ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The war in Gaza has killed more than 61,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials, and that's torn families apart. NPR's Jane Arraf spoke to one Palestinian survivor who then came to the U.S. as a scholar at Yale. Unable to go home, he is seeking asylum, but the U.S. immigration crackdown puts him at risk of being detained. A warning - our report contains graphic descriptions of war.
JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: In Gaza, before the war, Jaser Abu Mousa was among the elite.
JASER ABU MOUSA: I was very privileged in Gaza, working for a diplomatic mission. My wife was very well educated. My father was a doctor. My mother was a lawyer. So we have been raised well. We have lived well.
ARRAF: Abu Mousa, now 46, managed Swiss government aid projects. His wife was a poet, architect and teacher. With Gaza under Hamas rule and the Israeli blockade tightening, they considered leaving but decided to stay until their eldest son, Hmaid, finished high school. And then eight days after the war started with a Hamas attack in Israel, killing more than 1,200 people, an Israeli airstrike hit his house. Abu Mousa had crossed the street to greet a neighbor.
ABU MOUSA: I looked up. I saw that my apartment has vanished completely. I saw it on fire.
ARRAF: His wife, mother and four children were in the building. Tearing through the rubble, rescue workers called for a body bag.
ABU MOUSA: I recognized a head with long hair. My son was having a pony tail and he had the same characteristics of his mother's hair. So I did not know which one. I mean, I did not know if was my son or my wife.
ARRAF: Two of his children were rushed into emergency. He was called to the morgue to identify the broken bodies of his wife and his eldest son, 18.
ABU MOUSA: He was thrown 16 meters by the explosion, hit the wall of the neighbors', and he was down the stairs in the neighbors'.
ARRAF: He says he was able to recognize his wife Heba only by her lower teeth. She was 43. Their 8-year-old son, Abdulrahman, and Abu Mousa's 7-year-old nephew, Youssef, were also killed in the attack. There's a video of the scene in the hospital that day.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking Arabic).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
ARRAF: As it happens, his brother, a radiologist, was on shift when the casualties were brought in. Realizing it's his family, he runs through the hospital searching for his son, Youssef.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Non-English language spoken).
ARRAF: He and his family find the boy in the morgue. In February last year, Israeli forces stormed Nasser Hospital, where his brother Mohammad was working, imprisoning him, along with other medical staff. Jaser Abu Mousa says his brother, now 44, lost 30 pounds in his first three months in prison. He says he has not been charged. The Israeli military did not respond to an NPR request for comment about the arrests. Abu Mousa managed to get to the United Arab Emirates with his two surviving children for medical treatment.
ABU MOUSA: So we stayed, like, 40 days in the hospital. Abdallah, during these 40 days, has undergone, like, three surgeries.
ARRAF: And then he was offered a fellowship at Yale University as a peace fellow, arriving in January to focus on postwar reconstruction in Gaza. The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas collapsed in March, making reconstruction even more distant. I'm speaking with him from near Boston, where he lives with his son Abdallah, who's now almost 18, and his daughter Sham, who is turning 14. Last month, he tried for hours to reach his mother in Gaza. Seventy-five years old and in poor health, Heyam Al-Madhoun had already been displaced six times. She did not want to evacuate again when Israel started bombing. At 3 a.m. he started getting condolence messages.
ABU MOUSA: They all died - my mother, my sister, her children, my uncle, his wife. I did not know what to do, actually. I stayed, like - I stayed crying for four hours.
ARRAF: He couldn't bring himself to tell his children right away. Abu Mousa says he tries to protect them from what's happening.
ABU MOUSA: I'm struggling to keep sane in light of my personal loss and in understanding what's happening in Gaza. I'm not able to understand it.
ARRAF: To be able to remain in the U.S. after the visa for his fellowship expired in June, Abu Mousa applied for asylum. He moved to a quiet Boston suburb. Part of his asylum case is his public criticism of Hamas, the militant group running Gaza.
ABU MOUSA: I was kidnapped in 2007 by Hamas because I was vocal against their coup in 2007. My wife was threatened in 2018.
ARRAF: Abu Mousa is in the U.S. legally, but a crackdown by U.S. Immigration agents, even on asylum seekers, has raised fears by many applicants that they could be caught up in raids. His asylum interview is at least a month away, but it could take much longer. Even here, after all he's been through, he still doesn't feel his remaining family is safe.
Jane Arraf, NPR News, Amman. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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