A brave calling

The heroes of Israel’s war on Gaza are the doctors, nurses, and ambulance drivers who are being killed while saving the lives of others. If ever there were a group of people deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize, it is without a doubt Gaza’s healthcare practitioners at all levels.

Last Sunday, an Israeli strike on Palestinians sheltering in tents in southern Gaza killed at least eight people, including Drx Mousa Khafaja who was as an obstetrics and gynaecology consultant at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza. He and family members joined the dozens of Gaza’s healthcare professionals to be slain “at home” in tents because their built homes have been demolished.

The most recent internationally known physician to be killed was cardiac surgeon Marwan al-Sultan who was director of the Indonesian Hospital in Jabalya. Colleagues argue he was deliberately targeted because he had become the voice of Gaza’s healthcare community to the outside world. “The Washington Post” reported that he related to its reporters harrowing accounts of how Israel reduced the Gaza health service to a shambles. Due to the high flow of casualties entering the Indonesian hospital, he rarely left his post, and he feared being killed if he did, “The Post” said.

“The Post” cited Hadiki Habib, head of the Indonesian aid agency that helped finance the Indonesian hospital, who said Dr Sultan had become “’a symbol’ of the resilience of Gaza’s embattled people.”

He was the 70th health worker to be killed since March 18th when Israel broke the two- month ceasefire and resumed its onslaught on Gaza. The killing for Dr. Sultan “is a catastrophic loss to Gaza and the entire medical community and will have a devastating impact on Gaza’s healthcare system,” Healthcare Workers Watch (HWW) director Muath Alser told “The Guardian.”

“This is part of a much longer and systematic atrocious targeting of healthcare workers sanctioned by impunity. This is a tragic loss of life, but also an obliteration of [doctors’] decades of lifesaving medical expertise and care at a time when the situation facing Palestinian civilians is unfathomably catastrophic,” he added.

“He cannot be replaced,” stated Dr Mohammed Abu Selmia, director of Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital, which was the main medical facility in the strip until Israel attacked it early in the war. “He was a prominent scholar, and one of the two remaining cardiologists left in Gaza. Thousands of heart patients will suffer as a result of his killing. His only fault was that he was a doctor. We have no option but to be steadfast, but the sense of loss is devastating,” he also told “The Guardian.”

Among the healthcare providers killed since the ceasefire ended were three other head doctors, the chief nurses of the Indonesian hospital and al-Nasser children’s hospital, a senior midwife, a senior radiology technician and dozens pf medical graduates and trainee nurses,” “The Guardian” reported. Since the Gaza war was launched by Israel, more than 1,580 healthcare workers have been killed and as many as 300 have been detained by Israel, among whom is the director of the Kamal Adwan hospital Dr Hussam Abu Safiya. He has been held since December 2024. Orthopaedic surgeon Dr Adnan al-Bursh, who was working in al-Awda hospital, was arrested during a raid and died in custody in April 2024. The family told “Al-Jazeera” he was tortured to death.

The 4th Geneva Convention prohibits attacks on hospitals, clinics, ambulances, and medical staff. Violating these prohibitions can be treated as war crimes. While under customary international law, “medical units lose protection if they are being used, outside their humanitarian function, to commit acts harmful to the enemy,” the International Committee of the Red Cross states. Although no evidence has been provided that Gaza’s medical units and staff are acting “outside their humanitarian function,” Israel has claimed, without proof, that Hamas has established command centres in hospitals and fighters are sheltering there.

Israel has breached the Geneva Convention by systematically targeting Gaza’s entire healthcare system by striking most of Gaza’s facilities, slaying doctors, nurses, and ambulance drivers, and blocking the entry of critical medical supplies and fuel for power and ambulances. As hospitals are overwhelmed by the wounded and sick, patients have been treated while lying on corridor floors in their own blood, risking infection. Medicines and bandages are rationed. Due to Israel’s blockade, water and food are in short supply for patients and medical staff.

“Nearly all public hospitals in Gaza are down or gutted by months of hostilities and restrictions on the entry of critical medicine, supplies and equipment,” the International Committee of the Red Cross said last week. “The few medical facilities that continue to function – including the Red Cross Field Hospital – are overwhelmed and running dangerously low on essential supplies, including fuel, and even body bags.”

Censorship over Israel’s actions continues to reign in Western media. The latest scandal involved the film, “Doctors Under Attack,” commissioned by the BBC and produced by Basement Films. On June 20, the BBC – which is a government-funded public broadcaster – announced it had would not air the film. “We have come to the conclusion that broadcasting this material risked creating a perception of partiality that would not meet the high standards that the public rightly expect of the BBC,” the corporation said in a statement. However, the BBC did not define how its impartiality could be put in doubt.

Despite the BBC’s refusal to carry the film, Britain’s independent Channel 4 broadcast it in the UK while Zeteo – founded by progressive US-UK broadcaster Mehdi Hasan – showed it internationally.

The documentary, produced by Oscar-nominated, Emmy award and Peabody award-winning filmmakers, describes the challenges faced by Gaza’s doctors during Israeli bombardments. The film is not apolitical. Interviewees express opinions held by the overall population. Despite Israel’s brutal retributive onslaught on Gaza, several doctors expressed support for Hamas and the Oct.7, 2023, raid when Hamas killed 1,200 and abducted 250, according to Israel. The truth can be controversial as well as informative. Another BBC documentary, “How to Survive a Warzone,” was shown in November but was promptly dropped following pressure from pro-Israel groups and other UK broadcasters who branded the film “Hamas propaganda.” No one complains about or censors “Israeli propaganda.”

Photo: TNS