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mads gilbert
'Can You Hear the Screams?' Physician Says Western Leaders Complicit in Israeli Attacks on Gaza Hospitals
"When are you going to stop this?" Dr. Mads Gilbert asked U.S. President Joe Biden and the leaders of European nations.
Nov 11, 2023
A Norwegian physician who has volunteered in Gaza for decades said Friday that Western leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden, are complicit in Israel's intensifying assault on the Palestinian enclave's hospitals, which are overwhelmed with airstrike victims and displaced people seeking refuge.
In a video message posted to social media as Israeli forces bombarded al-Shifa—Gaza's largest hospital—and other medical facilities, Dr. Mads Gilbert asked, "Can you hear the screams from innocent people, refugees sheltering, trying to find a safe place, being bombed by the Israeli attack forces this morning inside the hospital, hospitals that are the temples of humanity and protection?"
"When are you going to stop this?" Gilbert added, with audio of screams from Gaza's al-Shifa hospital playing in the background. "You're all complicit."
Gilbert's plea for immediate action from world leaders who are supporting and arming Israel's military came as Israeli forces surrounded al-Shifa and other hospitals in northern Gaza, claiming that Hamas is using the facilities as command centers—an assertion that hospital directors have denied.
Targeting hospitals is a war crime under international law.
Israeli airstrikes and sniper fire on Gaza hospitals have forced thousands of people who were sheltering at the facilities to flee, but many others "remain trapped inside," the U.K.-based humanitarian group Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) said Saturday.
The charity said it has heard "chilling testimony from inside Gaza's largest hospital, al-Shifa," including reports that "the intensive care unit has been bombed and damaged."
"Staff moving between buildings have been shot at and critically wounded," said MAP, which is calling for a cease-fire. "Those who have tried to flee have come under fire, and lie dead or wounded in the street as rescue is impossible. With the mortuary shut down, a hundred bodies are piled up and cannot be buried."
"Power has gone out, and staff are having to hand ventilate critically ill patients to keep them alive," the group continued. "At least one patient in intensive care has already died. Babies in the neonatal intensive care unit which MAP has supported over many years are beginning to die from lack of oxygen. More will die soon unless the power supply is restored. Day after day, week after week, we have been warning of catastrophic consequences if world leaders fail to protect healthcare in Gaza. Our worst fears are coming true."
Doctors Without Borders, which has been providing emergency assistance in the Gaza Strip, offered a similarly harrowing account.
"We are currently unable to contact any of our staff inside al-Shifa, and we are extremely concerned about the safety of patients and the medical staff," the group said late Friday. "Patients are still in the hospital, some in critical condition and unable to move."
Mohammed Obeid, a Doctors Without Borders physician at al-Shifa, said that "there is a patient who needs surgery. There is a patient who's already asleep in our department. We cannot evacuate ourselves and [leave] these people inside. As a doctor, I swear to help the people who need help."
Early Saturday, the group wrote on social media that its staff "are witnessing people being shot at as they attempt to flee the al-Shifa hospital."
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UN Humanitarian Office Says Northern Gaza Is 'Hell on Earth' as Death Toll Climbs to 11,000
"It is a life of fear by day and darkness at night and what do you tell your children in such a situation, it's almost unimaginable—that the fire they see in the sky is out to kill them?" said a spokesperson for the United Nations.
Nov 10, 2023
As hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remained in northern Gaza, where the enclave's largest hospital was among the healthcare facilities being bombed by Israeli forces early Friday, a spokesperson for the United Nations humanitarian agency said the region now resembles "hell on Earth" due to a lack of aid and Israel's relentless bombardment.
Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said Friday that the crossing at Rafah in southern Gaza has mainly allowed only for movement to and from Egypt by pedestrians rather than trucks. Only 65 aid trucks entered Gaza on Wednesday—a fraction of the hundreds of vehicles that brought aid to the blockaded territory on a daily basis before Israel's onslaught—as well as seven ambulances.
Those vehicles, however, cannot reach northern Gaza amid Israel's constant airstrikes, which have damaged more than half of the enclave's housing units as well as numerous road networks.
"We cannot drive to the north at the current point, which is of course deeply frustrating because we know there are several hundred thousand people who remain in the north," said OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke. "If there is a hell on Earth today, its name is northern Gaza."
The death toll in Gaza passed 11,000 on Friday, with at least 4,412 children among those killed by Israeli forces since October 7. U.S. officials believe many more people may have been killed than have officially been reported.
Residents of Gaza City, in the northern part of the enclave, toldThe Guardian on Wednesday that they could see and hear Israeli ground forces closing in on the region, where health officials have also warned that infectious diseases are surging due to Israel's blockade affecting fuel, food, and water access.
Tens of thousands of people walked southward from Gaza City and other northern towns this week, following evacuation orders from Israeli military officials, who have agreed to a four-hour daily window during which they claim civilians will be guaranteed safe passage.
As The New York Times reported Wednesday, however, people have reported being fired at by Israeli tanks as they try to reach southern Gaza on foot.
Gaza City-based Al Jazeera correspondent Youmna ElSayed said last week that she has attempted to join other families in leaving several times, but "every time Israel military opens fire on the civilian cars trying to evacuate."
On Thursday, ElSayed told AJ+ about her experience telling her children that their family is likely to be killed in a bombing.
During Israeli attacks prior to the current war, ElSayed said, "we would tell our children, 'Don't worry, it's going to be okay, it's going to end soon... But now, we literally tell them every night, 'Don't worry, we're together, we're sticking together. If we die, we die together."
"It is a life of fear by day and darkness at night and what do you tell your children in such a situation, it's almost unimaginable—that the fire they see in the sky is out to kill them?" said Laerke on Friday.
While U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said this week that the "collective punishment by Israel of Palestinian civilians" fits the definition of war crimes, the U.S. State Department said Washington has "not come to that conclusion."
With the Biden administration's support, Israel's bombardment has forcibly displaced 70% of the Gaza Strip's 2.3 million residents in addition to killing more than 11,000 people. As Common Dreams reported Friday, the World Health Organization has confirmed hospitals in northern Gaza, where thousands of people are being treated for injuries and thousands more are seeking shelter, are "coming under bombardment."
Under international humanitarian law, collective punishment of civilians, forced displacement, and attacks on hospitals and medical personnel are illegal.
Norwegian physician Dr. Mads Gilbert, who has volunteered at al-Shifa Hospital, the largest medical facility in Gaza where the obstetrics department was hit by an airstrike on Friday, called the scene at the hospital "horrific."
"They will shoot at anything that they consider Palestinian: Infrastructure, schools, churches, mosques, hospitals, ambulances, civilians," said Gilbert. "Would this have been accepted by Europe and the U.S. if these had been hospitals caring for white people in Europe? Never ever. This is racist politics, it's utterly disgusting and I think we have to consider this as the greatest moral collapse in Western politics in my generation."
"It keeps going, and it's not hell," he added. "Gaza 2023 makes hell look like a tea party."
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