In Israel and the U.S., parallel cases of malice against Palestinians

On Thursday, Mohammed Zaher Ibrahim, 16, was released from Israel’s Ofer Prison and reunited with his family. The Palestinian American boy from Florida had been 15 when Israeli soldiers abducted him from his home in the West Bank village of Al-Mazraa Ash-Sharquia on Feb. 16.

His first stop after prison was the hospital. Before his release, both his lawyer and U.S. Embassy officials sounded the alarm on his rapidly deteriorating medical condition: Mohammed had lost a quarter of his body weight, contracted scabies and suffered beatings from prison guards. Emerging gaunt and pale from Israeli custody last week, the teenager bore little resemblance to the photos that had been circulated to campaign for his release.

Despite Israeli efforts to double down on Mohammed’s detention — including in a statement directly from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office — the media firestorm ignited by family members and their supporters ultimately won out. Mohammed’s uncle credited the dogged commitment of a grassroots movement that mobilized more than 100 organizations, Florida community members and members of Congress to fight for his nephew’s freedom. He was also careful to draw attention to the “hundreds of children” who are still “unjustly trapped in an Israeli prison, being subjected to Israel’s abuse and torture.”

Since Oct. 7, 2023, the Israel Prison Service has transformed its facilities into a “network of torture camps,” according to one Israeli watchdog group. Palestinian deaths in prison have skyrocketed, and the prisoners released in ceasefire exchange deals have attested to routine assaults, medical neglect, food deprivation and rape. These testimonies have been further corroborated by prison guards and high-level Israeli officials.

More than 300 Palestinian child prisoners, subject to the only military court in the world that systematically prosecutes minors, face these brutal conditions. Mohammed witnessed his fellow cellmate, Walid Khalid Abdullah Ahmad, 17, collapse and die from malnutrition. Such cases highlight how the repercussions of the U.S.-backed war on Palestinians have extended far beyond the bounds of the Gaza Strip.

For decades, the Israeli government has pumped money and weapons into the illegal settlement enterprise in the West Bank. In the last two years, killings of Palestinians have soared, arson attacks regularly set villages alight, local and foreign journalists face heightened threats from settler mobs and American solidarity activists trying to protect Palestinian villagers have been shot and killed by Israeli soldiers.

Through his nine-and-a-half-month detention, Mohammed’s family was denied the right to visit him. The joy of his freedom was therefore tempered by grief: it was only after his release that his family members were able to deliver the news that Mohammed’s cousin, Florida-born Sayfollah Musallet, 20, had been beaten to death by a mob of Israeli settlers in July. He was the fifth American killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7, 2023.

The U.S. State Department has dragged its feet on pursuing accountability for crimes against its citizens, deferring investigations to the Israeli military as a matter of course. This practice of ignoring Israeli violence against Americans long predates the current Trump administration. The families of activist Rachel Corrie and journalist Shireen Abu Akleh — killed by Israeli forces in 2003 and 2022, respectively — have yet to see justice.

The State Department’s inaction on behalf of Americans abroad can only be fully understood in light of the Department of Homeland Security’s hostility toward the domestic anti-war movement for Palestinian freedom.

A month after Mohammed’s arrest, and half a world away from Al-Mazraa Ash-Sharquia, a Palestinian woman in New Jersey was detained March 13 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement while applying for a green card through her mother, a U.S. citizen. Leqaa Kordia, 32, was summarily renditioned from Newark to the overcrowded Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, where she is still being held today.

Similar to other attempts at politically motivated “ideological deportations,” Kordia was put on ICE’s radar because of her participation in a protest against Israel’s war on Gaza. By the time she was arrested, according to her affidavit, she had lost “nearly 175 family members — almost an entire generation — to the ongoing genocide in Gaza.” Although judges have twice ordered her release on bond, ICE has invoked rarely used “administrative stays” to keep her in captivity.

Though they face vastly different juridical regimes, Kordia’s and Mohammed’s cases are both acute examples of the consequences meted out to Palestinians who dare to oppose their people’s slaughter — or who simply choose to maintain a connection to their homeland in defiance of Israel’s military occupation.

By preventing any international intervention into the crimes against humanity in Gaza, the U.S. and Israel have undermined the institutions tasked with upholding humanitarian law in favor of a world order defined by brute force. The U.S.’s unwavering military and diplomatic support of its ally has spiraled outward into an unchecked rampage across the region, with Israel conducting military operations in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran, Tunisia and Qatar.

But Mohammed’s case demonstrates the role that everyday people — family members and journalists, community organizers and retirees — can play in rejecting this state of affairs, by refusing to let Palestinians like Kordia and Mohammed be disappeared in silence. Relentless pressure campaigns can also have life-changing effects beyond individual cases: Mohammed’s lawyer was able to leverage the pressure against Israel to secure release deals for three other Palestinian children who had been detained and charged alongside Mohammed.

The last two years have witnessed a tidal shift in Americans’ public perception of the Palestinian cause. On both sides of the aisle, elected representatives are coming under greater scrutiny for their ties to pro-Israel lobbying groups. Social movements are now better positioned to pressure government officials, by raising the political and reputational costs of complicity with crimes against humanity.

Challenging the impunity with which Israel imprisoned a Palestinian American teenager necessarily means challenging the broader system of unconditional U.S. support for Israel. It also means opposing similar injustices within our own borders, such as the criminalization of solidarity with Palestine or the denial of due process to tens of thousands of migrants in detention centers like the one holding Kordia.

In both the U.S. and Israel, imprisonment is used to sever individuals from their communities, leaving them feeling alone, isolated and vulnerable to powers far beyond their control. But organized grassroots movements have the power to challenge these lethal bureaucracies, whether at home or abroad. We can fight for — and win — the freedom of people like Mohammed and Kordia.

Nasreen Abd Elal is a Palestinian organizer based in New York City.