Thousands of miles away from the brutality of war in Gaza, Tariq\u00a0Hamouda\u00a0and his wife Manal are in disbelief over the loss of three generations of their family. <\/p>\n
The Palestinian Americans, who live in Maple Grove, Minnesota, say it\u2019s been over a week since they learned 42 relatives were killed in the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, and they\u2019re still unable to fully comprehend the news. <\/p>\n
Hamouda\u00a0says his wife, whose maiden name is Saqallah, lost four brothers, a sister and most of their children when two explosions destroyed the Saqallah family compound on October 19 in the Sheikh Ejleen neighborhood of Gaza City. <\/p>\n
Hamouda and the family say it was an Israeli airstrike.\u00a0Israel has launched numerous airstrikes on Gaza City since October 7, including multiple strikes in the area that day. <\/p>\n
\u201cShe loves every member of her family. She spent the summer with them,\u201d explained Hamouda, who says he and his wife are originally from the same neighborhood in Gaza but have lived in Minnesota since 2004. <\/p>\n
There has been fear and numerous conflicts between Israel and militant groups in Gaza since then, but nothing like this, he says. <\/p>\n
Israel declared war on Hamas on October 7, after the militant group broke\u00a0through the barrier that separates Gaza from Israel and killed\u00a0more than\u00a01,400 people, including civilians and military personnel, and abducted over\u00a0220\u00a0others, according to\u00a0Israeli authorities. <\/p>\n
In response,\u00a0Israel launched devastating airstrikes on Gaza. It says it wants to destroy Hamas,\u00a0which governs the coastal territory. But 2.2 million Palestinians\u00a0living\u00a0there, unable to escape\u00a0with closed Israeli and Egyptian border crossings, are caught in the crossfire. <\/p>\n
Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 8,485\u00a0Palestinians and injured more than 21,000\u00a0others, according to the latest figures released by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah, drawn from sources in the Hamas-controlled enclave. Another 1.4 million people have been internally displaced, the United Nations Office for the\u00a0Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs\u00a0says,\u00a0after the IDF warned residents in northern Gaza to move south. <\/p>\n
But Hamouda\u00a0doesn\u2019t have time to properly mourn the dead, he says, as he is still worried about what will happen to those who\u2019ve so far survived. <\/p>\n
In South Florida, Manal\u2019s cousin Eyad Abu Shaban is equally distraught. \u201cIt\u2019s like your whole world stops,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not one, two, three, or four \u2013 it is 42 members, it\u2019s really hard to cope with.\u201d <\/p>\n
Abu Shaban says the deceased range in age from three months to 77. They were all staying in a single compound. His uncle, Essam Abu Shaban, wife Layla Saqallah and their son Ahmed were among those killed. To avoid Israeli airstrikes, they had evacuated\u00a0the nearby Tel El Hawa neighborhood and sought refuge in the Saqallah\u2019s home, Abu Shaban says. <\/p>\n
Before the airstrikes, the IDF called to say there could be military activity in the area, but they were never told to evacuate their home, Hamouda\u00a0says surviving family members told him. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey have bombed houses with warnings and without warnings,\u201d he said, lamenting there is a lot of fear, confusion and\u00a0nowhere to go. <\/p>\n
His mother-in-law was on a balcony when the first strike hit, Hamouda\u00a0says. She was able to flee with the help of a relative who also survived. <\/p>\n
A second strike completely destroyed the compound, killing dozens of relatives, he says. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy mother-in-law said her sons tried to evacuate, but they had no time,\u201d Hamouda\u00a0said, adding that his family\u00a0was not involved in militant activity and that they\u00a0\u201chad nothing to do with anything at all.\u201d <\/p>\n
Abu Shaban, a Boca Raton real estate developer, said the family were only civilians, and counted numerous medical professionals among them. <\/p>\n
Of Manal\u2019s four brothers \u2013 Saed, Omar, Ameed and Khorsheed \u2013 three were eye doctors; the other was an ENT doctor. Hamouda\u00a0says they operated Gaza\u2019s largest network of family-owned eye clinics. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have no Hamas members [in our family]. They\u2019re just ordinary people: doctors and grandmothers and grandfathers and uncles and aunts and children,\u201d Abu Shaban said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, if you want to exterminate Hamas then you should go to the source.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Maple Grove community has since rallied around the Hamouda family, showering them with love and support. <\/p>\n
Community members visited the nearby Brooklyn Park Islamic Center last week to pray for the family. A staff member from Sen. Amy Klobuchar\u2019s Minnesota office even called to offer condolences and extend an offer of assistance, Hamouda says. <\/p>\n
But all Hamouda\u00a0and Abu Shaban want is for the killing to stop. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve never seen in this day and age where the whole world is watching innocent people just being torn apart. Families, whole families, just wiped off the map,\u201d Abu Shaban said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI want everybody to know that the people of Gaza are just like them, they hurt, they bleed, they have families, they have feelings.\u201d <\/p>\n
Photos and videos of the conflict flooding social media are too much to bear, he says. <\/p>\n
Activists, human rights groups and international officials have all\u00a0called for a ceasefire,\u00a0but the war rages on, and has witnessed a new phase of dangerous ground operations. <\/p>\n
Until the killing stops, Abu Shaban says his family still reels: \u201cI\u2019m still in this nightmare. I haven\u2019t woken up yet.\u201d <\/p>\n\n
Thousands of miles away from the brutality of war in Gaza, Tariq\u00a0Hamouda\u00a0and his wife Manal are in disbelief over the loss of three generations of their family. The Palestinian Americans, who live in Maple Grove, Minnesota, say it\u2019s been over a week since they learned 42 relatives were killed in the ongoing war between Israel <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10957,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10956","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}