MILWAUKEE — Community members of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee (ISM) gathered on Tuesday night in support of Gaza civilians who are enduring extreme violence in the war between Israel and Hamas.
One of their members, Mohammad Hamad from Brookfield lost his 66-year-old sister Faheemah Jameel Hamad. She was buying food and other essentials with her daughter-in-law when an Israeli airstrike bombed the marketplace in their refugee camp. Faheemah was the sole caretaker for their mother. In another Gaza bombing, a friend of Hamad’s from high school lost his wife and six children.
ISM board member Munjed Ahmad told WTMJ that many children and women are dying because bombings are targeting residential places like marketplaces and apartment towers.
“What’s happening now in Gaza is more than 2 and a half million people being collectively punished,” said Ahmad. “That needs to stop. The disproportionate use of force needs to stop. There needs to be a cease-fire.”
Over 80% of the people of Gaza are refugees, many of whom were forced to leave their Palestine homes in 1947 under The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine and during the 1948 Palestine War. Regions like the Gaza Strip and West Bank have remained occupied by the Israeli military since 1967.
Ahmad said the ISM community wishes more Americans were aware of the military occupation of Gaza and the reality that many of its civilians live in refugee camps.
“These people have been besieged for 17 years — electricity cut off, food supplies rationed, water cut off, having hundreds of checkpoints of no freedom of movement,” said Ahmad. “The whole notion of living under a brutal military occupation, I don’t think people understand the scope of that.”
Ahmad and the members of ISM said they would like to see more collective effort, including from the West, to dismantle the apartheid.
“Once we talk about the root cause, which is the occupation, then we can start talking about solutions so that this does not happen again,” said Ahmad. “No one wants innocent people to die tragically.”
