Palestine Tet – 105 – Abdullah Elagha’s Email to Denver Councilman Chris Hines: Support a Ceasefire Proclamation
February 13, 2024
Abdullah Elagha
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By the time this blog entry is posted, the Denver City Council will have either voted in favor of a proclamation in support of a bilateral permanent ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinians. As I am traveling home to the United States. I do not know how the council voted.
(The measure failed by a 4-8 vote).
In recent blog entries I have posted several emails to Denver City Council officials calling upon them to support a ceasefire. Here is one from a young man who has become a true civic leader in Denver, and whose personal sacrifice would have broken, completely destroyed most people.
New social movements produce their own generation of leadership. Abdullah Elagha is a one of these precious new, humane, militant voices.
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Good afternoon Councilman Hinds,
My name is Abdullah Elagha and I am a Palestinian American who lives and works in Denver in District 10, your district. I want to urge you to help make Denver join the over 50 cities who have called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. I am including the rest of the city council on this email as I would like them to hear my story as well.
Since October 7th, my family has faced an unrelenting series of horrors and tragedies. On October 10th, 1 year old Aseel Elagha was killed along with her 2 year old sister Taleen Elagha and 12 year old brother Yahya Elagha. In fact their entire family was killed that day, including their mother, father and grandparents. This was the first of 3 entire families of my relatives who have been wiped out entirely in the past 5 months. In total, 120 of my relatives have been killed by Israel since October 7th, and that number continues to grow each and every day.
Those who somehow have managed to survive this long have been living in unimaginable conditions. Immediately after October 7th Israel cut off water and electricity to the entire Gaza strip, depriving over 2 million people of the most basic human needs. They also installed a suffocating blockade, not allowing for any food or medical supplies to get in. This has since caused the healthcare system in Gaza to fully collapse. Doctors are performing amputations on children without anesthesia, per this CNN article. Note the date is from over a month ago, since then the situation has gotten considerably worse.
On a more personal level, my 18 year old cousin Borak Elagha, who is an American citizen by the way, born in Chicago, whom I’ve been keeping in touch with since this all started. Borak has been giving us glimpses of how difficult life there is. Below is an image he sent back in December of what he and his 11 family members have to eat: just 1 block of cheese and 1 can of beans, shared among all 11 of them, for the entire day. All while bombs continue to fall all around them, as you can see in the other image he sent.
It’s strange looking at these screenshots again as I’m sending them to you, as I now wish that I could go back to the time when Borak was updating me on how horrible their conditions were. You see, 4 days ago, Borak and his brother Hashem, who is also an American citizen, as well as their father and uncle, were abducted by Israeli soldiers and their current whereabouts are unknown. I have spoken with a number of news outlets about this already, here is a link to an article written about it by Fox 31. It is sickening to me to imagine what they are going through right now as the stories of torture and abuse that other Palestinian who have been abducted have recounted are harrowing, per this Amnesty International article.
I want to highlight that my stories are not unique. This is the experience of many, many people in Gaza, and their relatives here in the United States continue to grapple with these horrors every day. Similarly, Palestinian Americans here are facing an unprecedented rise in racially motivated violence. I am sure you have all heard the story of the 6 year old Palestinian boy in Illinois who was stabbed by his landlord, covered in this AP article or the Palestinian man in Texas who was stabbed last week, per this NPR article. But this situation has also hit close to home, as a dear friend of mine who is a Palestinian woman living in Colorado with businesses in Denver has received many death threats and had her home shot at, as you can see in this CBS article. These are verified, material examples of anti-Palestinian hate crimes that we continue to experience even right here in Colorado. This is why I truly believe that although this war is waging thousands of miles away, it is very much a local issue.
Nearly 30,000 Palestinian civilians have been killed since October 7th, nearly 10,000 of which are children and this number continues to grow each and every day. I understand that you may feel uneducated on this issue and that there is a lot of propaganda and charged opinions about this, however calling for a ceasefire is such a simple and basic ask. It is very clear that the primary targets of this offensive by Israel are civilians and civilian infrastructure. The 120 relatives of mine who were killed were all civilians. What was baby Aseel’s crime? What was 12 year old Yahya’s crime? Nearly all the hospitals in Gaza have been targeted, municipal buildings have been leveled, entire residential blocks of Gaza have been flattened and dozens of mosques and churches have been demolished. Not to mention the violence Palestinians in the West Bank have been facing, where there is no Hamas. In fact in the West Bank, Israeli forces are using Palestinians as human shields, as per this Reuters article.
It is clear as day that this is not a defensive war.
I urge you to call for the end of this violence and support the proclamation to call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. This is not a political issue, this is a humanitarian issue. Stand on the right side of history and vote for humanity.
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