The news sometimes provides us with blatant examples of the contempt of the Canadian political class and medical establishment for the realities experienced by the Palestinian people. The week of February 12, an emergency demonstration in Toronto, “ Hands Off Rafah! », made the rounds of the English-speaking media in Canada.
The concern of families who have loved ones in Rafah, as Israel attacked several neighborhoods of the city, certainly deserved to make headlines. However, the media coverage focused more on allegations that the demonstration “targeted” Mount Sinai Hospital, founded in 1923 by Jewish immigrants and which today provides care to residents of the cosmopolitan city in more than 45 languages , in front of which she made a 20-minute stop… on a journey of approximately four hours.
A video initially posted on Instagram shows a person in a Spider-Man costume climbing onto scaffolding in front of the hospital and then waving the Palestinian flag. The video clip was decried on social media as an example of anti-Semitism, leading politicians of different stripes and political orders, including Justin Trudeau, to denounce the demonstration.
Yet in his exhaustive account of the incident, David Gray-Donald, a journalist for The Grind, reports that the hospital was not targeted as such, while Independent Jewish Voices ruled that “the demonstration was in no way anti-Semitic.”
For their part, the CEOs and presidents of a dozen Toronto hospitals followed Trudeau’s example by publicly denouncing the demonstration. This unusual outing challenged the Palestinian Youth Movement, Jews Say No to Genocide and the Health Workers Alliance for Palestine, who in turn published a letter demanding an apology, and highlighting the double standards. of several Toronto hospitals that sanction their own employees for openly denouncing the suffering inflicted on Palestinians. The signatories say they are “horrified” by the silence of these same leaders in the face of Israeli attacks on infrastructure and health personnel in Gaza.
Hypocrisy
The hypocrisy is striking. On February 13, almost at the time when this incident caused a media outcry in Canada, the United Nations Agency for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported in its report for the day that seven Palestinians had been killed and fourteen others injured by gunfire. sniper in the courtyard of Nasser Hospital in Khan Younes, threatening staff, patients, and thousands of displaced Palestinians. Barely 48 hours later, Israeli forces attacked the Nasser hospital, an offensive denounced by Doctors Without Borders (MSF), whose teams were on the ground.
On February 22, when only 12 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals were still partially functional and hundreds of healthcare workers had been killed, kidnapped or missing, Christopher Lockyear, secretary general of MSF, testified before the UN Security Council demanding an immediate and sustained ceasefire.
He described the situation as “a war that Israel is waging against the entire population of the Gaza Strip.” The health system was destroyed in Gaza because “the Israeli army dismantled hospitals one after another.” However, he wanted to point out: “attacks on health care are attacks on humanity”.
His words echoed those of the DD Joanne Liu in 2016, when she spoke as president of MSF before the Security Council regarding resolution 2286 to safeguard the protection of civilians and health services in times of armed conflict.
Assassination
Listening again to the speech of the DD Liu, in which she states that “hospitals should not be attacked or invaded by armed agents” and that “patients should not be attacked or massacred in their beds”, I was reminded of this unprecedented assassination of three patients occurred at the end of January at the Ibn Sina hospital (in Jenin in the West Bank), Israeli commandos having infiltrated the building disguised as caregivers or wearing women’s clothing.
When the DD Liu said that “receiving or providing health care should not be a death sentence”, I remembered the words of the UNICEF spokesperson who, during an intervention last December, was “furious” that Palestinian children are being bombed and killed in hospitals where they were recovering from amputations suffered following previous bombings.
I also remembered Yusuf Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun, sent to rescue little Hind Rajab, who had just seen her family members killed in their car after it had been stopped by Israeli forces; the cries of terror of the 5-year-old girl, recorded during a call for help to the Palestinian Red Crescent (PRC), went around the world. According to the CRP spokesperson, the two caregivers were a few meters from Hind and his car when their ambulance, clearly identifiable as such, was bombed.
When the DD Liu reminded that caregivers “do not abandon patients”, I remembered the words of Dr.r Hammam Alloh, a father of two young children and a doctor at al-Shifa hospital. During an interview given to the show Democracy Now! in October, he responded to the question why he was not evacuating northern Gaza: “And if I leave, who will treat my patients?” »
He added: “Do you think that’s why I studied medicine, to think only about my life? That’s not why I became a doctor. » The Dr Alloh was killed two weeks later, along with other members of his family, after an Israeli artillery shell hit his wife’s house.
Seven years after his address to the UN Security Council, in an open letter published by the Financial Times last November in which she called for a ceasefire in Gaza, the DD Liu deplores the fact that his heartfelt cry to “stop these attacks” has not been heard, despite the unanimous adoption of resolution 2286.
Having worked in conflict zones herself, she explains that “in the chaos of war, hospitals are often the last shred of humanity available”. His letter concludes with the words written at the end of October on a board at Al-Awda hospital by Dr.r Mahmoud Abu Nujaila, doctor with MSF, a few weeks before he was also killed by a strike on the hospital: “Whoever stays until the end will tell the story. We did what we could. Remember us. »
We must absolutely remember the caregivers who courageously served the besieged people of Gaza. But we have more than a duty to remember the tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths. We must fight to protect the lives, dignity and freedom of those who are still alive. And for that, we need to do much more than call for a ceasefire.