Polish-Palestinian survivors take Israeli leaders to court over Gaza genocide

“Polish-Palestinian survivors take Israeli leaders to court over Gaza genocide Submitted by Dalia Mikulska on Tue, 05/26/2026 - 14:44 Yoav Gallant, Israel Katz and military top brass accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Lawyers call it a test for the country's justice system Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz speaks after his meeting with his Greek counterpart in Athens on 20 January 2026 (Aggelos Nakkas/AFP) Off Five-year-old Malik still hides food beside his pillow before he goes to sleep - sometimes a piece of bread, sometimes fruit, sometimes a sweet. His four-year-old sister Razan sets aside part of every meal, even when there is plenty on her plate. Malik confuses the words "tent" and "home". Both children flinch at smoke and flashing red lights, bracing for bombs. More than two years have passed since their parents got them out of Gaza. The memories have not left them. On Monday, their father, Amjad Agha, and another Palestinian-Polish survivor, Ahmed Elsaftawy, walked into the district prosecutor's office in Wrocław, southern Poland, and filed a criminal complaint accusing senior Israeli officials of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip. Among those named are former Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant and his successor, Israel Katz; the former and current chiefs of staff of the Israeli army; the commander of the Israeli navy; the minister of energy and water; and the current and former heads of the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (Cogat), the body that controls humanitarian access to Gaza and the occupied West Bank. It is one of the first cases of its kind in Europe brought by named survivors with dual citizenship, and lawyers say it is designed to test whether Polish prosecutors will treat international crimes against their own nationals with the seriousness the law demands. Agha was born in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip. He came to Poland to study, earning degrees in food chemistry and management from the Lodz University of Technology, before returning home in 2005 to care for his ageing parents. He took a job at the agriculture ministry, running a laboratory that taught Palestinians in Gaza how to cultivate oyster mushrooms - a cheap source of protein, and for many a small income in a besieged economy. It was in the lab that he met his future wife, Alaa, a microbiologist. They married in 2020 and settled on the ground floor of a house in the centre of Khan Younis, with Agha's brother and his family upstairs. Cousins, friends and acquaintances lived all around them. A year later, their son Malik was born, followed by their daughter Razan. The children acquired Polish citizenship through their father. In October 2023, Malik was two; Razan had just turned one. 'Where's Razan?' A week into Israel's genocidal war on Gaza, on 14 October 2023, the family was woken before dawn by a strike on their building. They had moved their mattress into the hallway, the most sheltered part of the house. Had they been sleeping in their bedroom, with the children in their cots, Agha believes they would all be dead. "It was dark and very hot, and dust hung in the air. The children were crying desperately," he told Middle East Eye. Pieces of windows, ceiling and walls were falling around them. Agha picked up his son, who had been sleeping next to him. "Where's Razan?" his wife screamed. Agha's brother ran down from the floor above with a phone torch. Agha handed him Malik, then, when he found her, Razan. The boy was crying loudly. The girl, at first, was crying too. Then she fell silent. Exclusive: ICC prosecutor's office seeks arrest warrant for Israel's Smotrich Read More » His brother carried both children out to an ambulance. Agha stayed behind with Alaa, who was buried up to the neck in rubble. By the time the ambulance reached the hospital, Razan was no longer breathing. "At that moment, we were convinced that the little girl was already dead, that she was gone," Agha said. It was only after a fire broke out in the bombed-out building, and Agha managed to pull his wife from the rubble and reach the hospital, that the parents learned Razan had been revived. Thirteen people were killed in the strike, among them members of the extended family. The survivors lost everything they owned and spent months in tents. "It was cold, the water was contaminated, and there wasn't enough food, especially for the children," Agha said. Both children developed chronic diarrhoea and dehydration. Razan slid into severe malnutrition; Malik developed anaemia. The family eventually left Gaza in May 2024, on the strength of the children's Polish passports. They now live in Wrocław, where Malik and Razan attend preschool with Polish classmates. Malik's first words, his father said, were about a "broken window". "His favourite spot was the windowsill, from which he watched the street, children playing with a ball, cars passing by," Agha said. "That space was his world, his point of reference. Suddenly, it was gone. He didn't know who did it; he just said that they 'broke it', that 'it's gone'. He was not quite two years old, and those were practically his first words." A surgeon's grief The second complainant, Ahmed Elsaftawy, is a distinguished plastic surgeon who heads a department in Trzebnica, near Wrocław. His father was eight years old when he was driven out of al-Majdal - now the Israeli city of Ashkelon - during the Nakba, the mass expulsion of Palestinians that accompanied Israel's creation in 1948. The family ended up in tents in the Gaza Strip, refugees overnight. Elsaftawy himself was born in Qatar, where his parents had moved in the 1960s in search of work. At 17 he came to Poland to study medicine – a field then closed to non-citizens in Qatar - and has lived in the country for more than 30 years. His relatives returned to Gaza after the Oslo Accords in the 1990s. Thirty-four members of his family have been killed since October 2023. The hardest loss, he said, was his sister, who died of malnutrition and a lack of medical care. "This tragedy will forever remain a part of my life," he told MEE. To get his elderly father and his brother's family out of Gaza, Elsaftawy travelled to Egypt and paid a total of $27,500 in cash to Hala, the Egyptian company that for much of 2024 was the only practical route onto the evacuation list at the Rafah crossing. It was $5,000 for his father; $2,500 for each of his brother's three children. "In a world where freedom is not a right but a commodity, everything has a price," he said. A test for Polish justice The complaint argues that the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza is not a byproduct of war but the outcome of a coordinated strategy meeting the criteria of genocide. It singles out the use of starvation as a prohibited method of warfare and the obstruction of humanitarian aid to Polish citizens and their families. The complainants are supported by the Hind Rajab Foundation , the Polish-Palestinian Justice Initiative Kaktus, and Polish members of the Global Sumud Flotilla mission, Nina Ptak and Ewa Jasiewicz. Elsaftawy said he was not asking for special treatment. "I am demanding only the right to the truth, accountability and the protection of fundamental humanitarian values, which should apply regardless of nationality, religion or origin," he told MEE. "Poland has a duty to adhere to the principles of international law, the protection of human rights and responsibility for the safety of its citizens." Kaktus framed the case as a test of Polish institutions. "Will the law be applied equally to everyone, or selectively, depending on origin?" it asked. International law News Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:19 Update Date Override 0

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