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Israel's Takeovers of Gaza Hospitals Amount to 'War Crimes,' Says Human Rights Watch
"The Israeli military's denial of water and electricity left sick and wounded people to die, while soldiers mistreated and forcibly displaced patients and health workers, and damaged and destroyed hospitals."
Mar 20, 2025
As the Israel Defense Forces continued a devastating assault on the Gaza Strip Thursday, a U.S.-based rights group said that the IDF "caused deaths and unnecessary suffering of Palestinian patients while occupying hospitals" there over the past 18 months, "amounting to war crimes."
"International humanitarian law provides that hospitals and their staff may not be deliberately attacked," states the new Human Rights Watch (HRW) report. "Parties to the conflict must at all times respect and protect hospitals and take all feasible precautions to minimize harm to patients, staff, and facilities during the hostilities."
Like previous publications exposing the IDF's systematic destruction of the Gaza health system, the HRW report lays out how Israeli forces who occupied hospitals neglected their legal obligations and instead "severely interfered with the treatment" of injured and sick Palestinians, including by denying doctors' pleas to bring in supplies and blocking access to facilities and ambulances, "leading to the deaths of wounded and chronically ill patients."
HRW interviewed patients and healthcare workers present for Israeli takeovers of al-Shifa medical complex in Gaza City, Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, and the Nasser facility in Khan Younis. According to witnesses, the IDF "denied electricity, water, food, and medicines to patients; shot civilians; mistreated health workers; and deliberately destroyed medical facilities and equipment. Unlawful forced evacuations put patients at grave risk and left desperately needed hospitals nonfunctional."
In the section on Israeli activities at al-Shifa in November 2023, HRW reported that "Ridana Zukhra, 25, said she left al-Shifa with her children, brother, and cousin when Israeli forces ordered people to evacuate. Despite holding white flags, a tank fired at the group, badly wounding her daughter, Ghazal, 5, whose leg had to be amputated."
The report also shares accounts from the hospital five months later:
Dr. Badr B., 28, who asked not to use his real name for his protection, said that electricity at the hospital was cut off at about 2:00 am on March 18. Israeli forces broadcast a message that no one could leave, he said, and they shot and wounded four healthcare workers near the entrance. A doctor told the BBC that two patients on life support died because of the electricity cut.
Israeli forces seized the complex with "military vehicles, snipers, quadcopters [drones], soldiers, everything," Dr. B. said. Israeli forces ordered the 72 healthcare workers left at the hospital to transfer about 180 patients from the third and fourth floors of the ICU in the specialized surgeries building to the ground floor and warned they would "start shooting at these floors" within two hours. Dr. B. said that they began "shooting as we were evacuating the last group, three [patients] on crutches and the rest in wheelchairs." Staff then transferred patients to the hospital's reception building.
HRW also detailed Israel's December 2023 assault on Kamal Adwan and the February 2024 raid at Nasser, "when 850 patients and up to 10,000 displaced people were sheltering there."
According to the publication:
Duaa D., who asked that her real name not be used for her protection, said her son Mohammed, 20, was a kidney patient in Nasser hospital at the time, where there was no fresh food, clean water, or medicine for Mohammed's hypertension. Her two younger children, sheltering in a tent in the hospital courtyard, went sleepless with fear. Mohammed said he could barely walk and had lost almost half his body weight due to vomiting and diarrhea, that the water was contaminated, and that he could not digest the canned food due to his chronic illnesses.
On February 13, Duaa saw Jamal Abu al-Ola, 25, who had been sheltering in the hospital, in a white hazmat suit with his hands bound. NBC and other media reported that Israeli forces had detained and beaten him and ordered him to warn the hospital to evacuate, threatening to kill him and others if he did not return. Duaa said al-Ola shared the warning and left the hospital, but soon after was carried back in and "shot, with a fountain of blood pouring." Witnesses told news media that Israeli forces shot and killed him near the hospital entrance.
Duaa told HRW that she saw a large number of bodies on the ground and recalled an "unbearable" smell. "We saw cats and dogs eating bodies," she said. "Once a dog brought a human hand and gave it to its puppies."
Bill Van Esveld, associate children's rights director at HRW, demanded accountability for Israeli troops' well-documented war crimes.
"Israeli forces repeatedly demonstrated deadly cruelty against Palestinian patients in hospitals that they seized," Van Esveld said. "The Israeli military's denial of water and electricity left sick and wounded people to die, while soldiers mistreated and forcibly displaced patients and health workers, and damaged and destroyed hospitals."
"The Israeli military's occupation of Gaza's hospitals has transformed sites for healing and recovery into centers of death and mistreatment," he added. "Those responsible for these horrific abuses, including senior officials, should be held to account."
The report was published just days after Israel fully abandoned a cease-fire that took effect in January. Gaza Ministry of Health spokesperson Khalil Al-Dakran toldAnadolu Agency on Thursday that "the bodies of 710 people were transferred to hospitals since Tuesday, in addition to over 900 others injured."
Al-Dakran said that 70% of the injured were women and children, and "many of the injured died due to the lack of urgent medical care amid an Israeli blockade on Gaza, which causes a severe shortage of essential equipment and medicine."
Since the Hamas-led October 2023 attack on Israel, the IDF has slaughtered at least tens of thousands of Palestinians—leading to an ongoing genocide case at the International Court of Justice. The International Criminal Court has also issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant.
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I Resigned 22 Years Ago Over the Iraq War... And Wish I Had More Resignations to Give!
I resigned two decades ago due to criminal U.S. policies and now I am in my 22nd year of resistance to criminal policies of successive administrations.
Mar 20, 2025
Twenty-two years ago, on March 19, 2003, I resigned from the U.S. Department of State. I was the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia and the third U.S. government employee to resign in opposition to the U.S. war on Iraq. I resigned on the day the Bush administration began the 10-year U.S. war on Iraq on March 19, 2003.
22 Years Later, I Don’t Regret My Decision One Bit
Former President George W. Bush, like the presidents before and after him, lied. His specific lie was about the reason for the U.S. to attack and kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.
In 2003, Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s lie was about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction when international weapons inspectors were very clear in their statements that after their exhaustive investigation there were no weapons of mass destruction.
Four Presidential administrations after I resigned—Obama, Trump, Biden, Trump—another roadmap for domestic and international lawbreaking and chaos is guiding a president: Project 2025.
Instead, Bush was following the advisers who wrote the guidebook Project for the New American Century, which called for the overthrow of seven countries in the Middle East, and Iraq was the first to be overthrown.
The names of the authors of this war on the world, the “War on Terror,” still live in infamy: Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and of course, Vice President Dick Cheney.
Bush had already lied about the reason to send the U.S. military into Afghanistan. Instead of mounting an international police dragnet for the leaders of al Qaeda that planned and executed the events of 9/11, the Bush administration wanted to have a platform next to Iran from which to conduct a war on Iran. But, the small, underfunded, poorly-trained Taliban kept the U.S. military and the highly trained and poorly motivated Afghan Army on the run for the 20 years that the U.S. was in Afghanistan.
I was a part of the team that reopened the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan in December 2001. Our small group of diplomats realized very quickly that going after al Qaeda was not the main objective of U.S. intervention in Afghanistan. The focus of U.S. policies and funding in 2002 was elsewhere… and it turned out to be in overthrowing Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
If I had one more resignation…. no, two more resignations...
One Resignation Over Biden’s Complicity in the Genocide of Gaza
In the next 22 years there have been numerous times I felt that if I had still been in the U.S. government, I would have resigned.
Former President Joe Biden’s complicity in the Israeli genocide of Gaza which began in October 2023 deserved resignation… and 14 U.S. government employees have resigned over the weapons and encouragement the Biden administration gave to the Israeli government in the genocide of Gaza with over 60,000 Palestinians killed and tens of thousands still under the rubble by the time Biden left office, with no attempt at getting the Israeli government to stop the killings.
And, let’s not forget the Obama-Biden complicity in the U.S. orchestrated events in Ukraine, including the 2014 right-wing, nationalist overthrow of the government and broken promises to Russia that Ukraine would not become a part of NATO that led to the terrible war between Ukraine and Russia and the fueling of that war by the Biden administration with weapons and total lack of any attempt to bring an end to the dangerous conflict.
Another resignation over Trump’s Actions Domestically and Internationally-Project 2025
And right now, another resignation would be coming from me if I were still in the U.S. government.
Four Presidential administrations after I resigned—Obama, Trump, Biden, Trump—another roadmap for domestic and international lawbreaking and chaos is guiding a president: Project 2025.
While Trump, like Bush before him, disavowed knowledge of any plan cooked up by advisers, Trump is playing into the hands of those with an agenda that will haunt him, an agenda much more wide-ranging than the one Bush allowed to happen.
The rails are off for the destruction of the U.S. government with massive firings of civil servants. Reasonable government reform and downsizing has become government destruction led by unelected Elon Musk, the world’s richest person who has some of the largest government contracts (many of which have been under investigation) leading a team of very young technology mavericks who have no knowledge of the government and are taking over the computer information of the entire U.S. government firing tens of thousands of employees with a keystroke.
Trump is emboldened by the lack of congressional outrage and now is threatening to invade Panama and Greenland and is bullying Canada about becoming a state of the United States, to which the Canadian public and officials have rightly responded with a hockey warning to Trump: “Elbows up!”
Shamefully, the “peace” candidate Trump humiliated and bullied Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the White House in a meeting over the sale of Ukrainian minerals to pay the U.S. for its weapons in its war with Russia.
While the “peace candidate” Trump’s go-to-envoy, billionaire real-estate investor Steve Witkoff, did hammer out a much-needed cease-fire in the Israeli genocide in Gaza, the cease-fire has now ended in an Israeli two-week blockade of Gaza of food, water, shelter, and electricity and continuation of massive bombing of Gaza and $12 billion more from the U.S. in killer weapons. As the cease-fire came into effect, Trump, true to his style, told the world that Palestinians need to leave Gaza so it can be built back into something “wonderful”... but without them.
And, don’t get me started on the kowtowing by government agencies, universities, and corporations to Trump on the elimination of DEI—Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion—as his henchmen erase mentions of women, minorities, disability, and gender in his white male nationalist agenda, seemingly spearheaded by the very unqualified (on every level) Secretary of Offensive Pete Hegseth.
So many issues… and opportunities for resignation and resistance.
From Resignation to Resistance
I resigned two decades ago due to criminal U.S. policies and now I am in my 22nd year of resistance to criminal policies of successive administrations.
Working with many, many organizations on the local (Hawaii Peace and Justice, World Can’t Wait, Students and Faculty for Palestine, Hawaii For Palestine: Under the Olive Tree), national (CODEPINK: Women For Peace, Veterans For Peace, Shut Down Drone Warfare), and international levels (International Peace Bureau, NO to NATO, No to War, World Beyond War, Women Cross DMZ, Pacific Peace Network, Ban Killer Drones) has given me outlets for protest and, very importantly, being with others who are deeply concerned about U.S. administration actions here in our own country and around the world.
You Must Resist
If you are not yet resisting, please join the millions who are on the streets, in Congress, at town hall meetings, writing emails, and calling to end the assault on our country and the world. I have put links to many of the organizations with which I work. Please join us!!!
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In Rebuke to Trump, Court Orders Mahmoud Khalil Case Moved to New Jersey
"This is a first step, but we need to continue to demand justice for Mahmoud," said Khalil's wife. "His unlawful and unjust detention cannot stand."
Mar 19, 2025
A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that the case of Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent U.S. resident arrested earlier this month and slated for deportation by immigration authorities over his pro-Palestine activism, should be heard in New Jersey—not Louisiana as sought by the Trump administration—and reaffirmed an order blocking his expulsion from the country pending the outcome of his legal challenge.
Judge Jesse Furman of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York found that since Khalil was detained by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in New Jersey when he lodged a legal challenge to his detention, his case should be transferred to the Garden State. Last week, Furman—an appointee of former President Barack Obama—issued and then
extended an order temporarily barring Khalil's deportation.
"This is a first step, but we need to continue to demand justice for Mahmoud," Khalil's wife, Noor Abdalla, who is eight months pregnant, said in response to Wednesday's ruling. "His unlawful and unjust detention cannot stand. We will not stop fighting until he is home with me."
Khalil, an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent, last year finished his graduate studies at Columbia University, where he helped lead campus protests against Israel's annihilation of Gaza. He was arrested at his New York home by plainclothes DHS officers on March 8 before being transferred to New Jersey and then Louisiana.
Accused of no crime and widely considered a political prisoner, Khalil was targeted following U.S. President Donald Trump's issuance of an executive order authorizing the deportation of noncitizen students and others who take part in pro-Palestine demonstrations. The Trump administration has also invoked the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which empowers the secretary of state to expel noncitizens whose presence in the United States is deemed detrimental to U.S. foreign policy interests.
Samah Sisay, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights and a member of Khalil's legal team, said Wednesday that "the government transferred Mr. Khalil to a remote private prison in Louisiana hours after his arrest and the filing of his original habeas petition—an intentional and retaliatory attempt to silence his speech in support of Palestinian rights and interfere with the jurisdiction of the New York and New Jersey courts."
"Mr. Khalil should be free and home with his wife awaiting the birth of their first child, and we will continue to do everything possible to make that happen," Sisay added.
ACLU senior staff attorney Brett Max Kaufman, who also represents Khalil, said that "this is just the beginning, but it is a moment to celebrate."
"The court's ruling sends a critical message to courts across the country, who are sure to face similar unprecedented challenges to their authority in the days that come, that the judiciary must not shy from its constitutional role," he continued. "And no judicial role is more important than acting as a check on executive abuses the Trump administration has made the defining feature of its first 60 days."
"After this first step, we will eagerly and aggressively seek to get Mahmoud out, bring him home, and then defend his and others' right to speak freely about Palestine or any other issue without fear of detention and deportation," Kaufman added.
Another lawyer for Khalil, Amy Greer, said: "We are ready to fight just as hard for Mr. Khalil in the district of New Jersey. He was taken by plainclothes federal agents, transferred in the middle of the night across state lines, and has been detained for over a week now, all because of his advocacy for Palestinian freedom. We will not stop working until Mr. Khalil is home with his wife."
Democracy defenders have warned that Khalil's arrest—which sparked protests across the nation—is a blatant violation of constitutionally protected free speech rights and a sign of advancing authoritarianism. Trump vowed last week that Khalil was "the first arrest of many to come."
On Tuesday, Khalil released a
letter calling himself a "political prisoner." He called his arrest and detention "a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza," and "part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent" from which no one is immune.
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