XPost: uk.legal, soc.culture.jewish, alt.revisionism   
   XPost: alt.politics.democrats   
   From: void@invalid.noy   
      
   by FEROZE SIDHWA   
   MARK PERLMUTTER   
   Apr 11, 2024   
      
   On March 25 the two of us, an orthopedic surgeon and a trauma surgeon,   
   traveled to the Gaza Strip to work at Gaza European Hospital in Khan   
   Younis. We were immediately overwhelmed by the overflown sewage and   
   the distinct smell of gunpowder in the air. We made the short journey   
   from the Rafah crossing to Khan Younis, where Gaza European Hospital   
   stands as one of the last remaining semi-functional hospitals for the   
   2.5 million human beings—half of them children—in the Gaza Strip. As   
   humanitarian surgeons we thought we had seen all manner of cruelty in   
   the world, but neither one of us has ever experienced anything like   
   what we found when we arrived in Gaza.   
      
   We exited the van into a sea of children, all shorter and thinner than   
   they ought to have been. Even over their screams of joy at meeting new   
   foreigners, the snowmobile-like hum of Israeli drones could be heard   
   overhead. It quickly became background noise, an omnipresent reminder   
   that violence and death can rain down on anyone at any time in this   
   besieged and ransacked territory.   
      
   Our limited sleep was constantly interrupted by explosions that shook   
   the hospital’s walls and popped our ears, even well after the United   
   Nations Security Council declared a cease-fire must be implemented.   
   When warplanes screamed overhead, everyone braced for a particularly   
   loud and powerful explosion. The timing of these attacks always   
   coincided with “iftar,” when families in this overwhelmingly Muslim   
   county broke the daily fast of Ramadan and were most vulnerable.   
      
   We as Americans must acknowledge that we are responsible for this   
   crime against humanity, now in its seventh month and unfolding in full   
   view of the entire world.   
      
   We walked through the wards and immediately found evidence of   
   horrifying violence deliberately directed at civilians and even   
   children. A three-year-old boy shot in the head, a 12-year-old girl   
   shot through the chest, an ICU nurse shot through the abdomen, all by   
   some of the best-trained marksmen in the world. Every square inch of   
   the hospital’s floor is taken up with makeshift tents where displaced   
   families live, desperate to find some semblance of safety. They are   
   the lucky several hundred who get to live indoors, unlike the tens of   
   thousands sheltering outside on the hospital’s grounds.   
      
   As we got to work we were shocked by the violence inflicted on people.   
   Incredibly powerful explosives ripped apart rock, floors, and walls   
   and threw them through human bodies, penetrating skin with waves of   
   dirt and debris. With the environment literally embedded in our   
   patients’ bodies we have found infection control to be impossible. No   
   amount of medical care could ever compensate for the damage being   
   inflicted here.   
      
   As humanitarian trauma surgeons we have both seen incredible   
   suffering. Collectively, we were present at Ground Zero on 9/11,   
   Hurricane Katrina, the Boston Marathon bombing, and the 2010   
   earthquake in Haiti on the first day of these disasters. We have   
   worked in the deprivation of southern Zimbabwe and the horrors of the   
   war in Ukraine. Together we have worked on more than 40 surgical   
   missions in developing countries on three continents in our combined   
   57 years of volunteering. This long experience taught us that there   
   was no greater pain as a humanitarian surgeon than being unable to   
   provide needed care to a patient.   
      
   But that was before coming to Gaza. Now we know the pain of being   
   unable to treat a child who will slowly die, but also alone, because   
   she is the only surviving member of an entire extended family. We have   
   not had the heart to tell these children how their families died:   
   burned until they resembled blistered hotdogs more than human beings,   
   shredded to pieces such that they can only be buried in mass graves,   
   or simply entombed in their former apartment buildings to die slowly   
   of asphyxia and sepsis.   
      
      
   The United States has heavily funded and overwhelmingly armed what is   
   called “the occupation” of Palestine, but the term is misleading.   
   Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, declared that the existence   
   of the Palestinians was simply “a matter of no consequence.” Thirty   
   years later, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan told the Israeli   
   cabinet that the Palestinians “would continue to live like dogs…and we   
   will see where this process leads.”   
      
   Now we know: This is where it leads. It leads to Gaza European   
   Hospital, and to two surgeons realizing that the blood on the floor of   
   the trauma bay and the operating room is dripping from our own hands.   
   We Americans provide the crucial funding, weapons, and diplomatic   
   support for a genocidal assault on a helpless population.   
      
   The two of us continue to hope against hope that American politicians,   
   and especially President Joe Biden, will abandon their support for   
   Israel’s war on the Palestinians. If they do not, then we have learned   
   nothing from the history of the past hundred years. Polish poet   
   Stanislaw Jerzy Lec quipped that “no snowflake in an avalanche ever   
   feels responsible,” but we as Americans must acknowledge that we are   
   responsible for this crime against humanity, now in its seventh month   
   and unfolding in full view of the entire world.   
      
   By December, the Israeli Air Force had dropped so much American   
   ordinance on Gaza that it exceeded the explosive force of two of the   
   atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima. Nearly 14,000 children have   
   been killed in Gaza in the past six months, more than were killed in   
   all war zones in the entire world in the past four years combined. No   
   conflict of any size in history has ever been this deadly to   
   journalists, healthcare workers, or paramedics. Indeed, we and our   
   entire team lived in constant fear that Israel would attack Gaza   
   European Hospital directly, as it has with so many others. The   
   complete and utter destruction of al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City,   
   along with the killing, kidnapping, and torture of the healthcare   
   staff, only heightened this sense of dread.   
      
   We came to Gaza as two individual snowflakes trying to stop this   
   avalanche of death and horror, and yet we also feel responsible for   
   it. We urge anyone who reads this to publicly oppose sending weapons   
   to Israel as long as this genocide continues, until the Israeli siege   
   of Gaza is lifted, and until an end to the occupation can be   
   negotiated.   
      
   https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/surgeons-cruelty-israel-gaza   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)