Omar Assad’s family says ‘unjust’ US decision will not end push for justice

Relatives slam the US government for continuing to fund the Israeli army unit involved in an elderly Palestinian American man’s killing.

Assad Assad says he and his family feel betrayed.

But more than that, the Palestinian American said his first reaction to the United States government’s decision to continue funding an Israeli army unit that bound his elderly uncle and left him for dead could be summed up in a single word: “devastation”.

“We see this [as] hypocrisy — a US government that allows a foreign entity to have this opportunity to kill,” Assad, 36, told Al Jazeera in a phone interview from his home in the state of Wisconsin.

“They murdered my uncle in cold blood. My uncle was not armed, was not…,” he continued, his voice trailing off. “He was just going home from a night with his friends, his cousins, playing a card game.”

Omar Assad, a 78-year-old Palestinian American, died in January 2022 after he was detained by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint in his home village of Jiljilya, near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.