On Sunday Dec. 29, Doctors Against Genocide held an emergency online event to mobilize national and international forces to stop Israel’s genocide against the people of Gaza. The doctors, human rights advocates, legal experts and organizers presented a devastating case that Israel is carrying out a deliberate policy of targeting hospitals and medical professionals as part of that genocide. The immediate focus of the event was the atrocity which had just occurred two days before when the Israel Defense Forces shut down and destroyed the Kamal Adwan Hospital—the last remaining hospital in northern Gaza—and detained the hospital’s director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who must be freed immediately, as his life is in danger in Israeli custody.
The event featured contributions from Doctors Against Genocide co-founder Dr. Nidal Jboor; Dr. Mimi Syed, Emergency Doctor currently on a medical mission in Gaza; Dr. Tlaleng Mofokeng, United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health; Dr. Rafat Al-Majdalawi, Director of Al-Awda Hospital, Gaza; Dr. Mark Perlmutter, President of World Surgical Foundation; Noura Erakat, professor and human rights attorney; Medea Benjamin, founder of Code Pink; Dr. Norman Finkelstein, professor and author; Dr. Jill Stein, Green Party Presidential candidate; and others.
Listeners heard the first-hand testimonies of the American doctors who had gone to Gaza to provide care over the last year. The testimonies were professional—and heart-rending. Each conveyed very personally their shock at finding how many of their patients were children, in such numbers and whose wounds were such types that it was unmistakable that the Israel Defense Forces were carrying out a deliberate campaign against children. They spoke of having to deliver care without supplies, in hospitals without fuel, to people who had no access to sanitation, clean water, or much food—all under conditions of bombardment. Dr. Rafat Al-Majdalawi, speaking from Gaza, added a stunning overview of how the hospital system in northern Gaza had been taken down, such that today the 70,000 people in north Gaza have no access to health care.
Of note, all of the doctors, each of whom had spent multiple weeks in various hospitals throughout Gaza, emphasized that they never once saw a combatant, a store of weapons, or any other evidence that a hospital was being used for a military function—including connected tunnels. Responding to this, legal expert and professor Noura Erakat noted that, even if hospitals were treating combatants, that still would not legally allow Israel to strike them in the way that they have. Hospitals maintain a special protected status in international humanitarian law, even in war zones, Erakat said, as she outlined how Israel is violating all international norms and laws in this regard.
Dr. Tlaleng Mofokeng, the UN Human Rights Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, testified to the violations of the right to health occurring in Gaza. And as a South African who experienced apartheid, she spoke of how the same policy is being applied in Gaza today.
The webinar was much more than a retelling of experiences and atrocities witnessed; it was a documentation by professional medical experts, organizing to not just make a statement, but also taking responsibility to change the present policy. Doctors Against Genocide has issued a statement calling for Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya’s freedom, and announced they will be on Capitol Hill on Jan. 8, to lobby the new Congress for both his freedom and to cut off U.S. military, economic and moral support for Israel’s genocide. They urged all listeners to join them in these campaigns and in their rallies, at which they urge all medical personnel, as well as others to join.
