Metro Atlanta woman says at least 100 family members killed in Gaza

“Since October 8, I have lost more than 100 members of my family,” said Elnajjar, a descendant of Palestinian refugees who works as an operations manager at a financial company. “As more and more people are killed, our fear is who will be next. It’s devastating.

Credit: AP

Credit: AP

The Israeli military campaign followed the Hamas attack on October 7. Hamas militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took around 250 hostages. Since then, more than 36,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza and at least 81,000 have been injured, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

The United Nations estimates that 1.7 million Palestinians are displaced by bombing campaigns that have reduced entire neighborhoods to rubble.

Nowhere to go, no time to cry

Elnajjar said several members of his extended family died last weekend in western Rafah, an area they had been told would be safe from bombing.

Most of those killed since the war began were women and children, she said, and some children in her family lost both parents.

“This is generational trauma and it’s going to last a lifetime for them,” she said. “We don’t even have time to grieve.”

Credit: AP

Credit: AP

“When a bomb is dropped on a house, it kills an entire branch of a family, because you can have 60 to 80 members in a house looking for shelter,” Elnajjar said.

Elnajjar said some members of the Joudah family, his relatives in Gaza, had to move three or more times in search of safety. But she fears there’s no truly safe place to go.

“Some of them moved several times between Rafah and Dier al Balah, depending on where the bombings were taking place,” she explained. “Thank God we don’t have anyone in the tents, but my cousin who just died in an airstrike was in a house. »

Credit: AP

Credit: AP

There are more than 2 million Palestinians living in Gaza. The majority of them – around 80% – are either refugees or descendants of refugees displaced from their homes and villages before Israel’s creation in 1948, or in subsequent wars, according to the UN.

Palestinians call the mass displacement and resulting diaspora the Nakba, the Arabic word for catastrophe.

“The situation continues to get worse”

Elnajjar’s grandparents were from the coastal village of Isdud, now called Ashdod, but moved to Gaza 76 years ago. Both of his parents were born in refugee camps in this densely populated strip.

Elnajjar was born in Libya and spent her formative years in the United Arab Emirates before moving to Atlanta in 1986. She fondly remembers the summers she spent in Gaza as a youth, where she said she reconnected with her roots.

Credit: Contributed

Credit: Contributed

She has not returned since 2005, before the blockade imposed by the Israeli government on the Palestinian territory.

“My children are now 15 and 17 and they have never met their extended family in Gaza,” she said. “Every year I wait for the siege and blockade to be lifted, but the situation continues to get worse. »

A lifelong Democrat, Elnajjar said she campaigned for Joe Biden in 2020 with the group Arab Americans for Biden, encouraging Arab voters to go to the polls in swing states. She does not plan to vote for president again in November, citing his handling of the war.

“The United States is financing this genocide and that makes it a responsible party,” she said.

The latest Bloomberg poll shows Biden trailing former President Donald Trump in Georgia and other swing states. In 2020, Biden led Trump by nearly 12,000 votes in the Peach State. Navigating the war between Israel and Hamas has been a major issue for the Biden campaign and has sparked protests across the country on college campuses.

Her husband, Nidal Ibrahim, said Israel was flaunting international law and repeatedly crossing “red lines” set by the Biden administration.

“Every one of these red lines was crossed and there was total silence,” Ibrahim said. “There was no action. No decision has been made to hold Israel accountable for its gross human rights violations.”

Credit: AP

Credit: AP

Biden and his top advisers have repeatedly warned Israeli officials against conducting large-scale operations in Rafah without a plan to ensure the safety of innocent civilians. But the administration made clear this week that it would not — at least not immediately — move to reduce any support for Israel in the wake of last weekend’s strike.

By continuing arms deliveries amid rising civilian casualties, Ibrahim said the Biden administration had “abandoned the principles of the Democratic Party and what the United States has long stood for.”

On Thursday, Trump was found guilty on all counts in the secret trial in New York. He later called the proceedings a “rigged” trial and said: “The real verdict will be delivered by the people on November 5.”

Speak out

In the United States, Israel faces growing criticism from religious leaders, human rights activists and students on college campuses.

Darryl Winston, pastor of Greater Works Ministries in metro Atlanta, is among hundreds of black religious leaders who have called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

“This genocide has gone too far,” said Winston, who served for several years as a chaplain in the U.S. Army. “People across the country are outraged by this idea that Palestinian lives are useless. This is inhumane and should not be normalized.

Fahed AbuAkel, a retired Presbyterian minister born in Palestine in 1944, said he had never seen so much support for Palestinians. He credits social media for the recent shift in public opinion, saying Americans scrolling on their phones are exposed hourly to horrific images rarely shown on the evening news.

“In seven months, the American people began to learn about our history, our pain and suffering under occupation for 76 years,” said AbuAkel, who first came to Florida in 1966 and moved to Atlanta four years later. later.

Born in Kuffer Yassif in the Galilee, AbuAkel was 4 years old when the State of Israel was established.

His family was among an estimated 150,000 Palestinians who remained home and obtained Israeli citizenship decades ago. But AbuAkel said the nearly 800,000 Palestinians who have fled to Gaza or neighboring countries have not been so lucky. The vast majority were never allowed to return.

Even as a Palestinian citizen of Israel, AbuAkel said he and other Arabs face discrimination in almost every aspect of their lives. If he wanted to visit neighboring towns, for example, he said he would need a travel permit approved by the Israeli government. Palestinians caught traveling without proper authorization face court appearances, fines and even prison, he said. Today, Israeli Arabs represent more than 20% of the Israeli population.

For AbuAkel, the scale of the destruction in Gaza reminds him of the suffering he witnessed 76 years ago as a child.

“Every time I see the children of Gaza, I see myself,” he said, adding: “The Nakba has never stopped. »

Credit: AP

Credit: AP

Even though some of his family members lost everything, Elnajjar said they remained hopeful that things would get better.

“I am impressed and amazed by their strength and resilience,” she said of her family and Palestinians in general.

She recalls a conversation she had with her cousin, Yasmeen, who recently lost her son, daughter-in-law and unborn granddaughter. Elnajjar was able to help her cousin evacuate to Egypt so she could receive medical treatment for her daughter’s pre-war injury. However, most of their immediate family is still in Gaza.

“I said, ‘I’m so sorry, I have no words,’ and his response was ‘Alhamdulillah.’ She thanked God,” Elnajjar said. “Their faith is so strong, and they have no choice but to move forward and continue… They want to live like everyone else.”

Natalie Mendenhall contributed to this article.