Hospital Attacks
Updated 2024-04-03
2024-03-12 As Starvation Death Toll Grows in Gaza, Israel Blocks Aid Over Scissors in Child Medical Kits With the level of humanitarian aid reaching Gaza residents perilously low and creating what one group last week called “famine-like conditions” throughout the enclave, the United Nations’ top official overseeing relief for Palestinians on Tuesday condemned Israel’s latest reason for blocking a shipment: It included medical scissors for caring for children.
Israel flagged the scissors as a so-called “dual-use” item, suggesting the government feared medical workers in Gaza—where more than 600 attacks on hospitals have pushed the healthcare system toward collapse—would use the scissors as weapons instead of to care for people who have been injured in relentless bombings.
“Medical scissors are now added to a long list of banned items the Israeli authorities classify as ‘for dual use,'” said Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). “The list includes basic and lifesaving items: from anesthetics, solar lights, oxygen cylinders, and ventilators, to water cleaning tablets, cancer medicines, and maternity kits.” https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-gaza-aid-scissors
2024-02-07 Chris Hedges: The Silence of the Damned Leading humanitarian and civic institutions, including major medical institutions, refuse to denounce Israel’s genocide in Gaza. This exposes their hypocrisy and complicity.
But these institutions — with a few notable exceptions such as The American Public Health Association that has called for a ceasefire — have either remained silent or, as with Dr. Matthew K. Wynia, the director of the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado, attempted to justify Israeli war crimes. These doctors — who somehow find it acceptable that in Gaza a child is killed every 10 minutes on average — are accomplices to genocide and stand in violation of the Geneva Convention. They embrace death as a solution, not life. The deans of U.S. medical schools and leading medical organizations, especially the American Medical Association (AMA) have joined the ranks of universities, law schools, churches and the media to turn their backs on the Palestinians.
Robert Jay Lifton in his book The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide writes that “genocidal projects require the active participation of educated professionals — physicians, scientists, engineers, military leaders, lawyers, clergy, university professors and other teachers — who combine to create not only the technology of genocide but much of its ideological rationale, moral climate, and organizational process.”
A group of 100 Israeli doctors in November 2023 defended the bombing of hospitals in Gaza, claiming they were used as Hamas command centers, a charge Israel has been unable to verify. https://consortiumnews.com/2024/02/07/chris-hedges-the-silence-of-the-damned/
2024-01-30 Israel’s war on Gaza updates: Israeli troops storm Al-Amal Hospital Israeli troops have stormed Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis and are demanding doctors and displaced Palestinians evacuate, the Palestine Red Crescent says.https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/1/30/israels-war-on-gaza-live-israeli-forces-detain-dozens-in-un-shelter-raid
2023-12-20 SHOCKING VIDEO Shows Moment Gaza Hospital OBLITERATED by Israeli Missiles Live on Al Jazeera’s Air Briahna Joy Gray and Robby Soave discuss the ceasefire protests over the Israel-Hamas War that took place at the Capitol yesterday. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFdf03JpnwE
2023-11-21 Israel’s War on Hospitals Israel is carrying out a campaign to make Gaza uninhabitable. This campaign includes destroying all of Gaza’s hospitals. The message Israel is sending is clear – Nowhere is safe. If you stay you die.
Israel is not attacking hospitals in Gaza because they are “Hamas command centers.” Israel is systematically and deliberately destroying Gaza’s medical infrastructure as part of a scorched earth campaign to make Gaza uninhabitable and escalate a humanitarian crisis. It intends to force 2.3 million Palestinians over the border into Egypt where they will never return.
Israel has destroyed and nearly emptied the Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia is next. Israel is deploying tanks and armored personnel carriers around the hospital and has fired rounds into the building, killing twelve people.
The playbook is familiar. Flyers are dropped by Israel over a hospital telling people to leave because the hospital is a base for “Hamas terrorist activities.” Tanks and artillery shells rip away parts of the hospital walls. Ambulances are blown up by Israeli missiles. Power and water is cut. Medical supplies are blocked. There are no painkillers, antibiotics and oxygen. The most vulnerable, premature babies in incubators and the gravely ill, die. Israeli soldiers raid the hospital and force everyone out at gunpoint. https://countercurrents.org/2023/11/israels-war-on-hospitals/
2023-11-15 Biden admin justifies Israel’s assault on Gaza hospitals with recycled Israeli ‘intelligence’ As Israel assaults Gaza’s Shifa Hospital, the Biden administration claims that “Hamas does use hospitals” as military bases. Once again, Washington appears to be relying on dubious Israeli propaganda rather than independent analysis. “I can confirm for you that we have information that Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, used some hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including Al-Shifa, and tunnels underneath them, to conceal and to support their military operations and to hold hostages,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Tuesday.
Kirby’s claim echoed the assertion by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who maintained that “open-source reporting” shows “Hamas does use hospitals, along with a lot of other civilian facilities, for command-and-control, for storing weapons, for housing its fighters.”
On November 14, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters that US intelligence had no “boots on the ground,” nor any intelligence assets capable of independently gathering intelligence from or about Shifa. When asked if the declassified intel briefing spun out by Kirby and Sullivan arrived through Washington’s “Israeli counterparts,” she refused to answer. But she strongly suggested the intelligence dump was politically motivated. https://thegrayzone.com/2023/11/15/biden-israels-gaza-hospitals-intelligence/
2023-11-13 “Beacon of Light”: Fellow Doctors Recall Dr. Hammam Alloh, Gaza Doctor Killed by Israeli Airstrike We speak with two physicians who knew Dr. Hammam Alloh, a Palestinian nephrologist at Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital who was killed Saturday in an Israeli airstrike. They recall him as a “committed physician, wonderful father” and “beacon of light.” He had refused to heed Israeli directives to evacuate in order to continue providing care to his patients. “He spent a decade learning how to serve his people,” says Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan with Doctors Without Borders. “He wanted his children to be able to see a day when they had a free, just, durable, free life in Palestine, without occupation,” says Dr. Ben Thomson, a fellow nephrologist who worked with Dr. Alloh. Democracy Now! is an independent global news hourhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvLS_zbVwGM
2023-11-13 Largest US Medical Lobbying Group Shuts Down Resolution to Back Cease-Fire in Gaza The AMA has a responsibility to uphold the well-being of healthcare workers and minimize human suffering, and it is clear that these values are not being upheld,” said Healthcare Workers for Palestine.
“Shame on the American Medical Association.” That was one American nurse’s response to the news on Sunday that the powerful medical lobbying organization had shut down members’ call for a public statement that would declare the AMA’s support for “a cease-fire in Israel and Palestine in order to protect civilian lives and healthcare personnel.”
Since the finalization of the statement and the meeting, MedPage Todayreported, at least 60 medical workers had been killed by Israel’s bombardment, which targeted at least six hospitals in that period. In recent weeks, doctors and nurses who have refused to leave their posts despite the repeated airstrikes and Israel’s ground attacks have resorted to performing Caesarean sections on pregnant women and other major surgeries without anesthesia, have been unable to properly sterilize medical instruments, and have been buying laundry detergent and vinegar to clean wounds due to the lack of supplies and electricity.
Despite the fact that Israel’s onslaught has seriously endangered doctors and nurses and left them unable to perform their duties, the AMA’s Resolution Committee recommended the statement not be reconsidered and said it did not meet the organization’s criteria for speaking out about an issue affecting the healthcare community. https://www.commondreams.org/news/ama-ceasefire-resolution
2023-11-12 ‘We Are Being Killed Here, Please Do Something’: Nurses and Doctors Plead for Gaza Cease-Fire “We are nearly sure that we are alone now,” said a Doctors Without Borders surgeon at Gaza’s largest hospital. “No one hears us.” “We are being killed here, please do something,” the nurse wrote. “The shelling is so close, my kids are crying and screaming in fear.”
Doctors and nurses in the Gaza Strip issued urgent pleas for a cease-fire as Israeli forces encircled and attacked the territory’s largest hospital, trapping thousands of displaced people and threatening the lives of medical workers and patients. One Doctors Without Borders nurse texted his colleagues from the basement of al-Shifa Hospital early Saturday, writing that “four or five families”—including his own—were sheltering there amid heavy bombardment and fighting around the facility. https://www.commondreams.org/news/doctors-nurses-gaza-cease-fire
2023-11-11 ‘Can You Hear the Screams?’ Physician Says Western Leaders Complicit in Israeli Attacks on Gaza Hospitals “When are you going to stop this?” Dr. Mads Gilbert asked U.S. President Joe Biden and the leaders of European nations. A Norwegian physician who has volunteered in Gaza for decades said Friday that Western leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden, are complicit in Israel’s intensifying assault on the Palestinian enclave’s hospitals, which are overwhelmed with airstrike victims and displaced people seeking refuge. In a video message posted to social media as Israeli forces bombarded al-Shifa—Gaza’s largest hospital—and other medical facilities, Dr. Mads Gilbert asked, “Can you hear the screams from innocent people, refugees sheltering, trying to find a safe place, being bombed by the Israeli attack forces this morning inside the hospital, hospitals that are the temples of humanity and protection?” https://www.commondreams.org/news/physician-gaza-hospitals
2023-11-10 Global Cease-Fire Call Grows as Israel Wages ‘War Against Hospitals’ in Gaza “Children in Gaza are hanging by a thread,” said a UNICEF director, calling for attacks on healthcare facilities to stop immediately and the urgent delivery of supplies to hospitals. As Israeli forces waged what al-Shifa’s director described as a “war against hospitals” in Gaza on Friday, United Nations officials, human rights groups, and doctors demanded the protection of medical facilities and renewed calls for a cease-fire.
“Half of the Gaza Strip’s 36 hospitals and two-thirds of its primary healthcare centers are not functioning at all,” World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the U.N. Security Council. “Those that are functioning are operating way beyond their capacities. The health system is on its knees, and yet somehow is continuing to deliver some lifesaving care.”
Since the Hamas-led attack on October 7 that killed around 1,200 Israelis, the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) assault of Gaza has devastated civilian infrastructure, displaced about 70% of the strip’s 2.3 million residents—about half of whom are children—and killed over 11,000 Palestinians, including more than 4,500 children. Tens of thousands more are injured or missing. https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-bombs-hospital-in-gaza
2023-11-10 Israeli Military Attacks Several Hospitals in Northern Gaza Israeli forces on Friday launched attacks on several hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including the territory’s largest medical facility, where thousands of displaced people have sought refuge from Israel’s relentless bombing campaign. “Israel is now launching a war on Gaza City hospitals,” Mohammad Abu Selmeyah, director of Gaza’s main hospital, al-Shifa, toldReuters.
The World Health Organization confirmed Friday that hospitals in northern Gaza are “coming under bombardment.”https://www.commondreams.org/news/israeli-military-accused-of-attacking-gaza-hospitals-where-thousands-are-sheltering
2023-11-10 Why the US must support an immediate ceasefire in Gaza For the past month, Palestinian medics have risked their lives and safety to treat Gaza’s wounded. Despite widespread, indiscriminate, and incessant bombardment by Israeli forces, our colleagues have continued working under fire. With limited access to food, water, electricity, essential medicines, and medical supplies, they have persevered. On the rare occasions when we are able to connect over the phone—between communications blackouts and frequent movements to avoid attacks—they recount scenes of horror in the hospitals: dead bodies everywhere, people with crushed limbs rescued from collapsed buildings, orphaned children with severe burns covering most of their tiny bodies. They describe patients screaming in pain because there’s not enough anesthesia. All the while, they’re worried about being killed themselves as hospitals and ambulances are hit by airstrikes. And every day, they stay for their patients.
They can’t go on like this. No one in Gaza can go on like this. We need an immediate ceasefire.https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/why-us-must-support-immediate-ceasefire-gaza
2023-11-09 Human Rights Watch Sounds Alarm as Israeli Forces Close In On Gaza’s Largest Hospital “Hospitals must always be protected. No area is a free-fire zone,” said one HRW director. “World leaders should urgently act to prevent further mass atrocities.”
Israel—which is now also conducting ground operations—has bombed homes, schools, religious buildings, medical facilities, and even an ambulance convoy outside Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, where an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 people are sheltering.
As Israeli troops neared the hospital on Thursday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on social media that “with ongoing strikes and fighting nearby, we are gravely concerned about the well-being of thousands of civilians there, many children among them, seeking medical care and shelter, including people on life support, those who lost limbs in air strikes, and burn victims.” https://www.commondreams.org/news/al-shifa-hospital-gaza
2023-10-31 Israeli rabbis tell Netanyahu that Israel has a right to bomb Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza Yesterday, Israeli right-wing journalist Amit Segal shared a letter from 45 influential Israeli rabbis (initial list), addressed to “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu May His Light Shine, the heads of state and security apparatus,” explicitly affirming the right of the state to bomb the Al-Shifa’ hospital in Gaza – the main hospital in the strip.
The Israeli military has made an allegation that Hamas is using both Shifa and Al Quds hospitals as bases and has warned both institutions to evacuate before an expected attack. The allegations cannot be verified, and regardless, an attack on healthcare facilities is prohibited under international law. If Israel does bomb Shifa it won’t be the first time. The hospital was attacked on July 28, 2014, and at the time, it was the fourth hospital Israel bombed during that onslaught. https://mondoweiss.net/2023/10/israeli-rabbis-tell-netanyahu-that-israel-has-a-right-to-bomb-al-shifa-hospital-in-gaza/
2023-10-25 Gaza’s Al-Shifa: A hospital on the brink On the verge of collapse, Gaza’s biggest hospital faces darkness as fuel, water and medicine are running out. Gaza’s main hospital is overflowing with both the living and the dead. The morgues are at capacity, and the bodies spill onto the street outside Al-Shifa Hospital.
Inside, hundreds of seriously injured people fill the hallways as the doctors decide which lives they can save. Men, women and children are among the wounded, and doctors work under immense pressure, knowing all services will soon grind to a halt when the backup generators stop working.
Israel’s siege on Gaza has meant no food, no water, no electricity and no fuel. As these necessities deplete faster than the hospital can cope, Al-Shifa is on the brink on catastrophe. While the hospital struggles to cope with arrivals of the injured, its staff also worries for other patients – 70 people on ventilators, hundreds receiving dialysis and 118 babies in incubators. Without electricity, they will die. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) called the escalation of the conflict “abhorrent”.
“As Gaza loses power, hospitals lose power, putting newborns in incubators and elderly patients on oxygen at risk. Kidney dialysis stops, and X-rays can’t be taken. Without electricity, hospitals risk turning into morgues,” Fabrizio Carboni, the ICRC’s regional director for the Near and Middle East, said in a statement.
We visit Al-Shifa’s neonatal intensive care unit. Most of the babies in incubators there are connected to mechanical ventilation. As the generators fall silent, the incubators will stop working, and most of these babies will die. Dialysis patients face the same fate. The dialysis department at Al-Shifa treats 1,800 patients who receive dialysis three times a week. We meet some of these patients whose lives are not only threatened by the bombardments but who are also vulnerable if they are unable to receive this life-saving treatment.
The hospitals of Gaza have also become a shelter to many Palestinians, and Al-Shifa is no different. It is now home to hundreds of displaced people with nowhere else to go. With basic services and necessities no longer available, we hear from several who had no choice but to come to the hospital for refuge. With so many dead, the morgues are overwhelmed. Undertakers struggle to identify and bury the deceased. When the generators stop working, the morgues will no longer be able to function.
No one knows the reality of what is happening in Al-Shifa better than the medics. They may be doctors or nurses, but they are also residents of Gaza. We meet these medical teams who tell us about the daily horrors they have witnessed since Israel’s latest assault began. https://www.aljazeera.com/program/featured-documentaries/2023/10/25/gazas-al-shifa-a-hospital-on-the-brink
2023-10-19 The Israeli military has not admitted it bombed a Gaza hospital, despite widespread claims online https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-israel-hamas-gaza-hospital-blast-367673389958
2023-10-17 What we know about the deadly blast at a Gaza City hospital In the dark of early evening in Gaza, reports emerged of an explosion at Gaza City’s al-Ahli hospital. Al-Ahli was crowded both with victims of 10 days of Israeli airstrikes and with families and others who have taken refuge on hospital grounds. Video that The Associated Press confirmed as being from the hospital showed an orange ball of fire and flames engulfing the building and grounds. https://apnews.com/article/hospital-airstrike-gaza-rocket-74ae3e38d9f771abd23d6d49c814b980
2023-10-11 ‘It’s like a nightmare’: families of Hamas hostages continue agonising wait for news The families of the 150 people thought to have been seized by Hamas militants over the weekend and taken to Gaza to be held as hostages are enduring an agonising wait for news of their loved ones as retaliatory Israeli missile strikes continue to pound the enclave. Four days after Saturday’s atrocities, the fate of the hostages, both Israeli and foreign, remains unclear. Their relatives’ fears are being exacerbated by Hamas’s threats to kill one hostage for each new Israeli airstrike on civilian targets without warning, and by the prospect of a possible ground offensive.
Hamas has said it is seeking the release of all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails – approximately 4,500 detainees, according to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem – in exchange for the Israeli hostages. On Monday, the group said the airstrikes had killed four hostages and their captors. According to the health ministry in the Gaza Strip, Israeli attacks have so far killed 1,100 Palestinians and wounded 5,339.
On Wednesday, both the UN secretary general, António Guterres, and Pope Francis urged the immediate release of all the hostages held in Gaza. In the meantime, the families of the kidnapped men, women and children are continuing to hope and to hunt for information. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/11/its-like-a-nightmare-families-of-hamas-hostages-continue-agonising-wait-for-news-israel-gaza
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