[News] The Israeli Attack on Palestinian Health Workers in Gaza and the Failure of the American Medical Association

[Anti-Imperialist News]

counterpunch.org
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/11/16/the-israeli-attack-on-palestinian-health-workers-in-gaza-and-the-failure-of-the-american-medical-association/>
The Israeli Attack on Palestinian Health Workers in Gaza and the Failure of
the American Medical Association
Rupa Marya and Vijay Prashad - November 16, 2023
------------------------------

Al Shifa Hospital before the IDF entered the building.

On November 11, 2023, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) stated
that Israeli tanks were within twenty meters of the al-Quds hospital, the
second-largest hospital in Gaza City. They reported
<https://twitter.com/PalestineRCS/status/1723337562360598937>that there was
“direct shooting at the hospital, creating a state of extreme panic and
fear among 14,000 displaced people.” Many of those killed have been medical
personnel. A group called Healthcare Workers Watch-Palestine, formed in
November 2023, has been keeping a list
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/13Jk8J-dx_SBhD6AEnorgK_UHh64f4hH26BHRi3-xQgQ/edit>
of healthcare workers in Gaza killed by Israeli attacks (226 are known to
have been killed from October 7 till November 13).

The day before, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent
Societies (IFRC) reported
<https://www.ifrc.org/article/ifrc-statement-evacuation-order-al-quds-hospital-gaza>that
the PRCS is “caring for hundreds of injured people and bed-ridden,
long-term patients” at al-Quds. “Evacuating patients, including those in
intensive care, on life-support, and babies in incubators, is close to, if
not impossible in the current situation,” said the IFRC. This and other
hospitals as well as medical missions and medical workers “are protected
under international humanitarian law,” noted the IFRC. The legal framework
they referred to is straightforward:

1)  Article 19 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions (Protection of medical units
and establishments). “Fixed establishments and mobile medical units of the
Medical Service may in no circumstances be attacked, but shall at all times
be respected and protected by the Parties to the conflict.”

2) Rule 25 of the International Humanitarian Law (Medical Personnel).
“Medical personnel exclusively assigned to medical duties must be respected
and protected in all circumstances.”

Two similar phrases in both the Article and the Rule stand out: “in no
circumstances” must the protection be withdrawn, and medical workers must
be protected “in all circumstances.” Humanitarian law applies to all parts
of the world and all conflicts. This is now established by the Treaty of
Rome <https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/RS-Eng.pdf>(2002), which
is the legal basis for the International Criminal Court. The Treaty of Rome
says that it is a war crime if an army is “intentionally directing attacks
against buildings,” including “hospitals and places where the sick and
wounded are collected.” There is one exception: “provided they are not
military objectives.” By claiming that the hospitals are above Hamas
tunnels, the Israelis are claiming that the entire medical infrastructure
in Gaza is a military target. This is a convenient way to skirt the
absoluteness of international humanitarian law.

In the coming days, we can expect the Israeli propaganda machine to pump
out images of IDF soldiers in the tunnels under decimated hospitals holding
up guns and copies of *Mein Kampf* to counter the horrific real-time images
of premature babies dying. While these are attempts to justify murdering
healthcare workers and the patients they were caring for, they won’t hold
up against International Humanitarian Law. Israel has a documented history
of bombing <https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1300> hospitals and other
healthcare facilities in Gaza, and any doctor versed in patient care
quality and safety would insist that underground spaces were constructed to
conduct patient care far from the shrapnel of these air strikes.

*‘At All Costs’*

Across the world on November 11, the American Medical Association (AMA)
held a meeting of its House of Delegates while these terrible acts took
place. When over 135 medical students and doctors in training in the AMA
tried to hold a discussion about a resolution that would call for a
ceasefire in Gaza, the AMA leadership shut them down. Those who supported
the effort said that there was a “coordinated effort at the national
meeting to shut the resolution down, with the Speaker not allowing
delegates their allotted 90 seconds to speak about the resolution.” The AMA
said that this resolution was “not relevant to advocacy.” “The AMA,” wrote
the medical personnel who framed the resolution, “has a responsibility to
uphold the wellbeing of healthcare workers and minimize human suffering,
and it is clear that these values are not being upheld by some of the most
influential physicians in the country, nor is the democratic process being
respected.”

This stands in stark contrast to the AMA’s official position on Ukraine in
2022, when they threw their institutional weight behind a call for an
immediate ceasefire and an end to Russian attacks on healthcare workers and
facilities, emphasizing that international humanitarian and human rights
laws must be and civilian and medical personnel lives must be protected “at
all costs.”
<https://www.ama-assn.org/about/leadership/targeting-civilians-and-health-care-war-unconscionable>

*Every Life Is Sacred*

A few days before the House of Delegates meeting, the flagship journal of
the AMA, the Journal of the AMA (JAMA), published an article
<https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2811877> by Dr. Matthew
Wynia from the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of
Colorado and the co-chair of the AMA’s Taskforce on Truth, Reconciliation,
Healing, and Transformation. His article “Health Professionals and War in
the Middle East” makes three unimpeachable points:

+ First, health professionals should condemn dehumanization and acts of
genocide.

+ Second, health professionals should vigorously oppose both antisemitism
and anti-Muslim hatred.

+ Third, health professionals have special responsibilities to speak out
against certain war crimes.

We concur with all three of these points, including the final sentiment by
Dr. Wynia: “In wartime, our profession must remain the living embodiment of
religious injunctions to treat every life as sacred, because to save a
single life is to save an entire world.”

Dr. Wynia’s article in JAMA, published a few days before the AMA meeting,
suggests that it would have been uncontroversial for the AMA to pass a
resolution asking for a ceasefire. After all, a ceasefire would allow
fellow medical workers to do their work without fear of bombardment, it
would stop the killing of civilians, and it would allow for investigation
into the attacks on medical facilities and medical workers. If “every life
is sacred,” then a medical body must join in the call to prevent any
further loss of innocent life. But this is not what happened at the AMA
meeting, whose refusal to open the floor for discussion about a ceasefire
resolution suggests the opposite approach.

A closer reading of Dr. Wynia’s article shows why medical professionals
decided not to allow even a discussion of a ceasefire in Gaza. “Health
professionals of goodwill and equally strong commitments to human rights
have differing questions on these questions, which reflects the nature of
the questions,” Dr. Wynia writes. Introducing moral relativism to the
discussion, Dr. Wynia allows for ambiguity where there is none—none in
legal terms and none in moral terms. How can “health professionals of
goodwill” have a disagreement about the targeting of medical workers and
medical institutions or indeed how can they disagree about the killing of
civilians, including those who are injured and sick in hospitals? There is
room for debate over what must be done when confronted by the evidence of
attacks on medical workers and medical workers, but there is no ambiguity
about their illegality and immorality.

*Dying One by One*

Israel has been spreading
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/israel-hamas-terror-groups-main-operations-base-is-under-shifa-hospital-in-gaza-city/>
propaganda over the past several weeks about the presence of Hamas
headquarters under one of Gaza’s hospitals—Al-Shifa—to inject a space of
moral confusion around protecting healthcare workers and healthcare
facilities. On November 5, a group of almost 100 doctors in Israel
circulated a letter
<https://mondoweiss.net/2023/11/israeli-doctors-urge-the-bombing-of-gaza-hospitals/>
calling for the annihilation of all hospitals in Gaza, as if to sanction
the IDF’s direct attack on the most sacred spaces of our profession. On
November 11, Israel also bombarded the Al-Shifa Hospital complex with 1,700
sick and injured patients inside and about 50,000 displaced people
sheltering in its courtyard according to Dr Ghassan Abu Sitta, a surgeon
who was stationed there at the time. Israeli attacks have completely
destroyed the hospital. With the power now out in Al-Shifa, 39 newborns in
incubators are now wrapped in blankets, dying
<https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/too-close-too-cold-premature-babies-grave-peril-gazas-al-shifa-hospital-2023-11-13/>
one by one. Perhaps this is whom Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
referred to when he said <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKD9qR8YHYE> the
“children of darkness.”

Israel’s attack on Gaza’s healthcare is an attack on the soul of the
medical profession, for which JAMA has provided cover and the AMA supports
through enforced silence. Why the American Medical Association can make
such a blunt statement about Ukraine but want to remain silent about
Palestine raises an important question: does the AMA advocate only for the
issues outlined by the U.S. State Department or are these the opinions of
the doctors who make up its membership?

*This article was produced by **Globetrotter* <https://globetrotter.media/>
*.*
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