by Feroze Sidhwa, Mark Perlmutter, Common Dreams, April 11, 2024 https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/surgeons-cruelty-israel-gaza
On March 25 the two of us, an orthopedic surgeon and a trauma surgeon, traveled <https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/11/surgeons_in_gaza> to the Gaza <https://www.commondreams.org/tag/gaza> Strip to work at Gaza European Hospital in Khan Younis. ... . . . We walked through the wards and immediately found evidence of horrifying violence deliberately directed at civilians and even children. ... . . . As we got to work we were shocked by the violence inflicted on people. Incredibly powerful explosives ripped apart rock, floors, and walls and threw them through human bodies, penetrating skin with waves of dirt and debris. With the environment literally embedded in our patients’ bodies we have found infection control to be impossible. No amount of medical care could ever compensate for the damage being inflicted here. . . . By December, the Israeli Air Force had dropped so much American ordinance on Gaza that it exceeded the explosive force of two of the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima <https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/11/9/israel-attacks-on-gaza-weapons-and-scale-of-destruction>. Nearly 14,000 children have been killed in Gaza in the past six months <https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/gaza-over-2-gazas-child-population-killed-or-injured-six-months-war>, more than were killed in all war zones in the entire world in the past four years combined <https://www.barrons.com/news/more-children-reported-killed-in-gaza-war-than-in-four-years-of-worldwide-conflict-unrwa-b67d92da>. No conflict of any size in history has ever been this deadly to journalists <https://cpj.org/2024/04/journalist-casualties-in-the-israel-gaza-conflict/>, healthcare workers <https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/there-are-no-more-words-six-months-israels-total-siege-and-bombardment-gaza-leaves-tens-thousands-dead-healthcare-system-ruins-and-starving-population>, or paramedics <https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/there-are-no-more-words-six-months-israels-total-siege-and-bombardment-gaza-leaves-tens-thousands-dead-healthcare-system-ruins-and-starving-population>. Indeed, we and our entire team lived in constant fear that Israel would attack Gaza European Hospital directly, as it has with so many others. The complete and utter destruction of al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, along with the killing, kidnapping, and torture of the healthcare staff <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/01/israeli-forces-withdraw-from-gaza-al-shifa-hospital-after-two-week-raid>, only heightened this sense of dread. We came to Gaza as two individual snowflakes trying to stop this avalanche of death and horror, and yet we also feel responsible for it. We urge anyone who reads this to publicly oppose sending weapons to Israel as long as this genocide continues, until the Israeli siege of Gaza is lifted, and until an end to the occupation can be negotiated. # # # *‘Not a normal war’: doctors say children have been targeted by Israeli snipers in Gaza* by Chris McGreal, Guardian, April 2, 2024 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/02/gaza-palestinian-children-killed-idf-israel-war . . . But doctors also reported treating a steady stream of children, elderly people and others who were clearly not combatants with single bullet wounds to the head or chest. Some of the physicians said that the types and locations of the wounds, and accounts of Palestinians who brought children to the hospital, led them to believe the victims were directly targeted by Israeli troops. . . . Israeli and foreign human rights groups have documented a long history of snipers firing on unarmed Palestinians, including children, in Gaza and the West Bank. Palestinians in Gaza also report a terrifying new development in the latest Gaza war – armed drones able to hover over streets and pick off individuals. Called quadcopters, some of these drones are used as remote-control snipers that Palestinians say have been used to shoot civilians. . . . Alvi, the Canadian physician, left Gaza in the third week of February as Israeli forces were threatening a ground assault against Rafah. Alvi founded the US-based charity Humanity Auxilium <https://www.humanityauxilium.com/>, which has worked with Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, displaced Syrians and earthquake survivors in Turkey. “This is not a normal war. The war in Ukraine has killed 500 kids in two years and the war in Gaza has killed over 10,000 in less than five months. We have seen wars before but this is something that is a dark stain on our shared humanity.” # # # -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. 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