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‘Devastating Blow to Humanity’: Barred From Gaza by Israel, Health Workers Cry Out for Help

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Original article by Jon Queally republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Health workers, holding banners and placards, gather at the Nasser Hospital to protest Israeli army’s attacks on northern Gaza and the prevention of the entry of necessary equipment and supplies to the besieged hospitals in Khan Yunis, Gaza on October 19, 2024.  (Photo by Doaa Albaz/Anadolu via Getty Images)

As the situation inside Gaza is increasingly described as “indescribable,” medical NGOs blocked from providing care to Palestinians trapped inside besieged territory demand world leaders to stop turning ‘blind eye’ to Israeli war crimes and violations of humanitarian law.

As more Israeli bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza killed dozens of people Saturday, health workers from both inside and out of the besieged territory are again pleading with world leaders to bring an end to the indiscriminate attacks and imposed humanitarian crisis that witnesses on the ground increasingly say there are no words to describe.

At al Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis and elsewhere in Gaza, doctors and other medical staff on Saturday staged protests and held press conferences to call attention to the ongoing attacks in northern areas, including the latest targeting of Jabalia in which reporting indicated anywhere from 33 to over 50 people—including civilian men, women, and children—were killed.

“The world is watching, and history will judge us by how we respond to this grave injustice. I call upon each and everyone one of you to join this fight for the preservation of our shared humanity.” —Dr. Khaled Saleh, FAJR Scientific

Al-Jazeera reports that hospitals, which have repeatedly been bombed by Israel over the last year, were not immune from this latest round:

Three partially functioning hospitals treating severely wounded patients and sheltering thousands of displaced Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza are now out of service after coming under intense Israeli fire, a Gaza health official told Al Jazeera, as the siege on Jabalia enters its third week, with at least 33 more people killed in the northern area.

Israeli forces bombed al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia early on Saturday, and have also shelled Kamal Adwan and the Indonesian hospitals in Beit Lahiya over the past few hours, Al Jazeera correspondents have reported.

Saturday’s attacks come days after Israel barred at least six medical service NGOs from continuing their life-saving work in Gaza. According to the Washington Post:

Two of those medical NGOs, Glia and the Palestinian American Medical Association (PAMA), confirmed to The Washington Post that they were notified by the WHO this week about the bans. Both groups have worked in Gaza for years preceding the war.

“WHO is concerned about the impact of these denials on Gaza’s strained healthcare system,” the organization said Thursday in a statement. It added that international emergency medical teams (EMTs) deployed to Gaza are essential to keeping the system operational, as only 17 of the enclave’s 36 hospitals remain functionaland “healthcare needs far exceed the system’s capacity.”

Dr. Khaled Saleh, chair of FAJR Scientific, which provides surgical expertise and trauma specialists to war-torn regions and was another of the groups notified by the WHO that it had been barred from entering Gaza, said in a statement that the move by the Israeli government filled him with “deep sadness and concern for the current state of our global family, questioning our shared humanity and ethics.”

Blocked from providing aid to people in dire need, Saleh called on people worldwide to push for an end to Israel’s blocking of vital medical aid and those seeking to provide it.

“This is a devastating blow to humanity, representing a level of destruction that we have not witnessed since World War II, yet our world leaders turn a blind eye,” he said.

“As a member of the global community,” Saleh continued, “I implore all of you who value compassion, ethics, and the sanctity of human life to stand with us and raise your voices against this unconscionable decision. Together, we must advocate for the voiceless and demand restoration of the fundamental right to access to medical care.”

Israel’s ban on the medical NGOs comes after a string of healthcare professionals who spent time in the Gaza strip have gone public with what they witnessed on the ground, telling tales of unspeakable horror and trying to shake the world out of its complacency on what experts say is a genocide in motion being carried out by Israeli forces.

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Earlier this week, the UN humanitarian office, OCHA, said that Israel’s continued blocking of food and medical supplies to Jabalia and other ares in the northern was “having life-threatening impacts” for the people there.

OCHA spokesperson Farhan Haq said the OCHA was calling on Israeli authorities “to allowed safe, sustained and unimpeded access to Jabalia and all areas of the north where people are in desperate need of assistance.”

In a post on Friday, Oxfam International mourned the killing of Dr. Ahmad Al-Najar and midwife Laila Jneid, both of whom worked with Juzoor, “killed by Israeli airstrikes on Jabalia,” the group said. “They were providing lifesaving health care in Gaza. Attacking aid workers is a war crime.” Oxfam repeated its demand for a “cease-fire now” and said healthcare workers should never be a target.

In a dispatch on Friday, Dr. Taghreed Al-Imawi, Juzoor staff and an OBGYN doctor at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, described the untenable situation on the ground.

“The situation is beyond horrific and is very difficult and indescribable,” said Al-Imawi. “Dead people, severed body parts and injured people everywhere. We are receiving emergency calls from all the areas of the north. Ambulances are not able to reach the injured. We have seen more than 23 pregnant women among the injured coming to the hospital since last week, wounded either by shrapnel or gunfire, suffering from fractures. Some were in a critical condition. Kamal Adwan Hospital and other semi-operational hospitals have received displacement orders but there is no way to evacuate in any case.”

“The pediatrics section is closed as it is full of injured people,” Al-Imawi added, “the surgery section is full of injured people, even the reception, the hospital has been shelled several times and targeted by snipers, people are terrified to come to the hospital now.”

Having recently returned from a field mission in Gaza, pediatric nurse Becky Platt, working through Save the Children—who posted her testimony Saturday—described a situation on the ground that was “like nothing I’ve seen before.”

Platt said the horrific situation is “both in terms of healthcare need and just in terms of the whole humanitarian context—seeing homes and landscapes completely devastated and seeing just the absolute level of human suffering and need as absolutely mind blowing.”

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“No child should have to be in pain,” she said. “And it just feels like your hands are tied when you can’t do what you know that you could do easily at home or in another context. I think that when it really hits. It’s just—it’s just not fair. It’s not okay that we’ve got children with devastating injuries who don’t have access to pain relief.”

For his part, Dr. Saleh of FAJR Scientific, said it was up to everyone in the world to make their voices heard.

“The world is watching,” he said, “and history will judge us by how we respond to this grave injustice. I call upon each and everyone one of you to join this fight for the preservation of our shared humanity.”

Original article by Jon Queally republished from Common Dreams under reative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue Reading‘Devastating Blow to Humanity’: Barred From Gaza by Israel, Health Workers Cry Out for Help

‘Crime Against Humanity’: UN Inquiry Details Israeli ‘Extermination’ of Gaza Healthcare

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Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Palestinian paramedic Maha Wafi, 43, walks past destroyed ambulances destroyed by Israeli attacks in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on September 15, 2024. (Photo: Bashar Taleb/AFP via Getty Images)

“Israel must immediately stop its unprecedented wanton destruction of healthcare facilities in Gaza,” the head of the inquiry stressed.

For the second time this year, a United Nations commission tasked with investigating Israel’s conduct during its yearlong invasion and blockade of Gaza has found that the U.S.-armed Israeli military is committing crimes against humanity against Palestinians.

The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory released a report Thursday detailing how “Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.”

“The commission also investigated the treatment of Palestinian detainees in Israel and of Israeli and foreign hostages in Gaza since October 7, 2023 and concluded that Israel and Palestinian armed groups are responsible for torture and sexual and gender-based violence,” the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said in a summary of the report.

The report cites the U.N. World Health Organization’s findings that Israel carried out 498 attacks on healthcare facilities in the Gaza Strip between October 7, 2023—when Hamas launched the deadliest-ever attack on Israel—and July 30, 2024.

“A total of 747 persons were killed directly in those attacks, and 969 others were injured, and 110 facilities were affected,” the publication states. The report calls the attacks “widespread and systematic.”

The commission continued:

Israeli security forces carried out air strikes against hospitals, causing considerable damage to buildings and surroundings, as well as multiple casualties; surrounded and besieged hospital premises; prevented the entry of goods and medical equipment and exit/entry of civilians; issued evacuation orders but prevented safe evacuations; and raided hospitals, arresting hospital staff and patients. Israeli security forces also obstructed access by humanitarian agencies.

“Israel must immediately stop its unprecedented wanton destruction of healthcare facilities in Gaza,” said commission chair Navi Pillay. “By targeting healthcare facilities, Israel is targeting the right to health itself with significant long-term detrimental effects on the civilian population. Children in particular have borne the brunt of these attacks, suffering both directly and indirectly from the collapse of the health system.”

OHCHR said that “attacks on medical facilities in Gaza, particularly those devoted to pediatric and neonatal care, have led to incalculable suffering of child patients, including newborns.”

“In continuing these attacks, Israel has violated children’s right to life, denied children access to basic healthcare, and deliberately inflicted conditions of life resulting in the destruction of generations of Palestinian children and, potentially, the Palestinian people as a group,” the agency added.

The commission’s inquiry found that as of July 15, “113 ambulances had been attacked and at least 61 had been damaged,” including vehicles used by the U.N., International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), and other organizations.

“Access was also reduced owing to closure of areas by Israeli security forces, [and] delays in coordination of safe routes, checkpoints, searches, or destruction of roads,” the report notes.

The commission investigated the January 29 attack that killed 6-year-old Hind Rajab and six of her relatives, as well as two paramedics who had Israeli permission to attempt to rescue them.

“They were attacked while trying to evacuate in their car,” the report said of the family. “The ambulance, carrying two paramedics, Yousef Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun, was dispatched after its route had been coordinated with Israeli security forces. It was hit by a tank shell at a distance of some 50 meters from the family’s car.”

“Hind was still alive at the time that the ambulance was dispatched,” the publication noted. “The presence of Israeli security forces in the area prevented access. As a result, the family members’ bodies could not be retrieved from their bullet-ridden car until 12 days after the incident.”

Israel Defense Forces officials have repeatedly claimed that no IDF troops were in the area at the time of the attack. Multiple journalistic investigations, including one published Tuesday by Sky News, showed that Israeli tank and machine gun fire killed the family and paramedics.

The new report’s authors also noted that “hundreds of medical personnel, including three hospital directors and the head of an orthopedic department, as well as patients and journalists were arrested by Israeli security forces” during raids on Gaza medical facilities.

“Reportedly, 128 health workers remain detained by Israeli authorities as of July 15, including four PRCS staff members,” the publication states.

“The institutionalized mistreatment of Palestinian detainees, a longstanding characteristic of the occupation, took place under direct orders from the Israeli minister in charge of the prison system, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and was fueled by Israeli government statements inciting violence and retribution,” said OHCHR.

The commission report also detailed crimes committed by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups against Israelis on and after October 7, 2023, when more than 1,100 Israelis and others were killed—at least some by so-called “friendly fire” and under the fratricidal Hannibal Directive—and over 240 people abducted.

Hostages “were mistreated to inflict physical pain and severe mental suffering, including physical violence, abuse, sexual violence, forced isolation, limited access to hygiene facilities, water and food, threats and humiliation,” OHCHR said. “Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups committed the war crimes of torture, inhuman or cruel treatment, and the crimes against humanity of enforced disappearance and other inhumane acts causing great suffering or serious injury.”

In June, the same U.N. commission found Israel’s far-right government responsible for a range of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip, including “extermination, torture, forcible transfer, and the use of starvation as a weapon of warfare.”

Over the course of its 370-day assault on Gaza, Israeli forces have killed at least 42,010 Palestinians in the coastal enclave—most of them women and children—and wounded more than 97,700 others, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health and international agencies.

At least 10,000 Palestinians are missing and believed to be dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed buildings. Israel’s “complete siege” of Gaza has forcibly displaced more than 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, and has contributed to the starvation and sickening of hundreds of thousands of Gazans.

Israel is on trial for genocide at the U.N. International Court of Justice. Meanwhile, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders—at least one of whom, political chief Ismail Haniyeh, has been assassinated—for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including extermination.

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue Reading‘Crime Against Humanity’: UN Inquiry Details Israeli ‘Extermination’ of Gaza Healthcare

One year of Israel’s war on Gaza’s health system

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Original article by Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Al Shifa Hospital after a two-week Israeli siege, April 2024.

After a year of unrelenting Israeli attacks, Gaza’s healthcare system lies in ruins. Yet, health workers continue their steadfast efforts to provide care

After a year of relentless bombardment, Gaza’s healthcare system lies in ruins, and the warnings Palestinians have issued for decades are being confirmed: hospitals, clinics, and health workers are deliberate targets of Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). What was once a systematic campaign against healthcare has escalated into an all-out assault, resulting in the decimation of most of the infrastructure. As the one-year anniversary of this ongoing genocide approached, Israeli forces continued their siege on northern Gaza, intensifying their attacks on health facilities.

Three hospitals still barely functioning in the area — including Al-Awda and Kamal Adwan — were just issued so-called “evacuation orders,” which, as pointed out by Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), are nothing short of forced removal orders. Kamal Adwan’s director, Hussam Abu Safiya, stressed the impossible position the hospital faced soon after the orders were issued. With critically injured children in their care, no means to safely evacuate them, and no other facility able to accept them, health staff are faced with the excruciating decision of either abandoning their patients or staying at the risk of their own lives.

“In between the constant bombardment occurring on the hospital and the surrounding buildings, the healthcare staff have become terrorized to a point where they are struggling to do their jobs,” Abu Safiya stated. Their situation is similar to that faced in other health facilities. Around the same time Abu Safiya recorded his statement, medics in Al-Awda were also issued forced removal orders—for the third time in a year—says Matilde De Cooman from Viva Salud, a Belgian organization partnering with the hospital.

The risks health workers face are all too real. Israeli forces have systematically besieged and destroyed healthcare infrastructure over the past 12 months, including Gaza’s largest hospitals, such as Al-Shifa. Under the pretext of searching for resistance fighters, the IOF raided operating rooms, destroyed medical equipment, and abducted patients and medical staff. In the aftermath of the attacks, civil defense teams discovered seven mass graves containing 520 bodies on hospital grounds.

Read more: Remember the Palestinian doctors killed by Israel

Over 1,000 health workers have been killed since the genocide began, with hundreds more kidnapped and held in Israeli concentration camps. Those who have been released share harrowing accounts of torture: shackles, electric shocks, broken limbs, and sexual violence. Families of those still missing, like Dr. Ahmed Muhanna, the director of Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza, are not granted any official information about prisoners’ conditions. Dr. Muhanna was abducted in December 2023. Since then, no official word has emerged about his mental or physical condition, says De Cooman.

International campaigns to secure the release of Dr. Muhanna and other abducted health workers are ongoing, though disturbing reports of their treatment in Israeli camps have sparked both outrage and fear about what the future holds. Despite these developments, Gaza’s health workers remain resolute, refusing to abandon their patients. Their unwavering commitment, sumud (steadfastness), has been lauded by global health workers since the beginning of the genocide. Operating without pay or essential supplies due to the blockade, they have continued their work tirelessly since last October. “Even with Dr. Muhanna’s fate in mind, Al-Awda’s operating director, Mohammed Salha, never once considered abandoning the hospital,” says De Cooman. “As long as there is even one person left in the area, the hospital will remain open and stand by its people.”

Read more: Fears of flooding add to Gaza’s health crisis

The health suffering in Gaza extends far beyond the hospitals. With more than two million people pushed into poverty by the attacks and the aid blockade, food and clean water are scarce. Recent reports reveal that 35% of children and 40% of pregnant or breastfeeding women in Gaza are surviving on just one type of food. Malnutrition is rampant, and the World Health Organization (WHO) has documented cases of children starving to death as humanitarian aid convoys are blocked at Israeli-controlled checkpoints.

Hunger and disease go hand-in-hand, as the WHO continues to repeat. Gaza is witnessing a hard-to-imagine surge in infectious diseases—respiratory infections, skin diseases, Hepatitis A, and even polio, a virus that had been eradicated decades ago but resurfaced, paralyzing a 10-month-old child. The shortage of basic hygiene products, such as soap and clean water, only adds to the crisis.

The spread of diseases is anything but collateral damage: it is a calculated weapon in Israel’s strategy. As Jewish Voice for Peace remarked, in prisons, “skin diseases are a method of punishment. Prison authorities are allowing scabies to spread by restricting Palestinian inmates’ water supply and depriving them of clean clothes and medical care.”

Read more: Palestinian health workers in Gaza describe torture and abuse in Israeli detention

On top of it all, Gaza’s whole environment is contaminated with asbestos dust raised by the constant bombardment. An estimated 800,000 tonnes of debris in Gaza could contain asbestos particles, as reported by Al Jazeera, raising the prospect of soaring cancer rates in the coming years.

“After a year, the occupying forces continue to practice an unprecedented genocide in modern history. What is particularly painful is the disgusting silence of the international community,” stated Hani Serag, Co-Chair of the People’s Health Movement. “We hope that activists across the world will continue expressing their solidarity to Palestinian people and refuse the barbaric practices of the occupying forces.”

Israeli crimes against healthcare are not confined to Gaza. In less than a month, Israeli forces have killed over 100 health workers in Lebanon and forced the closure of dozens of health centers. The destruction unfolding in Gaza serves as a blueprint for the invasion of Lebanon, raising the question: how long will the West look away while Israel continues its rampage?

People’s Health Dispatch is a fortnightly bulletin published by the People’s Health Movement and Peoples Dispatch. For more articles and subscription to People’s Health Dispatch, click here.

Original article by Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Continue ReadingOne year of Israel’s war on Gaza’s health system

‘No End to Hell’: Disaster Spirals as Israeli Assault Traps 400,000 in Northern Gaza

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Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

A Palestinian child who was wounded in an Israeli attack on Jabalia, Gaza receives treatment on October 9, 2024. (Photo: Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“The latest move to forcefully and violently push thousands of people from northern Gaza to the south is turning the north into a lifeless desert,” warned one aid worker.

The head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees said Wednesday that at least 400,000 people are trapped in northern Gaza as Israeli forces ramp up their bombardment of the area, killing dozens and intensifying an already nightmarish humanitarian emergency.

“Northern Gaza: no end to hell,” Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), wrote on social media. “Recent evacuation orders from the Israeli authorities are forcing people to flee again and again, especially from Jabalia Camp. Many are refusing because they know too well that no place anywhere in Gaza is safe.”

Lazzarini said some UNRWA shelters and services in northern Gaza have been forced to shut down amid the Israeli assault “for the first time since the war began” over a year ago.

“With almost no basic supplies available, hunger is spreading and deepening again,” said Lazzarini. “This recent military operation also threatens the implementation of the second phase of the polio vaccination campaign for children. Children are as ever, the first and most to suffer. They deserve so much better, they deserve a cease-fire now, they deserve a future.”

Zero humanitarian aid has entered besieged northern Gaza in over a week, according to aid groups and the U.N., and incessant Israeli attacks have rendered the area’s hospitals largely inaccessible. Israeli forces have ordered the area’s hospitals to evacuate, endangering patients and healthcare workers.

The director of northern Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital told Drop Site on Wednesday that he is refusing to comply with Israel’s evacuation order.

“As long as there are patients, I won’t leave,” said Dr. Hossam Abu Safia. “I’ve been here since the genocide started, and I am determined to continue helping my people.”

At least dozens of people have reportedly been killed in the Israeli military’s latest assault on northern Gaza, but emergency workers on the ground have said it’s impossible to determine the true toll given Israel’s ongoing bombing campaign, which has targeted the Jabalia refugee camp and other areas in the region.

Citing Gaza’s Civil Defense, The Associated Press reported Wednesday that an Israeli airstrike “hit a family home” in the Jabalia camp, “killing at least nine people”—including two women and two children.

“Footage shared by the Civil Defense showed first responders recovering dead bodies and body parts from under the rubble,” the outlet noted.

On Monday—the one-year anniversary of the Hamas-led October 7 attack and the beginning of Israel’s devastating response—Israeli forces ordered swaths of famine-stricken northern Gaza to evacuate, instructing residents to move south to Deir Al-Balah and Al-Mawasi, badly overcrowded so-called “humanitarian zones” that the Israeli military has repeatedly bombed.

After ordering most of northern Gaza to evacuate, Israeli forces fired on Palestinians desperately trying to flee.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders, said Tuesday that Israel’s forced displacement of Palestinians is “turning the north of Gaza into an unlivable wasteland, effectively emptying out the whole north of the strip of Palestinian life.”

“The latest move to forcefully and violently push thousands of people from northern Gaza to the south is turning the north into a lifeless desert, while aggravating the situation in the south, where more than one million people have already been squeezed into a small portion of the Gaza Strip and live in deplorable conditions,” said Sarah Vuylsteke, an MSF project coordinator in Gaza.

“Access to water, healthcare, and safety is already almost nonexistent, and the thought of more people fitting into this space is impossible to imagine,” Vuylsteke added. “People have been subjected to endless displacement and relentless bombing for the past 12 months. Enough is enough, this must stop now.”

In a joint statement on Wednesday, a coalition of 18 aid groups warned that the ongoing Israeli assault “will worsen the already dire humanitarian situation in the north” and has already “prevented international and national humanitarian organizations from carrying out already very limited lifesaving aid operations.”

“The new orders have obstructed humanitarian actors from providing necessities such as health services, clean water, food, and nutrition services, taking away the remaining lifelines for the civilian population,” reads the statement signed by Oxfam, ActionAid, Islamic Relief, and more than a dozen other groups.

“Nowhere in Gaza is safe for civilians,” the coalition said. “Given the severity of the needs, humanitarian actors must be able to distribute aid and continue their work, without threat of displacement or military operations. The undersigned aid organizations urge all parties to the conflict to uphold their obligations to protect civilians and facilitate unhindered humanitarian access at all times.”

Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue Reading‘No End to Hell’: Disaster Spirals as Israeli Assault Traps 400,000 in Northern Gaza

US Doctors Tell Biden, Harris They ‘Witnessed Crimes Beyond Comprehension’ in Gaza

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Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Razan Arafat Barbah, a 14-year-old Palestinian girl who lost both of her legs in an Israeli attack on her home in Rafah in southern Gaza, is treated at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis on October 1, 2024.  (Photo: Hani Alshaer/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“A cease-fire must be imposed on the warring parties by withholding military support for Israel and supporting an international arms embargo on Israel and all Palestinian armed groups.”

Nearly 100 U.S. healthcare providers who have volunteered in the Gaza Strip over the past year sent President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris a Wednesday letter detailing “the massive human toll from Israel’s attack” and urging the administration to “end this madness now!”

Israel has been waging war on Gaza since the Hamas-led attack that killed over 1,100 people last year. During that time, the physicians, surgeons, nurse practitioners, nurses, and midwives who signed the letter have collectively spent 254 weeks volunteering in hospitals and clinics throughout the besieged enclave.

As of Wednesday, Israeli forces have killed at least 41,689 Palestinians in Gaza and injured another 96,625, according to local officials. Thousands more remain missing in the rubble of civilian infrastructure. Israel—which also launched a ground invasion of Lebanon this week—faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice.

“This letter and the appendix show probative evidence that the human toll in Gaza since October is far higher than is understood in the United States. It is likely that the death toll from this conflict is already greater than 118,908, an astonishing 5.4% of Gaza’s population,” the health workers wrote to Biden and Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee for the November election.

“Our government must act immediately to prevent an even worse catastrophe than what has already befallen the people of Gaza and Israel,” they argued. “A cease-fire must be imposed on the warring parties by withholding military support for Israel and supporting an international arms embargo on Israel and all Palestinian armed groups. We believe our government is obligated to do this, both under American law and international humanitarian law. We also believe it is the right thing to do.”

“Gaza was the first time I held a baby’s brains in my hand. The first of many.”

Even before the October 7, 2023 attack, the United States had given Israel billions of dollars in annual military aid. Throughout Israel’s assault on Gaza—and now Lebanon—the Biden administration has continued to provide weapons and diplomatic support.

The American medical volunteers’ new letter—published on a website that also features a July missive along with similar ones that Canadian and U.K. health workers sent to their governments—shares accounts from individual signatories. Dr. Thalia Pachiyannakis, an OB-GYN, said that “I saw so many stillbirths and maternal deaths that could have been easily prevented if the hospitals had been functioning normally.”

Those who survived birth faced a warzone where thousands of children have died. Last month, Gaza’s Ministry of Health released a 649-page document with names and ages of Palestinians killed in the past year—and the first 14 pages are babies.

“Every day I saw babies die,” said Asma Taha, pediatric nurse practitioner. “They had been born healthy. Their mothers were so malnourished that they could not breastfeed, and we lacked formula or clean water to feed them, so they starved.”

Israeli bombings in the past year have claimed thousands of lives. Dr. Mark Perlmutter, an orthopedic and hand surgeon, said that “Gaza was the first time I held a baby’s brains in my hand. The first of many.”

The letter to Biden and Harris states:

Children are universally considered innocents in armed conflict. However, every single signatory to this letter saw children in Gaza who suffered violence that must have been deliberately directed at them. Specifically, every one of us who worked in an emergency, intensive care, or surgical setting treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head or chest on a regular or even a daily basis. It is impossible that such widespread shooting of young children throughout Gaza, sustained over the course of an entire year is accidental or unknown to the highest Israeli civilian and military authorities.

President Biden and Vice President Harris, we wish you could see the nightmares that plague so many of us since we have returned: dreams of children maimed and mutilated by our weapons, and their inconsolable mothers begging us to save them. We wish you could hear the cries and screams our consciences will not let us forget. We cannot fathom why you continue arming the country that is deliberately killing these children en masse.

“I’ve never seen such horrific injuries, on such a massive scale, with so few resources,” said Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma and critical care surgeon and the letter’s organizer. “Our bombs are cutting down women and children by the thousands. Their mutilated bodies are a monument to cruelty.”

The letter notes that “Israel has destroyed more than half of Gaza’s healthcare resources and has killed nearly 1,000 Palestinian healthcare workers, more than 1 out of every 20 healthcare workers in Gaza. At the same time, healthcare needs have increased massively from the lethal combination of military violence, malnutrition, disease, and displacement.”

It also challenges Israeli forces’ attempts to justify attacking the enclave’s medical infrastructure, stressing that “not once did any of us see any type of Palestinian militant activity in any of Gaza’s hospitals or other healthcare facilities.”

“We urge you to see that Israel has systematically and deliberately devastated Gaza’s entire healthcare system, and that Israel has targeted our colleagues in Gaza for torture, disappearance, and murder,” the American volunteers wrote, describing Palestinian healthcare workers as “among the most traumatized people in Gaza, and perhaps in the entire world.”

While welcoming the administration’s efforts to negotiate an end to the fighting, they emphasized that “the United States can impose a cease-fire on the warring parties by simply stopping arms shipments to Israel, and announcing that we will participate in an international arms embargo on both Israel and all Palestinian armed groups.”

“President Biden and Vice President Harris, we are 99 American physicians and nurses who have witnessed crimes beyond comprehension,” they added. “Crimes that we cannot believe you wish to continue supporting. Please meet with us to discuss what we saw, and why we feel American policy in the Middle East must change immediately.”

Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingUS Doctors Tell Biden, Harris They ‘Witnessed Crimes Beyond Comprehension’ in Gaza