When the bombing of hospitals was still taboo in October 2023, Israel denied bombing al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City. This time, Israel claims it targeted a Hamas command-and-control center at the hospital. It has not provided any evidence.
Polio had been eradicated in the Gaza Strip but was detected this past week. While it is unclear how it has suddenly reappeared it is beyond doubt how it’s spreading: Israel’s systematic destruction of Gaza’s health infrastructure.
In a wide-ranging interview, Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah discusses the liberatory potential of medicine, the genocidal nature of Zionism, and the obligation, when confronted with the logic of elimination, to remain unwavering in our commitment to life.
Recent reports by Physicians for Human Rights Israel and Human Rights Watch on alleged mass rape and the Ahli Hospital attack fail to meet the basic standards of human rights reporting and feed into Israeli propaganda campaigns justifying genocide.
Human Rights Watch’s misleading report on the Al-Ahli Hospital attack was published without a genuine investigation or conclusive evidence. Such double standards are putting Palestinian lives at risk.
Without definitive results, key evidence, or access to the Al Ahli Hospital site, Human Rights Watch’s decision to publish an inconclusive report while Israel continues its genocidal war including the targeting of hospitals must be questioned.
In the sterile field of medicine, mention of culpability or politics amounts to contamination. In the colonial situation, doctors can’t afford this narrow a definition of health, or of life–diagnosis requires context.
After the Al Ahli hospital massacre in Gaza this feels like the last essay I am ever going to write. There is nothing more to say and no other way to say it. I will never be the same and neither should you.
The Israeli military bombed the Anglican-run al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday massacring hundreds of people. Estimates range between 500-1000 dead, but that number may continue to climb.