jewish members of Congress criticized the US’s military support for Israel after its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, declared bluntly that he opposed a Palestinian state following the ongoing war in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s comments were a pointed rejection of the Biden administration’s policy in the region at a time when the president has asked Congress for an additional $14bn in aid to Israel. Israel receives about $3.8bn annually in US security assistance.
After an attack by Hamas on Israel that killed about 1,200 people on 7 October, Israeli military operations in Gaza since have killed more than 24,000 people, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
At least 369 had been killed by Israeli troops and settlers in the occupied West Bank since October, including 95 children, Reuters reported on Monday.
The Associated Press contributed reporting