Doctors justify genocide in a prestigious journal 

I’m a primary care physician based in Boston. For the past five months, my colleagues and I, along with the rest of the world, have seen countless videos and reports documenting the most barbaric kinds of violence and inhumanity by Israeli Defense Force soldiers. This past week, several people were killed when Israel bombed an UNRWA aid site in Gaza. In the same week, the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association published four letters to the editor challenging an argument about international humanitarian law previously published by Gostin and Goodwin. The responses are rife with Orientalist anti-Palestinian tropes borrowed from the playbook for the “war on terror,” which marked the entirety of my youth and young adulthood. They rely on disputed, if not fully debunked claims to justify genocide. The claim put forth most egregiously and repeatedly in multiple letters is that Palestinian hospitals are used for military purposes. The technical argumentation style in the letters focused on a narrow set of legal claims, and the prestigious platform created the appearance of intellectualism and expertise. But it’s all just racism with a ribbon on it. 

My medical colleagues and other commenters in this prominent journal continue to repeat all manner of Israeli state narratives about al-Shifa hospital, namely that it serves as a military “command center” and a place for militants to store weapons. These have been debunked, and their repetition as fact helps to excuse egregious and regular attacks on healthcare — the latest of these is taking place as I write. The letters cite no sources other than the New York Times or the Israeli state itself to support many of their claims. This is despite substantial evidence of anti-Palestinian bias in Times coverage, which frequently minimizes the state’s violence and the barbarism of its military. Continued debate over whether Palestinian hospitals are really hospitals is fundamentally about the right of Palestinians to exist as a society, and this racist framing offers a handy distraction for Israel’s continued massacres and destruction.

Beyond specific unsubstantiated claims in the letters, the conversation is framed around the false premise of a “war” between equal parties. In a conversation that erases the colonial reality of Israel’s occupation and apartheid regime, it becomes taboo to suggest that Palestinians have the right to armed resistance against the illegal occupation. In fact, in this context, Israel does not have a “right to defend itself,” as the authors claim. As special rapporteur on Gaza for the UN, Francesca Albanese, and human rights lawyer Noura Erakat must frequently explain, Israel actually has no right to wage war on territory it occupies. 

The distortions of reality required to justify a genocide are built up by a well-funded propaganda machine, and neither healthcare nor medical education are spared. Recently, some courageous medical students at my institution were able to schedule a screening of the film “Israelism” for the campus community, with support from faculty. The film documents the journey of a young Jewish American woman and features candid interviews with representatives of groups like Hillel and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). It describes their role in entrenching Israeli politics and a normalized view of occupation in everyday American Jewish life, as well as Jewish-led efforts to challenge this normalization.  

The screening was followed by an in-person discussion with the director, Eric Axelman, and was well-attended. As with many university-sponsored events, including any discussion of Palestine, it was subject to incredibly disproportionate policing. Campus police checked IDs at the door and were present for the full screening and discussion. Many of my colleagues came to eat falafel, learn about Zionism in America, and support the admirable student leaders who led and facilitated a space with the intention of being safe and open for everyone.

Many enjoyed the film and appreciated the opportunity to hear about its production, the background of the director, and its reception with various audiences. Axelman described to us how a significant portion of campus screenings are censored, often because of anxieties from administrators who try to discourage the events or subject them to bizarre conditions like having attendees watch the film with headphones on their personal laptops. During our discussion with the director, one attendee stood to declare that the film is biased, that it only presents one perspective, and that, therefore, its screening produced an “unsafe space.” Axelman asked this attendee to explain what they felt was biased in the film, but they produced no coherent answer, insisting that the space was too unsafe to even answer that question. Axelman went on to describe how many such critiques are made of the film, but seldom can people describe the missing perspective that they thought would make it more “balanced.”

My other colleagues appreciated the film and engaged in a nuanced discussion about it, despite the unnecessary and intimidating police presence. One of my colleagues, already familiar with some but not all of the context through one Palestinian relative, expressed how the film deepened their understanding. They hadn’t realized before that the regime actually fit the legal definition of apartheid, and they described what they saw in the film as a process of “indoctrination” depicted in the film, occurring through the politicized coupling of Israel’s settler colonial project with every beautiful, sacred, or mundane aspect of Jewish life in America. This is, in fact, the project of modern Zionism. Although its original conception was more brazenly antisemitic, modern Zionism paints every critic of Israel as antisemitic in order to avoid scrutiny, even as we watch the IDF’s frenzy of barbaric violence unfold on social media every day.

With this context clearly in my mind, it’s upsetting to see how my colleagues and others are offered prestigious platforms to publicly defend a genocide, which our government is enthusiastically supporting against the will of regular Americans. I have been able to have conversations with my colleagues about this by going to great lengths to self-censor and make comfortable those for whom Arab and Palestinian death seems normal. If I express any anger, which is a normal and healthy response to genocide for anyone of conscience, I worry about the risk of racialized professional retribution. My most trusted colleagues and mentors have supported me to speak up anyway, and with the immediacy that the situation requires.  

The latest volley of JAMA letters reminds me that the complicity of American health systems is grounded in the dehumanization of our Palestinian colleagues. A letter signed in November by a hundred Israeli doctors pleaded with their government to bomb hospitals in Gaza, calling them “terrorist nests.” While my colleagues and others writing in JAMA use less virulent language and garnered a prestigious platform for their ideas, the racism is the same.

As I try to quickly respond to it during a busy work week, I am comforted by the words of Toni Morrison: “The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being…None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”

The work set out for health workers of conscience is to find every way to stand in solidarity with our Palestinian colleagues and their communities.