“If the Biden administration and if Vice President Harris’ campaign is truly interested in a ceasefire, in saving civilian lives, they have to walk the walk. The talk is not enough.”
A group of American doctors who have worked in the besieged Gaza Strip demanded an immediate arms embargo on Israel as they shared horrific experiences of the “unimaginable” situation in the enclave at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago.
“I cannot tell you how disheartening it is to know, as I am standing in front of a patient pulling shrapnel out of their body, that my tax dollars have paid for this,” Dr Tammy Abughnaim told reporters at a press briefing on Tuesday. “And that my president and vice president and their administration are in full support of this.”
She said “If the Biden administration and if Vice President Harris’ campaign is truly interested in a ceasefire, in saving civilian lives, they have to walk the walk. The talk is not enough.”
In what was reported to be a first, the DNC held a forum on Palestinian rights on Monday, which featured testimony from some of the doctors who spoke at Tuesday’s press briefing.
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Dr Abughnaim, who had just returned in from her second visit to Gaza, stressed that “When we press the Biden administration for an arms embargo as physicians, what we are saying is we cannot do our jobs as bombs are falling.”
“We cannot do our jobs as Israeli snipers target children and civilians, as Israeli quadcopters descend on groups of civilians. We cannot do our jobs because Israel has made our jobs impossible,” she added. “And Israel has made our jobs impossible with the direct support of the United States.”
‘Gives Us Nightmares’
Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan said doctors who worked in Gaza“cannot unsee what we witnessed, it gives us nightmares.”
“I can personally testify that I have never seen anything so horrific, so egregious, so inhumane,” Haj-Hassan stressed. “We decided to come here and bear moral witness with the unfortunate recognition that the only way to protect civilian life is through putting pressure on the US government to stop militarily supporting Israel in its campaign.”
“For the past 10 months, we have witnessed civilian casualty after civilian massacre after civilian massacre. The bread massacre, the Nuseirat massacre, the multiple school massacres where internally displaced people, who have been forcibly transferred, a war crime in and of itself… finally sought shelter only to be massacred,” she emphasized.
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Over 17,000 children have lost one or both parents in Gaza since October, the doctor said, adding “We have treated children who are the only surviving members of their entire family who were killed in the same bombing.”
“I have personally held the hands of children taking their last final gasps with no family alive… unable to comfort them during their final agonizing breaths.”
She explained that this phenomenon of children having their entire families killed and arriving to the emergency department “is so frequent it actually has an acronym… wounded child, no surviving family (WCNSF).”
“And yet we continue to fund this,” Haj-Hassan stressed.
“History is watching us. The world is watching us. I cannot make sense of this. I suspect you cannot too. And I hope that the Democratic Party recognizes the irony and the hypocrisy of what we continue to fund and chooses to finally stand by the values of human rights and justice that we claim to stand by.”
Medical Supplies Denied
A tearful Dr Ahmed Yusuf who worked in the ICU and in the emergency room at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Gaza said “I’m not a politician and I’m not a military strategist, but the moment we drove through Rafah with the UN convoy towards the middle area where we would be stationed, it became clear to me that what I was seeing was unfathomable.”
At the same time, he added, “I had a small hope that when the doors are open and the ceasefire is had, that when you all (journalists) are allowed back in there, that it doesn’t require a military strategist to realize what they’re doing.”
“They’re making Gaza unlivable,” he stressed.”They destroyed the water infrastructure, and so we were seeing kids die of diarrheal illness.”
He said Israel prevented all medical supplies in, emphasizing that “II can tell that by first-hand witness, not by hearsay.”
“They refused me the medical supplies that I was able to gather over months from wonderful people in Arkansas, things like endotracheal tubes and foley catheters, things like antibiotics and sedative medications that were denied.”
He added, “They do not allow medical supplies in to treat children that are dying.”
“And when we got to the hospital, everything I saw on TikTok and Instagram and all the stuff that we had in alternative media because you can’t be there, it was 100 times worse than I could have ever imagined.”
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‘Genocidal Violence’
Dr Feroz Sidhwa, who was in Gaza from March 25 to April 8, witnessed what she called “genocidal violence.”
“I saw children’s heads torn off not once, not twice, but literally every day, by bullets that we paid for. I saw the terrible, systematic destruction of the entire city of Khan Younis.”
A letter from Dr Mark Perlmutter, an American Jewish doctor working in Gaza, was reportedly read in which he wrote: “I have never seen a small child shot in the head and then in the chest before. I never imagined that I would see two such cases in less than two weeks.”
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“I have never seen dozens of small children screaming in pain and terror… I never imagined what a hospital would look like when it was turned into a camp for displaced persons.”
Perlmutter stressed that “the United States government continued to fund this terrible massacre, not for a week or a month, but for almost a year.”
(PC, WAFA)
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