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A 56-year-old American man was killed during an Israeli air strike in Lebanon as Israel Defense Forces continue a military campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah, according to his loved ones.
Services for Kamel Ahmad Jawad, a Lebanese American father of four, are being held in Dearborn, Michigan, this week.
Jawad “was a respected figure whose impact on the lives of many will not be forgotten,” a “man of service” and “one of the kindest and most generous humans,” according to memorials from friends and family members posted to social media.
His family reports that Jawad was staying in Nabatieh, Lebanon, and was killed under Israeli airstrikes while trying to protect others on Tuesday.
“We are honored by my father’s sacrifice. In his last days, he chose to stay near the main hospital in Nabatieh to help the elderly, disabled, injured, and those who simply couldn’t financially afford to flee,” according to a statement shared with The Independent by his daughter Nadine Kamel Jawad on behalf of the family.
“He served as their guardian, provided them with food, mattresses, and other comforts, and anonymously paid off their debts,” she wrote. “I would often ask him if he was scared, and he repeatedly told me that we should not be scared because he is doing what he loves the most: helping others live in the land he loved the most.”
Jawad, however, “never viewed himself as a savior,” Nadine wrote.
“His response to political conflict was always simple: ‘I stand with the oppressed.’ He wasn’t alone in this fight,” she added, noting that his support for others “are part of a much larger movement of people who refuse to stay silent in the face of oppression.”
“In his last moments, my father was calm. He emphasized our collective responsibility to help the oppressed,” Nadine wrote. “Even as he witnessed destruction from the missiles falling around him, his certainty in the importance of caring for community — in any and every capacity possible — remained at the forefront.”
Nadine said she spoke to her father on Tuesday as he fell from the impact of a nearby airstrike.
“He simply got back up, found his phone, and told me he needed to finish praying in case another strike hit him,” she wrote.
Department of State spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters during a briefing on Wednesday that the US “obviously offer our sincerest condolences to the family on their loss”
The Independent has requested additional comment from the State Department.
Israeli airstrikes and military actions in Lebanon have killed more than 1,000 people, including dozens of children, and displaced a fifth of the population and wounded several thousand others, within the last two weeks, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
Israel announced on Tuesday that eight soldiers were killed in combat in a first wave of ground battles, the first in the region since Israel’s month-long war with Hezbollah in 2006.
Another series of 180 missiles fired by Iran into Israel on Tuesday were largely intercepted by Israel with US support. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said late Tuesday that the attack was in response to the assassination of Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut and the death of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed in Tehran in July.
Iran’s mission at the United Nations said the attack was a “legal, rational, and legitimate response to the terrorist acts of the Zionist regime,” in the wake of Israel’s year-long retaliatory assault on Gaza, where more than 41,600 Palestinians have been killed since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack in Israel.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights group, laid the blame for Jawad’s death on President Joe Biden’s administration and US support for Israel in its campaign in Lebanon.
“Every member of the Biden administration’s foreign policy team should be ashamed of themselves for enabling Israel’s war crimes against American citizens and countless other civilians,” the group said in a statement. “We do not expect this feckless and complicit administration to do anything to hold Kemal’s killers accountable, and we are done asking them to treat American Muslims killed overseas like human beings worthy of US protection. Shame on them. That is all we can say.”
Nadine Jawad said in a statement shared with The Independent that her father’s message “was clear: stop arming, aiding, and abetting our oppression and start caring for the people struggling for their freedom and dignity.”
