Opinion | My Gazan Friend Is Dead

I call my friends in Israel every few weeks. I check the war news obsessively and donate to various Jewish and Israeli causes. Somebody I know just died in the war. She was a Gazan. She was Baraa Abu Elaish, a 26-year-old doctor who was killed in the airstrikes at the Jabalia refugee camp.

My wife, Alice, used to teach physical education in the Cleveland Heights, Ohio, school system, and Baraa had been a foreign-exchange student at Cleveland Heights High School. In 2014 Baraa assisted Alice with some elementary-school classes. “A sweet girl,” my wife said at the outbreak of the Gaza-Israel war. “I hope she doesn’t get killed.”