Hilda Sabbah watches news reports from Gaza, seeing if she knows the faces of the wounded and dead being carted away from a bombed-out building.
The Palestinian woman, 38, left home eight years ago to earn a doctorate from Brigham Young University, but her parents and siblings still live in the West Bank and her cousins are in Gaza, which is under Hamas control.
One of her close friends was shot three times in the head earlier this week and likely won't survive.
"You wait to hear from friends and family, but you just feel crippled," she said.
Sabbah was one of nearly 200 protesters who gathered Wednesday in front of the Federal Building in Salt Lake City to protest U.S. funding of the Israeli military and the renewed violence in the Middle East.
Protesters held signs, shouted to drivers to honk in support and shared their stories with passersby.
"We're very concerned about the indiscriminate bombing of innocents in Gaza," said Frances ReMillard, whose group, Utahns for a Just Peace in the Holy Land, organized the protest. "Our government has taken the stance that Israel deserves to live in peace and security. Our position is that Palestinians deserve the same."
Israel last week launched an air offensive, bombing targets in Gaza for five straight days in response to months of sporadic rocket attacks by Hamas.
Gaza officials put the death toll at more than 390 dead and 1,600 wounded. Hamas says about 200 uniformed members of its security forces have been killed, and the U.N. says at least 60 Palestinian civilians have died. Israeli defense officials say Hamas' top military and political leaders have gone underground.
Four Israelis have been killed by militant rocket fire, including three civilians.
Rose Jones, a retired police officer who is majoring in political science, Middle East Studies and Arabic at the University of Utah, said she has witnessed firsthand some of the violence. She said she came under fire from Israeli soldiers while in the city of Ni'lin in the West Bank in November. She said Israeli soldiers began gassing the group she was with, and stopped only after she removed her hijab, showing her blonde hair.
"When the smoke cleared, I looked up and there was a line of boys, some only five or six, who had stood up in front of me to defend me," she said. "They were throwing rocks, trying to save me, even though I was the one paying for the weapons that were being fired at us."
She hopes to go to law school after completing her degree and return to what she hopes is then a Palestine state and work as an attorney.
Avais Ahmed, 26, hoped the protest in Salt Lake City would add to the mounting international pressure on Israel to stop its bombing offensive.
"The world needs to know people from all over care," he said.
BYU graduate Sabbah hopes she can return home in the next couple of years with her husband and five children.
"I hope I can go back and clear the minds of people, and through education, make peace," she said. "I want to make that change, but I can't do it alone."
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
