“We are here to let everyone here in America know what is happening to Palestinians in Rafah,” said Piscataway resident Najla Khass. During a news conference Thursday with pro-Palestinian advocates, Khass said a dozen of her family members in Rafah are sheltering in a tent as a ground invasion is threatened by Israel of this last refuge for Palestinian evacuees displaced by the Israel-Hamas war.
“My uncle’s an 85-year-old man … and now lives on the street in a tent,” Khass said. “With little food, he’s waiting to die from hunger or to be killed from Israel’s ground invasion.”
Another New Jersey resident with family in northern Gaza said they’re eating animal feed to survive.
“These are Palestinian-Americans, residents of New Jersey — who are calling on our elected officials to demand that action be taken immediately,” said Selaedin Maksut, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations-NJ. “Ceasefire now is absolutely necessary to save the lives remaining in Gaza.”
During a Lunar New Year event at the governor’s mansion Monday, a couple of protesters demanded Gov. Phil Murphy disband a commission that fosters cultural and economic ties between New Jersey and Israel.
Murphy said he was “white hot mad” about the encounter in a text he fired off to staff — and inadvertently to NJ.com reporter Matt Arco, who broke the story.
On Thursday, Murphy said, “We stand for protecting innocent lives as best we can. The substance I get completely, but the statement we put out about what happened will stand for itself.”
Murphy said he understands the enormous passions involved. As for a ceasefire, he said, “I am where I am, I think where the Biden administration is. Let’s remember, Hamas started this. Let’s not forget that. And Hamas has let the Palestinian people down, to say it politely.”
