The photojournalist Mohammed al-Aloul holding the body of one of his children killed in the war. NYT

Her parents killed and her aunt with her in Hospital, NYT

The photojournalist holding his surviving son, Adam, and comforting a niece. NYT

Ula Faraj fed her daughter Batool, 8, who also suffered severe burns after a strike. NYT

Excerpt from article NYT:

NYT;A toddler, a 12-year-old, a mother, a photojournalist.

Their lives were ripped apart in one of the deadliest and most destructive wars of the 21st century.

Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, now in its fourth month, is often conveyed in stark numbers and historical comparisons: Some 27,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Gaza health ministry. Nearly two million are displaced and more than 60 percent of residential buildings have been damaged or destroyed in a territory smaller than Manhattan.

Yet the lives behind those statistics are often hidden from view. Internet and cellphone services are frequently cut; international reporters cannot enter Gaza except on escorted trips with the Israeli military; and dozens of Palestinian journalists have been killed in a military campaign prompted by the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on Oct. 7.

Samar Abu Elouf, a photojournalist for The New York Times, spent weeks following a handful of Palestinians who seemed to have lost everything: a boy with charred limbs, a journalist who lost four of his children in an Israeli strike, an orphaned toddler who may never walk again. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/04/world/middleeast/gaza-photos-israel-war.html

Excerpt from Washington Post Article;

Washington Post Article On Michigan Arab Americans; Michigan’s Arabs and Muslims push to defeat Biden in critical state
As the war in Gaza leads to the deaths of friends and relatives, anger at Biden’s refusal to call for a cease-fire has turned into political organizing.
During a Friday prayer at the Islamic Center of Detroit last week, Imam and prominent civil rights activist Omar Suleiman lambasted the president’s repeated assertion that Hamas beheaded babies, arguing that it has put Palestinians in danger. He noted that a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy in Chicago was fatally stabbed in October.
“And then your president wants to come to your community and make sure that you’re still going to vote with him and vote for him in November,” Suleiman said during a religious sermon. “I hope you’ve sent him the right message.”
After the sermon and prayer, Abandon Biden co-chairs Khalid Turaani and Samraa Luqman made an announcement about the effort, urging congregants to show up and vote in a way that ensures Biden does not retain the presidency. Turaani told those gathered they had no right to complain if they did not make their voices heard.
Arab and Muslim voters said they see a rare opportunity to demonstrate their power as a voting bloc and force politicians to more actively court their support. They said that since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, many Muslim and Arab Americans have been afraid to speak out, but the war in Gaza — and the calls for a cease-fire outside of their community — has helped change that dynamic. “For decades, we’ve squandered the power that we have here because [Democrats] were stringing us along, saying, ‘Vote for me, we’re not the other guy,’” said Shireen Al-Adeimi, a Lansing resident and an assistant professor at Michigan State University. “This is such a dangerous time that we’re finally willing to use that card, and [Biden] thinks we’re bluffing.”
Al-Adeimi noted the hundreds of thousands of people who have marched in support of a cease-fire, many of whom are not Arab or Muslim. “That gives us power to say we don’t have to be afraid anymore to express our views and our ideas about this,” she added.
“In America, we can just say, ‘We went against this guy because he went against our people, and we made him lose,’” Turaani said. “And I think that is just the way we market our campaign by saying, ‘This is what we’re going to do.’”

posted by F. Sheikh