US Medical Community Must Defend Human Rights for All People, Including Palestinians

In May of 2022, data from the Israeli Ministry of Health helped to establish the utility of a fourth dose of mRNA vaccine for SARS-CoV-2. Even a first dose of vaccine took many months to arrive in Palestinian health systems. Within days of the publication of the Israeli vaccine data, Al Jazeera reported the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, a celebrated Palestinian American journalist, by Israeli forces. The year prior, during the deadly June 2021 bombardment of Palestine, a group of doctors and students had their piece expressing solidarity with Palestinians retracted by Scientific American shortly after publication. In March of 2020, a letter in The Lancet about the dangers of an unmitigated SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in Gaza suffered the same fate.

There is a connection between the unmitigated killing of Palestinian journalists and the blockade which leaves Palestinians without vaccines or decent healthcare, but the current political climate in America and in American medicine demands that we separate the two. The silencing of Abu Akleh serves the same purpose as the silencing of health workers and researchers. Both help to maintain a system of apartheid that robs countless Palestinians of their health and dignity.

Social medicine is about putting public health and medical practice in their proper social context. It draws lessons from the ways people’s movements have built on demands for healthcare. This tradition has had positive influences on medical systems around the world, from Black Panther Party clinics to Cuban medical brigades in Algeria. I wrote about social medicine in my application for medical school: “Medicine will help me build a coherent narrative for the change I want to see during my lifetime, and it will also empower me to take action on behalf of the communities I serve.” The climate of silence and censorship around human rights for Palestinians makes this feel impossible.

As we mourn the deaths of all civilians, our institutions must end the censorship and intimidation related to Israel and Palestine.

This weekend, a horrifying surprise attack on Israeli civilians by Hamas has led to yet more horror for civilians in Gaza, a place many call “an open air prison.” I can feel empathy for the many innocent Israeli civilians who were killed, reject antisemitism, and still call for an immediate end to the racist terror being unleashed on Gaza in retaliation. Noura Erakat and countless other scholars are resources for those who wish to review the record of war crimes of the past 15 years, many of which were punishments for nonviolent Palestinian resistance. As Israeli Knesset member Ofer Cassif says, Israeli apartheid harms and endangers both Palestinians and Israelis.

Even as mainstream media increasingly acknowledges the injustice of Israeli apartheid, American leaders in medicine will not call the situation what it is. This week, colleagues have shared the email blasts sent by leaders at four major health systems in New York and Boston regarding the violence. My colleagues share the invisible burden of censorship in medicine and in academia. The statements all condemn Hamas, and rightly extend their compassion to innocent Israeli victims. They do not mention Palestine, Palestinians, or Gaza. Can we not also condemn the brutal system of Israeli apartheid? Can we not extend compassion to over 200 Palestinians already killed in 2023 prior to the Hamas attack? The double standard is not right. I hope they will at least honor the medics who were killed: paramedics Khalil Al-Sharif, Yousry Al-Masry, Ahmed Dahman, and Hatem Awad, as well as Dr. Saed Darabeh, and Professor Sereen Attar. These are surely not the only colleagues we have lost and will lose.

Some have referred to this moment of horror as Israel’s “9/11.” In 2001 I was in fifth grade, and the beating of war drums paired with rising Islamophobia takes me back to that time leading up to two disastrous and deadly wars. Israeli leaders call for Palestinians to be starved as “animals,” yet American officials cannot even bring themselves to call for restraint. As a Muslim I do not want to entertain demands that I “prove” my humanity or my innocence; I endured enough of that in the years after 9/11. We must ensure that this situation does not become another 9/11, which is to say, we cannot let one egregious massacre distort our sense of right and wrong so much that we justify further war crimes or retribution.

As we mourn the deaths of all civilians, our institutions must end the censorship and intimidation related to Israel and Palestine. Americans must speak up so we can withdraw our consent from this cycle of violence, and American medicine has a role to play in that. With the electricity shut off, freezers in the Al-Shifa Hospital mortuary have stopped working, and bodies are piling up in the street. There is no clean water. Our medical institutions must amplify the calls by Doctors Without Borders to end the collective punishment. We must embrace every human life as equally deserving of health and dignity. The time to do that is now, not in a few days after even more of Gaza has been razed to the ground. American medicine has social power, and we must add its power to every call for a just peace and for an end to apartheid.