For the past five months, Hamza Abu-Hamdeh has watched from afar as videos showed bodies unearthed from gray rubble, as more bombs fell on Gaza.

Abu-Hamdeh is a 24-year-old Palestinian American living in the suburbs outside Birmingham, in a state where most politicians support Israel, where public opinion tends to lean more conservative.

“It’s a very isolating feeling, that our lives, our family’s lives, are not seen as valuable enough to have a stance about,” he said. “But they still want our votes.”

For some first- and second-generation Palestinian Americans in the Birmingham metro, it’s felt impossible to turn away from the news since Hamas invaded Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking hundreds of hostages. In response, Israel launched a military siege of Gaza — tanks and troops, airstrikes, blockades that kept out food, water and supplies.

About 2.3 million Palestinians lived in Gaza prior to Oct. 7, more than half of them younger than 20. Starvation, bombings and snipers have killed more than 34,000 people. At least 10,000 more are lost under the gray rubble of bombed homes and buildings.

Now, more than 1 million Palestinians are in Rafah, pushed into the region’s southernmost city by Israel, deeming it as a safe zone. But Israeli troops have bombed Rafah, too.

Some of Birmingham’s Palestinian families landed here after U.S. visa applications brought them to Gadsden. Their children grew up going to protests with their families, hearing stories about their ancestry, history and culture from their parents and grandparents. They proudly wear keffiyehs – a black and white scarf that’s a symbol of Palestinian identity.

Roughly a week after the Oct. 7 attack, more than 400 people gathered near Birmingham’s Railroad Park in protest as Israel ramped up its bombing of northern Gaza. Local groups, including Arabama, Young Palestinians of Birmingham, Palestinian Christians of Alabama, Birmingham Democratic Socialists of America, the Party for Socialism and Liberation and students at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, have organized more protests, candlelight vigils, a film screening and an event celebrating Palestinian culture since then.

Across the state, though, Alabama’s politicians have overwhelmingly supported Israel’s response. Sen. Katie Britt traveled to Israel as part of a Senate delegation in late October. Only Rep. Terri Sewell – who also condemned the attack by Hamas in early October – has called for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Here are stories from five young Palestinian Americans in the Birmingham metro, navigating grief and resilience:

Laith Mekdad, 24, Birmingham

From his family’s home in Birmingham, 24-year-old Laith Mekdad awoke around 4 a.m. to find his father speaking on the phone. Amid service blackouts, his great-uncle got through with news of his daughter’s death.

Three months after the October 7 attacks, Mekdad said, more than 100 of his relatives back in Gaza had been killed.

“It’s almost surreal,” he said. “It’s so hard. I sympathize with them, but it’s so hard to imagine or fathom that this is actually happening to somebody my age, that could’ve been me in another world. My family got lucky to have gotten out.”

Mekdad, who was born and raised in Alabama has never been able to visit his family’s homeland.

“I never really got to have those connections with my cousins or uncles or anybody over there,” he said. “I feel like I’m almost losing my Palestinian identity, just because I’m not allowed to visit my homeland.”

Recently, Mekdad said, he was working out at a local gym when a woman approached him and harassed him, saying he was putting himself in danger for wearing a keffiyeh, telling staff that he had weapons and was a member of Hamas.

Elizabeth Shahid, 33, Birmingham

Elizabeth Shahid can trace her mother’s family roots all the way back to the original founders of the city of Ramallah, in the West Bank. Her ties to the city are grounded in her Christian faith. She said that’s what she said gave her the courage to speak at recent protests in Birmingham.

Her maternal grandparents moved to Alabama in the 1950s. After speaking about her experience as a Christian Palestinian American at a rally held near Railroad Park in early January, she reflected on how her mom had protested when she was a UAB student, too.

“It’s a new wave of solidarity that has been there in every generation since ‘48,” she said.

But still, she said, some have warned her against jeopardizing her family’s safety by being visible as a local activist.

“People are scared to speak up,” she said. “I’m one of the loudest voices. But that’s not going to stop me.”

Her family members in Ramallah call with reports of their neighbors rounded up in military raids, children arrested in the middle of the night. More of the usual, in a community where raids of citizens were common even before Oct. 7.

“There’s loss that’s just tied to the experience of being Palestinian. Loss of, not just lives, but land, culture,” she said. “For me, I feel like it’s just this grieving of theft.”

Salam Qashou, 24, Homewood

Salam Qashou took a break from his contractor job at a work site in Huntsville in early February. It was time to pray.

As he was kneeling on the ground, eyes closed, Qashou said, he heard a man’s voice behind him say, “Well, they ought to keep you in a cage if you’re doing that.”

He said he became used to comments like this while growing up in Alabama. But he still can’t imagine living anywhere other than the Birmingham metro, unless he could live in his family’s Palestinian homeland.

Since Oct. 7, Qashou has spoken with his relatives in Tulkarem nearly every day. He said they are experiencing “psychological torture,” soldiers entering their apartment buildings and sitting on the rooftops with guns pointed, ensuring people stay indoors. He said two of their neighbors have been killed.

“They just don’t know if it’s ever going to end,” he said. “They’re feeling really hopeless at this point.”

He stays connected to the Palestinian community locally in the Birmingham metro, but he said his experience with others outside the community have been largely positive and supportive.

“In my experience, if you have good character, then you’ll establish credibility with people,” he said. “If, at that point, they don’t listen, then it’s almost a lost cause.”

Danah D., 22, Hoover

Danah D. felt disconnected as she saw a flurry of social media posts from friends and acquaintances about Nick Saban’s retirement. She was spending her time watching as bombs fell on Gaza.

A Montgomery native, she said she knows it’s possible for people in her community, in Alabama’s government and from across the nation to tune in with what’s going on, to speak out in support of communities they don’t belong to. She saw it several years ago, with a public surge of support for Ukrainians amid the Russian invasion, with blue and yellow flags popping up in neighborhoods around Birmingham.

“I saw so much outcry whenever the whole war in Ukraine happened,” she said. “And that is well-deserved, that is needed. But you can’t have this kind of selective activism where you only choose to care for these people because they look like you or sound like you.”

She feels betrayed by the friends who her family has prepared meals for, invited into their home, who now criticize Palestinians. She’s said she’s been open about her family’s roots, ever since moving to Birmingham in 2009.

Sometimes being open about her cultural identity came at the expense of bullying, she said, comments like, “Here comes ISIS” or “Osama Bin Laden’s daughter.”

As the death toll rises in Gaza, she said she feels a level of guilt.

“You still feel like they’re your family that are dying, no matter where they’re in Palestine, because you feel they’re a part of you,” she said. “How am I, as a Palestinian, able to go on and live with all this privilege and comfort?”

Hamza Abu-Hamdeh, 24, Hoover

Hamza Abu-Hamdeh said he’s holding out hope for a solution in Palestine, a ceasefire and agreement for a one-state solution, one that provides equal rights for all people, free of oppression, where Arabs and Jews can live side by side with equal opportunity under the law.

The 24-year-old was born and raised in the Birmingham metro. He said it’s been difficult to sleep since videos first surfaced, showing people who look like him, people with his last name, buried under the rubble left in the wake of a U.S.-made bomb dropped on Gaza by the Israeli military.

“It kind of does something to you,” he said. “The fact that our government is so complicit in the massive death toll in Gaza shows that, what’s stopping them from doing it to us, simply because we’re located here?”