Chicago-area Palestinian Americans overwhelmed by grief as family members face death and destruction in Gaza

Two rows of men sat in near silence, ignoring the plates of dates on offer inside the Mosque Harlem Center in Bridgeview, Illinois, as the first snow of the year fluttered outside the window.

Others trickled in, by twos and threes to embrace Mohammed Aburealh, who was mourning more than 30 extended family members killed days earlier by Israeli bombs dropped during fighting between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas.

Aburealh’s relatives are some of the more than 11,000 Palestinians who have been killed since Oct. 7. Among his deceased relatives were school principals, a physician and his wife, a medical student and a 2-year-old.

When he spoke to reporters at the azza, or condolence gathering, for his extended family, Aburealh said Americans do not understand who the dead are.

“The people who are being slaughtered are not Hamas; they are children,” he said.

Two-thirds of those killed in Gaza are children and women, according to United Nations agencies and experts, and U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said, “Gaza is becoming a graveyard for children.”

Orland Park resident Lena Hussien said grief is overwhelming Chicago’s Palestinian American community.

With about 85,000 residents, Palestinians are widely believed to make up about 60% of the Arab American population in metro Chicago. Illinois also has more Muslims per capita than any other state in the U.S.

“We’re a grieving community,” Hussien, 41, said. “Any conversation that we have literally revolves around Palestine and what more can we do. We just feel helpless.”

A 31-year-old resident of Bolingbrook named Hashim, who asked that his last name not be used out of concern for his family’s safety in the Gaza Strip, said he and his wife are keeping in touch with their relatives as best they can. He said that for others in their community, the loss has been even more serious.

“We know other people who have faced much greater calamity, anywhere from deaths to loss of homes,” he said.

Periodic violence is nothing new to Palestinians and Israelis, who have been fighting since 1948, when Israel was established on land that was formerly Palestine. That conflict intensified Oct. 7, when Hamas attacked Israel, kidnapping about 240 people and killing about 1,200 others, a number revised from Israel’s initial estimate of 1,400. Four of those hostages have been released.

As of Friday, more than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed and another 27,000 have been injured by Israeli airstrikes as the humanitarian crisis escalates in the Gaza Strip. About 70% of the 2.3 million Palestinian civilians who live in the Gaza Strip have been displaced and many are sleeping on the streets.

Basic resources such as food and water, fuel and medicine were cut off by Israel while hospitals and U.N.-run shelters are overflowing with dead and injured Palestinians. Tensions are now also escalating in the West Bank, Palestinian territory on the eastern side of Israel.

Hashim, whose family is still in Gaza, said he’d last spoken to them three or four days earlier. Communication is intermittent. As fuel, food, water, supplies and internet service are scarce in the territory, it’s a serious undertaking to even charge a phone.

“As of right now, (they are) alive, from what we know,” he said. “It’s really hard to tell what their current position is but as far as we know, they are alive. They are counting their days. They are still not receiving any resources.”

Three days after he spoke with the Tribune, Hashim got word that four of his relatives had been killed in an airstrike. Another two were critically injured, he said. He and his wife had not heard from the rest of their family members in Gaza in about four days.

Aburealh said this round of violence feels different to his relatives in Gaza, like it’s “killing for the purpose of killing,” they tell him.

Aburealh said his family members in Gaza text him every day, when they can get reception. When Aburealh does get a text, it’s the same message every time.

“The message consists of two or three words: ‘Thank God, we are still alive,’” he said.

Two of the dead being mourned at the azza were his wife’s sister and brother-in-law. She has lost 21 nieces and nephews, Aburealh said. Other family members are in the hospital or are unaccounted for.

“We still have people who are under the rubble,” he said. “We don’t know who they are. There is no equipment and there is no gas or oil to get the equipment, so you die under the rubble — unrecognized, in pieces.”

Aburealh, the former head nurse at Stroger Hospital, said he has witnessed trauma and disastrous injuries, but nothing like the images he’s seeing recently out of Gaza. “I’ve never seen body parts of children all over the scene,” he said.

Many Palestinian Americans with relatives in the West Bank and Gaza told the Tribune that their lives have ground to a halt as they try to keep up with the destruction in their homeland.

Summer Rafati, 42, of Orland Park, used to go to the gym five days a week. Now she’s stopped. She said “survivor’s guilt” has changed her behaviors over the last few weeks.

“I can’t do the normal things I used to do,” Rafati said.

It feels impossible for her to go about her usual activities when she knows that people are going without basic resources and fearing for their safety in Gaza and the West Bank, where her extended family still lives.

“The continuous raw footage is beyond my ability to articulate at this point,” she wrote in a message to the Tribune. “If I shut my eyes, I see the images of the children. If I try to tune something out, I hear (women) screaming.”

Rafati, who works as a DJ, described herself as an outgoing and happy person, but said she feels guilty and depressed now.

“You can’t eat, you can’t think, you can’t sleep,” she said. “You’re laying in bed and your eyes are closed or you’re looking at the ceiling (and) the first thing (you think) is: My God, I’m safe in my home. It’s not going to collapse on me.”

The contrast between her life and the conditions for Palestinians is haunting her. She is desperate for a cease-fire.

“Everything we do, whether it’s sitting on the bed or sitting on a chair, is such a luxury,” she said. “And then you have people in Gaza happy because they got a piece of bread and sitting on the pavement floor for a couple of minutes without being worried about a bomb coming through.”

Anger, paralysis, guilt and sadness are typical responses to trauma, said Hadia Zarzour, a licensed therapist who specializes in trauma. She has facilitated five healing circles geared toward those grieving and processing the destruction in Gaza over the last month.

The same events can produce different reactions in people, she said. “People (ask), ‘Why am I feeling paralyzed while others are more active?’” she said. “We tell them we don’t really choose our reaction. It’s important that we understand this trauma response and then try to manage it.”

Understanding an emotional reaction is the first step a person can take toward channeling feelings into something productive, she said.

Making things more complicated is the fact that Palestinian Americans have watched the conflict unfold in their homeland for decades, she said: “Unfortunately, in this region, we have collective trauma and generational trauma,” she said. “People ... can inherit that and it can actually become part of our DNA.”

Zarzour is Syrian. She said that offering help to people who need to think through their fear and sadness about the bombing, destruction, death and displacement has brought back her own bad memories of the Syrian refugee crisis. But it is also something she can do.

She referred to the “something I can do” as a behavioral activation, which changes a person’s emotional state. For the people who have participated in Zarzour’s healing circles, that might mean checking on a friend who is also struggling with the news, contacting an elected representative or sharing how they feel with people outside the Palestinian community.

Zarzour said the group talks about self-care and ends with a prayer because people going through traumatic events, whether firsthand or secondhand, need to feel anchored and faith can be a good way to achieve that.

For Hussien, of Orland Park, engaging in activism is something she can do as she absorbs the news of bombings and their aftermath. She and her family joined hundreds of thousands of protesters at a Nov. 4 rally in Washington, D.C., that called for a cease-fire by Israel.

“They truly thought it was their duty to be there,” she said of her children, who are 5, 8 and 12. “We want to shout from the rooftops for people to hear us.”

Hussien said she is seeing local organizations cancel or push back festive gatherings. The Arab American Democratic Club pushed back its 40th anniversary celebration, originally scheduled for Nov. 1., to next spring.

“We recognize the immense suffering that our Palestinian brothers and sisters are enduring during these challenging times, and we feel it would be inappropriate to celebrate our milestone while they are in distress,” a statement on the group’s Facebook page read.

Hussien said the cancellation shows how the fighting has rocked every aspect of life for Palestinian Americans.

But life in the U.S. rolls on. “We are still able to be free and to go to work and to kiss our children,” Hussien said.

She said the ordinary things are what hurt the most.