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hussam abu safiya
As Lawyer Says Dr. Abu Safiya Is at Risk of Death in Israeli Prison, UN Rights Body Joins Call for Release
The panel found that the imprisoned doctor's detention is "arbitrary."
Jul 06, 2026
A United Nations rights body said Monday that the detention of Palestinian Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya by Israel was "arbitrary" and likely an indication of "a widespread or systematic practice of arbitrary detention in the country" as it demanded the physician be released immediately.
“The appropriate remedy would be to release [him] immediately and accord him an enforceable right to compensation and other reparations, in accordance with international law,” said the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, warning that Israel has violated multiple articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights by holding the doctor in detention since December 2024, when he was captured along with staff and patients at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza.
Abu Safiya has been held without charge ever since, as Israel has accused the doctor of being a member of Hamas, pointing to Gaza's Military Medical Services records that show him listed as a "colonel" and a photo of him seated next to members of the group.
But medical and human rights groups note that there is no evidence that Abu Safiya has had a command combat role and that Hamas, which announced the dissolution of its government on Monday, has governed Gaza through its political wing, likening Abu Safiya's role to that of the US surgeon general.
The working group issued the call following Abu Safiya's recent transfer to the underground Rakefet interrogation facility at Nitzan Prison, which is known for abuse of prisoners.
The doctor recently told his lawyer, Nasser Odeh, after being transferred on June 24: "This is the last time you will see me… They brought me here to kill me. I don't see myself surviving. This is the end."
Odeah reported after visiting the prison on July 2 that Abu Safiyah was nearly unrecognizable and had suffered injuries to his "head, eyes, ears, and neck" and was having trouble breathing. He was "in a state of extreme weakness and was constantly on the verge of losing consciousness mid-conversation," according to his lawyer's account.
"I have visited Dr. Abu Safiya several times since his detention, but the individual I encountered during this latest visit was not the same person I had previously met," said Odeh in a statement. "His physical and psychological state, the severe injuries visible on his body, and his personal testimony leave no room for doubt: his life is in immediate danger. He must be transferred out of the Rakefet facility immediately and granted an urgent, independent examination."
On Monday, the American Human Rights Council (AHRC) was among those demanding Abu Safiya's immediate release, pointing to reports from his legal team that he is in "imminent danger" and potentially at risk of death if he remains in Israeli detention.
"Since his arrest on December 27, 2024, Dr. Abu Safiya has reportedly been subjected to torture, abuse, and prolonged solitary confinement," said the group. "His health continues to deteriorate, and he has been denied communication with his family and legal team. Reports indicate he was recently transferred to an isolated cell, raising further alarm about his safety and wellbeing."
AHRC noted that Abu Safiya placed "his patients’ lives above his own safety" as he continued to provide medical care and to publicly call on Israel not to target healthcare facilities during the Israeli assault on Gaza that began in October 2023.
"He refused to abandon the hospital or leave the wounded behind despite repeated Israeli demands and threats," said AHRC. "He continued his humanitarian mission under bombardment, siege, and near-total depletion of medical supplies."
Imad Hamad, executive director of the group, called on physicians' groups and international medical associations to urgently demand Abu Safiya's release, as hundreds of people in Tel Aviv also assembled in solidarity with the doctor.
"We urge everyone to take a stand and push for the good doctor's release," said Hamad. "This is not about politics; this is about medicine and human rights."
At Amnesty International, Erika Guevara Rosas, the senior director for research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns, called the details that have emerged recently about Abu Safiya's condition "truly horrifying."
"It is unconscionable that a pediatrician, who has dedicated his life to saving others in the occupied Gaza Strip, is being subjected to torture and other ill-treatment—including severe physical and psychological abuse and prolonged solitary confinement—while being detained without any justification," said Guevara Rosas.
She added that Odeh's account "must serve as an urgent wake-up call for states around the world, particularly Israel’s allies," such as the US.
"It is utterly reprehensible that a doctor who refused to abandon his patients, and who became one of the most prominent voices denouncing the devastation of Gaza’s healthcare system, remains arbitrarily and unlawfully detained under Israel’s baseless designation as an ‘unlawful combatant,'" said Guevara Rosas. "He continues to be deprived of his most fundamental rights, including the right to be protected against torture and other ill-treatment, and his rights to a fair trial and due process."
"Expressions of concern alone are little more than a cynical fig leaf for states’ inaction in the face of Israel’s crushing of Palestinians’ human rights," she added. "Amnesty, alongside other human rights organizations, is not simply calling for Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya’s immediate release. This is a call for urgent and effective intervention to save his life.”
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A Doctor From Gaza and the Apathy of the American Medical Association
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya has been held in brutal Israeli detention for over 500 days without charge; you would think these details would trigger some sympathy or at least curiosity in his American counterparts.
Jun 28, 2026
"We have nothing to do with that." An American Medical Association staff member said this to me with a look of disdain on her face. I was at the AMA's annual conference in Chicago, urging the doctors in attendance to speak up for their imprisoned Palestinian colleague, pediatrician and neonatologist Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya. My group posted up outside conference rooms and handed out informational flyers uplifting his story. Dr. Abu Safiya has been held in brutal Israeli detention for over 500 days without charge; you would think these details would trigger some sympathy or at least curiosity in his American counterparts, but the opposite happened. We were flocked by security guards, verbally harassed, and treated as if we were doing something much more nefarious than handing out harmless pieces of paper.
A male security guard was threatening to get physical with me when the AMA staffer walked past — but instead of intervening, she joined in with him, egging him on. I asked her, "Do you know why we're here, though? You guys need to speak up for your colleagues in a genocide." She shook her head snidely, showcasing an apathy that was almost laughable considering the irony of the situation: A staff member for the country's leading medical institution — one that prides itself on its ethics — couldn't even pretend to care about a Palestinian doctor being tortured by Israel.
It's quite maddening when you think of how much support the AMA gave Ukraine when the Russian invasion began. They quickly put out statements of condemnation that the healthcare sector was being impacted, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in aid were given almost instantly. It has been three years since Gaza's healthcare sector was completely reduced to rubble, and the AMA has yet to say a single word about it. A year and a half has passed since Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya was abducted from the hospital that Israel besieged.
Dr. Abu Safiya before Israeli priso.
Coincidentally, the same week the AMA was meeting in Chicago, new photos of Dr. Abu Safiya emerged, the first in many months. He's shown handcuffed and alone in a sterile white room, apparently on a video call with the Israeli courts.
Dr. Abu Safiya after 1.5 years in Israeli prison
The new image of Dr. Abu Safiya breaks my heart. He's lost so much weight, and there's scarring and scabbing on his arms that weren't there before, obvious signs of torture. Israeli prisons are vile and dangerous; they are places where military personnel can go rogue with no fear of punishment and enact their most atrocious desires. After all, these prisons are run by the likes of Ben Gvir, a racist, sadist, and war criminal. I just don't understand how physicians in the AMA can consciously look at this photo of Dr. Abu Safiya and have nothing to say.
When Israelis are permitted to commit war crime after war crime, including holding medical professionals hostage, it sets a precedent. They're not only killing and kidnapping healthcare workers in Gaza, but in Lebanon and Iran, too. Is it just because these are brown Muslim people that the AMA refuses to speak out? For an organization that claims a commitment to human rights and dignity, its racism is loud, and its participation in the white supremacist attitudes of Western imperialism is staggering.
This conference was a place for the AMA to discuss policy, especially around advocacy. CODEPINK staff, volunteers, and coalition partners were outside and inside the conference every single day. Our presence sparked awareness and conversation among the members, and we learned that there were debates inside on an issue the organization could no longer ignore: Palestinian healthcare workers.
Although they didn't mention Dr. Abu Safiya by name, it's clear that the AMA heard our collective message and that the friends of the movement inside the AMA were emboldened by our consistent energy. During the conference's scheduled time to amend, remove, and propose new policies, a handful of resolutions were introduced about Palestine and the blatant attacks on its healthcare workers and infrastructure. There was one resolution in particular that was proof that our work was changing hearts and minds. It reads as follows:
RESOLVED, that our AMA supports efforts to protect, release, and provide restitution to detained noncombatant healthcare workers in all areas of conflict, including Gaza.
Ultimately, this specific resolution was not passed. But the mere inclusion and debate of the topic means that our persistence illuminated the issue of Palestine to every single person at the conference. And, because of that, the AMA delegates managed to pass 2 resolutions about the general "protection of healthcare workers and facilities in conflict areas."
The AMA staff member and security guards knew what we were talking about; they knew the story of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya. Whether they feel a moral obligation to do anything about it is beyond me, but we got confirmation that they knew exactly what we are organizing for. And even if the people in positions of power at the AMA don't feel inclined to do anything about genocide, it is very clear that the general body does care.
The AMA was founded, in part, to lay out a strict code of ethics for medical professionals in the United States. These principles explicitly highlight the responsibility of physicians to advocate for human dignity, human rights, public health, and medical access for all. What has happened in Gaza over the past three years has been nothing short of an abomination of human dignity and rights. Israel and the U.S. have bombed Gaza's public health system to the ground, and now the one million Palestinians in Gaza have been left without access to proper medical care for three years. If the AMA were run by individuals who actually practiced their own code, they would have been the first to advocate against medicide in Gaza. Unfortunately, the organization seems to favor quiet comfort over the actual embodiment of its values.
I am reminded of the photo that came out of Gaza just a few weeks after the genocide began. At a press conference outside an exhausted hospital, dead bodies of children in bags surrounded the podium, traumatized men stared at the camera, and some of the most courageous healthcare workers I have ever seen spoke out, pleading for the world to do something.
Press conference outside of Al-Ahli Hospital on October 18th, 2023.
I see the photo above, and the photo of Dr. Abu Safiya — these are just a handful of Palestinian healthcare workers making tremendous sacrifices to protect human life and dignity. They physically put themselves in the line of fire; meanwhile, the AMA doctors can't even put out a statement. It is well past time that they break their silence. If the AMA chooses to advocate for the release of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, they very well might save his life.
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'Profound Moral and Legal Failure': Israeli Supreme Court Rejects Appeal of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya
"If Israel has evidence against Abu Safiya, it should indict him and present that evidence," said the editors of Israel's oldest daily newspaper. "If it doesn't have evidence against him, it needs to release him."
Jun 16, 2026
Defenders of Palestine, human rights, and the rule of law denounced the Israeli Supreme Court's rejection Tuesday of an appeal from Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the Gaza hospital director imprisoned by Israel for 535 days without charge or trial and allegedly tortured by his captors.
In its decision, Israel's highest court cited a 2002 law allowing the government to detain people it classifies as "unlawful combatants" without charging them with a criminal offense or prosecuting them as prisoners of war.
The Times of Israel reported that because the Supreme Court's decision was based on classified intelligence, it will not be publicly released.
Israel claims Abu Safiya—a 52-year-old pediatrician who was the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia when he was abducted on December 28, 2024 during one of multiple Israeli sieges and assaults on the facility—is a colonel in Gaza's Military Medical Services. Israeli officials cited the service's own records and a 2016 photo showing the doctor wearing a uniform and seated beside members of Hamas, which carried out the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
However, supporters of Abu Safiya, human rights groups, and many medical organizations contend that "colonel" is a state medical corps rank rather than a combat command role, and note that Hamas' political wing rules Gaza. They point to positions and organizations like the US surgeon general and US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps—which is one of the nation's eight uniformed services but not part of the military—as illustrative of the concept.
“The rejection of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya’s appeal and his continued detention without charge represent a profound moral and legal failure,” said Naji Abbas, director of the Prisoners and Detainees Department at Physicians for Human Rights Israel, following the court's decision.
"Dr. Abu Safiya’s case is not an isolated one. It illustrates how judicial review proceedings for Palestinian detainees from Gaza have, in practice, become little more than a procedural formality," Abbas added. "Every month, hundreds of detention review hearings take place, yet to the best of our knowledge, they have not resulted in the meaningful reconsideration or revocation of detention orders—even in cases involving doctors and other medical personnel."
The Palestinian Center for Prisoners Advocacy said the high court's rejection of Abu Safiya's appeal "constitutes a clear violation of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions, which provide special protection for medical personnel during armed conflicts and prohibit their targeting or arbitrary detention for carrying out their humanitarian and professional duties."
"Dr. Abu Safiya remains held in solitary confinement at Nafha Prison under harsh and degrading detention conditions, while being denied necessary medical treatment and the most basic fundamental rights guaranteed to prisoners and detainees," the center continued, adding that it "holds the Israeli occupation authorities fully responsible for the life and safety of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, and calls for his immediate release, the provision of urgent medical care, and an end to the policy of arbitrary detention against medical and humanitarian personnel."
United Nations experts in March cited "reports that Dr. Abu Safiya has been subjected to torture and other cruel and degrading treatment, and that his health condition remains dire," as well as "flagrantly arbitrary" detention, in calling for his release. UN agencies, human rights groups, elected officials, and professional groups including the American Academy of Pediatrics are among those demanding that Israel free Abu Safiya.
Last week, Abu Safiya—who showed visible signs of his alleged torture—appeared remotely via video before the Supreme Court to demand his release following at least four major detention extensions or renewals.
“My detention is unjust and arbitrary, and I demand my immediate release,” he told the court. “I am a pediatrician who provides medical services and care to patients, the wounded and vulnerable people in the Gaza Strip.”
Abu Safiya was abducted while defying an Israeli forced displacement order by refusing to evacuate Kamal Adwan Hospital as long as patients were still being treated. In one of several Israel Defense Forces attacks on the facility, Israeli troops surrounded, bombarded, and then stormed the hospital over three weeks in December 2024, killing and wounding staff and patients while terrified children and other people were being treated inside.
During a previous Israeli attack on Kamal Adwan, Abu Safiya’s 15-year-old son was killed in a drone strike, and the doctor was seriously wounded in a separate drone attack that left six pieces of shrapnel in his leg.
As the invaders expelled Kamal Adwan's patients and staff, Abu Safiya sounded the alarm on the "catastrophic" conditions inside the facility, which, according to alleged victims and witnesses, included Israelis sexually assaulting women and girls as young as 13.
After his capture, Abu Safiya was first jailed at the notorious Sde Teiman prison in Israel’s Negev Desert—where dozens of detainees have died and where torture, sexual assault, and other abuses have been reported—and then Ofer Prison in the illegally occupied West Bank. He was subsequently transferred to Ketziot Prison and then Nafha Prison in the Ramon Prison complex.
Abu Safiya said he has endured torture by his captors—including beatings with batons and electric shocks—and suffered severe weight loss, broken ribs, and other injuries, for which he was allegedly denied adequate medical care.
Israeli authorities deny these accusations. However, there have been many documented and otherwise credible reports of health and medical workers being tortured by Israeli forces—sometimes fatally, as in the case of Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, who headed the orthopedic department at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
According to Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, al-Bursh was “likely raped to death."
Responding to the Israeli Supreme Court's decision, former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis—an outspoken advocate for Palestinian rights—said Tuesday on social media that "the heroic doctor's torture by Israel continues."
"They continue to torture Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya for the crime of not abandoning his patients," he added. "Without laying charges [or] offering him anything resembling due process, Israel is killing him slowly. One day, everyone will say they were against this."
On Monday, the editors of Haaretz, Israel's oldest daily newspaper, asserted in an editorial that Abu Safiya's "continued detention, and that of the other doctors from Gaza, is an injustice and constitutes collective punishment for Gaza's residents, who need their service" amid an ongoing public health crisis.
"If Israel has evidence against Abu Safiya, it should indict him and present that evidence," the editors argued. "If it doesn't have evidence against him, it needs to release him, and all the other jailed doctors, promptly."
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Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, Abducted by Israel in 2024, Renews Demand for 'Immediate Release'
The pediatrician and hospital director—who is reportedly being held in solitary confinement—called his imprisonment "unjust and arbitrary."
Jun 11, 2026
Showing signs of the "severe torture" he has allegedly endured at the hands of his Israeli captors over 530 days of detention without charge, Palestinian physician and Gaza hospital director Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya appeared remotely before the Israel's Supreme Court on Wednesday to demand his freedom.
“My detention is unjust and arbitrary, and I demand my immediate release,” Abu Safia—who appeared to have lost considerable weight—told the court through his defense attorney, Nasser Abu Odeh. “I am a pediatrician who provides medical services and care to patients, the wounded and vulnerable people in the Gaza Strip.”
Abu Safiya's son, Ilyas Abu Safiya, spoke with Al Jazeera after the hearing, telling the Qatar-owned network, “When we saw his latest image, we received it with shock, with tears, and with weeping."
“We did not only see the face of a father we have missed for many long months, we saw the marks of torture, pain, and exhaustion clearly etched on his face."
Abu Safiya lost his mother to a fatal heart attack during his imprisonment, and his 15-year-old son Ibrahim Hussam Idris Abu Safiya was killed in an October 2024 drone strike.
Israeli troops detained Abu Safiya—now 52 years old—on December 28, 2024 amid a prolonged siege and assault on Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, where he served as director. Abu Safiya defied an Israeli forced displacement order and refused to evacuate the facility as long as patients were still being treated.
Israel accuses Abu Safiya of being affiliated with Hamas, whose armed wing led the October 7, 2023 attack, and whose political division governs Gaza. Specifically, Israel claims the doctor is an officer in Hamas' Military Medical Services.
However, Israel has produced no verifiable evidence supporting its claims.
Former inmates at the notorious Sde Teiman torture prison in southern Israel's Negev Desert said they saw Abu Safiya there. According to testimonies gathered by the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, the physician was tortured before his arrival at Sde Teiman and inside the prison.
Abu Safiya was subsequently transferred to Ofer Prison in the illegally occupied West Bank, where another renowned Gaza physician, Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, died after reportedly enduring torture. United Nations Palestine expert Francesca Albanese cited reports that al-Bursh was “likely raped to death."
Israeli courts have repeatedly extended Abu Safiya's detention, most recently in late April. Last week, the advocacy group Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) said that Abu Safiya was moved to solitary confinement in Nafha Prison, also in the Negev, reportedly in retaliation for appealing his imprisonment.
“Dr. Hussam remains in solitary confinement in Nafha Prison. He appeared in court via screen, handcuffed and shackled; the court refused to remove the shackles,” Abu Odeh told Al Jazeera on Thursday.
"He has not received medical treatment or the medications he requires for his chronic illness," the attorney said of his client. "He continues to suffer from severe back and neck pain following an assault, and is experiencing vision problems after his glasses were confiscated and have not yet been returned.”
PHRI has repeatedly demanded the release not only of Abu Safiya but of more than a dozen other Palestinian doctors and hundreds of medical professionals jailed by Israel.
"Since the start of the genocide in Gaza, Israel has arrested hundreds of essential medical workers, effectively paralyzing an already fragile healthcare system under constant destruction," the group recently said. "These arrests have removed critical, highly trained individuals from their roles at a time when their expertise is most urgently needed. Dozens of these medical workers remain detained without due process as of today, many held for prolonged periods."
PHRI "calls for the immediate cancellation of these detention orders and urges both national and international actors to take action in solidarity, enabling these physicians to return home and resume their lifesaving duties."
A UN commission concluded in 2024 that “Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza" that has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing. The UN experts further accused Israel of "committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.”
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Rights Group Sounds Alarm After Israel Sends Gaza’s Dr. Abu Safiya to Solitary Confinement
“The international community cannot remain silent while a respected physician is reportedly subjected to harsh conditions, denied adequate medical care, and isolated from the outside world."
Jun 05, 2026
A prominent human rights group on Friday sounded alarms upon learning that Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza, has been sent to solitary confinement.
As reported by Haaretz, Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) said it learned on Thursday that Abu Safiya was moved to solitary confinement this week without any explanation.
According to a report from The Palestine Chronicle, an attorney representing Abu Safiya claimed that his client was placed into solitary confinement in retaliation for appealing his continued detention.
Abu Safiya was first taken into custody by Israeli forces in December 2024 and has been held since then without being charged with any criminal offenses.
In a Friday statement, the Council of American-Islamic Relations said news of Abu Safiya's solitary confinement was "deeply disturbing" and raised "even more urgent concerns about his welfare and basic human rights."
"Congress must demand his immediate release and insist that Israel end the arbitrary detention, abuse, and mistreatment of Palestinian medical professionals and civilians," CAIR added. “The international community cannot remain silent while a respected physician is reportedly subjected to harsh conditions, denied adequate medical care, and isolated from the outside world without any legal justification. Dr. Abu Safiya must be released immediately."
PHRI has for months been raising concerns about Abu Safiya's detention, long before he was transferred to solitary confinement.
While demanding the physician's release in April, for instance, PHRI said Abu Safiya was being held "in harsh conditions, without access to medication or medical care, as his health continues to deteriorate."
A 2025 report from Amnesty International, which has also called for Abu Safiya’s release, said that the Gaza-based physician “was detained in the course of caring for his patients and carrying out his medical duties.”
Amnesty also noted that, prior to his detention, Abu Safiya and other colleagues at the Kamal Adwan Hospital had “provided human rights and humanitarian organizations with reliable information about the health situation” in Gaza, which has been left devastated by years of Israeli attacks that have killed at least 72,000 Palestinians.
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Rights Group Demands Release of Gaza's Dr. Abu Safiya After Israeli Court Extends Detention
“Dr. Abu Safiya is currently held in Negev Prison under harsh conditions, without access to his medication or receiving medical treatment, despite the deterioration of his health," said the Israeli-based Physicians for Human Rights Israel.
Apr 28, 2026
An Israeli human rights group is demanding the release of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza, after a court ordered his detention extended.
Physicians for Human Rights Israel on Tuesday blasted the Beersheba District Court for extending the detention of Abu Safiya, who has been held in prison since December 27, 2024, without being charged with any criminal offenses.
The court justified keeping Abu Saifya detained under Israel's Unlawful Combatants Law, which allows for the detention of Palestinians for long periods without trial.
“The court upheld the detention despite arguments that detaining a doctor while performing his medical duties constitutes unlawful detention,” said Physicians for Human Rights Israel. “Dr. Abu Safiya is currently held in Negev Prison under harsh conditions, without access to his medication or receiving medical treatment, despite the deterioration of his health."
The group added that it is demanding "the immediate release of Dr. Abu Safiya along with 13 other detained doctors, as well as all medical personnel currently held in Israel. We call on the international community to intervene and put an end to this abuse."
The US-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) also slammed the court ruling, calling Abu Safiya's detention "a grave injustice and a blatant violation of fundamental human rights and due process."
"As a physician and hospital director, Dr. Abu Safiya dedicated his life to saving others," CAIR added, "yet he now faces indefinite imprisonment under conditions that credible reports indicate include torture, denial of medical care, and severe mistreatment."
A 2025 report from Amnesty International, which has also called for Abu Safiya's release, said that the Gaza-based physician "was detained in the course of caring for his patients and carrying out his medical duties."
Amnesty also noted that, prior to his detention, Abu Safiya and other colleagues at the Kamal Adwan Hospital had "provided human rights and humanitarian organizations with reliable information about the health situation" in Gaza, which has been left devastated by years of Israeli attacks that have killed at least 72,000 Palestinians.
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The American Medical Association Is Failing to Speak Up for Dr. Abu Safiya
If they speak out to save just one Palestinian doctor's life, they could pave the way to save hundreds of other prisoners.
Apr 10, 2026
Israel tortured a 1-year-old baby. They burned him with cigarettes and drove nails through his feet as a form of torture during his father's interrogation. This isn't some twisted, made-up movie scene; this is real life. And it's the one case we know of right now, but who knows how many other babies, in all their innocence, have been tortured by the Israeli military? It also begs the question: Since they're willing to do this to an infant, what are they doing to older prisoners?
It's always been clear that the Zionist settler colony will go to any length to achieve its goal of being an ethnostate. To achieve this goal, it subjects Palestinians to mass-imprisonment campaigns. No title—child, teenager, mother, father, health professional, aid worker—is spared from the Israeli prison system. Because if Israel can't just outright exterminate all Palestinians at once, the next best option is to round them up and slowly kill them behind bars.
Well, that was the case before March 30, 2026, when the Israeli Knesset passed a bill that calls for the hanging of Palestinian prisoners within 90 days of being convicted of killing Israeli settlers. The bill was introduced by Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has been wearing noose pins and carrying around a physical noose to publicly show his excitement for potentially becoming Israel's official executioner. When the vote was called out and the bill was passed, Ben-Gvir popped champagne bottles with his cronies, celebrating the essence of killing more Palestinians.
These are illegal settlers under international law, who have been terrorizing Palestinian villagers for years, their attacks becoming increasingly frequent and heinous. Palestinians have had their houses set on fire while inside them at the hands of these settlers, backed by the state. It is important to remember that the Israeli military courts operate outside of constitutional processes and have been widely condemned for their human rights abuses. In these courts, Palestinians have a conviction rate of over 96%, most often for crimes they never even committed.
Our government is killing people in cold blood, and the institutions meant to advocate for us remain silent even when it is their peers being forced into tanks, handcuffed, and locked away and tortured.
Israel promotes its interests by incentivizing settlers to brutalize Palestinians and destroy their land. And now, after systematically denying Palestinians' right to defend themselves, they are branding them as cattle to be killed by hanging. Israel is carrying out its genocide in the form of codified law. This is the true face of the settler colonial state of Israel: dehumanization to the lowest level.
Right now, Israel is holding the highest number of Palestinian prisoners ever recorded. One such prisoner is Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya. He was the sole lead of the only functioning hospital in northern Gaza, Kamal Adwan Hospital. For the "crime" of providing medical aid to Palestinians, he was surrounded by Israeli tanks and soldiers and forced into imprisonment in December 2024.
Israeli society is getting more and more draconian: no prosecution, no unanimity, nothing. Simply put, if the Israeli military sees fit to kill a Palestinian prisoner, they will do so. Dr. Abu Safiya has been in an Israeli prison for 16 months, and there is speculation that he is being tortured. But again, if they can torture an infant, what's a middle-aged man to them? The new Israeli bill gives the IOF a pathway to execute prisoners like Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya: torturing them to force a confession, convicting them, and then hanging them. Clearly, he's been deemed a threat to the very existence of Israel because he helped save the lives of Palestinians.
This is the situation of medical professionals outside of the West, heroes who put everything on the line to provide care for their people. In comparison to the most "esteemed" doctors in the US—like those within the American Medical Association, with all their prestige and shiny titles—the healthcare workers subjected to deadly imperialist brutality deserve our recognition, and they urgently need our help.
You might be thinking, "What does the American Medical Association have to do with a detained Palestinian doctor?" Firstly, we need to contend with the fact that it is our US tax dollars that fund these genocidal soldiers, prisons, and policies that got Dr. Abu Safiya arrested in the first place. The American government and its institutions are just as guilty of the oppression of the Palestinian as the Israelis are. We need to stop operating on willful ignorance because it has cost thousands of lives in the region, a tally that is increasing by the second with the recent attacks on Iran and Lebanon.
Secondly, the American Medical Association (AMA) prides itself on its strong relationship with the World Medical Association, which has already called for the release of Dr. Abu Safiya, demonstrating alignment with its policies that "support the rights of physicians worldwide." The advocacy of foreign doctors is integral to the AMA as a whole. Why is a Palestinian doctor being ignored by them, then? Maybe the topic of genocide is too taboo for them. That would be ironic if so, when a genocide is the culmination of healthcare sectors being destroyed, lineages lost, and eugenics shaping a land and people forever. These are topics any medical association should be speaking about, especially one that represents the literal country that enabled this violence. Imagine the leverage the AMA could have in the halls of Congress when advocating for change.
The recent codification of the execution of Palestinian prisoners poses a grave threat to Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya's life. Will the AMA finally act now, in the face of such injustice and wickedness? If they speak out to save just one doctor's life, they could pave the way to save hundreds of other prisoners.
The genocide in Gaza has shown me that so much of what I thought about society was false. I once believed I lived in a world where good prevails, but I have come to realize that selective empathy is the rule. The leaders of this world don't hold empathy for anything or anyone that stands in their way of global domination. I frequently think of how many lives have been lost at the hands of US-Israeli imperial violence. The sheer number of casualties in Gaza, despite being predicted to be in the hundreds of thousands, has never been enough reason to stop. I think of how one of the first targets in the US war on Iran was a girl's elementary school, which they targeted with not just one strike, but three in a row.
Our government is killing people in cold blood, and the institutions meant to advocate for us remain silent even when it is their peers being forced into tanks, handcuffed, and locked away and tortured. At this point, advocating for the release of our prisoners who were wrongfully detained is the least we can do.
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UN Experts Urge Israel to Free Gaza Doctor, Citing Reports of 'Severe Torture'
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya's imprisonment appears "to be flagrantly arbitrary and manifestly inconsistent with the Mandela Rules, which establish the obligation of states to ensure prisoners have access to healthcare.”
Mar 24, 2026
A pair of United Nations human rights experts on Tuesday called on Israel to immediately release Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, a Palestinian physician and hospital director who has been imprisoned for more than 450 days and allegedly tortured by his captors.
Israel must ensure Abu Safiya "is granted access to medical examination and treatment," UN Special Rapporteurs Tlaleng Mofokeng and Ben Saul said, adding that the doctor reportedly suffered "severe torture."
“We have received reports that Dr. Abu Safiya has been subjected to torture and other cruel and degrading treatment, and that his health condition remains dire,” the experts continued. “The conditions of his detention appear to be flagrantly arbitrary and manifestly inconsistent with the Mandela Rules, which establish the obligation of states to ensure prisoners have access to healthcare.”
“He has been systematically denied critical medical examination and treatment, and deprived of essential care to such an extent that his life, health, and well-being have been gravely endangered,” the pair added.
Israeli troops detained Abu Safiya, who is now 52 years old, on December 28, 2024 amid a prolonged siege and assault on Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, where he served as director. Abu Safiya refused to evacuate the facility as long as patients were still being treated.
Former detainees released from the notorious Sde Teiman torture prison in southern Israel said they met Abu Safiya there. According to testimonies gathered by the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, Abu Safiya was tortured before his arrival at Sde Teiman and inside the facility.
Abu Safiya was subsequently transferred to Ofer Prison in the illegally occupied West Bank of Palestine, where another renowned Gaza physician, Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, died after reportedly enduring torture. UN Palestine expert Francesca Albanese cited reports that al-Bursh was “likely raped to death."
During a previous Israeli attack on Kamal Adwan Hospital, Abu Safiya’s 15-year-old son was killed in a drone strike. Abu Safiya was seriously wounded in a separate drone attack that left six pieces of shrapnel in his leg.
Shortly after Abu Safiya's detention, his mother died of a heart attack attributed to "severe sadness" by the medical charity for which the doctor worked.
A UN commission concluded in 2024 that “Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—who ordered the "complete siege" of Gaza—are wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder and forced starvation.
"Violence against healthcare workers, destruction of health facilities, and underlying determinants of health continue unabated despite a so-called ceasefire in Gaza,” the UN experts said Tuesday. More than 650 Palestinian civilians, including medical professionals, have been killed by Israeli forces since the ceasefire took effect last October, according to Gaza officials.
Overall, more than 250,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded over 899 days of Israel's US-backed war, which UN experts, human rights groups, and many others argue is a genocide. Since South Africa filed a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in late 2023, nearly 20 countries have formally intervened to support the proceedings.
Most of Gaza's over 2 million people have also been forcibly displaced—many of them multiple times—and many have suffered starvation and sickness.
The UN experts asserted that countries "have the power to end [Abu Safiya's] torment, and we call on them to use it."
"It is incumbent upon states with influence on Israel and the international community to use all avenues to ensure prevention, recourse, and justice," they added. "Israel must release Dr. Abu Safiya and all healthcare workers, and ensure they have access to appropriate medical care.”
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'The Humanity Cohort': Med School Graduates Offer Hope in Gaza
Israel has waged a systematic campaign to destroy Gaza’s healthcare delivery and to kill or imprison healthcare professionals, but these 168 students persisted.
Dec 29, 2025
On Thursday, December 25, 2025, during Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians, 168 students graduated from medical school, in Gaza. Wearing their white coats, they stood in front of the ruined façade of what was formerly Gaza’s largest hospital, the al-Shifa Medical Complex. As a backdrop, the destroyed building realistically conveys perils the graduates faced while earning their medical degrees. Throughout the last two years of their studies, they risked assassination, injury, arrest, imprisonment, and torture, as well as attacks on their own family members.
Israel has waged a systematic campaign to destroy Gaza’s healthcare delivery and to kill or imprison healthcare professionals. From October of 2023 to October of 2025, The World Health Organization documented 687 Israeli attacks on Gazan healthcare facilities and 211 attacks on ambulances. These attacks killed 985 people. In the same time period, Israel detained over 306 healthcare workers.
Health Care Workers Watch—Palestine, a nongovernmental organization, reports that 95 Palestinian healthcare workers are still in prison, 80 of whom are from Gaza. Prisoners who have been released from detention report that doctors are singled out for particularly brutal treatment.
Among the 80 Gazan healthcare workers who are still detained is the former director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya. On December 27, 2025, Dr. Abu Safiya began his second year of imprisonment.
In a better world, in a better future, we can hope that Palestinians graduating from medical school could assemble for an address delivered by Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya.
For over a year, prior to his incarceration, the Israeli military had subjected the Kamal Adwan hospital to repeated sieges and attacks. Dr. Abu Safiya and his staff, refusing to desert their patients, managed to increase the number of available beds in the hospital as theirs became one of the few hospitals still operating in northern Gaza.
On October 25, 2024, Israel raided the hospital, bombing its buildings, detaining many patients, and arresting all hospital staff, including Dr. Abu Safiya who was interrogated and released. On that same day, an Israeli drone attacked one of the hospital buildings and killed Dr. Abu Safiya’s 20-year-old son, Ibrahim. Dr. Abu Safiya buried his son on the hospital grounds and still refused to abandon the patients.
“The Israeli army does not know what it wants,” Dr. Abu Safiya told a reporter with the Electronic Intifada. “They detained me for a few hours and interrogated me about whether there were fighters inside the hospital, and demanded that I evacuate the hospital completely, but I refused and assured them that there were only patients inside the hospital. But 57 of the hospital’s medical staff were arrested... So we are suffering from a severe shortage of doctors, especially surgeons. Right now, we only have pediatricians—it is a huge challenge to work under these circumstances. I refused to leave the hospital and sacrifice my patients, so the army punished me by killing my son. I saw him die at the entrance gate—it was a great shock. I found a grave for him near one of the hospital’s walls, so that he could stay close to me.”
On December 27, 2024, when Israeli forces threatened to level the whole facility, Dr. Abu Safiya agreed to leave the hospital which was, by then, largely inoperable. An iconic video shows him, clad in his white coat, walking through the rubble toward two Israeli tanks.
He was held incommunicado, and then taken to the Sde Teiman prison, in the Negev desert, where he was interrogated and beaten before being transferred to the Ofer prison. There, he is held in solitary confinement. Only his lawyer has been allowed to visit him. She expresses rising alarm over his weight loss, inadequate healthcare, and frequent beatings.
Amnesty International says he has been forcibly disappeared and arbitrarily held without charge. Even though no charges have been brought against him, an Israeli court has extended his detention multiple times. On October 16, 2025, Israel’s Be'er Sheva District Court added an additional six months to his detention.
Who are the criminals? Israel and its partner, the United States, egregiously flaunt international law, committing numerous war crimes in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Dr. Abu Safiya endures daily punishments in return for his courageous dedication to serving victims of war.
In a better world, in a better future, we can hope that Palestinians graduating from medical school could assemble for an address delivered by Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya. Together, they could uphold “the Humanity Cohort,” as the Gazan doctors who graduated in December 2025 call themselves, and safely commemorate the courageous healthcare workers who risked and lost their lives to care for patients during an Israeli genocide that is still ongoing. Confident that healthcare is never a crime, they could cite their fallen colleagues' historic and extraordinary adherence to the United Nation’s core mission, "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”
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'Free Them All': One Year After Dr. Abu Safiya Abducted, Israel Urged to Release Gaza Health Workers
"We won't forget him nor the 360+ health workers Israel has abducted from Gaza since October 2023," said CodePink.
Dec 26, 2025
Ahead of Saturday's one-year anniversary of Israel abducting Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya from the Gaza hospital he ran, advocates demanded the release the scores of health workers still imprisoned by Israeli occupation forces.
"One year ago, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya was abducted by the Israeli military along with dozens of other medical staff during a horrific raid on the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza," Dr. Yipeng Ge, a member of Doctors Against Genocide, said Friday on social media. "Free Hussam Abu Safiya. Free them all."
Activist Petra Schurenhofer said on X: "It's been a year since Israel abducted and illegally detained Dr Hussam Abu Safiya. And since then he has been languishing in an Israeli jail, being subjected to cruel and inhumane treatment. Don't forget him. And don't stop calling for his release."
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya was abducted by the IOF from Kamal Adwan Hospital one year ago this week.Israel has detained & tortured Dr. Abu Safiya for one whole year.We won't forget him nor the 360+ health workers Israel has abducted from Gaza since October 2023.
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— CODEPINK (@codepink.bsky.social) December 24, 2025 at 6:53 PM
Abu Safiya, the 52-year-old director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, was seized on December 27, 2024 as Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops continued their yearlong siege and raids on the facility in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza. The IDF claimed without evidence that Kamal Adwan—the last major functioning hospital in northern Gaza at the time—was a Hamas command center.
During a previous Israeli attack on Kamal Adwan, Abu Safiya's 15-year-old son was killed in a drone strike. Abu Safiya was seriously wounded in a separate drone attack that left six pieces of shrapnel in his leg.
After his capture, Abu Safiya was first jailed at the notorious Sde Teiman prison in Israel's Negev Desert—where dozens of detainees have died and where torture, rape, and other abuses have been reported—and then Ofer Prison in the illegally occupied West Bank.
Abu Safiya said he has endured torture by his captors—including beatings with batons and electric shocks—and suffered severe weight loss, broken ribs, and other injuries, for which he was allegedly denied adequate medical care.
Israeli authorities deny these accusations. However, there have been many documented and otherwise credible reports of health and medical workers being tortured by Israeli forces—sometimes fatally, as in the case of Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, who headed the orthopedic department at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
According to Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, al-Bursh was "likely raped to death," a fate allegedly suffered by multiple Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
Abu Safiya remains in Israeli custody, despite having not been charged with any crimes. Israeli courts have extended his detention multiple times under so-called “unlawful combatant” legal provisions.
In January, Abu Safiya’s mother died of a heart attack that MedGlobal, the Illinois-based nonprofit for which Abu Safiya worked as lead Gaza physician, attributed to “severe sadness” over her son’s plight.
According to United Nations agencies and other experts, Israeli forces have destroyed or damaged nearly all of Gaza's hospitals in hundreds of attacks since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. More than 1,500 Palestinian health workers have been killed.
Last year, an independent United Nations commission found that “Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.”
Israel is currently facing an ongoing genocide case filed by South Africa at the International Court of Justice. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes including murder and forced starvation.
Albina Abu Safiya, the imprisoned doctor's wife, pleaded last week: “Save my husband before it is too late. His only ‘crime’ was saving the wounded and tending to the wounds of children.”
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