No justice for New Orleans teens killed in occupied West Bank

New Orleans, La. and al-Mazra’a ash-Sharqiyat, Palestine — Three young men pile into an SUV, crank up the air conditioning, put on some Louisiana hip-hop, and hit the road. It’s a hot July weekday, and they’re heading to the city center to get some food. Popeye’s chicken, maybe. 

As they drive, they chat about dinner, then about other meals, other nights, other parties. From the backseat, one of the young men passes around a small joint made with hash. 

Talk meanders to video games. They praise their friend Mohammed’s skills at Counter Strike. 

They pass a warehouse on the side of the road, topped with the familiar orange logo of Popeye’s chicken, shimmering in the heat.

“Honestly, it’s better here,” insists Ahmad at the wheel.

“That’s true,” says Mahmoud from the back. “The Popeye’s in the West Bank is better than in Louisiana. It really is. I swear.”

The sounds, smells, and sweat of the afternoon here could pass for summer in New Orleans. But this isn’t Louisiana — this is al-Mazra’a ash-Sharqiyat, a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Palestine. The roads the boys drive down are winding and strewn with checkpoints of Israeli soldiers. And their friend Mohammed is dead — beaten to death by Israeli settlers just the day before. The boys have just finished directing traffic for his wake.

Though little-known in most of Louisiana, Mazra’a, and the villages next door, have strong ties to New Orleans. It’s also where at least four New Orleanians have been beaten or killed by Israeli settlers or soldiers since 2014. No one has ever been held accountable for those attacks. A resolution that could have forced an investigation into at least one of those killings was recently blocked by Republican senators, including Sen. John Kennedy from Louisiana. 

Throughout this story, The Lens is using first names to identify this group of young men from the village: Subhay, Ahmad, Mahmoud — and their fallen friends, Mohammed, Tawfic and Saif.

At least 18 families in New Orleans originally hail from Mazra’a, a village of just 4,000 permanent residents.

The boys in the car know that an Israeli settler or soldier could kill them with impunity. They are vulnerable to attack just by virtue of being Palestinian. They are also our neighbors, fellow New Orleanians who went to high school here and learned to drive in the streets of Gretna.

Palestinian New Orleanians here keenly felt the ties between New Orleans and al-Mazra two years ago, with the death of their friend Tawfic, shot in the head on his way to a picnic, driving down a road like this.

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‘No warning, no confrontation, no nothing’

It was a fine sunny afternoon in January 2024 after Jummah, the Muslim Friday prayer service. Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, 17, drove off in the family’s Mitsubishi truck, headed into the hills with some friends to have a barbecue. His younger friend Mohammed Salameh, 16, a Miami native, was with him.

Like most of the area vehicles, the Mitsubishi had white plates with green letters that marked it as a Palestinian vehicle, rather than the yellow plate issued to Israeli-owned vehicles. That made its Palestinian status visible from a distance. 

The two young men realized they’d forgotten some groceries. They made a U-turn to head back to the village. But on the highway below, a driver parked and got out of a white car with Israeli plates, according to a witness. The driver, believed to be a settler, stood on the shoulder with a rifle, watching the pickup truck pass once on the road about 70 yards away. Tawfic’s uncle, Moh Jabbar, believes the settler waited and prepared to shoot at the truck from behind. 

The settler fired two shots, shattering the truck’s back windshield. The younger teen, terrified, leapt into the backseat. At some point, Israeli soldiers arrived in two military jeeps. The shooting escalated. More shots rang out; single shots, then volleys, according to information the Center for Constitutional Rights received in response to a FOIA request, and an investigation led by Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. 

The fourth, fatal bullet, reportedly fired by a soldier, hit Tawfic in the back of his head, on his right side.

“I saw the moment he was hit,” 16-year-old Mohammed Salameh told B’Tselem. “Blood burst from his head and sprayed on my face and body. I felt its warmth.”

Tawfic slumped over the steering wheel. The truck, still in drive, flipped off the road and rolled a few times before settling a short distance down the hill. Ten shots in total had hit the truck from behind. 

Tawfic’s father soon arrived. Soldiers pointed M-16s at his chest and told him to get away. He ignored them, he told The Lens, and rushed towards the body of his son, pulling him out of the wreckage with his bare hands.

Tawfic, child of two West Banks

Tawfic was born in Gretna, a suburb on New Orleans’ West Bank, across the Mississippi River from the city center. He had planned to go to the University of New Orleans to study business or engineering and had dreamed of working at NASA, maybe at the nearby Michoud Space Center.

His uncle Moh runs an Athlete’s Foot franchise in New Orleans. Walking through the warm and dry streets of Mazra, Moh described his nephew as a big teddy bear, “a jokester,” known for a constant smile and good heart. 

Tawfic attended Brother Martin, loved beignets, and spent his Sundays cheering for the team in the black and gold, like most other New Orleanians in Mazra’a: “We all are, all of us, die-hard Saints fans,” his uncle said.

Tawfic Abdel Jabbar was buried in a cemetery on a hillside at the edge of Mazra’a, with the golden-brown valley of the village outskirts stretched out below. 

Mazra’a was long a quiet village, its tranquil dusty streets dotted with stone compounds, lined by grape vines and olive trees. Until recently, despite violence in Gaza and other parts of the West Bank, this little corner was always peaceful, Moh said. 

Mazra’a has about 14,000 residents, many of whom —  including the Abdel Jabbars —  can trace their presence here back generations. But today, only 4,000 live here full-time, says Mayor Abdul Samad. He estimates that 90% of the people in Mazra’a hold an American passport. Most, he says, are from New Orleans and Baton Rouge; others are from Florida, Texas, and North Carolina.

For decades, families split their time between their adopted hometowns in the United States and their ancestral homeland in Mazra’a. Here, in Mazra’a, it was safe for their children to spend all day playing outside, in a community where everyone seems to know one another.

That calm unraveled after October 7, 2023, when Israel responded to a Hamas attack by bombing Gaza in a sustained assault now widely considered to be a genocide.

Reliance on the official Israeli statement in Mazra’a, despite the evidence

Over two years after Tawfic’s killing, no one has been charged.

In the United States, key news outlets immediately misrepresented Tawfic’s death, reporting that the settlers had acted in self-defense, said the family members. They pointed out international media’s reliance on statements from Israeli police, which reported that “an off-duty law enforcement officer, a soldier and an Israeli settler had all been involved in a “firearm discharge” … directed towards a perceived threat” — identified as “individuals purportedly engaged in rock-throwing activities along Highway 60.” 

In its investigation, B’Tselem concluded that the Israeli theory was untrue. “The shooting was not a response to stone-throwing,” wrote B’Tselem, which maintains an online chronicle of settler violence in occupied territories.

Standing on a Mazra’a hillside, overlooking the bend where the boy’s pickup flipped, Moh opened his phone to display photos of his nephew Tawfic in a morgue. He pointed out what appeared to be bullet wounds on the back of his nephew’s head, neck, and hip. His friend Mahmoud Haifa watches Jabbar point out the wounds, created by someone shooting from behind.

“That’s not self-defense,” stressed Haifa, who sees Tawfic’s death as an execution. “He [the killer] was hunting,” Haifa said.

To date, the killer – a soldier whose identity is believed to be known to Israeli authorities — has been shielded. Israeli investigators who came to collect evidence, left bullets behind and failed to interview eyewitnesses. They have given the family no information. “We don’t even know his name,” Moh said of the killer. “We don’t know nothing about him.” 

More than two years later, there’s been no decision about whether to prosecute Tawfic’s murderer, the family said. When family members contact the Israeli prosecutor’s office, all they get it is, “‘It’s under investigation.’” And by keeping the investigation open, Israeli authorities are able to block the release of the Israeli investigation file, which is reportedly held by Israeli prosecutors at the District Attorney in Jerusalem.

The U.S. Embassy has become similarly unreachable – the family’s last meaningful update was in 2024. 

The total lack of accountability is a pattern. Between 2005 and 2025, more than 93% of Israeli police investigations into settler violence in the West Bank concluded without an indictment. Since 2020, just one Israeli settler has been indicted over the killing of a Palestinian. (Settler Yinon Levi was indicted in August for shooting and killing activist Awdah Hathaleen, a year after Hathaleen caught his own murder on video.)

In September 2025, a small group of grieving Palestinian-Americans — Tawfic’s father, Hafeth, and the families of two other U.S. citizens killed in West Bank attacks — visited Washington, DC and met with multiple senators. But neither Louisiana senator replied or met with them, despite a dozen letters and emails. Louisiana’s governor has also not responded, they said.

Tawfic appears by name, as one of nine U.S. citizens killed by Israeli settlers or security forces in the West Bank, in the recently proposed Senate Resolution 852, sponsored by  Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD). 

On September 30, Van Hollen forced a vote for the resolution, which would have pushed the U.S. State Department to provide, within 30 days, any Israeli information about the nine deaths, including declassified information about any individual responsible for the killings, along with a formal report on human rights conditions in the West Bank. 

Van Hollen has pledged to continue pursuing accountability for the killings. But the recent resolution did not advance to the full Senate; it was rejected by a narrow margin, in a 51-47 vote. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana was one of two senators recorded as “not voting” on the resolution. Sen. John Kennedy, the state’s other senator, voted against the resolution. 

Neither Cassidy nor Kennedy responded to emailed questions about the resolution vote.

With Saif’s killing, “the wound opens back up”

Moh Jabbar had flown from New Orleans to Mazra’a last summer to celebrate the engagement of Tawfic’s older brother. But instead of celebrating with his nephew, Moh found himself sitting outside Saif’s wake next to an image of Tawfic’s smiling face, stenciled on the schoolyard’s cement wall.

“When things like this happen, the wound opens back up,” Jabbar said. 

As the mourners headed home, Jabbar and family friend Mahmoud Haifa drove to a nearby hillside deck where Tawfic liked to sit and play cards.

The two of them can trace their family history through the trees around them. Around the deck, young pomegranate and cherry trees stand in neat rows. Just below the ledge are a row of olive trees planted by Tawfic’s great-grandfather, Moh’s grandfather. 

Across the valley below them is a mountain with olive groves, 80% of which belong to the village. But they can’t reach them anymore. 

Between where they stand and those groves is an invisible line they no longer dare to cross, lest settlers attack, they say.

People in Mazra’a cannot protect their families and property, Jabbar said, describing how Israeli settlers “come attack the houses, try to burn them, and then when the people from the village try to stop them, that’s when they get shot.” 

Even as Jabbar spoke, a neighbor drove by with cracks spidered across the windshield. Settlers had smashed it while the car was parked, Jabbar said. A few minutes later, a man with a white cast on his forearm walked up. His hand had been broken while trying to escape the settlers, he explained.

The U.S. passport is no shield, and the violence continues. Earlier this year, on April 10, Israeli forces stormed through Mazra’a, seizing vehicles, raiding homes, and detaining and assaulting some of the young men.

“They took five guys for no reason — one of them was my friend, in front of his kids and mom.” said Leith, who runs the Athlete’s Foot along with his brother Moh and whose children were born in New Orleans. He moved back to Mazra’a two years ago, but says he’s considering a return to the U.S. again because it feels too dangerous to be Palestinian in the West Bank.

Tawfic’s father has remained in Mazra’a after his son’s death. “I just can’t leave the grave of Tawfic,” he said. “It’s just a feeling inside of me. If I leave, I feel like I’m letting him down.”

Guns from the U.S. flowing to settlers

Even the gun that killed Tawfic may have passed through New Orleans. A U.S.-Israeli gun deal put thousands of high-powered rifles into the hands of Israeli settlers, and some of those shipments pass through Louisiana ports. 

In the occupied territory, while it’s become easier for Israeli settlers to own guns, firearms are highly restricted for Palestinians; it is virtually impossible for a Palestinian outside the state security forces to get a gun license.

Since the Gaza war began, Israeli’s ultra-right National Security Minister Itama Ben-Gvir has been distributing thousands of guns in border areas, with more than 120,000 firearms handed to settlers by October of last year. Illegal Israeli settlements have civilian security squads who receive fully-automatic assault rifles from the military.

In Mazra’a, attackers are typically armed with M-16 assault rifles, Jabbar said.

In late 2023, the Biden administration held up the sale of more than 20,000 assault rifles, over concerns about Israeli settler attacks. But in March 2025, Trump moved forward with that sale. 

Internal emails between the Port of New Orleans and Customs and Border Patrol show that more than 50,000 military weapons were exported from New Orleans to Israel in the summer of 2024, while International Trade Commission data shows that 337,000 telescopic sights for rifles were exported through New Orleans to Israel in 2023, along with more than 13,000 shotgun or rifle parts. 

From Palestine to Louisiana and back again

As Israel pushes out Palestinians from the occupied West Bank, it inadvertently leads to greater diaspora communities in places like New Orleans. That means the impacts of the violence reverberate for thousands of miles, to the parade routes and high schools of New Orleans. 

In the years after Tawfic was killed, a group of New Orleans friends created two new Carnival krewes: the Krewe of Chickpea, begun during Carnival 2024 by Zayd Sifri, a Palestinian-American social worker at Tulane University; and the Krewe of Zeitoun, created during Carnival 2025 by Simon Moushabeck, a Palestinian-American musician who leads NOLA Musicians for Palestine.

Hundreds have rolled with those krewes through New Orleans streets, at times led by a giant watermelon-headed puppet wearing a keffiyeh, the traditional patterned scarf. Moushabeck and other New Orleans musicians also formed the Hanoun Brass Band, which blends jazz and Arabic music. Inspired by pre-1948 celebrations in Palestine, like the Nabi Rubin festival, that were once jointly celebrated by Muslims, Jews, and Christians, paraders handed out copies of Palestinian poems and packets of watermelon seeds, with directions on the best time to plant them in New Orleans.

The connections also remain strong in the other direction, from the West Bank of New Orleans to the occupied West Bank. Despite the intense restrictions Israel imposes on Palestinian travel, many with American citizenship feel compelled to spend even more time in their threatened homeland, which seems more precious than ever. As a result, Mazra’a has become an increasingly Americanized village. 

“Ten years ago, it wasn’t American as much as now in the villages,” said another New Orleans resident, Mak, a friend of the families of Tawfic and Saif, sitting in Mazra’a as his young son played around his legs. Rather than immigrating for good, he said, the people of his generation are coming back to Mazra’a for months, or sending their kids to Mazra to grow up.

Though Hafeth, Tawfic’s father, has not been able to get help from U.S. officials, he feels deep support from neighbors in New Orleans and Mazra’a, he said. The younger generation is particularly good about staying in touch.

“All his friends come see me,” he said, describing the visits as bittersweet.

“It gets sad when all his friends are there and he’s not around,” Hafeth said. “It’s like he was in the room, and then someone switched the light off, and it just never went back on.”

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