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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/bombing-hospitals-red-line-unless-israel-doing-it">middleeasteye.net</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Bombing hospitals is a red line - unless Israel is doing it</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Ghada Majadli</div>
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<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time">June 19, 2025</div>
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<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div><p>On Thursday morning, <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/iran" target="_blank">Iranian</a> missiles <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/missile-strikes-injure-dozens-soroka-hospital-and-tel-aviv-buildings-hit" target="_blank">struck</a> Soroka hospital in Beersheba, triggering expressions of outrage from <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/israel" target="_blank">Israeli</a> officials. </p>
<p>National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir <a href="https://x.com/itamarbengvir/status/1935568012477620322" target="_blank">likened</a> the Iranian regime to \u201cNazis who fire missiles at hospitals, the elderly and children\u201d. President Isaac Herzog<a href="https://x.com/Isaac_Herzog/status/1935576516483506667" target="_blank"> evoked</a> imagery of a baby in intensive care and a doctor rushing between beds. </p>
<p>Culture Minister Miki Zohar <a href="https://x.com/zoharm7/status/1935579359785386080" target="_blank">declared</a>
on social media that \u201conly the scum of the earth fires missiles at
hospitalized children and elderly people in their sick beds\u201d. The chair
of Israel\u2019s medical association, Zion Hagay,<a href="https://www.ima.org.il/ENG/ViewContent.aspx?NewId=5766" target="_blank"> decried </a>the strike as a war crime and urged the international medical community to condemn it.</p>
<p>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\u2019s hospitals
over the past two years.</p>
<p>Since 7 October 2023, Israeli air strikes and ground invasions have
decimated Gaza\u2019s healthcare infrastructure. The World Health
Organisation <a href="https://www.who.int/news/item/22-05-2025-health-system-at-breaking-point-as-hostilities-further-intensify--who-warns?utm_source=chatgpt.com" target="_blank">has recorded</a>
around 700 attacks on healthcare facilities. Major hospitals -
al-Shifa, Nasser and the Indonesian hospital, among others - have been
besieged, bombed and dismantled.</p><p>Israeli officials frame these hospitals as <a href="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" target="_blank">military targets</a> and Hamas \u201cshields\u201d. Shifa, the largest hospital in Gaza, was placed under <a href="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" target="_blank">siege and then invaded</a>, with the attack hailed by Israeli media as a victory. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the Israeli Medical Association remained silent. In one of its rare <a href="https://www.ima.org.il/ENG/ViewContent.aspx?CategoryId=21362" target="_blank">statements</a>
after a year and a half of Israel\u2019s repeated and targeted attacks on
hospitals and civilian infrastructure, the association echoed the
state\u2019s narrative, stating that health facilities and personnel must not
be targeted \u201cunless these are being used as a base for terrorist
activities\u201d.</p>
<h3>Selective moral outrage</h3>
<p>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\u2019s healthcare system now describe an
attack on an Israeli hospital as a red line, a war crime. </p>
<p>Herzog\u2019s sentimental imagery of doctors rushing between beds evokes the stark reality in Gaza, where health workers have been <a href="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" target="_blank">shot and shelled</a> in operating rooms, imprisoned, or forced to abandon their patients under fire.</p><p>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. </p><p>It would be a mistake to treat these official statements as being detached from the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/11/10/what-winning-the-war-means-for-israelis" target="_blank">public mood</a>
in Israel. Most Israelis have defended the destruction of Gaza\u2019s
healthcare infrastructure. Public discourse has normalised the idea that
<a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/palestine" target="_blank">Palestinian</a> hospitals are legitimate military targets, even celebrating their destruction in some cases. </p>
<p>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 \u201cshield\u201d.</p>
<p>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. </p><p>This is not simply a double standard; it reflects an entrenched hierarchy of whose suffering matters.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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\u2019s entire health system. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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. </p>
<p><i>The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.</i></p>
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