At Issue
Foreign-InflictedUnspeakableSufferingSeen Up close
“Everyone deserves health care,” said Dr. Jilani. “It is a basic human right. No one should have to undergo this dystopian level of destruction, despair, the disintegration of their community and the fabric of their culture, or the dismantling of their health care systems” said the physician working in Gaza at Al Aqsa Hospital during the period December 25, 2023, through January 8, 2024, in partnership with Medical Aid for Palestinians.
Dr. Seema Jilani “served as a pediatrician on the Emergency Medical Team, working on pediatric wards and in the emergency room.” She gave an interview with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
From the Ground in Gaza
“I never thought as a pediatrician that I would be at all useful in a war, but I was treating war-wounded children and pronouncing them dead at rates I had not done before. One day in our code resuscitation room, four out of the five patients we were actively bringing back from the brink of death were under the age of 15. The high proportion of children amongst war injured and dead is appalling.”
“Doctors themselves have been displaced several times over. They were in the midst of finding shelter and food for their families and would still come to work and bravely treat patients, and sometimes even their friends and family.”
One day “…when we were waiting in the doctor’s area, I noticed that a nurse was quietly sobbing in the corner. When we inquired how we could support or help, it turned out that he had pronounced his friend, another colleague from the hospital, dead overnight.”
“We learned tremendously from our Palestinian colleagues, who are highly educated and engaged, working alongside one another as a team.…” The Palestinian medical staff “are people who are intensely dedicated to their work and to their communities; valiantly working under extreme circumstances with minimal supplies and with patients who desperately need their efforts.”
Source: London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine March 2024, Interview “On the ground with a doctor in Gaza” https://www.rescue.org/uk/article/ground-doctor-gaza
Dr. Seema Jilani “served as a pediatrician on the Emergency Medical Team, working on pediatric wards and in the emergency room.” She gave an interview with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
From the Ground in Gaza
Dr. Seema Jilani’s Experiences, Observations
“People were being brought into the hospital by every means possible. Parents brought their injured children into the hospital on mattresses.”Injuries “… were extraordinarily severe,” the “scale and magnitude” “was phenomenal, especially in children.”
“I never thought as a pediatrician that I would be at all useful in a war, but I was treating war-wounded children and pronouncing them dead at rates I had not done before. One day in our code resuscitation room, four out of the five patients we were actively bringing back from the brink of death were under the age of 15. The high proportion of children amongst war injured and dead is appalling.”
“My fear centers on the generation of new amputees and children who have been traumatically burned or left to live with a disability facing adolescence and adulthood without the support they need.”The people of Gaza are languishing “under relentless bombing and suffering tremendous consequences to their families and their children.” Often, they have “to bury whole families or bury their children without a dignified death or burial.”
The Hospital in Gaza
“The hospital itself became a de facto village full of hundreds, if not thousands of people. Inside the hospital were tents, a magnitude of tents.” “Every square inch of the hospital was taken up by families sheltering together.”“Even patients who were expected to be discharged would not leave because there was no safe place to go. So, they were sheltering in what they assumed would be a safe place, which ended up not being a safe space for them.”
The Medical Staff in Gaza
“They expressed a fear about even being healthcare workers because they had seen what had happened to healthcare workers previously who had been targeted or detained.… They not only fear for their own lives, they are fearing for their families’ lives, fearing that they will be detained, that their hospital will be targeted, and that the shelter they seek won’t be safe from bombardment.”
One day “…when we were waiting in the doctor’s area, I noticed that a nurse was quietly sobbing in the corner. When we inquired how we could support or help, it turned out that he had pronounced his friend, another colleague from the hospital, dead overnight.”
“We learned tremendously from our Palestinian colleagues, who are highly educated and engaged, working alongside one another as a team.…” The Palestinian medical staff “are people who are intensely dedicated to their work and to their communities; valiantly working under extreme circumstances with minimal supplies and with patients who desperately need their efforts.”
Source: London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine March 2024, Interview “On the ground with a doctor in Gaza” https://www.rescue.org/uk/article/ground-doctor-gaza
“Dr Seema Jilani from the International Rescue Committee served as a pediatrician on the Emergency Medical Team deployed to Al Aqsa Hospital, the sole remaining hospital in Gaza’s middle region at the time. After her team was forced to withdraw due to increasing Israeli military activity, she talks candidly about how children in Gaza are affected by the war; the extreme challenges in dealing with mass casualties; and the emotional toll on healthcare providers who treat war-wounded children.”
The world contributed to taking away our dignity
But “I would rather die in my home than in a tent,” Mahmoud Shalabi told the interviewer.
Mahmoud Shalabi was described as deputy program director in Gaza for the UK-based NGO Medical Aid for Palestinians. Son of parents who had been “forced to flee their homes in the city of Ashdod during the war and campaign of ethnic cleansing that accompanied the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, referred to by Palestinians as al-Nakba – the catastrophe.” “When the Israeli military issued evacuation orders on October 13, 2023, telling 1.1 million Palestinians in the north of the Gaza Strip to head south, Mahmoud Shalabi decided he wasn’t going to leave.”
Later, between October 2023 – July 2024, the interviewer asked Mahmoud Shalabi about living conditions in northern Gaza during the conflict (excerpt from responses)
“If you were someone who visited Gaza years ago and came back, you would be shocked by the level of destruction that you will see everywhere: on the streets, in the homes, and in any aspect of life.… You will be shocked by the sad reality of the sewage water, the garbage everywhere, the lack of transportation, people (having to walk) long distances. You will also realize that there is no (running) water. You will see queues of people waiting for water trucks, for clean water, basically, to bring for their children; and, also, to be able to drink some water.”
“There is no water access, no infrastructure. There are no electricity poles in the street, no telephone poles, no lights, no electricity since the fourth or fifth day of the war. You are talking about nine months with no electricity.”
“Famine and starvation are imminent. Every day you hear about a child who has suffered acute malnutrition and died.” There is deep suffering and sadness seen on the faces of the people. “They are exhausted. I am exhausted. Everyone in Gaza is exhausted. The mental toll that we have is extreme, and I’m not sure we will recover from it for ages to come.”
“We Palestinians are a dignified people,” Shalabi said.
“This is a very important word in our life.”
But “the world has contributed to taking away from us our dignity.” “The international support for the war and the way aid has been entering Gaza—the flour massacre (back) in March; the air drops falling in some areas and not others, some falling into the sea” — show carelessness and humiliations, indignities, disrespect for “the people of Gaza.”
Gaza between October 2023 and July 2024 Mahmoud Shalabi remembers
- “I remember a school being targeted in Jabalia refugee camp. I was taking my mother for an issue that she had to Kamal Adwan Hospital. I remember seeing people lying on the ground waiting for someone to take care of them. No one was taking care of them because the load was humongous.”
- “I remember seeing dead bodies in the corridors. It was like, this person is dead, leave him there. We can’t do anything right now. There weren’t refrigerators working; they couldn’t put the dead bodies inside the refrigerator.”
- “I also remember at the Indonesian Hospital during the massacre that happened [last November] in al-Faluja (north of Gaza city). When I went to check on my friend and his family, the number of dead bodies was overwhelming. The injured people were everywhere on the pavement outside of the hospital because there was no space available inside the emergency room. Some of them, like elderly people, were bleeding from their heads, and [the healthcare workers] couldn’t do anything. People just put a blanket on them and left them. That’s the only care that they could provide at that stage.”
- “Another person had their guts outside of their belly – sorry for the graphic images – but their guts were spilled all over their body. You know what they did? At one stage, they said, ‘Khalas, this person is going to die. Let’s read al-fatiha (the Muslim prayer said before someone dies), and may God bless his soul’. That’s it.”
THAT’S WHAT’S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW. … [T]he hospitals are not coping with the huge number of people that get injured and targeted directly by the Israeli forces….”
Source: London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine July 9, 2024. “What is life like in northern Gaza?” Interview Edited by Andrew Gully. https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2024/world-humanitarian-day-amplifying-voices-war-gaza
https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/interview/2024/07/09/life-in-northern-gaza-palestine?
Related source Damon, Andre WSWS January 22, 2025 “Trump’s UN ambassador pick says Israel has ‘biblical’ right to West Bank” “White House signals new phase in ethnic cleansing of Palestine”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/01/22/qjxm-j22.html
Lancet Findings
- Life Expectancy in Gaza “decreased by 34.9 years during the first 12 months of the war.”
Prof Michel Guillot, PhD; Mohammed Draidi, MA; Valeria Cetorelli, PhD; José H C Monteiro Da Silva, MA; Ismail Lubbad, PhD https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)02810-1/abstract
February 2025
“Traumatic Injury Mortality in the Gaza Strip”
October 7, 2023-June 30, 2024
|
64, 260 |
|
39.3 per 1000 people |
|
16, 699 |
Source: The Lancet Volume 405, Issue 10477p469-477 February 08, 2025, Open access “Traumatic injury mortality in the Gaza Strip from Oct 7, 2023, to June 30, 2024: a capture–recapture analysis” Zeina Jamaluddine, PhD; Hanan Abukmail, MD; Sarah Aly, DO; Prof Oona M R Campbell, PhD; Prof Francesco Checchi, PhD https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)02678-3/fulltext
Universal Declaration of Human Rights Excerpt
Historically CONTEXTUALIZED
“Disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts that have outraged the conscience of mankind.” …
“…If man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, … human rights should be protected by the rule of law.”
“The INHERENT DIGNITY and equal and inalienable rights (of all human beings) is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”
“… A WORLD in which human beings enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want …, the highest aspiration of the common people.”
“ESSENTIAL to PROMOTE … the development of friendly relations between (and among) nations”
“…The peoples of the United Nations in the Charter (of the United Nations) reaffirm their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women; and determine to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.”
“Member States pledge to achieve, in cooperation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
“Common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge.”
“Universal Declaration of Human Rights” (English) United Nations Department of Public Information, NY https://www.ohchr.org/en/human-rights/universal-declaration/translations/english
https://www.ohchr.org/en/universal-declaration-of-human-rights
https://www.ohchr.org/en/about-us/high-commissioner
Boldly DECLARED
“The INHERENT DIGNITY and equal and inalienable rights (of all human beings) is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”
“… A WORLD in which human beings enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want …, the highest aspiration of the common people.”
“ESSENTIAL to PROMOTE … the development of friendly relations between (and among) nations”
“…The peoples of the United Nations in the Charter (of the United Nations) reaffirm their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women; and determine to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.”
“Member States pledge to achieve, in cooperation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
“Common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge.”
PROCLAIMED by GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE UNITED NATIONS “this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.” December 10, 1948
Articles 1-3
“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration…(and) … no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.”
“Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”
Article 5
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 6
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
Article 12
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence; nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation; Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks
Article 13
Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
Article 15
Everyone has the right to a nationality. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.
Article 17
Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
Article 18
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion…
Article 25
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
Article 26
Everyone has the right to education.
“Universal Declaration of Human Rights” (English) United Nations Department of Public Information, NY https://www.ohchr.org/en/human-rights/universal-declaration/translations/english
https://www.ohchr.org/en/universal-declaration-of-human-rights
https://www.ohchr.org/en/about-us/high-commissioner
In My View
Life, Liberty, Safety, Security, Sovereignty
All are nonexclusive rights, inalienable rights
Human beings as Human beings: Rights due by virtue of being Human.
No matter how many games with words or finagling with meanings people in powerful positions choose to play, there is no taking away or removing human from the being who is human.Human rights are universally applicable. Laws universally, consistently, honorably applied and adhered to ensure the universality of rights.
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PROLIFIC SOUTHERN-BORN AMERICAN WRITER DR. CAROLYN LADELLE BENNETT focuses on People, Press, Politics USA; Domestic and Foreign Affairs (no copyright claimed in direct quotes and individual image)
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