Local family with Palestinian roots mourns relatives killed in Gaza, calls for cease-fire

BRAINTREE – Sitting with her Palestinian husband, Mohammad, and daughter Laila in the living room of their Braintree home, Victoria El-Shrafi read from a long list of names, many of which share the El-Shrafi surname.

She stopped short before reciting all 110. That's how many relatives − cousins of Mohammad and their descendants − have been killed in the four-month-long Israeli bombardment of Gaza.

On Oct. 7, Hamas militants broke through a security perimeter, launching an attack that, according to Israeli officials, killed 1,200 civilians, military personnel and foreign nationals and took about 240 hostages.

In the ensuing weeks and months, Israeli airstrikes and ground invasions have killed over 27,000 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, and injured more than 60,000, according to the Gaza health authorities. Thousands more are missing, many presumed buried beneath the rubble of destroyed buildings.

"They have no place to go," Mohammad said of his relatives in Gaza, a densely populated strip of land hemmed in by a wall on one side and the Mediterranean Sea on the other. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, over 85% of Gaza's 2.2 million people have been displaced, some multiple times.

The war is the latest and most violent phase of a conflict that determined Mohammad's path even before he was born.

Born in a refugee camp, Braintree's Mohammad El-Shrafi wants a homeland, humanity for his people

His parents were from Jaffa, a city south of Tel-Aviv on the Mediterranean coast in what is now Israel but was then Palestine. In 1948, the British relinquished control over the region that it had exercised since 1920 and the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

1948 saw the birth of Israel and a war between Israeli forces and indigenous Palestinians backed by surrounding Arab nations. About 700,000 Palestinians were driven from their land in the conflict, though the exact number is disputed.

Palestinians refer to these events as the Nakba, "the catastrophe."

Israel has denied refugees and their descendants the right to return, a right guaranteed by international law, according to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights.

Mohammad's parents were among those displaced. Half of his family fled to Gaza. They and their descendants fill Victoria's list of recently killed relatives. The other half, including Mohammad's mother and father, ended up in the Jordanian refugee camp where he was born.

"They told my family, 'This will be for a period of time, then you can come back,'" Mohammad said.

But that never happened. All the family has of the once prosperous farm on the outskirts of Jaffa is the key to the house.

Mohammad said he was born in a squalid U.N.-run refugee camp in Jordan, where he and his family lived in a one-room cement block with a tin roof and an outdoor bathroom.

"We were from nothing," Mohammad said of his start in the camp.

His only way out was through the U.N.-run school.

"My family stressed it a lot, my mother and father – education, education, education."

Mohammad excelled in his studies and came to the United States in 1979 to study engineering at Northeastern University. Now a civil engineer specializing in rail and transit systems, he left his mark on the region through his work on the Greenbush commuter rail line from South Station to Scituate.

Mohammad said he believes strongly in American democracy, but lately he said he's been put in a difficult position by U.S. foreign policy.

"What hurts me now is my taxes have contributed to the bombing of my people in Gaza," he said. According to the Council of Foreign Relations, Israel received $216 billion in U.S. military aid between 1946 and 2023, more than twice as much as any other nation.

The Times of Israel says arms shipments from the U.S. to Israel surged following Oct. 7. Citing the Israeli Defense Ministry, the report said 10,000 tons of armaments and military equipment were delivered between the start of the war and Dec. 25.

Rallies at town hall protest foreign policy and local politics

Not only American foreign policy but local politics have added to the El-Shrafis' grief and loss. They and other Muslim families from Braintree have held weekly rallies outside town hall since early November.

The protesters, the El-Shrafis among them, say former Braintree Mayor Charles Kokoros erred in holding a prayer service for innocent victims of the Oct. 7 attack while denying a request for a similar expression of sympathy for the thousands of innocent Palestinians killed in Gaza after the attack.

Mohammad acknowledged warm relations between Kokoros and Braintree's Muslim community in the past. He said Kokoros provided public space for Friday prayers every week and joined in Ramadan observances last spring. However, he said many in the community found the prayer service for Israeli victims alienating.

"Why didn't you do it for the people in Gaza, who are innocent people?" he said. "You have to pray for all innocent people."

Victoria said that after Kokoros denied the request to hold a prayer service for Palestinians, some members of the Muslim community collectively decided not to vote for him in the Nov. 6 election, which he lost to challenger Erin Joyce by 519 votes.

In a phone interview, Kokoros told The Patriot Ledger that he has always worked to protect and respect all groups.

"We've had Lunar New Year, Greek Independence Day, Ramadan, Hanukkah, Christmas tree lightings," he said. "We've pretty much covered all different folks, and we try to bring people together."

Regarding the public prayers after the Oct. 7 attack, Kokoros said it was not his intention to make a political statement.

"We did a prayer service because we had a conversation with someone that happened to be from the temple (B'Nai Shalom) and wanted us to come together," he said.

Asked why he didn't grant the request for a service acknowledging Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks, Kokoros said he never had the chance.

"We were in the middle of an election," he said. "A knock-down, dirty election. We just didn't really have an opportunity to put anything together."

Braintree mom, a Palestinian rights activist, says rallies will continue

The rallies calling for a cease-fire have been organized by Reem Al Zaeem, a Braintree native and mother of three who is a Palestinian rights activist with a master's degree in international relations. She said the message is one of solidarity with the Palestinian community in Gaza, the West Bank, the United States and around the world.

"We exist," Al Zaeem said. "We live here in America. We have every right to stand up against our government for killing our brothers and sisters, sending weapons and bombs."

On Kokoros' decision to hold the prayer service for Israeli victims and not Palestinian victims, Al Zaeem said he shouldn't have used public property and his public office to comment on foreign affairs.

"We're not in Israel," she said. "We're in Braintree, Massachusetts. Why are you praying for Israel? We have nothing to do with that. You're the mayor of Braintree. I told him that over and over again."

Al Zaeem said the rallies will continue until a cease-fire is in place and the United States stops providing Israel with military assistance. The rallies are held Sundays at 1 p.m. outside the Thayer Public Library.

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This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Braintree family lost over 100 relatives in Gaza, calls for cease-fire