Sami Shaban, a Palestinian American businessman and elected official from Franklin Township in New Jersey, was ready to celebrate his birthday on Sunday when he received the news from his father. Nine members of their extended family – later upped to 10 – had been killed in a bombing in Gaza.
“In that one bomb, four generations were lost,” said Shaban, speaking at a Wednesday press conference organized by the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations or CAIR. The fatalities in the family from the bombing Friday ranged from a 72-year-old aunt, Salwa Shaban, to a 3-month-old girl named Farah, he said.
Shaban, who serves on his town’s Board of Education, said what made the incident doubly tragic was that his cousin had invited other relatives to stay with him, thinking they would be safe there.
“And it was in that house that they faced their end,” said Shaban.
Our plea is for this all to end.
He called on other elected officials to push for a cease-fire and to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. The Biden administration has said it was too soon to end the fighting, with hundreds of Israelis still being held by the militant group Hamas.
“Our plea is for this all to end,” said Shaban, “and for people like my family to stop suffering.”
Shaban said the only family member who survived the bombing was his uncle, “who’s burned from head to toe and barely surviving right now.”
Separately, he noted that a pregnant cousin on his mother’s side had been turned away from a hospital and was forced to deliver her baby on a sidewalk.
“There is no health care there, there is no anesthesia,” he said of conditions in Gaza. “So when they’re operating they go directly into you, with no pain relief. What’s happening there is tragic.”
New Jersey is home to approximately 300,000 Muslims, who make up 3% of the state's population — the highest proportion of any state, according to CAIR. The death toll since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas currently stands at more than 8,000 in Gaza, according to the Gaza health ministry, and more than 1,400 in Israel, according to Israeli authorities.
Other Muslims in New Jersey have also lost loved ones during the conflict, including Mohammad Qatanani, the imam of the Islamic Center of Passaic County, who said that 15 members of his family had been killed during an Israeli air strike in October.
At the press conference, Jersey City Councilmember Yousef Saleh recounted learning how his family member had been killed not in Gaza but in the West Bank, where the United Nations warned on Nov. 1 of settler violence by Israelis “rising significantly” since the Hamas attack.
Saleh said he was eating lunch on Saturday when he received a video from a friend. It showed the death of Bilal Saleh, his mother’s cousin.
“He was basically getting killed by Israeli settlers while he was harvesting his olives,” said Saleh. “My heart sank.”
Saleh also urged U.S. officials and elected representatives to call for a cease-fire in Gaza. The National Muslim Democratic Council warned Monday that U.S. Muslims will withhold votes from President Joe Biden in the 2024 election if he fails to negotiate a cease-fire. Biden has said he would not push for one until all hostages kidnapped by Hamas had been released.
“We really need our leaders to lead here,” said Saleh. “There is no military solution to this conflict.”
