I say to the world, do not get fooled or distracted by these toxic strategies the US and Israel use. Do not let anyone talk you out of your humanity.
As a psychology major in college, the human mind fascinates me. Why do certain people act the way they do? What motivates individuals to behave in extreme ways? Witnessing the horrors in Gaza as an Emergency Physician, I frequently asked myself the question, ‘How does the world allow Netanyahu and his cabinet to commit these atrocities in Gaza?’
Toxic deflection comes to mind when I think of Netanyahu and his cabinet. Denying accusations, blame shifting as a distraction, gaslighting, and playing the victim are some of the vile characteristics of the right-wing Israeli government. How else can an entire government get away with ethnic cleansing? You shift the blame and fabricate a reality that paints you as a victim.
As the United States government continues to support Israel’s destructive efforts on Gaza, they have also engaged in this form of toxic deflection. On March 21, 2024, the White House press secretary stated that a ceasefire “would not be upheld by Israel because Hamas had started this on October 7, 2023”. This is a method of blame shifting and distraction instead of taking responsibility for their own actions of committing war crimes against children.
The first phase of the ceasefire agreement stated that a certain number of hostages would be released by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian “prisoners”. The Israeli government also agreed to allow a certain number of medical evacuations and humanitarian aid to enter. Not only did they continue to bomb parts of Gaza and kill civilians, including a 14-year-old boy in Rafah who was shot by a sniper, but they also continued to block aid from entering. Despite this, Hamas continued to release the agreed number of hostages.
Suddenly, right before the second stage of the ceasefire would have started after March 1, 2025, Netanyahu declared that he wants all hostages released immediately. This was a sudden and unilateral change in the original ceasefire terms. Logic dictates, negotiations simply do not work this way.
On March 20, 2025, Sky News reporter Sophy Ridge confronted Israeli ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, with these very facts. Ridge stated that the terms were clearly upheld by Hamas when they released the agreed-upon hostages, but that Israel had broken the ceasefire by continuing the bombardment on Gaza. Ambassador Hotovely immediately resorted to gaslighting and denying the truth to Ridge, despite her clearly stating the facts about the ceasefire agreement.
The United States has also been engaging in this destructive narrative. On March 24, 2025, Tammy Bruce, the US State Department spokesperson, said, when asked about the killing of two journalists in Gaza, “every single thing that’s happening in Gaza is Hamas’ fault.” Blame-shifting again is used by our own government to deflect accountability.
Furthermore, she goes on to shift focus, stating that the attack on October 7th, 2023, “killed the most Jews since the Holocaust”. What she does not mention are the 18,000 children that have been indiscriminately killed by the US-made bombs or the 50,000 innocent civilians that have been killed by indiscriminate bombing by the Israeli government. These tactics are meant to distract the viewer from the horrendous war crimes that the US and Israel have and are continuing to commit.
I say to the world, do not get fooled or distracted by these toxic strategies the US and Israel use. Do not let anyone talk you out of your humanity.
Killing children, bombing hospitals and schools, and targeting journalists are all war crimes according to the Geneva Convention.
In the time I lived in Gaza twice for a month each time in the hospitals, I never witnessed combatants or weapons inside them. This is important to point out as it is the very reason Netanyahu uses to bomb hospitals.
Even if there were military or combatants inside the hospital, as they claim, you still do not bomb hospitals. These conventions and rules of engagement were put in place to protect humanitarian rights. We must honor them and demand accountability when they are breached.
– Dr. Mimi Syed is an American board-certified emergency medicine physician, Dr. Syed served in Gaza from August 8 to September 5, 2024, and December 3 to December 31, 2024, at both Al-Aqsa Hospital and Nasser Hospital. She contributed this article to the Palestine Chronicle.
Thank you Dr. Syed. You are a true hero. And of course you are correct about
” Israelica ” . I object to what my US government is doing in my name. We The People need to vote the Mafia Donald and his entire administration out of office immediately. And the citizens need to stop paying taxes. War-Tax Resistance. Only pay the least amount, without accruing debt of course…then they can’t use our money to fund Wasrael, leading to their collapse and finally an end to Zionist aggression. The world will be a better place without them.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free of the real Jew-haters, the Zionists.
“Do not let anyone talk you out of your humanity” says Dr Sayed. How very apposite!
Israel, its US puppet and all those countries complicit in the unspeakable holocaust being wreaked upon Palestinians have yet to learn that, while they may succeed in slaughtering tens of thousands, what they are really doing is creating even greater resentment, resolve and resistance now and in the future. The Zionists may congratulate themselves on the ongoing success of their Final Solution but they will pay a very heavy price over the years to come. The world sees Israel for the affront to humanity it really is and this pariah state must be shunned and isolated because its very existence is offensive.