Dr Ghassan Abu Sitta: “All the areas around the hospital were being bombed all the time. We then got a call to the emergency room and we were told that the administration and the out patients building had been hit – a lot of families had taken refuge in that area – so we had to go and help.”
Al-Shifa Hospital, July 2014.
During each of Israel’s three major assaults on Gaza, Dr Ghassan Abu Sitta has volunteered as a surgeon at the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. A Palestinian reconstructive surgeon, he lives in Lebanon.
This interview with him was conducted by journalist Yazan al-Saadi, and published in the English edition of Al-Akhbar, a Lebanese newspaper.
As of August 18, 2014, the number of Palestinians killed by the Israeli assault on Gaza has risen to 2,016, including 541 children, 250 women and 95 elderly men. Wounded: 10,196. The death toll keeps rising as more people die from catastrophic injuries.
Gaza City, July 27, 2014. Photo: Oxfam International.
“For the last eight years, Israel and the U.S. had repeated opportunities to opt for a diplomatic solution in Gaza. Each time, they have chosen war, with devastating consequences for the families of Gaza.”
Why?
The answer is here, in a well-documented account by Sandy Tolan, author of The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East, and an associate professor at the University of Southern California.
The only practical response that does not depend on goodwill or common sense from the Israeli or American authorities: the growing international grassroots movement for BDS – boycott, divestment and sanctions.
As the Israeli attack on Gaza and the suffocating military occupation of the West Bank grind on, and resistance continues on both sides of the apartheid wall, Canadian publisher Between the Lines is featuring Witness, a chapter from Our Way to Fight: peace-work under siege in Israel-Palestine, on the front page of their website.
“My name is Eran Efrati, I am Jewish, a veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces, and a 7th generation Jerusalemite. What I’ve seen in Israel over the last few weeks is beyond anything I have witnessed in my life.
Gaza under Israeli attack, July 2014. Photo: The Times, UK.
I’ve seen terrified Palestinian children in Hebron and Halhul, sitting on the ruins of their homes.
I’ve seen Israeli mobs in the street chanting “death to Arabs” and pulling out Palestinian men from their stores to beat them as other Israelis stood idly by. I’ve seen Israeli soldiers lined up at the Gaza border, ready at a moment’s notice to invade.
And now, like you, I’ve seen the climbing death toll in Gaza, over 100 dead and some 500 injured – all by Israeli missiles, with no end in sight.
As much as it pains me to say it, I don’t think I can do a lot about it. But I believe you can.
North American voices – especially Jewish North American voices – are probably the most critical voices right now. [MR: I would add that in the face of crimes on this scale, all voices of reason and compassion need to be heard wherever and however they can.]
We need you to tell Israeli politicians, the Israeli media, Israeli society, that you can’t support this attack. That you can’t support human rights violations. That you can’t support racism. That you won’t support the idea that Jewish lives matter more than Palestinian lives.
We know the roots of this are long and deep. But the truth behind this latest assault is finally coming out: as J.J. Goldberg wrote in The Forward, the Israeli government lied, and created this situation.
For weeks, the government knew that the three kidnapped teenagers were dead. But they instituted a gag order on the media, lied to Israelis and the world, and falsely claimed the mass arrests and collective punishment of Palestinians was all in the hopes of finding the teenagers alive.
In other words, their chosen response was to kidnap the mind of an entire country.
From the very beginning, this has been about punishing Palestinians. From the beginning, the government has been willing to manipulate and use its own people for that goal.
Overhead, I hear airplanes headed to Gaza all day long, and I know there’s nothing I can do to stop them. And now we all know the lengths they’ve gone to justify this attack, and how fully Israeli society has bought into it. And I don’t think we can stop it from within.
Al-Shifa Hospital, July 2014.
Michael Riordon 