‘Our lives are at stake’: U.S. citizens with Lombard roots stuck in Gaza

Posted January 23, 2024 12:59 pm

By Nader Issa and Kade Heather

The Elagha family was shaken awake early last Wednesday by a pre-dawn Israeli airstrike outside their front door.

They’re in at least 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 Elagha 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.”

Elagha, 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,” Elagha wrote in a text. “But unfortunately, they didn’t put any serious pressure to evacuate us ... on the Egyptian and Israeli parties.”

For the full story, see chicago.suntimes.com.

Borak Elagha and his cousin, Yasmeen. Yasmeen has been trying to get Borak and his brother, their three younger siblings, their parents and their disabled uncle out of Gaza for the past few weeks. Courtesy of Sun-Times

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