Israeli officials have confirmed that soldiers took two Palestinian American citizens from their shelter in Gaza last week but have so far declined to detail any specific allegations against the men or provide evidence of wrongdoing.
Brothers Borak and Hashem Alagha, 18 and 20, were sleeping among dozens of relatives Thursday when Israeli soldiers broke into their makeshift home and took them, along with their Canadian-citizen father and three other male family members.
Their mother said Israeli soldiers tied up and blindfolded the women and girls in the family and threw them outside, where neighbors later found and untied them.
The Alaghas, natives of west suburban Lombard, were cleared months ago by the U.S. State Department for evacuation from Gaza with their parents, three younger sisters and uncle — but American officials have since failed to secure their exit. Their cousin Yasmeen Elagha lives in the suburbs and has sued the U.S. State and Defense departments to help her family evacuate.
On Tuesday, five days after their capture, Elisha Breton, a spokesperson for the Consulate General of Israel to the Midwest said in an email that the brothers had been “arrested for collaboration with Hamas.” Breton added that “the story, as told by Ms. Yasmeen Elagha and reported in your article, is erroneous and misleading.”
Neither Breton nor the Israeli military have answered follow-up questions from the Chicago Sun-Times about what may have been erroneous or misleading or shared evidence or allegations against the brothers.
An Israeli military spokesperson said there would be “no further comment.” Later, the Israeli military said the brothers are in the custody of the Israeli Security Agency, an internal-focused branch of the Israeli intelligence community. The ISA didn’t immediately respond to questions.
Asked if Israel has relayed any accusations to U.S. officials or presented any evidence against the American citizens, a U.S. State Department spokesperson said Wednesday they are “aware of those unconfirmed reports.”
“Due to privacy considerations, we have no further details to share,” the spokesperson said.
John Babcock, a spokesman for Global Affairs Canada, the State Department equivalent in that country, also declined to comment, citing privacy laws. The Alagha brothers and their father all have Canadian citizenship, the family has said.
Maria Kari, an attorney representing the Alagha family, said the “unverified claims, which have zero evidence, are nothing but a flimsy attempt by Israel to avoid accountability for unjustly and arbitrarily detaining two U.S. citizens.
“For months, Hashem and Borak’s family members have been pleading with elected officials in the U.S. to protect the boys — both American citizens born and raised in Chicago — from Israel’s attacks on Gaza,” Kari said in a statement. “Now the family’s worst fears have come true, and on top of worrying for the boys’ safety, the family is being forced to grapple with Israel’s baseless accusations and smears.”
The family hasn’t heard from the brothers since they were taken last week, and U.S. officials haven’t notified them of any charges, Kari said. She said the family learned of the allegations from a Sun-Times reporter.
The brothers were both engineering students at a top Gaza university until Israeli attacks displaced them. Their 53-year-old mentally disabled uncle, Maen Alagha, was among the six male relatives taken by soldiers from the family’s shelter.
Human rights attorneys and experts on the Israeli military justice system say the claims against the brothers should be scrutinized.
“I would be highly skeptical of claims that the Israeli government is making — especially right now, when they’re on the record equating the entire population of Gaza with Hamas,” said Diala Shamas, a senior staff attorney at the New York City-based Center for Constitutional Rights, where she works on challenging government and law enforcement abuses.
Israeli officials have come under fire for a series of comments in recent months like the one by President Isaac Herzog in October, when he said, “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true, this rhetoric about civilians [being] not aware, not involved.”
More than 28,000 Palestinians, mostly civilian women and children, have been killed in the ongoing Israeli attacks on Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. About 1,200 Israelis were killed in the Hamas attack in Israel on Oct. 7, the Israeli government has said. The militant group also took about 250 hostages; six American citizens are among those still held captive.
Since the Hamas attack, the United Nations has accused Israel of taking thousands of men from their homes and shelters in Gaza, in some cases holding them for weeks while soldiers beat, blindfold and undress them.
Award-winning Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha, whose son is an American citizen, was taken by Israeli soldiers in November and accused of a Hamas affiliation. He said he was beaten and interrogated but later released without evidence of wrongdoing after international outrage.
“The laws are so broad and subjective that essentially any Palestinian can be arrested by Israeli forces at any time — there’s not really much limitation on it,” said Brad Parker, a senior policy and advocacy adviser with Defense for Children International-Palestine, which investigates and documents human rights violations against children. “An arrest [or] a detention is not indicative of any wrongdoing whatsoever.”
Parker said he isn’t sure of next steps for the brothers now that they’re facing these accusations because there’s no clear legal process in Gaza right now.
Shamas, the Center for Constitutional Rights attorney, said the Israeli government’s regular accusations of Hamas affiliation are a “form of justifying whatever measures they’re taking against the population in Gaza.”
“We’ve seen over and over again, that at the slightest actual scrutiny, a lot of these allegations have crumbled,” Shamas said. “Unfortunately, it’s oftentimes too late because the allegations will already kind of get spread in the media, and … the damage is done.”
The Israeli government has recently accused a dozen of the 12,000 employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency of participating in Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. Although Israel has not made any information public to back up the claim, which is currently being investigated by the U.N., the U.S. and other Western allies have since suspended funding to Gaza’s premier aid organization during a humanitarian crisis.
