MASON, Michigan — It was a normal day for Iman Abu Aitah, a Palestinian student going to college in the United States. A rising junior, she had spent the month of Ramadan with her host family in Mason and was making plans to visit her relatives back in Gaza for the first time in two years. But as she did her routine Facebook check of the Gaza Now news feed, she knew something was off.

“I saw that the Ajrami family’s house was bombed in the Jabaliya refugee camp, where I live, so I called my family, but no one was answering,” she said, describing a neighbor's home. “Finally my sister answered and was crying. I couldn’t understand her.”

The news was the worst it could be. Abu Aitah’s parents had been killed, along with her two eldest brothers and a 4-year-old nephew. Suddenly, she was an orphan.

They died in the recent 50-day conflict between Hamas, which governs Gaza, and Israel, which recently invaded the territory, with the stated aim of preventing rockets from being fired and destroying the tunnel network being used to infiltrate border areas. As the conflict raged, more than 2,100 Gazans were killed and almost 11,000 others injured; 69 Israelis also died, most of them soldiers.

The conflict caught the attention of the world, but with the loss of Abu Aitah’s family, it suddenly struck in Mason too. This small city near Lansing is home away from home for Abu Aitah, where she spends all her vacations with her host mother.

Her situation has shocked the organization that brought her to the U.S. “Iman’s situation has affected all 40 students in our program,” said Nancy Qubain, director of the Hope Fund. “They’ve all been traumatized and concerned about their own families, and they’ve been very supportive of her.”

The Hope Fund coordinates working partnerships with American universities for Palestinian students living in Jordan, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza. It is now creating a scholarship in honor of the Abu Aitah family members who were killed. “We will be there for her not just over the next few months but until she graduates,” said Qubain. “We’re hoping she will continue on to graduate school.”

Abu Aitah first arrived the U.S. as a high school student through the State Department’s Youth Exchange and Study program in 2010. It was the first time she had left the Gaza Strip. “It taught me so much about myself,” she said. “I learned that I can do anything.”