TURMUS AYYA, West Bank — To his family, Amer Rabee was just a 14-year-old American boy picking almonds with two friends.

But to the Israeli soldiers who gunned him down on Sunday night, the trio were “three terrorists” who were “endangering civilians” by throwing rocks at cars. The hail of bullets the soldiers fired over the next several minutes succeeded in “eliminating one terrorist and hitting two additional terrorists,” the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement Tuesday.