Opinion: I lost family in Israel's war on Gaza. I owe it to them to tell their stories.

Four days after Oct. 7, 2023 — days after the Israeli military began its deadly retaliation in Gaza — I met with my new editor.

I have family in Gaza, where my parents were born, but in this meeting, I expected to hold back and talk about my reporting on Mayor Mike Duggan’s political dynamic with the White House. But as my editor walked into the room, he asked how I was doing.

Tucking my head into my hands, I broke down.

I could barely catch my breath or speak. Just before our meeting, I had learned from a cousin that the Israeli military was launching airstrikes in his neighborhood, and countless bombs were dropping near his home. My parents came to the U.S. in the late 1980s, leaving behind big families on both sides. Before this war began, we had visited many times. I thought this would be the last time I spoke to my cousin, that I was going to lose someone I loved.

I felt helpless. My family had nowhere to go — Israel and Egypt wouldn’t allow most Palestinians in Gaza to leave, and thwarted aid from flowing in . Israel controls the borders out of the Palestinian territories. The Rafah border crossing south into Egypt has been blockaded since at least 2007, opening only periodically, and was closed early in the war.

I couldn’t escape the feeling that my family needed me. But I was here, in Detroit, mentally defeated as I watched my family in Gaza in peril.

I couldn’t turn away

I had hoped the horrors wouldn't last. But the soul-crushing images from Gaza were endlessly flooding my social media and news feeds, and I couldn’t look away, fearing I’d see a familiar face. I needed to know if my family was alive.

The impact of it all became physical. I wasn’t eating well, and some days, I felt sick, nauseous and in pain. I felt a knot in my neck every time I saw a news update. My heart would palpitate. My stomach would cramp.

Often, I had the appetite only for small snacks — cheese, crackers, a little fruit and a bowl of popcorn became a normal dinner some nights.

I lost several pounds, and my doctor demanded I gain weight. I impulsively dropped money on a hardcore personal trainer and nutrition coach — I’ve gained 10 pounds and can now lift more than my body weight.

And then it happened.

Who I lost

In December 2023, two months after the attack, I received links to videos posted on social media of a gentleman on a stretcher with his index finger pointed to the sky — a gesture Muslims make while professing faith in God and His Messenger — and a limping woman with blood dripping down her face and neck, forcing her eyes shut as she clutched her son to guide her out of an ambulance truck and into the hospital.

Children around them were coughing from the giant plumes of dust that rose as they fled their crumbling apartment building, blood on their faces, telling the videographer how their home had been bombed as one of the younger children lay on a hospital floor, being treated by medical staff.

I cried out — a loud noise I had never made before — and froze.

Those were my relatives. My uncle — my mother’s brother — on the stretcher, my aunt beside him, my cousins around them, people I love as though they are my own father, mother, brothers and sisters — injured and bleeding, simply for existing.

This was the only time I would be confronted with a video, but it was not my only loss.

My aunt and uncle and their children survived, but their home was gone.

They moved in with another uncle in central Gaza, but temporarily — in early March, that house was bombed, too. My younger cousin was injured as the building collapsed, his entire right side covered in casts. I couldn’t put my phone down until my cousins updated me on his condition. With hospital resources running dry , he couldn’t be treated in Gaza. It was nearly two months before he was finally allowed to leave for treatment outside of Gaza — he lost an appendage, and his shoulder was badly damaged.

In April, six months into the war, my aunt — my father’s sister — and uncle were killed. They were at home when an airstrike destroyed multiple homes on their block, including theirs.

When I learn from family or the news which areas the Israeli military is attacking, I try to mentally prepare for the worst, and pray a little extra.

I had spent months knowing this could happen, but when it did, I was too shocked to believe the news, too shocked to cry. All I wanted was to check on my father and spend time with my family as we processed her loss. My aunt was the funny one, the big-hearted one who made us feel loved, even an ocean away. I think back and laugh a little — like the time she threw a wedding in her living room with her girlfriends for my brother because she couldn’t travel to the U.S. to celebrate with him. Moments like those may be why I couldn’t, and cannot, believe she’s gone.

But that wasn’t the end of it.

Early in the war, my aunt — my mother’s sister — and her family had been displaced from their home in the south of Gaza, and were displaced again and again from places across the territory they'd sought refuge. The chaos can make it hard to record dates. In July, they had to move twice. In early August, her son, my cousin, had gone back to the south. He was with a friend there when a blast hit. His friend, injured, crawled to safety, and notified my family that my cousin had been killed. My aunt was a mess, emotionally, and it didn’t help that they couldn’t immediately find his body.

As I struggled to process another loss, my editor urged me to put my personal needs first. But my thought in that moment was to wrap up a story I was writing on Detroit’s political future — to get it off my plate while I had some mental capacity left — so I could be home with family again, and away from everything else.

Their stories matter

It is a struggle to navigate the ethical and professional boundaries that discourage journalists like me from speaking publicly about the news, whether we’re covering it or not, and dealing with the death and destruction in my second home.

As a journalist, my duty is to seek and report the truth at all costs.

I entered the industry to tell stories like those of Palestinians — whose voices are often suppressed — the truth of the daily violence and oppression they face at the hands of the Israeli government and its decadeslong occupation of Palestine.

As a journalist, and as a human being, I owe that to my family and all those who are strategically undervalued.

I can’t get those images of my family and others in Gaza malnourished, displaced — or worse, dead — out of my head.

My family is like many others in Gaza. They love to cook maqluba and mandi. And my late aunt, the chef extraordinaire — may God have mercy on her soul — made the most crispy and savory fried sardines I’ll ever have. My cousins love to play soccer, and fiercely, but humorously compete at card games. My aunts and uncles love to bring home toys and candy for their grandchildren, relishing their smiles and laughter. All of them love to sit on Gaza’s breezy beaches, scattered with seashells, sipping on tea and dunking each other in the salty Mediterranean Sea. They love to look after each other.

Their lives matter. Their stories matter.

And as I watch the resilience of those who haven’t been killed try to survive Israel’s brutal decimation of Gaza, it’s a reminder that we need to work even harder to tell their stories — and the world needs to listen.

Dana Afana is the Detroit city hall reporter for the Free Press. Contact: dafana@freepress.com. Follow her: @DanaAfana .

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Opinion: I lost family in Israel's war on Gaza. I owe it to them to tell their stories.