Practically 100 U.S. Health Staff Who Served In Gaza Demand Arms Embargo To Israel

Virtually 100 American well being care staff who’ve served in Gaza are demanding a U.S. arms embargo on Israel till a everlasting cease-fire is reached — the most recent plea for the Biden administration to finish its unconditional assist for Israel forward of the anniversary of the nation’s siege on the Palestinian territory.

In a Wednesday letter first obtained by HuffPost, the multifaith and multiethnic group of physicians, surgeons, nurses and midwives are additionally demanding a gathering on the White Home to allow them to focus on Israeli battle crimes they are saying they witnessed whereas volunteering in Gaza’s hospitals and clinics.

“President [Joe] Biden and Vice President [Kamala] Harris, we wish you could see the nightmares that plague so many of us since we have returned: dreams of children maimed and mutilated by our weapons, and their inconsolable mothers begging us to save them,” the letter reads.

“We wish you could hear the cries and screams our consciences will not let us forget. We cannot fathom why you continue arming the country that is deliberately killing these children en masse.”

The signatories make up nearly all of American medical professionals who’ve labored in Gaza since Oct. 7, when Hamas militants killed 1,200 folks and captured about 250 in an assault on Israel. Virtually a 12 months later, roughly 100 hostages are estimated to nonetheless be in captivity, one-third of whom are presumed useless.

In response, Israel launched its ongoing U.S.-funded bombardment of Gaza, killing what the enclave’s well being ministry says is greater than 42,000 Palestinians (the letter’s signatories estimate the true quantity is nearer to 119,000, or about 5.4% of the inhabitants). Virtually a thousand of these killed are Palestinian well being care staff themselves, the letter says, not together with medical staff who’ve been taken by Israeli forces to what are being described as torture camps.

The well being care staff, who’ve spent a mixed 254 weeks in Gaza since Oct. 7, additionally launched an appendix that features the info they used to tell their letter.

Israel’s navy offensive has destroyed Gaza’s land and infrastructure whereas blocking most humanitarian help from coming into the territory. Along with the dying and mutilation brought on by bombs and bullets, Palestinians trapped within the enclave face displacement, illness and hunger — and with no totally functioning hospitals and little entry to drugs and sanitary assets, well being care staff there are struggling to cease the rising dying toll and gradual the unfold of illness.

“These things are all concealed – the malnutrition, the disease, the displacement, the lack of sanitation, and then the destruction of the water infrastructure. There’s literally no potable water in Gaza,” stated the letter’s organizer Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a California-based trauma and demanding care surgeon who volunteered at European Hospital earlier this 12 months within the southeastern a part of central Gaza’s Khan Younis governorate.

“All of that together is conspiring to basically just kill children constantly,” he advised HuffPost. “And that’s definitely what’s happening.”

Each medical employee within the letter stated that they didn’t personally see any type of Palestinian militant exercise at any of Gaza’s overrun well being care services, contradicting Israel’s justification for laying siege to the enclave’s hospitals.

What they did often see, the letter says, had been largely ladies and youngsters both severely injured or useless. The well being care staff say they routinely handled preteen Palestinian kids whose bullet wounds to the top or chest signaled they had been intentionally focused by the Israeli navy.

“Virtually every child under the age of five whom we encountered, both inside and outside of the hospital, had both a cough and watery diarrhea. We found cases of jaundice … in nearly every room of the hospitals in which we served, and in many of our healthcare colleagues in Gaza,” the letter says, including {that a} excessive share of surgical incisions find yourself contaminated as a consequence of situations at hospitals.

“Malnutrition led to widespread spontaneous abortions, underweight newborns, and an inability of new mothers to breastfeed. This left their newborns at high risk of death given the lack of access to potable water anywhere in Gaza. Many of those infants died,” the medical staff testified. “In Gaza we watched malnourished mothers feed their underweight newborns infant formula made with poisonous water. We can never forget that the world abandoned these innocent women and babies.”

The well being care staff, a few of whom signed a letter in July that had comparable calls for, known as on the Biden administration to vary its present Center East coverage and maintain Israel accountable earlier than each U.S. and worldwide legislation.

Thus far, the administration has doubled down on its assist for Israel because the battle expands to incorporate the occupied West Financial institution, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and probably Iran.

Spokespeople for Biden, Harris and Harris’ presidential marketing campaign didn’t reply to HuffPost’s request for remark.