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 infant 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.
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’s Muslim population stands at approximately 300,000, and comprises 3% of the state, the highest proportion of any state, according to CAIR. The death toll since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas currently stands at…
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