Burning hospitals in Gaza.. Are you following the news? | policy

This morning, I opened social media to search for news about Gaza. I had to scroll a long time through the news before I found any mention of my homeland. However, the news reaching us from Gaza through friends, family and social media is no less bleak than it was a year ago. Its people continue to scream for help, hoping the world will hear them.

For three months, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, north of Gaza, sent distress calls to the world, while the Israeli army surrounded the hospital, cut off supplies, and bombed the area around it, killing people in its vicinity and wounding some of the medical workers and patients inside. .

In a video appeal published on December 12, Dr. Abu Safiya said: “We are now without any capabilities, and we provide substandard services. We hope that there will be listening ears, and that there will be a living conscience that will hear our call and open a humanitarian corridor for the hospital to continue providing its services.”

But his cries fell on deaf ears. The day after Christmas, a woman was murdered at the hospital’s front gate; Due to the Israeli bombing, five medical workers were also killed: Dr. Ahmed Samour, a pediatrician; Israa Abu Zaida, “laboratory technician”; Abdul Majeed Abu Al-Aish and Maher Al-Ajrami, “paramedics”; And Faris Al-Hodli, “maintenance technician.” As for nurse Hassan Dabous, he was seriously injured inside the hospital after fragments shattered his skull.

Next, Israeli soldiers stormed the hospital, set it on fire, expelled 350 patients, and kidnapped Dr. Abu Safiya and other medical staff.

This horrific news barely received any attention in the international media; There were no reactions from foreign governments or leading institutions, except for some countries in the Middle East and the World Health Organization. It is clear that Israel has succeeded in normalizing its brutal attacks, destroying Palestinian hospitals, and killing Palestinian patients and medical staff.

There was also no reaction from the world when Dr. Saeed Judeh, the last orthopedic surgeon in northern Gaza, was assassinated earlier this month while on his way to work at the barely functioning Al Awda Hospital in the Jabalia refugee camp. Dr. Judah, who was a retired surgeon, felt compelled to return to work; Due to the severe shortage of doctors; As a result of Israeli targeting.

A week before his murder, he learned that his son, Majd, had been killed. Despite his sadness, he continued his work.

Israel seeks to eliminate all aspects of civilian life in northern Gaza as part of a policy to depopulate the area. For this reason, it targets civilian infrastructure in the north and hampers its work. The few medical facilities were the last vestiges of civilian life.

Besides trying to eliminate medical personnel, the Israeli military systematically prevents civil defense teams and ambulances from saving lives in the north, often targeting and killing their personnel in their attempts.

Not only were the North’s calls ignored, but the entire Gaza Strip is suffering from famine, as Israel has dramatically reduced the number of humanitarian and commercial trucks entering the Strip. Hunger is everywhere, affecting even those who have the means to buy food but cannot find it.

My cousin, an UNRWA teacher, told me about his visit to his sick and displaced sister in Deir al-Balah. During the visit, he couldn’t sleep. He didn’t eat bread for 15 days, but what kept him awake wasn’t his own hunger as a diabetic, but the crying of his sister’s children who just asked for a piece of bread. My cousin tried to calm them down by telling stories until they fell asleep, but he stayed awake, haunted by the sounds of their hunger and his own.

Besides food, Israel also prevents the delivery of materials needed to build shelters. Four newborn babies have died from freezing since the beginning of this month.

Amid famine and harsh winters, the Israeli bombing of homes and tents of displaced people did not stop.

On December 7, a distant relative of mine, Dr. Muhammad al-Nayrab, lost his wife and three of his daughters when the Israeli army bombed his home in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in western Gaza. Two of his daughters, Sally and Sahar, were doctors, helping save lives. Now they can’t do that anymore.

When my niece, Nour, a mother of two, reached out to her uncle Dr. Mohammed to offer condolences, she found the pain of losing him unbearable. I spoke to her a little later. Her words pierced despair like a cry: “When will the world hear us and see us? When will these massacres matter? Are we no longer human?”

On December 11, another family was targeted near Dr. Muhammad’s home in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood. That Israeli attack killed Palestinian journalist Iman Al-Shanti, along with her husband and three children.

Days before her murder, Iman shared a video in which she spoke about the reality of genocide. She told the world: “Is it possible for this level of failure to exist? Is the blood of the people of Gaza so cheap for you?”

There was no answer. Just as war crimes against Palestinians were normalized, their death and pain were normalized. This normalization not only silences their suffering, but also denies their humanity.

However, for Palestinians, the pain of loss is not ordinary – it remains, seeping into the soul, raw and unrelenting, carried in the echoes of those lost both inside and outside Gaza. It is a transnational pain, a grief that transcends borders, connecting Palestinians in the diaspora to those who bear the horrors of genocide.

In a social media post on December 3, journalist Diana Al-Mughrabi, who was displaced to Egypt, documented the never-ending grief of the people of Gaza: “Our loved ones do not die once, but rather die many times after their actual death. The person died on the day he died, Then he died again when his watch, which I had been wearing for years, broke. He died again when the tea cup he was drinking from broke, and the death continued every day that reminded us of the date of his death.”

While this death has occurred more than 45,000 times, the world seems ready to move on without Gaza. Fifteen months after the genocide, advocates and activists around the world are exhausted by the endless devastation in Gaza and the overwhelming silence about it.