Correction: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Borak and Hashem Alagha’s last name.
The Alagha family was shaken awake early Wednesday morning by a predawn Israeli airstrike outside their front door.
They’re in their third home in Gaza in the past three months. It was the seventh bombing in the same spot in recent days, the family says.
“We wake up every day knowing that our lives are at stake,” Borak Alagha wrote in a message in Arabic to a Chicago Sun-Times reporter on WhatsApp. “At any time, we could be bombed at home, in the car or on the road. A terrible tragedy.”
Alagha, 18, and his 20-year-old brother Hashem are Palestinian Americans who are U.S. citizens born in Chicago’s western suburbs. They say their pleas to the U.S. government to secure their evacuation from the besieged enclave through the Rafah Crossing at the Egyptian border have fallen on deaf ears.
“We thought there would be care from the government,” Alagha wrote in a text. “But unfortunately, they didn’t put any serious pressure to evacuate us ... on the Egyptian and Israeli parties.”
‘Only those who live it will feel this feeling’
The brothers grew up in suburban Lombard for a few years surrounded by their parents, grandparents and extended family. They moved to Canada for a short time. Then, when their grandparents moved to Gaza and the grandmother fell ill, the brothers’ family followed in 2011.
Today, they’re among 28 family members taking shelter in a small two-bedroom home in the heavily bombarded Khan Younis. They sleep on the floor and share one bathroom and a tiny kitchen. Relatives range in age from Alagha’s 8-year-old sister to his mentally disabled 53-year-old uncle.
They’ve fled from one area to another amid seemingly endless airstrikes since the war between Hamas and Israel started Oct. 7, Alagha said. Their original home was destroyed in an Israeli bombing shortly after they left it. Both brothers were engineering students until the attacks displaced them.
“I will not talk about the intensity of the explosion and the fire,” Alagha says of airstrikes outside their door, “because only those who live it will feel this feeling.”
They’re running out of food.
“One meal in the afternoon, either fava beans or chickpeas or kidney beans,” Alagha said. “And at night, canned cheese.”
Alagha’s family also ran out of medication needed for his grandparents — who have since evacuated into Egypt — so a few of them journeyed to find medicine but quickly retreated as they witnessed tanks firing in their direction, striking other people in the street, the family said. A few days later, an airstrike narrowly missed the home they’re staying in, leaving shattered glass and shrapnel all over.
So far, none of Alagha’s immediate family has been killed in Israeli attacks. But his uncle was wounded in a strike, and Alagha suffered an electrical shock to his face when he ran into a live wire as he fled from another bombing in the dark.
“Unfortunately the situation is very difficult,” he texted. “The food is not suitable. The water is unhealthy and not sterile. The bombing continues. Fear is everywhere.
“We are all afraid that the Israeli army will inform us that we have to move to another area after they already forced us to move from our original home.”
Last week, they learned Israeli military vehicles had seemingly entered the Elagha family’s cemetery and bulldozed graves and exhumed bodies. CNN reported Thursday that the Israeli military confirmed it had done so to a cemetery in Khan Younis. Family members said the report appeared to show their cemetery, but it wasn’t immediately clear if that was the case. Intentional attacks on cemeteries could amount to a war crime, according to international law.
Family members ‘left for dead,’ Chicago-area relative says
Alagha’s cousin Yasmeen Elagha is a 27-year-old law student at Northwestern University from Oakbrook Terrace who has spent weeks trying to help the Elagha brothers, their three younger siblings, their parents and their disabled uncle out of Gaza for the past few weeks.
She joined a lawsuit in December against U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, claiming denial of equal protection for American citizens in Gaza compared to those in Israel, thousands of whom were quickly evacuated from the area by the U.S. government.
“Israeli Americans were brought here on U.S. charter planes and cruise ships in the first few weeks since Oct. 7, and Palestinian Americans have been fully left for dead,” Yasmeen Elagha said.
A Defense official said the department doesn’t comment on pending litigation, and the State Department didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Elagha said her cousins’ family was approved for evacuation in December, but their names have not yet appeared on an exit list that on any given day has anywhere between a few names to dozens.
So far, only her grandparents have made it through to Egypt and are receiving medical care there. They were separated from the rest of the family at the Egyptian border when the group made its fourth attempt to cross last month. And the elderly couple faced a dicey bus ride to Cairo, Elagha said.
“The road from Gaza to Cairo is super dangerous,” she said, having taken the trip herself several times to visit family in Gaza since there aren’t direct flights there or into the West Bank. “There’s regularly kidnappings and robberies. There are multiple checkpoints.” And her grandparents are “not fully aware of everything around them because of their age. We didn’t have any communication with them for seven hours.”
The war has been “genuine hell” for her extended family that spans thousands of relatives in Gaza, of whom more than 100 have been killed since Israeli strikes began in October, Elagha said. She receives daily updates through WhatsApp.
More than 24,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza, mostly women and children, and thousands more are still unaccounted for, presumed dead under rubble, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Those attacks were launched after the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 Israelis, including hundreds of young people at an outdoor music festival.
The United Nations has accused Israel of denying aid into Gaza for its 2.2 million people, and the World Food Program estimates 93% of Gaza’s population faces crisis levels of hunger. Dehydration, starvation and deadly disease are spreading, and the World Health Organization has warned more Palestinians could die from illness and starvation in the next few months than have already been killed in Israeli strikes.
Elagha said that’s not the Gaza she knows. She misses the annual trips she’d take to visit family in Gaza — the last one was a year ago — and the culture there. Her cousins were supposed to visit the U.S. last month.
“To us, everything beautiful that Gaza encapsulates is because of our family being there,” she said. “It’s their home, their place, where they belong. I know they feel similarly ... But at this point it’s a choice between life and death.”
Elagha says she has contacted congressional representatives and U.S. embassies overseas, but the overwhelming response has been “there’s pretty much nothing they can do.”
U.S. Rep. Sean Casten and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin said they wouldn’t comment on the specific details of the Elagha family’s case.
“I will continue to reiterate to Secretary Blinken that the United States must do everything in our power to bring folks home,” Casten said through a spokesperson.
