Israeli war criminals have systematically attacked hospitals for 20 months. During the genocide in Gaza, Israel and its loyal propagandists have been working flat out to normalise attacks on hospitals and health workers.

Now, Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran has sparked retaliations unlike what resistance from Gaza or Lebanon could offer. And an Israeli hospital next to a military site has just received some damage as a result. But unsurprisingly, the genocidal crybully‘s selective outrage is failing to land.

Worries of ‘another Gaza’ as Israeli attacks create ‘bloodbath’ in Iran

Israel’s bombing of Iran heavily damaged a hospital in recent days, injuring patients in the process. An Israeli attack on an ambulance, meanwhile, reportedly killed two people, and another strike took the lives of three rescue workers of the Iranian Red Crescent.

So far, Israel’s assault on Iran has killed about 639 people, while Iran’s retaliation has killed around 24. Iran says the Israeli hospital probably received damage as a result of a blast wave from the impact on the nearby military site. No one received injuries, according to one Israeli soldier. But Israel’s war-criminal ‘defence’ minister Israel Katz responded by saying Iranian leader Ali Khamenei “should no longer exist”.

A long context of devastating US sanctions on Iran had already left the country’s health system in dire straits. But some health workers now suggest it is close to collapsing as a result of Israel’s assault. One nurse implored:

doctors and nurses everywhere to put themselves in our shoes and speak out, so Israel cannot bring the same disaster it brought upon Gaza’s medical staff to us here in Iran

Even an Iranian citizen who opposes their government lamented that Israeli war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu was hitting “residential buildings, offices, and hospitals” and:

wants to turn us into another Beirut, another Gaza

An Iranian doctor, meanwhile, asserted that health workers are witnessing “a bloodbath”. They said:

The injuries are terrifying and it looks like we are working in a makeshift hospital on a battlefield.

Most casualties are reportedly civilians.

Israel’s systematic destruction of healthcare infrastructure

In January 2024, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that Israel had attacked “hospitals and other vital medical infrastructure in Gaza and the West Bank” around 600 times. Six hundred times.

A UN report on the months between October 2023 and June 2024, meanwhile, said Israeli attacks had blasted Gaza’s healthcare system:

to the brink of total collapse

UN official Volker Turk called hospitals “a death trap”.

Such collective punishment is a war crime. Some have suggested using the term “medelacide“.

Israel’s “pattern” of attacking Gaza’s hospitals, the UN insisted, showed a “blatant disregard for international humanitarian and human rights law”.

Campaigners believe Israel has murdered at least 1,400 healthcare workers in Gaza. And currently, the WHO says, Gaza’s health system is “at breaking point“. Only around half of the occupied territory’s hospitals are still operational, but:

At least 94% of all hospitals in the Gaza Strip are damaged or destroyed

In northern Gaza in particular, there are officially no functioning hospitals.

Meanwhile, Israel has abducted doctors like Hussam Abu Safiya, torturing them in Abu-Graib-like prisons. The apartheid state’s sadism has killed many, including Dr Adnan Al-Bursh.

Lebanon didn’t escape Israel’s medelacidal campaign either. The settler-colonial power reportedly “attacked 67 hospitals, 56 primary health care centres, and 238 emergency medical teams, killing at least 222 medical and emergency relief workers” from October 2023 to November 2024.

Attacking hospitals is bad. Medelacide is pure evil.

The UN says:

Attacks on schools and hospitals during conflict is one of the six grave violations identified and condemned by the UN Security Council.

It adds:

Under international humanitarian law, both schools and hospitals are protected civilian objects, and therefore benefit from the humanitarian principles of distinction and proportionality.

The law does allow an exception if it’s clear that an enemy is using such an institution as a base for fighting. But the serial liars running the Israeli state have never offered any verifiable evidence. And international experts have long called them out on this while slamming their prevention of independent verification.

For 20 months, we have regularly seen Israel’s horrific, intentional destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system. We have been witnessing the evil of medelacide perhaps more clearly than ever before. And we will continue to see it as long as Western governments and their propagandists allow Israel to act with impunity.

We can push for change by demanding the heavily tarnished BBC finally shows the Gaza: Medics Under Fire documentary (from the award–winning Basement Films), which it has shamefully postponed for months. We can watch the new Sky documentary Gaza: Doctors on the Frontline tonight. And we can heed the words of one doctor who has volunteered in Gaza, who has insisted:

What we need to be doing now is to mobilise collectively to force those who remain complicit in Israel’s genocide to act to bring about an immediate end to this barbarity

Featured image via the Canary

By Ed Sykes

This post was originally published on Canary.