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Israeli Military Has Killed 500 Gaza Healthcare Workers—Two a Day Since Assault Began

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Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

Mourners carry the body of Palestinian doctor Hani al-Jaafarawi, Gaza’s ambulance and emergency teams chief, during his funeral in Gaza City, Gaza on June 24, 2024. (Photo: Omar Al-Qattaa/AFP via Getty Images)

“This cannot be allowed to continue any longer,” said one advocate. “Every potential serious violation must be independently investigated and those responsible brought to justice.”

Doctors and humanitarian organizations demanded international investigations and action on Wednesday after the United Nations announced that Israel’s military has now killed 500 healthcare workers in Gaza—roughly two per day on average—during its nearly nine-month assault on the besieged Palestinian enclave.

The U.N. Human Rights Office said in a statement Tuesday that Israeli forces’ killing of hundreds of healthcare workers has “occurred against the backdrop of systematic attacks on hospitals and other medical facilities in violation of the laws of war.” The World Health Organization has documented more than 460 attacks on healthcare workers and infrastructure in Gaza since October 7.

“The latest health worker reportedly killed was Mr. Hani Al Ja’afarwi, head of Emergency and Ambulance Services at a health clinic in Gaza City on 23 June 2024,” said the U.N. Human Rights Office. “Many health workers have also died with their family members when residential buildings were struck by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).”

The U.N.’s latest tally did not include Fadi Al-Wadiya, a 33-year-old Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) staffer who was killed along with five other people Tuesday in an attack in Gaza City. MSF did not explicitly assign blame for the attack, which the group described as “yet another brutal example of the senseless killing of Palestinian civilians and healthcare workers in Gaza.”

Rohan Talbot, director of advocacy and campaigns at Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), said Wednesday that “hospitals, medical staff, and civilians all have protected status under international law, law that the Israel military has flagrantly ignored every day through its repeated targeting of healthcare facilities and staff.”

“Though now happening at an unprecedented rate in Gaza, attacks on Palestinian healthcare by the Israeli military have recurred over many years, ever-worsening because of chronic impunity,” said Talbot. “This cannot be allowed to continue any longer. Every potential serious violation must be independently investigated and those responsible brought to justice.”

Not a single hospital is fully functioning in the Gaza Strip after months of relentless Israeli bombing, and medical workers have been forced to treat airstrike victims and other patients in overwhelmed facilities without necessary equipment and medications, including anesthesia.

As Israel’s blockade leaves the occupied territory’s population without sufficient access to clean water and other essentials, infectious diseases have been spreading rapidly as the health crisis spirals out of control, starvation proliferates, and the death toll mounts.

“Systematic attacks on healthcare by Israeli forces are exacerbating the worst humanitarian crisis ever seen in Gaza,” MAP said Wednesday. “More than 37,000 Palestinians have been killed and at least 86,000 injured since Israel’s assault began, with an estimated 10,000 still trapped under rubble, most presumed dead. Instead of being able to safely provide medical care for those in urgent need, Palestinian healthcare workers have themselves come under both indiscriminate and apparent targeted attack by the Israeli military.”

Tanya Haj-Hassan, a doctor who volunteered in a hospital with MAP earlier this year, said that “Palestinian healthcare workers have told me that when they leave the hospital, civilians give them civilian clothing because wearing scrubs is putting a target sticker on their back.”

“This is how systematically healthcare has been targeted in Gaza,” Haj-Hassan added.

Haider Al-Qudra, executive director of the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) in Gaza, told MAP that “as long as the international community does not take any measures against Israeli forces that continue to violate international humanitarian law, we will lose more personnel working to meet the health and humanitarian needs of citizens on the frontline.”

“Because of this systematic targeting from Israeli forces,” said Al-Qudra, “34 PRCS staff have lost their lives, most of them emergency medical services staff, including 19 while they tried to respond to emergency calls from citizens.”

Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

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Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted "I support Zionism without qualification." He's asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.

Continue ReadingIsraeli Military Has Killed 500 Gaza Healthcare Workers—Two a Day Since Assault Began

Israel is decimating Gaza’s health infrastructure as disease threatens the majority of its population

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The public health situation among people displaced by Israeli attacks worsens by the day, as targeting of health workers and infrastructure continues

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

Healthcare workers at Al-Awda hospital. Photo: Al-Awda

The number of people infected with contagious diseases in Gaza continues to rise. The latest data from the World Health Organization (WHO) warns that 180,000 people are currently suffering from respiratory infections. Additionally, the UN’s health agency reports that 55,000 people have lice and scabies, 42,000 are experiencing various forms of skin rashes, and 136,000, half of whom are children under 5 years old, have contracted diarrhea.

While these diseases would not be deadly under conditions with a functioning health system and adequate living conditions, in the current situation, they could be life-threatening. “Unless something changes, the world faces the prospect of almost a quarter of Gaza’s 2 million population – close to half a million human beings – dying within a year. These would be largely deaths from preventable health causes and the collapse of the health system,” estimated Devi Sridhar, Chair in Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh, at the end of 2023.

If a permanent ceasefire does not take immediate effect, though, things are unlikely to change, as reiterated by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a statement. WHO teams, now participating in fairly regular missions on the ground, are sending reports about overcrowding in Gaza’s hospitals and shelters. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, on January 4, only 9 out of 36 hospitals were partially functioning in the Strip, resulting in an average bed occupancy of 351% and 261% occupancy in intensive care units.

Israel’s attacks on healthcare in Palestine are affecting everyone, especially the most vulnerable. Cancer and dialysis patients cannot access the specific care they need, and most have not yet been transferred to hospitals abroad as announced. The Ministry of Health estimates that 5,300 patients need to be transferred abroad for treatment, but until January 5, less than 1,000 were moved. This number includes 571 people injured in the attacks and 401 patients who required distinct forms of care, including cancer patients.

Children and pregnant women are also groups most at risk from the attacks and their consequences. Over 5,000 babies were born in Gaza just last month, all requiring adequate care and nutrition. With mothers and families going hungry, it is evident that some of them are also lacking proper food. Among the newborns are about 130 premature babies dependent on incubators, yet most incubators are located in northern Gaza, which, in terms used by the WHO, has become a medical disaster zone.

In addition to going hungry and sleeping in overcrowded tents, newborns and children are also not getting vaccinated. Recounting the experience of a woman who recently gave birth, Nareman, who was “taken from her tent in a temporary camp by horse-drawn carriage to a hospital to give birth to her daughter, before returning to her makeshift home straight after,” the WHO warned that the health system in Gaza is struggling to ensure standard immunization routines. Nareman’s baby is among those who are yet to receive planned vaccines, and she is staying with her sisters and brothers at the camp, who are reportedly in ill health themselves.

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has managed to deliver 600,000 key vaccines into Gaza in the period between December 25-29, 2023, and is planning to deliver some 960,000 more together with WHO and UNICEF. Yet, this is no easy feat as Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) continue to target health infrastructure and health workers. Since the beginning of the attacks on October 7, 326 health workers in Palestine were killed by Israeli attacks, 764 were injured, and 65 were arrested, according to Ministry of Health data.

Many more experienced violence and intimidation by the IOF, including ambulances and partners of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS). On January 4, Israeli soldiers attacked a PRCS ambulance. Not long before that, the organization reported attacks targeting the house of Anwar Abu Holi, Director of the Central Gaza Ambulance Center, as well as multiple attacks on the Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis.

As shelling in the proximity of the hospital began, Al-Amal offered shelter to approximately 14,000 forcibly displaced people. The attacks, said the PRCS, endangered the lives of thousands. “The displaced persons are living in an atmosphere of horror and panic.”

The attacks that have taken place since the beginning of January killed 7 people, including a days-old baby, injured 11 more, and were reported by the PRCS to be ongoing on January 5, without a meaningful indication they would stop anytime soon.

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

Continue ReadingIsrael is decimating Gaza’s health infrastructure as disease threatens the majority of its population