Al-Qudra commented on the viral image of Hussam Abu Safiya that it is “a photo of the betrayal of two billion Muslims, a photo of the humiliation of 450 million Arabs, a photo of an entire planet conspiring against a small spot called Gaza.”
The viral image of a Palestinian doctor in his white medical coat, walking alone towards the unknown fate awaiting him, behind a cluster of tanks and soldiers, has emerged as the embodiment of heroism. That doctor is Hussam Abu Safiya.
Born on November 21, 1973, Hussam Abu Safiya is, like most Palestinians who were raised in Gaza, a refugee whose parents were expelled from their homes during the ethnic cleansing of Palestine (1947-9). His family actually originates from the village of Hamama, near the city of Askalan.
Born in the Jabalia Camp, the largest refugee camp in the Gaza Strip per population, he lived through the period of Israel’s internal occupation of the territory, siege and also Israel’s countless aerial assaults upon the territory. The most devastating attacks were the 2008/9, 2012 and 2014 wars, prior to the ongoing Genocide that began in October of 2023.
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Hussam Abu Safiya – otherwise known as Abu Elias – grew up in the Gaza Strip, but managed to travel abroad in order to study. During his travels, he met his wife, Albina Abu Safiya, who is originally from Kazakhstan and left her country to settle with her husband in 1996.
Abu Safiya obtained a master’s degree and a Palestinian board certificate in pediatrics and neonatology and earned his current position as director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza’s Beit Lahia.
Despite his tireless work throughout the past 15 months of the Gaza genocide, during which Israel has systematically dismantled the territory’s health sector, rendering it all but inoperable in most cases, it has been over the course of the last 3 months that Abu Safiya has really shone as a symbol of humanity.
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As Israel decided to launch its new assault into the northern Gaza Strip, starving and slaughtering the remaining civilians who live there, Abu Safiya emerged as the voice of conscience, repeatedly giving powerful statements to the media in which he called upon the International Community to urgently intervene.
On October 26, Israeli occupation forces raided Kamal Adwan Hospital and detained the doctor, along with countless other medical staff and patients. From October 5, Israel had threatened the Hospital Director a number of times and repeatedly ordered him to flee the facility, yet he refused to leave his patients and colleagues.
When he was released from Israeli military detention, Abu Safiya was faced with one of the greatest horrors any person could face, Israel had murdered his son Elias. Then, on November 23, Abu Safiya was injured by an explosive that was dropped from an Israeli quadcopter, targeting him while he was working inside the hospital. This resulted in six shrapnel wounds that penetrated his thigh area and caused ruptures to veins and arteries.
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On December 27, Israeli army forces again stormed the besieged Kamal Adwan Hospital and arrested the prominent doctor. This time, a photo prior to his arrest was circulated showing him walking through the rubble of the hospital that the Israelis had burned, surrounded by tanks.
While the full details regarding his condition are currently unknown, Israel initially announced that they were going to relocate him to the Indonesian Hospital area, but instead abducted him to the infamous Sde Teiman torture center.
The Director General of the Palestinian Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip, Munir Al-Barsh, stated that Abu Safiya was beaten and severely injured by Israeli soldiers, who forced him to strip off his clothes and wear prisoner fatigues, before using him as a human shield.
The Gaza Health Ministry’s spokesman, Ashraf al-Qudra, said in a statement: “We bid farewell to the year with the image of a man who was not shaken by a nuclear state, nor frightened by steel tanks, forced to go to his fate barefoot, with every grain of dirt beneath him accepting his touch.”
Al-Qudra commented on the viral image of Hussam Abu Safiya that it is “a photo of the betrayal of two billion Muslims, a photo of the humiliation of 450 million Arabs, a photo of an entire planet conspiring against a small spot called Gaza.”
(The Palestine Chronicle)
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
Not only those with weapons are resistance fighters. There are others who has never fired a single bullet yet their role is as crucial as the fighters. Dr Abu Safiya, among many others, belong to that category. May Allah bless them all.