Letter to Biden, Harris with American physicians’ and nurses’ observations from the Gaza Strip
Link to Letter sent by 45 American Doctors and Nurses to President Biden and Vice President Harris
July 25, 2024
Re: American physicians’ and nurses’ observations from the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023
I’ve never seen such horrific injuries, on such a massive scale, with so few resources. Our bombs are cutting down women and children by the thousands. Their mutilated bodies are a monument to cruelty.
Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, trauma and critical care surgeon
I saw so many stillbirths and maternal deaths that could have been easily prevented if the hospitals had been functioning normally.
Dr. Thalia Pachiyannakis, obstetrician and gynecologist
Every day I saw babies die. They had been born healthy. Their mothers were so malnourished that they could not breastfeed, and we lacked formula or clean water to feed them, so they starved.
Asma Taha, pediatric nurse practitioner
Gaza was the first time I held a baby’s brains in my hand. The first of many.
Dr. Mark Perlmutter, orthopedic and hand surgeon
Read the letter at: https://tinyurl.com/gazadoctorsletter
Read the appendix at: https://tinyurl.com/gazadoctorsletterappendix
US medics who volunteered in Gaza demand arms embargo over ‘unbearable cruelty’ inflicted by Israel
Doctors and nurses say death toll is more than 92,000, describe gruesome injuries and a sick and traumatized people
Dozens of US doctors and nurses who worked in Gaza have written to Joe Biden claiming that the true death toll from Israel’s months-long assault is much higher than previously reported, demanding the US withdraw diplomatic and military support for Israel until there is a ceasefire.
The eight-page letter, delivered on Thursday and addressed to Biden, the first lady, Jill Biden, and the vice-president, Kamala Harris, said the medics saw evidence of widespread violations of laws governing the use of US weapons supplied to Israel, and of international humanitarian law.
Forty-five surgeons, emergency room physicians and nurses who volunteered in several Gaza hospitals over recent months laid out what they described as the “massive human toll from Israel’s attack on Gaza, especially the toll it has taken on women and children”.
“We cannot forget the scenes of unbearable cruelty directed at women and children that we witnessed ourselves,” they wrote.
“Every single signatory to this letter treated children in Gaza who suffered violence that must have been deliberately directed at them. Specifically, every one of us on a daily basis treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head.”
Several of the signatories previously told the Guardian they believed Israeli snipers were targeting children and reported the devastating impact on civilians of weapons designed to spray high levels of shrapnel.
The medics, who volunteered with the World Health Organization and other relief groups, told the president the real death toll is much higher than the Palestinian ministry of health’s casualty figure of more than 39,000 people killed, the majority being women and children.
“It is likely that the death toll from this conflict is already greater than 92,000, an astonishing 4.2% of Gaza’s population,” they wrote.
The medics added almost no one in Gaza has escaped the consequences of the Israeli attack.
“With only marginal exceptions, everyone in Gaza is sick, injured or both. This includes every national aid worker, every international volunteer and probably every Israeli hostage: every man, woman and child,” they said.
The letter warned that “epidemics are raging in Gaza” and described Israel’s repeated displacement of a malnourished and sick civilian population to areas without running water and toilets as “absolutely shocking”.
Read more at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/25/israel-gaza-war-biden-letter?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
We Volunteered at a Gaza Hospital. What We Saw Was Unspeakable.
American surgeons who witnessed the civilian carnage of the Israel-Hamas war.
GAZA — In the United States we would never dream of operating on anyone without consent, let alone a malnourished and barely conscious 9-year-old girl in septic shock. Nevertheless, when we saw Juri, that’s exactly what we did.
We have no idea how Juri ended up in the Gaza European Hospital preoperative area. All we could see was that she had an external fixator — a scaffold of metal pins and rods — on her left leg and necrotic skin on her face and arms from the explosion that tore her little body to shreds. Just touching her blankets elicited shrieks of pain and terror. She was slowly dying, so we decided to take the risk of anesthetizing her without knowing exactly what we would find.
In the operating room, we examined Juri from head to toe. This beautiful, meek little girl was missing two inches of her left femur along with most of the muscle and skin on the back of her thigh. Both of her buttocks were flayed open, cutting so deeply through flesh that the lowest bones in her pelvis were exposed. As we swept our hands through this topography of cruelty, maggots fell in clumps onto the operating room table.
Read more at: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/07/19/gaza-hospitals-surgeons-00167697
Knesset votes overwhelmingly against Palestinian statehood, days before PM’s US trip
Now there can be no doubt, Israel is against a two-state solution or any solution that provides Palestinians with human rights and self-determination:
The Knesset late Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to pass a resolution rejecting the establishment of a Palestinian state.
The resolution was co-sponsored by parties in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition together with right-wing parties from the opposition and even received support from Benny Gantz’s centrist National Unity party.
Lawmakers from Opposition Leader Yair Lapid’s center-left Yesh Atid party left the plenum to avoid backing the measure, even though he has spoken in favor of a two-state solution. The more left-leaning Labor Party followed suit. The only ones to oppose the resolution were lawmakers from the Arab-majority Ra’am and Hadash-Ta’al parties.
The initiative was passed just days before Netanyahu’s visit to the US to address a joint session of Congress and meet with President Joe Biden at the White House. The move was likely to further irk Democrats uncomfortable with embracing an Israeli government that increasingly rejects a two-state solution.
Already in February, the Knesset passed a resolution sponsored by Netanyahu rejecting the establishment of a Palestinian state, but that motion specifically addressed the unilateral establishment of such a state amid reports that countries abroad were considering recognizing a Palestinian state absent a peace agreement with Israel.
This resolution — passed 68-9 — altogether rejects the establishment of a Palestinian state, even as part of a negotiated settlement with Israel.
I Fixed the New York Times' Pro-Israel Headlines on Gaza
When a poll in March showed that only about half of Americans could correctly answer that more Palestinians had been killed in the war on Gaza than Israelis, many of those who have been following the conflict were stunned. After all, the gap between Israeli and Palestinian deaths is enormous. By early March, Israel’s war on Gaza had killed more than 31,000 Palestinians.
Perhaps, however, it’s not all that surprising, given the coverage of the war by U.S. mainstream media, which appears to be going to great lengths to help absolve Israel of its crimes and dehumanize Palestinians.
The New York Times has been particularly egregious in removing Israel’s criminal responsibility from the broader story. In April, the Intercept reported a Times memo leak in which the paper’s reporters were instructed to avoid words and phrases like “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” “occupied territory,” and “Palestine,” according to the Intercept.
To see the memo’s impact, you only have to look at the NYT’s headlines – something I’ve been doing since the war began. I've also been ‘fixing’ them so that they reflect the reality on the ground rather than covering it up.
Read more at: https://zeteo.com/p/new-york-times-whitewashing-israel-genocide-gaza?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web