SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
hospitals
'We Cannot Allow This to Happen Again': Israeli War on Lebanon Sparks Cholera Resurgence
"We have already seen in Gaza how the lethal combination of mass displacement, attacks on healthcare, and lack of nutritious food and water can impact children's lives," said Save the Children's Lebanon director.
Oct 23, 2024
Israel's invasion and intense bombardment of Lebanon—including recent attacks on hospitals and other medical infrastructure—have sparked a potentially catastrophic health crisis in the country, with cholera and other diseases spreading among the more than a million people who have been displaced over the past month.
Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that it was working to stem the spread of cholera after Lebanon's health ministry confirmed the country's first known case of the bacterial disease since a deadly outbreak that began in October 2022.
Particularly vulnerable to the worsening public health crisis are the hundreds of thousands of children who have been displaced by Israel's bombing and ground attacks. The United Nations Children's Fund stressed that cholera is a severe threat to kids under the age of 5, the unvaccinated, and those suffering from malnutrition.
The humanitarian group Save the Children said Tuesday that "over 400,000 children forced from their homes by the escalating conflict in Lebanon are at risk of skin diseases, cholera, and other waterborne diseases due to overcrowded, basic conditions in collective shelters and a lack of water and sanitation facilities."
Kamal Nasser El Deen, Save the Children Lebanon's emergency response coordinator, said Wednesday that he has been in "multiple" shelters in which families were forced to wait in long lines to access bathrooms.
"The facilities are inadequate for the number of people, and to make matters worse, the water supply is inconsistent," he continued. "This lack of clean, reliable water creates a significant risk for waterborne diseases. It's heartbreaking to know that these children, already displaced and vulnerable, face the additional threat of illness simply because basic needs like sanitation and clean water aren't being met."
"The international community must act now to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe and exert pressure for an immediate cease-fire."
Jennifer Moorehead, Save the Children's country director in Lebanon, likened the intensifying health crisis to the dire conditions in Gaza, which the U.S.-armed Israeli military has decimated with more than a year of relentless bombings and ground attacks, obliterating the enclave's healthcare system and causing the reemergence of polio. Experts have also warned of a looming cholera outbreak in Gaza.
"Thousands of vulnerable children are now unprotected and with winter just round the corner and temperatures dropping, they will become even more susceptible to diseases such as measles, meningitis, and hepatitis A," Moorehead said of the Lebanon crisis. "We have already seen in Gaza how the lethal combination of mass displacement, attacks on healthcare, and lack of nutritious food and water can impact children's lives. We cannot allow this to happen again. The international community must act now to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe and exert pressure for an immediate cease-fire."
Save the Children's warning came as rescue teams searched the rubble for survivors in the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike that hit across the street from Beirut's main public hospital earlier this week, killing at least 18 people including four children.
"Hussein al-Ali, a nurse who was there when the attack happened, said it took him a few minutes to realize it was not the hospital that was hit. Dust and smoke covered the hospital lobby," The Associated Pressreported Tuesday. "The glass in the dialysis unit, the pharmacy, and other rooms in the hospital was shattered. The false roof fell over his and his colleagues' heads."
Some hospitals and clinics operated by humanitarian groups have been forced to shut down due to Israel's military campaign. The New York Timesnoted that facilities that have not been damaged by Israeli bombings "have been abandoned after staff fled, fearing for their safety."
"The ones that remain operational say they are quickly running out of beds as patients evacuated from other facilities are brought in," the newspaper added.
The WHO said last week that it had verified nearly two dozen attacks on healthcare in Lebanon since mid-September. Those attacks killed at least 72 patients and healthcare workers, according to the U.N. body.
Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said Tuesday that he was "appalled" by Israel's strike near Beirut's public hospital.
"Hospitals, ambulances, and medical personnel are specifically protected under international humanitarian law because of their lifesaving function for the wounded and the sick," said Türk. "When conducting military operations in the vicinity of hospitals, parties to the conflict must assess the expected impact on healthcare services in relation to the principles of proportionality and precautions. Any incidents which affect hospitals must be subjected to a prompt and thorough investigation."
"I repeat the U.N.'s call for an immediate cessation to hostilities," he added, "and remind all parties that the protection of civilians must be the absolute top priority."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'The Smell of Death Is Everywhere': UN Staffers Issue SOS for Northern Gaza
"On behalf of our staff in northern Gaza, I am calling for an immediate truce," said UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini.
Oct 22, 2024
Staffers with the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees issued a message of desperation to the international community on Tuesday as U.S.-armed Israeli forces continued their devastating and increasingly deadly assault on famine-stricken northern Gaza, besieging the area's hospitals, attacking shelters full of displaced people, and obstructing the delivery of critical aid.
Relaying reports from agency workers on the ground, the commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said in a statement that the people remaining in northern Gaza "are just waiting to die" amid squalid conditions, deprived of food, water, and medical treatment with nowhere safe to move.
"Nearly three weeks of non-stop bombardments from the Israeli forces as the death toll increases," wrote Philippe Lazzarini. "The smell of death is everywhere as bodies are left lying on the roads or under the rubble. Missions to clear the bodies or provide humanitarian assistance are denied."
"On behalf of our staff in northern Gaza, I am calling for an immediate truce, even if for few hours, to enable safe humanitarian passage for families who wish to leave the area and reach safer places," Lazzarini continued. "This is the bare minimum to save the lives of civilians who have nothing to do with this conflict. Cease-fire now."
Israeli forces have killed more than 600 people in northern Gaza over the past 17 days—likely an underestimate of the true death toll, given the difficulty of tallying casualties amid relentless bombing that has trapped many under the rubble of destroyed homes and buildings.
Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor has called on the U.N. to declare northern Gaza "a disaster zone that requires immediate action."
"Israel must be pressed to cease its attacks on civilians, allow the provision of life-saving emergency aid, and end its violent genocidal campaign," the group said.
Over the weekend, the U.N.'s humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territories said that the Israeli military had denied "an urgent request from the United Nations to access North Gaza to assist in rescuing dozens of injured people trapped in rubble."
"In the past two weeks, Israeli forces increased their pressure on these hospitals to be evacuated, but patients had nowhere to go. Patients, medical staff, and displaced persons were injured," the official said. "At the Indonesian Hospital, two patients died due to a resulting power outage and lack of supplies; some medical staff had to flee for their lives. The facility is no longer operational."
One nurse at the Indonesian Hospital toldReuters that the Israeli army was "burning the schools next to the hospital, and no one can enter or leave the hospital
Meanwhile, Middle East Eyereported Monday that Israeli soldiers have been "systematically raiding schools" in northern Gaza and "marching out the displaced people sheltering there at gunpoint."
"According to witnesses, Israeli forces are separating men from their families and instructing women and children to flee southward," the outlet reported. "A video from Israel's state news broadcaster showed crowds of people expelled from the besieged Jabalia refugee camp attempting to cross a checkpoint."
Hossam Shabat, a Palestinian journalist reporting from northern Gaza, wrote Tuesday that what's happening in the region amounts to "genocide in the full sense of the word, with homes destroyed, shelters bombed, and displaced people forced to leave their homes and shelters."
"A short while ago, the occupation forces asked citizens to leave the Beit Lahia project area, which now includes the largest number of displaced people from all of the northern Gaza Strip," Shabat wrote.
The latest warnings about rapidly deteriorating conditions on the ground in northern Gaza came as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel for what his office characterized as "intensive discussions about the importance of ending the war in Gaza, returning the hostages to their families, and alleviating the suffering of the Palestinian people."
"You'd have a much better chance of doing all that from your desk in Washington by using your authority to enforce U.S. arms and aid law, as you should have months ago," Dylan Williams, vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, wrote in response to the stated goals of Blinken's Middle East visit.
Blinken departed for the trip amid sustained outrage over the revelation that he contradicted experts within his own department when he told Congress earlier this year that Israel was not impeding deliveries of U.S. humanitarian assistance to Gaza. U.S. law prohibits the federal government from sending military aid to countries obstructing American humanitarian assistance.
Earlier this month, after Israeli forces assailed the Gaza Strip with the help of U.S. weapons for more than a year, the Biden administration threatened to cut off military aid if Israel's government does not take "urgent and sustained actions" to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza within 30 days.
In response to a photo of a crowd of Palestinians in northern Gaza surrounded by rubble and bombed-out buildings, U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) wrote Monday, "I can't believe our country won't stop funding and enabling these war crimes."
Keep ReadingShow Less
The US Must Stop Arming Israel’s Assault on Hospitals
If we can't find the morality to stop, we may find we have created a world in which no one can count on upholding basic human rights.
Feb 21, 2024
Many decades ago in Chicago, my favorite of several part-time student jobs was operating the “old-style” telephone switchboard at a small hospital called Forkosh Memorial. The console of coils and plugs included a mirror so operators could keep an eye on the hospital entrance, which on weekends and evenings was also monitored by an elderly, unarmed security guard named Frank. He sat at a classroom style desk near the entrance with a ledger book.
Over the course of four years, on weekends and evenings, “security” at the hospital generally consisted solely of Frank and me. Fortunately, nothing much ever happened. The possibility of an attack, invasion, or raid never occurred to us. The notion of an aerial bombardment was unimaginable, like something out of War of the Worlds or some other sci-fi fantasy.
Now, tragically, hospitals in Gaza and the West Bank have been attacked, invaded, bombed, and destroyed. News of additional Israeli attacks is being reported on a daily basis. Last week, Democracy Now! interviewed Dr. Yasser Khan, a Canadian ophthalmologist and eye surgeon who recently returned from a humanitarian surgical mission at the European Hospital in Khan Younis in Gaza. Dr. Khan spoke of bombings taking place every few hours resulting in a constant influx of mass casualties. The majority of patients he treated were children from age 2 to 17. He saw horrific eye injuries, shattered faces, shrapnel wounds, abdominal injuries, limbs severed above the bone, and traumas caused by drone-launched laser-guided missiles. Amid the overcrowding and chaos, healthcare workers tended to patients while lacking basic equipment, including anesthesia. Patients lay on the ground in unsterile conditions, vulnerable to infection and disease. Most of them also suffered from severe hunger.
At Forkosh Hospital in the 1970s, I had a mirror to see what was happening behind my back, but everyone on Earth can see, directly, the horror of U.S. support for a genocidal event happening on our watch.
Normally, a child who undergoes an amputation faces as many as 12 additional surgeries. Khan wondered who would do the follow-up care for these children, some of whom have no surviving relatives.
He also noted sniper fire prevented doctors from going to work. “They’ve killed healthcare workers, nurses, paramedics; ambulances have been bombed. This has all been systematic,” Khan explained. “Now there are 10,000 to 15,000 bodies decomposing. It’s the rainy season right now in Gaza, so all the rainwater mixes with the decomposing bodies and that bacteria mixes with the drinking water supply and you get further disease.”
According to Khan, Israeli forces have kidnapped 40 to 45 doctors, specifically targeting specialists and hospital administrators. Three healthcare professional organizations have issued a statement expressing deep concern that the Israeli military has abducted and unlawfully detained Dr. Khaled al-Serr, a surgeon at the Nasser Hospital in Gaza.
On February 19, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described conditions in the Nasser hospital after Israel ordered evacuation of Palestinians from the complex. “There are still more than 180 patients and 15 doctors and nurses inside Nasser,” he said. “The hospital is still experiencing an acute shortage of food, basic medical supplies, and oxygen. There is no tap water and no electricity, except a backup generator maintaining some lifesaving machines.”
Eight years ago, in October of 2015, the United States military destroyed Afghanistan’s Kunduz hospital, run by Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). For more than an hour, a C-130 transport plane repeatedly fired incendiary devices at the hospital’s emergency room and intensive care unit, killing 42 people. Thirty-seven additional people were injured. “Our patients burned in their beds,” read the MSF’s in-depth report. “Our medical staff were decapitated or lost limbs. Others were shot from the air while they fled the burning building.”
The horrific attack outraged war resisters and human rights groups. I remember joining a group of activists in upstate New York who assembled outside a hospital emergency room with a banner proclaiming, “To bomb this site would be a war crime.”
In 2009, on a smaller, yet still horrific scale, I witnessed an Israeli onslaught in Gaza called “Operation Cast Lead.” In the emergency room of the Al Shifa hospital, Dr. Saeed Abuhassan, an orthopedic surgeon, described experiences similar to Khan’s. This surgeon grew up in Chicago, very close to the neighborhood where I lived. I asked him what he would want me to tell our neighbors back home. He listed a litany of horrors, and then he stopped. “No,” he said. “First, you must tell them that U.S. taxpayer money paid for all of these weapons.”
Taxpayer money feeds the bloated, swollen Pentagon budget. U.S. Senators, last week, cowed by AIPAC, decided to send Israel an additional $14.1 billion to boost military spending. Only three Senators voted against the bill.
From Palestine, Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian-American human rights attorney, wrote on X: “The scary part is not that Israel is planning the forcible transfer of the Palestinians it hasn’t slaughtered, but that the so-called ‘civilized world’ is allowing it to happen. The ramifications of this coordinated evil will haunt its collaborators for generations to come.”
At Forkosh Hospital in the 1970s, I had a mirror to see what was happening behind my back, but everyone on Earth can see, directly, the horror of U.S. support for a genocidal event happening on our watch. Gravely distorted versions of what occurred on October 7, cannot—even if believed—justify the scale of the horrors being reported in Gaza and the West Bank each day.
The U.S. government continues enthusiastically to bankroll Israel’s systemic and inhumane destruction of Gaza. U.S. advisers make feeble attempts to suggest Israel should pause or at least try to be more precise in their attacks. In its quest for hegemonic superiority, the United States tears into ever tinier shreds whatever remains of a commitment to human rights, equality, and human dignity.
What kept Forkosh Hospital secure, decades ago, was a social contract that presumed safety for a small hospital serving the local population.
If we can't find the morality to stop supplying weapons for ongoing Israeli onslaughts against Gaza and its places of healing, we may find we have created a world in which no one can count on upholding basic human rights. We may be creating intergenerational wounds of hatred and sorrow from which there will never, ever be any safe place to heal.
A version of this article first appeared on The Progressive website.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular