Written by: Maher Mellakh/academic journalist
Up to the date of writing this article, 44 days after its war against the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, the Zionist entity has managed to exceed all pessimistic expectations, committing something that was not expected. Without focusing on the total number of victims and martyrs who fell, including children and civilians, we can focus in particular on a sector that usually remains in the custom of war, at least after 1949, and is immune from targeting.
However, the Zionist entity refused to record in modern history that it was the first to dare to attack this sector with such scale and ferocity, and even boldness and impudence. Therefore, it is our duty to monitor, even temporarily, the outcome of these crimes committed, and continues to be committed to this moment, against the medical staff. In order to ask about the real reasons that made him violate all international values and conventions related to this field.
Firstly: Heavy criminal toll:
According to the daily monitoring and follow-up carried out by humanitarian organizations, the outcome of targeting the health sector until November 19, 2023 can be determined as follows:
- 203 martyrs of medical personnel.
- 210 wounded health personnel
-135 health institutions were targeted.
-26 hospitals were destroyed and completely out of service
-56 primary care centers are out of service
-60 ambulances were targeted
-55 ambulances were out of service
-150,000 chronically ill patients lacked medical care and lacked access to the medications prescribed for them
-More than 1,000 cancer patients whose permanent care has stopped
-More than 3,000 children are left without specialized care
-Approximately 4,800 patients received life-saving medical intervention
-1034 patients with kidney failure stopped dialysis.
-50,000 pregnant women are no longer under health follow-up, including more than 5,500 women who will give birth within the next month.
-More than 100,000 medical personnel, wounded and displaced people inside other hospitals where professional conditions are lacking are threatened at every moment with being targeted.
- Complete collapse of the health system inside the Gaza Strip
-A severe shortage of medicines
-A complete cessation of the main generators of electricity in most hospitals that are still resisting stopping service.
Secondly: heavy legal arsenal did not protect the health sector:
All this crime is occurring at a time when international health organizations, including the Red Cross, are unable to prevent or reduce this barbaric practice. This is despite the presence of a heavy international legal arsenal that was supposed to prevent this from happening. Here we list a typical list of those laws that Zionism violates in its war against Gaza and the West Bank:
- Geneva Conventions: The 1949 Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols provide the foundational framework for the protection of medical facilities and medical personnel during armed conflicts. It establishes the principle of medical neutrality, ensuring respect and protection of medical units and teams.
Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions: Additional Protocol I (1977) deals with the protection of victims of international armed conflicts and reinforces the principles of medical neutrality. Additional Protocol II (1977) focuses on the protection of victims of non-international armed conflicts, and extends similar protection to include medical facilities and medical personnel.
- Customary international humanitarian law: The International Committee of the Red Cross has established some rules of customary international humanitarian law, including provisions relating to the protection of medical facilities and medical personnel during armed conflicts.
- International human rights law: The right to health and protection of medical personnel is also addressed in various international human rights instruments, such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Third: What is the real background behind this crime?
A question arises: targeting hospitals! Why?
Why does the Zionist enemy, in its war against the resistance, target, with all ferocity and on this scale, hospitals and medical workers, including paramedics, nurses, technical assistants, and doctors...?
To answer this, we must return to the nature and function of the hospital institution and the medical profession, and compare it to the nature and function of the Zionist entity:
The sanctuary of the hospital and the sanctity of the medical profession are the only spot of hope and compassion that usually remains for peoples afflicted by war, when there is no security in everything. Therefore, they were protected by this arsenal of international laws. Because international logic, in general, is built on two foundations: the equality of human nature between the combatants, and considering that the ultimate goal of the combatants in fighting is merely to impose the conditions of one of them on the other.
However, the Zionist enemy, by virtue of its formation and composition, is controlled by a deep outlook that is completely different from that of the international community in general, which is manifested in the doctrine of contempt for the rest of the peoples of the world, adopting the function of the existential eradication of the Palestinians, and governed by Talmudic fatwas and directives steeped in obscurantism. Therefore, he sees the hospital and medical personnel as his direct enemies, contradictory to his contemptuous nature and eradicating function.
Regardless of the biblical books that recommend killing children and the elderly, cutting open their bellies (to be careful if they are pregnant), and not leaving one stone upon another when targeting enemy villages... there is a special text in the “Law of the King”, which is called the “Torah Halemakh”, which he wrote. Both Rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef are alive, and he is an essential jurisprudential reference for Jewish extremists, in dealing with the “Gentiles,” called by them the “Goyim,” and since it seems clear that Netanyahu has adopted his directives to the letter, he recommends especially in the medical field, especially in the fifth volume. From it, since the medical field is not considered a neutral humanitarian field, but rather considers it a weapon in the hands of the enemy, and those working in it are no less dangerous than armed soldiers, it literally states the following:
“We must kill those who work in the enemy’s medical corps, because without this weapon the enemy will be more weak.”
This treatment practiced today by this Zionist enemy against the hospitals of Gaza and Palestine only revealed that truth, which remained hidden behind the rhetoric and practices of this criminal entity. After the Biden administration gave him a blank check, he could do whatever he wanted to achieve what he wanted.
Therefore, shouldn't the medical community around the world be pushed to take action by all means to uncover this truth and fight this tendency, including submitting a draft international law to consider Zionism an anti-human tendency?
A question for doctors and legal professionals
