Doctors who returned from Gaza urge US to impose immediate arms embargo on Israel

WASHINGTON

About a half-dozen doctors who recently returned from providing medical care in the devastated Gaza Strip urged the Biden administration Tuesday to impose an immediate arms embargo on Israel, saying that without one, the US remains complicit in the bloodshed that has devastated the coastal enclave.

Speaking on the sidelines of the ongoing Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, Dr. Tammy Abughanim said the result of Israel's over 10-month war "has been to make life literally impossible for a civilian in Gaza right now."

"When I say we cannot afford one more day of this, and when they tell me we cannot afford one more day of this, it is quite literally true," Abughanim said, recalling conversations she held with Gazans during her recent trip there.

"When we press the Biden administration for an arms embargo as physicians, what we are saying is we cannot do our jobs as bombs are falling. We cannot do our jobs as Israeli snipers target children and civilians, as Israeli quadcopters descend on groups of civilians. We cannot do our jobs, because Israel has made our jobs impossible, and Israel has made our jobs impossible with the direct support of the United States," the Chicago-area emergency medicine specialist added.

The sentiment was repeatedly echoed by Abughanim's fellow physicians, who described horrors whose extent they acknowledged could not be fully conveyed.

"I was in Gaza from March 25 to April 8 and saw firsthand genocidal violence. I saw children's heads smashed to pieces by the bullets that we paid for -- not once, not twice, but quite literally, every single day. I saw the outrageous and systematic destruction of the entire city of Khan Younis. If there was a single room in that city with four walls left, I can't tell you where it is, " said Dr. Feroze Sidhwa.

"I saw mothers mix what little formula they could find with poisoned water to feed their newborns, because they were so malnourished themselves that they could not breastfeed. I saw children who cried out, not because of pain, but because they wished they had died along with their families instead of being burdened with the memory of their siblings and their parents charred and mutilated beyond recognition. And all, of course, with American weapons," he added.

Sidhwa stressed that imposing an arms embargo on Israel "is not a radical idea" and read aloud a letter passed on by Mark Perlmutter, a Jewish-American doctor who accompanied him on a recent trip to Gaza but who could not attend Tuesday's press conference.

In it, Sidhwa's colleague recalls the "cruelty being visited upon the people of Gaza," particularly its children, saying it "remains incomprehensible to me" how it could come to pass.

"Never before have I seen a small child shot in the head and then in the chest, and I could never have imagined that I would see two such cases in less than two weeks. Never before have I seen a dozen small children screaming in pain and terror, crowded into a trauma base smaller than my living room, their burning flesh filling the space so aggressively that my eyes started to burn. I could never have imagined what a hospital looks like when it becomes a displaced person's camp," he said.

"Worst of all, I could never have imagined that my government would be supplying the weapons and funding that keeps this horrifying slaughter going -- not for one week, not for one month, but for nearly an entire year now," he added.

"For the good of the Palestinians, for the good of the United States, for the good of Israel, for the good of Judaism, and indeed, for the good of international law and all of humanity, please stop arming Israel."

Israel’s war on the besieged Gaza Strip has killed over 40,000 Palestinians, including tens of thousands of women and children, and displaced 2 million others, leaving them exposed to famine and disease amid acute shortages of daily necessities and medical supplies.

Multiple doctors who spoke at Tuesday's press conference maintained that it is Israel's restrictions that are preventing them and their colleagues from obtaining badly-needed medicines, including pain killers to dull the suffering of the wounded.