Irish Palestinian tells of losing 16 family members in three days

Miriam Mofeed pictured in happier times. She says: 'So far they’ve only dug out one of my cousins, Fatma Mokhallalati, a retired Gazan high court judge, from the rubble. The rest we know are dead but they’re still under the building.' 

Irish Palestinians are becoming ever more fearful for the lives of their loved ones in Gaza as Israel prepares to launch what could be a devastating land incursion with the aim of eliminating Hamas entirely.

With Palestinians in the strip under an evacuation order from the Israeli government mandating that more than a million people must depart the north of the territory ahead of the invasion amid a blockade on fuel, water, and electricity, contact with those left behind is becoming increasingly difficult.

Miriam Mofeed, a 37-year-old Irish-Palestinian living in Dublin, said 16 members of her extended family were killed by an Israeli missile strike in the last three days — her cousin, her husband, their two sons and daughters in-law, and their ten children. 

“I just had a call this morning from her brother,” Miriam, a software architect who left Gaza with her husband and family in 2019, said. “These people are not even political. 

So far they’ve only dug out one of my cousins, Fatma Mokhallalati, a retired Gazan high court judge, from the rubble. The rest we know are dead but they’re still under the building.

She said the attack in northern Gaza was designed “to show people that it is dangerous to stay” in the area. She said a friend of her father’s, together with his family, were also killed in the area in a separate strike over the past four days.

“I grew up with his wife and daughters," she said. "Thirteen people died without any warning being given. 

“But if I were still there, it would be very hard for me to leave. To leave your life, your house, everything, just so it can be destroyed for nothing."

Cork-based chef Habib Al Ostaz says of his family in Gaza: 'I do not know what is going to happen, I can’t say if I’m waiting for them to die because every single moment they are bombing houses.'

Miriam’s two brothers are still in Gaza. One, a surgeon working in Gaza City, will not evacuate the north of the territory, and is keeping his family with him.

“There is no internet, so it is very difficult to call them, but sometimes I can get him via the hospital where he works,” she says.

“He is busy all the time, but the hospital is a safer place. 

I am very proud of him. He is helping people. I’m very concerned for him. He told me yesterday he is ‘living in the middle of the blood’.
"Yesterday he did an operation on the floor, and he knew as a medical person he should not do the operation but otherwise the person would have died. Every time I call him it is worse, but he is safe for now.

“You can’t imagine how hard it is, the neighbourhood I grew up in, now I see photos and I don’t recognise it — it is the colour of grey.”

Habib Al Ostaz, a 27-year-old chef based in Cork since 2021, but who left Gaza in 2016, says his whole family is still in Gaza — “my parents, my brothers, and sisters”. 

He has been able to speak to them for roughly one minute every day, but no longer, as “the internet is too bad”.

“They come online every 24 hours, I call all the time but the connection is so bad. Now in three days I haven’t talked to my Mum. My brother tells me that they are in a UN school,” he says.

Habib’s family has evacuated to the south of the strip, but he says realistically “there is nowhere to go”.

I do not know what is going to happen, I can’t say if I’m waiting for them to die because every single moment they are bombing houses.

“It is ethnic cleansing, they are wiping people out.”

Both Habib and Miriam are unhappy with the international reportage of the situation in Gaza.

“Why are there no sanctions of Israel?” says Miriam. She adds: 

People have heard about what happened last weekend, but we have been living this situation for 75 years.

Habib believes the Irish people “strongly support Palestine”. “In other countries, they don’t let them protest,” he says.

Of Hamas, he says: “I don’t blame anyone, I just blame killing of civilians. But for any occupation there will be a reaction, there will be resistance.

“Stop the world, stop killing people,” he says. “As I speak to you now, they are killing us every moment.”