A P.G. woman from Gaza fights to save her family, against the odds.

Her grandmother always insisted that education was the key to opportunity, and Rolla Alaydi took the message quite literally.

The eldest of six, she was raised in Al Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza, and left home to attend a prestigious university in the West Bank. Then she landed a scholarship at the University of Texas at San Antonio to pursue a master’s degree in education. She came to the U.S. in 2001, and learned English while earning her master’s then a PhD, and teaching Arabic to support herself. She got married and had a son, now 13. She moved to Pacific Grove eight years ago for a job teaching Arabic. She built a life here, a world away from her family home, a three-story house in northern Gaza with a lemon tree, a fig tree and her book collection.

“I was the luckiest one,” she says. “It’s a blessing and a curse at the same time, because I am the only one here. It is hard.”

On Nov. 10, the Israel Defense Forces bombed Alaydi’s hometown, part of Israel’s ongoing response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. Her family’s home (and the fruit trees and books) were demolished. Since then, her four brothers and their wives and children – 21 people, all told – have been on the move, fighting for their lives.

They send updates periodically, when they can get a charge and a signal. The families have split up, a painful but strategic choice. “This is a decision so if anything happens to them, at least our family will not be erased,” Alaydi says.

She is 44; the youngest of their siblings, a sister, died from cancer before the war. The other four brothers are 41-year-old Mamdouh, whose wife and their six children (ages 3-17) are living under a tarp in Rafa. Her 40-year-old brother, Medhat, and his wife and their five children, are in Khan Yunis. Mehat has diabetes and has not had any insulin treatments since October; Alaydi says when she sees his face in a video, the bones are visible. Their youngest brother, 26-year-old Muhamad, has Stage 1 cancer but cannot get treatment. Musbah, 36, was taken into custody by the IDF during their evacuation when they began heading south, and has not been heard from since. His wife, Shireen, and their twin 13-year-olds are in central Gaza; Shireen has had no time to grieve for her own father and brother and his family who were killed in a bombing.

As an American citizen, Alaydi is a beacon of hope for the family. “My whole family now sees me as their savior,” Alaydi says. “I am doing what I can.”

Doing what she can means working with the Arab American Civil Rights League for pro bono immigration services, submitting I-130 petitions (at a cost of $575 per person, for 21 people) to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, hoping to evacuate at least some of her family from Gaza to Egypt to the U.S. Her siblings never intended to follow her to the U.S. – they all have college degrees and established careers in Gaza, with no interest in leaving, but they now find themselves walking hours to get water, and sharing two small eggplants and a piece of bread among an entire family in a daily fight for survival. “It is like going 1,000 years back,” Alaydi says.

The immigration applications (“petitions for alien relative”) are something of a test case for Gaza, and there is no guarantee any will be granted. But Alaydi is latching onto what she can, while still sleeping with her smartphone under her pillow, waiting for updates any time. “I am hopeful – and I am scared too,” Alaydi says. “I don’t want to be scared. But the whole world is failing them.”

I asked Alaydi what we can do here, while news of the worsening humanitarian crisis continues daily. She is indeed raising money (for the immigration applications, and hopeful future resettlement expenses for her family members, at gofund.me/345a85a3), but she hopes for something different, perhaps harder to achieve but ultimately more world-changing. “I hope people see me and my family as human beings,” she says. She wants people simply to know who her siblings and nieces and nephews are – people with achievements, careers, dreams.

Alaydi invokes a Jewish saying from the Talmud, that to save one life is to save the entire world. “If we can do this, at least we are doing something,” she says. “The rain drops will fill the bottle.”

SARA RUBIN is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at sara@mcweekly.com