[News] Bombing hospitals is a red line - unless Israel is doing it

[Anti-Imperialist News]

middleeasteye.net
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/bombing-hospitals-red-line-unless-israel-doing-it>
Bombing hospitals is a red line - unless Israel is doing it
Ghada Majadli
June 19, 2025
------------------------------

On Thursday morning, Iranian <https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/iran>
missiles struck
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/missile-strikes-injure-dozens-soroka-hospital-and-tel-aviv-buildings-hit>
Soroka hospital in Beersheba, triggering expressions of outrage from Israeli
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/israel> officials.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir likened
<https://x.com/itamarbengvir/status/1935568012477620322> the Iranian regime
to “Nazis who fire missiles at hospitals, the elderly and children”.
President Isaac Herzog evoked
<https://x.com/Isaac_Herzog/status/1935576516483506667> imagery of a baby
in intensive care and a doctor rushing between beds.

Culture Minister Miki Zohar declared
<https://x.com/zoharm7/status/1935579359785386080> on social media that
“only the scum of the earth fires missiles at hospitalized children and
elderly people in their sick beds”. The chair of Israel’s medical
association, Zion Hagay, decried
<https://www.ima.org.il/ENG/ViewContent.aspx?NewId=5766>the strike as a war
crime and urged the international medical community to condemn it.

This swift and unified condemnation by Israeli political and medical
leadership underscores a striking contradiction: these same actors not only
ignored but openly justified the destruction of Gaza’s hospitals over the
past two years.

Since 7 October 2023, Israeli air strikes and ground invasions have
decimated Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure. The World Health Organisation has
recorded
<https://www.who.int/news/item/22-05-2025-health-system-at-breaking-point-as-hostilities-further-intensify--who-warns?utm_source=chatgpt.com>
around 700 attacks on healthcare facilities. Major hospitals - al-Shifa,
Nasser and the Indonesian hospital, among others - have been besieged,
bombed and dismantled.

Israeli officials frame these hospitals as military targets
<https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-army-displays-tunnel-beneath-al-shifa-it-says-served-hamas-hideout-2023-11-22/?utm_source=chatgpt.com>
and Hamas “shields”. Shifa, the largest hospital in Gaza, was placed
under siege
and then invaded
<https://www.un.org/unispal/document/six-months-of-war-leave-al-shifa-hospital-in-ruins-who-mission-reports-press-release/?utm_source=chatgpt.com>,
with the attack hailed by Israeli media as a victory.

Meanwhile, the Israeli Medical Association remained silent. In one of its
rare statements
<https://www.ima.org.il/ENG/ViewContent.aspx?CategoryId=21362> after a year
and a half of Israel’s repeated and targeted attacks on hospitals and
civilian infrastructure, the association echoed the state’s narrative,
stating that health facilities and personnel must not be targeted “unless
these are being used as a base for terrorist activities”.
Selective moral outrage

What is especially striking about this moment is the selective moral
outrage from Israeli officials. The same ministers who justified the
systematic dismantling of Gaza’s healthcare system now describe an attack
on an Israeli hospital as a red line, a war crime.

Herzog’s sentimental imagery of doctors rushing between beds evokes the
stark reality in Gaza, where health workers have been shot and shelled
<https://www.who.int/news/item/28-12-2024-kamal-adwan-hospital-out-of-service-following-a-raid-today-and-repeated-attacks-since-october?utm_source=chatgpt.com>
in operating rooms, imprisoned, or forced to abandon their patients under
fire.

International medical voices have played along. While many doctors and
health workers have spoken out, many others have remained silent, with no
real actions taken to hold Israel accountable.

It would be a mistake to treat these official statements as being detached
from the public mood
<https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/11/10/what-winning-the-war-means-for-israelis>
in Israel. Most Israelis have defended the destruction of Gaza’s healthcare
infrastructure. Public discourse has normalised the idea that Palestinian
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/palestine> hospitals are
legitimate military targets, even celebrating their destruction in some
cases.

This normalisation is not incidental. It is part of a broader
dehumanisation of Palestinians, where even a child under anaesthesia in a
Gaza operating room is not seen as a victim, but as collateral damage or a
“shield”.

The outrage over Soroka thus reveals a deeper truth: in the eyes of many
institutions and audiences, some lives are inherently more valuable than
others. When Israeli hospitals are struck, the world responds with empathy
and urgency. When Palestinian hospitals are dismantled - patients killed in
their beds, doctors arrested mid-surgery - the world hesitates,
rationalises or remains silent.

This is not simply a double standard; it reflects an entrenched hierarchy
of whose suffering matters.

Israeli leaders speak today of moral lines, of civilians and children, of
hospitals as sanctuaries. Yet for nearly two years, those very values have
been systematically violated in Gaza, with hardly a whisper of regret. This
situation reveals not only hypocrisy but also the cynical confidence that
comes with impunity. It reflects how the boundaries of Israeli grief and
outrage are drawn narrowly around Jewish Israeli lives, grounded in the
certainty that Israel will face no consequences.

This moment puts the international system to the test. While some medical
and humanitarian groups have expressed concern, most international
stakeholders have remained silent in the face of the destruction of Gaza’s
entire health system.

Will medical journals, international associations and UN bodies respond to
the attack on an Israeli hospital with the kind of swift condemnation and
concrete actions they failed to take when hospitals in Gaza were bombed?
The world should have acted when the first operating room was hit in Gaza.
It should not take an Israeli facility being targeted for them to remember
that hospitals are meant to be protected spaces.

If an attack on a hospital is a red line, this must be true for all
hospitals, not just those serving Israelis. If international law is to mean
anything, it must protect everyone, with the same standards applied to
every violation. Anything less is not only hypocrisy; it is complicity.

*The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.*
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