Kamel Ahmad Jawad, a U.S. citizen, was remembered by friends and relatives as someone who chose to stay behind to help others who couldn’t flee.
Kamel Ahmad Jawad remained calm, even as Israeli missiles rained down around him in his hometown in southern Lebanon, thousands of miles from his other home, Dearborn, Mich.
That’s what his family recounted in a statement about Mr. Jawad on Tuesday. When the impact of an airstrike knocked him down while he was on the phone with his daughter, he got back up, found his phone and told her he needed to finish praying. Then, he got back to helping others, the family added.
That was his last day alive. Mr. Jawad, an American citizen, husband and father, and resident of Dearborn, was killed on Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. during an Israeli airstrike, his family said.
“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,” his daughter Nadine Jawad, a Rhodes scholar and Stanford medical school graduate, wrote in the statement.
When Mr. Jawad’s wife was reached on Friday, she said the family declined to comment further.
The airstrike was part of Israel’s intense bombardment and ground invasion in Lebanon, intended to target Hezbollah forces in that country and stop Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel. The military campaign has caused widespread destruction and displacement. At least 1,600 people have been killed by the airstrikes, and over 1.2 million people have been displaced across the country, according to Lebanese authorities.
A State Department representative wrote in a statement on Friday evening that it had confirmed that Mr. Jawad was a U.S. citizen and that it was “aware and alarmed” of reports of his death.
