US, UK Doctors in Washington to Warn of “Israel’s” Appalling Atrocities in Gaza

By Staff, Agencies

A delegation of American and British doctors is in Washington DC to tell the Biden administration the “Israeli” military is systematically destroying Gaza’s health infrastructure in order to drive Palestinians out of their homes.

The doctors, who have recently returned from volunteering at Gaza’s besieged hospitals, are expected to meet White House officials and senior members of Congress this week to warn that pledges of increased aid to Palestinians under bombardment are largely meaningless without an immediate ceasefire to allow safe distribution of food and the revival of healthcare services.

Professor Nick Maynard, the former director for cancer services at Oxford University who worked at the al-Aqsa hospital in central Gaza at the beginning of the year, accused the “Israeli” army of “appalling atrocities”.

“The ‘Israeli’ are systematically targeting healthcare facilities, healthcare personnel and really dismantling the whole healthcare system,” he said.

“It’s not just about targeting the buildings; it’s about systematically destroying the infrastructure of the hospitals. Destroying the oxygen tanks at the al-Shifa hospital, deliberately destroying the CT scanners and making it much more difficult to rebuild that infrastructure. If it was just targeting Hamas militants, why are they deliberately destroying the infrastructure of these institutions?”

The UN says none of Gaza’s 36 hospitals is fully functional. A dozen are partially working and the others are destroyed. On Monday, the “Israeli” military again raided the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. Medical staff said the killed and arrested Palestinians inside the hospital.

The crisis in the hospitals has been compounded by the killing or arrest of hundreds of healthcare workers by the “Israeli” army. Last week the BBC reported that medical staff said they were stripped, beaten and tortured by “Israeli” troops during a raid on the Nasser hospital in the south of the Gaza Strip.

Maynard said he believed the closure and damage to the hospitals was part of a strategy to force Palestinians out of their homes.

“It persuades the local population to leave. If a hospital has been dismantled, if the locals see there is no medical care available and see the disrupted infrastructure, it’s yet another factor that drives them south,” he said.

Thaer Ahmad, a Chicago doctor who volunteered in Nasser hospital’s emergency room in January, said the damage to the healthcare system makes the need for a ceasefire all the more urgent.

“We all feel a sense of urgency,” said Ahmad. “So, we’re trying to communicate that same sense of urgency to people who can make some impactful decisions.”

In addition, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are now at risk of starvation, because Israel has blocked adequate food supplies to Gaza. The UN has warned that “Israeli” restrictions may amount to the war crime of deliberate starvation, and the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has accused “Israel” of “provoking famine” and using starvation “as a weapon of war”.

Maynard said the delegation will warn the White House that large-scale food deliveries will have a limited impact without a ceasefire.

“We’re here to say that however much aid gets to the borders of Gaza it cannot be distributed whilst there’s ongoing military action,” he said.

Dr Zaher Sahloul, president of the medical charity MedGlobal who volunteered in Gaza earlier this year, said that some Democratic politicians appear more open to discussion about “Israel’s” actions in part because of the voter backlash against Biden’s support for the military assault. Sahloul was a guest of Senator Dick Durbin at the president’s State of the Union address earlier this month.

“I think, especially now with the administration shifting its position on Gaza and trying to be more sensitive to the public pressure, they are more open to it. People want to hear about Gaza nowadays at the highest level,” said Sahloul.

Maynard said he met the British foreign secretary and former prime minister, David Cameron, before coming to the US.

“Although David Cameron was receptive, we walked away from meeting thinking this was a tick box exercise that has had no impact whatsoever on our government,” he said.

Maynard, who has volunteered in Gaza repeatedly over the past decade as chief clinician for Medical Aid for Palestinians, said he travelled to the US because he does not believe Americans are hearing the full story.

“I felt a real desperation to counter some of the false narratives coming out of ‘Israel’, but also out of a lot of the western media and governments. The particular thing, which so many people believe because it keeps being repeated, is that the ‘Israelis are protecting civilians. What we witnessed refutes that completely,” he said.

“We’ve witnessed appalling atrocities in Gaza and we’re desperately keen that people know about it. I witnessed indiscriminate killing of vast numbers of innocent civilians. I spent two weeks operating all the time. I operated on far more women than I did men. This notion that they’re targeting Hamas militants – I saw the most appalling injuries in children. Awful burns, traumatic amputations in children.”