{"id":1511288,"date":"2024-02-21T06:55:44","date_gmt":"2024-02-21T06:55:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=314089"},"modified":"2024-02-21T06:55:44","modified_gmt":"2024-02-21T06:55:44","slug":"israel-is-assaulting-hospitals-in-gaza-with-full-u-s-support-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/02\/21\/israel-is-assaulting-hospitals-in-gaza-with-full-u-s-support-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel Is Assaulting Hospitals in Gaza with Full U.S. Support"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>\n
\"\"

Photograph Source: Wafa (Q2915969) in contract with a local company (APAimages)\u200f\u200f – CC BY-SA 3.0<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

Many decades ago in Chicago, my favorite of several part-time student jobs was operating the \u201cold-style\u201d telephone switchboard at a small hospital called Forkosh Memorial. The console of coils and plugs included a mirror so operators could keep an eye on the hospital entrance, which on weekends and evenings was also monitored by an elderly, unarmed security guard named Frank. He sat at a classroom style desk near the entrance with a ledger book. Over the course of four years, on weekends and evenings, \u201csecurity\u201d at the hospital generally consisted solely of Frank and me. Fortunately, nothing much ever happened. The possibility of an attack, invasion or raid never occurred to us. The notion of an aerial bombardment was unimaginable, like something out of \u201cWar of the Worlds” or some other sci-fi fantasy.<\/p>\n

Now, tragically, hospitals in Gaza and the West Bank have been attacked, invaded, bombed and destroyed. News of additional Israeli attacks is being reported on a daily basis. Last week,\u00a0Democracy Now<\/em>!\u00a0interviewed<\/a>\u00a0Dr. Yasser Khan, a Canadian ophthalmologist and eye surgeon\u00a0who recently returned from a humanitarian surgical mission at the European Hospital in Khan Yunis in Gaza. Dr. Khan spoke of bombings taking place every few hours resulting in a constant influx of mass casualties. The majority of patients he treated were children from age 2 to 17. He saw horrific eye injuries, shattered faces, shrapnel wounds, abdominal injuries, limbs severed above the bone, and traumas caused by drone launched laser guided missiles. Amid the overcrowding and chaos, health care workers tended to patients while lacking basic equipment, including anesthesia. Patients lay on the ground in unsterile conditions, vulnerable to infection and disease. Most of them also suffered from severe hunger.<\/p>\n

Normally, a child who undergoes an amputation faces as many as twelve additional surgeries.\u00a0\u00a0Khan wondered who would do the follow-up care for these children, some of whom have no surviving relatives?<\/p>\n

He also noted sniper fire prevented doctors from going to work. \u201cThey\u2019ve killed health care workers, nurses, paramedics; ambulances have been bombed. This has all been systematic,\u201d Khan explained. \u201cNow there are 10,000 to 15,000 bodies decomposing. It\u2019s the rainy season right now in Gaza so all the rainwater mixes with the decomposing bodies and that bacteria mixes with the drinking water supply and you get further disease.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Khan, Israeli forces have kidnapped forty to forty-five doctors, specifically targeting specialists and hospital administrators. Three health care professional organizations\u00a0have issued<\/a>\u00a0a statement\u00a0\u00a0expressing deep concern that the Israeli military has abducted and unlawfully detained Dr. Khaled al-Serr, a surgeon at the Nasser Hospital in Gaza.<\/p>\n

On February 19, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus\u00a0described<\/a>\u00a0conditions in the Nasser hospital after Israel ordered evacuation of Palestinians from the complex. \u201cThere are still more than 180 patients and 15 doctors and nurses inside Nasser,\u201d he said. \u201cThe hospital is still experiencing an acute shortage of food, basic medical supplies, and oxygen. There is no tap water and no electricity, except a backup generator maintaining some lifesaving machines.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eight years ago, in October of 2015, the United States military\u00a0destroyed<\/a>\u00a0Afghanistan\u2019s Kunduz hospital, run by M\u00e9decins sans Fronti\u00e8res (Doctors Without Borders). For more than an hour, a C-130 transport plane repeatedly fired incendiary devices at the hospital\u2019s emergency room and intensive care unit,\u00a0killing<\/a>\u00a042 people.\u00a0Thirty-seven additional people were injured. \u201cOur patients burned in their beds,\u201d read the MSF\u2019s\u00a0in-depth report<\/a>. \u201cOur medical staff were decapitated or lost limbs. Others were shot from the air while they fled the burning building.\u201d<\/p>\n

The horrific attack outraged war resisters and human rights groups. I remember joining a group of activists in upstate NY who assembled outside a hospital emergency room with a banner proclaiming \u201cTo bomb this site would be a war crime.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2009, on a smaller, yet still horrific scale, I witnessed an Israeli onslaught in Gaza called \u201cOperation Cast Lead.\u201d In the emergency room of the Al Shifa hospital, Dr. Saeed Abuhassan, an orthopedic surgeon,\u00a0described<\/a>\u00a0experiences similar to\u00a0\u00a0Khan\u2019s. This surgeon grew up in Chicago, very close to the neighborhood where I lived. I asked him what he would want me to tell our neighbors back home. He listed a litany of horrors and then he stopped.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cNo,\u201d he said. \u201cFirst, you must tell them that U.S. taxpayer money paid for all of these weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Taxpayer money feeds the bloated, swollen Pentagon budget. U.S. Senators, last week,\u00a0cowed<\/a>\u00a0by AIPAC, decided to send Israel an additional $14.1 billion\u00a0to boost military spending.<\/a>\u00a0Only three Senators\u00a0voted against<\/a>\u00a0the bill.<\/p>\n

From Palestine,\u00a0Huwaida Arraf<\/a>, a Palestinian-American human rights attorney, wrote on X:: \u201cThescary part is not that Israel is planning the forcible transfer of the Palestinians it hasn\u2019t slaughtered, but that the so-called \u2018civilized world\u2019 is allowing it to happen. The ramifications of this coordinated evil will haunt its collaborators for generations to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Forkosh Hospital in the 1970s, I had a mirror to see what was happening behind my back, but everyone on earth can see, directly, the horror of U.S. support for a genocidal event happening on our watch.\u00a0\u00a0Gravely\u00a0distorted versions<\/a>\u00a0of what occurred on October 7th<\/sup>, cannot \u2013 even if believed – justify the scale of the horrors being reported in Gaza and the West Bank each day.<\/p>\n

The U.S. government continues enthusiastically to bankroll Israel\u2019s systemic and inhumane destruction of Gaza. U.S. advisors\u00a0make feeble attempts<\/a>\u00a0to suggest Israel should pause or at least try to be more precise in their attacks. In its quest for hegemonic superiority, the United States tears into ever tinier shreds whatever remains of a commitment to human rights, equality and human dignity.<\/p>\n

What kept Forkosh Hospital secure, decades ago, was a social contract that presumed safety for a small hospital serving the local population.<\/p>\n

If we can’t find the morality to stop supplying weapons for ongoing Israeli onslaughts against Gaza and its places of healing, we may find we have created a world in which no-one can count on upholding basic human rights. We may be creating intergenerational wounds of hatred and sorrow from which there will never, ever be any safe place to heal.<\/p>\n

A version of this article first appeared on\u00a0<\/em>The Progressive<\/em><\/a>\u00a0website.<\/em><\/p>\n

The post Israel Is Assaulting Hospitals in Gaza with Full U.S. Support<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many decades ago in Chicago, my favorite of several part-time student jobs was operating the \u201cold-style\u201d telephone switchboard at a small hospital called Forkosh Memorial. The console of coils and plugs included a mirror so operators could keep an eye on the hospital entrance, which on weekends and evenings was also monitored by an elderly, More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post Israel Is Assaulting Hospitals in Gaza with Full U.S. Support<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1045,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1511288"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1045"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1511288"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1511288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1511289,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1511288\/revisions\/1511289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1511288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1511288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1511288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}