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tanya haj hassan
'History Is Watching': Gaza Doctors Urge Harris to Back Israel Arms Embargo at Democratic Convention
"We are here to deliver a policy that saves and improves lives," Uncommitted National Movement co-founder Abbas Alawieh said in opening remarks at a press conference on the sidelines of the DNC.
Aug 20, 2024
As humanitarians opposed to the U.S. government's support for Israel's assault on Gaza continued to protest during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Tuesday, American doctors who recently volunteered in the besieged enclave implored the party's presidential nominee Kamala Harris—based on the carnage and heartache they have witnessed—to embrace an arms embargo on Israel and an immediate cease-fire.
during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the Uncommitted National Movement held a Tuesday press conference at which American doctors who volunteered in Gaza implored Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, to embrace an arms embargo on Israel and an immediate cease-fire.
"We are here to deliver a policy that saves and improves lives," Uncommitted National Movement co-founder Abbas Alawieh said in opening remarks at Tuesday's press conference. "We are here because we want to win a better world."
Alawieh slammed the "hypocritical action" of Biden administration officials who, while "saying they want a cease-fire," continue "to send more and more weapons" to far-right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's "murderous government," which "is using those weapons to kill civilians" and is "preventing any hope for all captives, Israeli and Palestinian, to be reunited with their families."
Such support, Alawieh added, is also "preventing any hope of a departure from the horrors that we are seeing our siblings in Gaza experience with more than 16,000 children... being killed using U.S. weapons."
"The Uncommitted National Movement mobilized Democratic voters—more than 740,000 nationally—specifically around the idea that our candidate, regardless of who they may be, needs an updated approach to their Gaza policy," Alawieh continued. "Specifically, our stance is that our government should embrace an arms embargo. Stop sending weapons that are being used to kill civilians."
"Vice President Harris is engaging with us on this issue," Alawieh added. "Her team is engaging with us on this issue. We do view that as a positive step in the right direction. We want to be very clear that what we need to see urgently is for the bombs to stop. Stop sending bombs if you want us to believe that you want a cease-fire."
There are 30 Uncommitted delegates attending the DNC after being elected in Democratic primaries in states like Minnesota, where the movement received 18.9% of the vote, and the key swing state of Wisconsin, where it won 13.3%. As polling reveals that Democratic and Independent voters in crucial swing states would be more likely to vote for Harris if she backs an arms embargo on Israel, her campaign has made some moves to accommodate Uncommitted voices, including providing space at the DNC.
Dr. Tammy Abughnaim, a Chicago-based emergency physician, said she asked Palestinians what she should tell people in the United States about Gaza, where she saw the aftermath of "massacre after massacre" and "suffering on an entirely unprecedented scale."
"Tell the world what you saw," she said they told her. "We cannot afford another day of this."
On Monday, the DNC held its first-ever panel on Palestinian rights, which featured testimony from some of those who spoke at Tuesday's press conference, including Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, an American pediatric intensive care physician who volunteered for two weeks at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
On Tuesday, Haj-Hassan said that the American doctors who worked in Gaza "cannot unsee what we witnessed, it gives us nightmares."
"I can personally testify that I have never seen anything so horrific, so egregious, so inhumane," she stated. "We decided to come here and bear moral witness with the unfortunate recognition that the only way to protect civilian life is through putting pressure on the U.S. government to stop militarily supporting Israel in its campaign."
Haj-Hassan continued:
For the past 10 months, we have witnessed civilian casualty after civilian massacre after civilian massacre. The bread massacre. The Nuseirat massacre. The multiple school massacres, where internally displaced people, who have been forcibly transferred, a war crime in and of itself... finally sought shelter only to be massacred. Entire families exterminated. Humanitarian workers and healthcare workers and journalists killed in record numbers. Children with their extremities amputated traumatically in record numbers...
Over 17,000 children have lost one or both parents in Gaza since October. We have treated children who are the only surviving members of their entire family who were killed in the same bombing. I have personally held the hands of children taking their last final gasps with no family alive... unable to comfort them during their final agonizing breaths... This phenomenon of children having their entire families killed and arriving to the emergency department is so frequent it actually has an acronym... wounded child, no surviving family, given the acronym WCNSF.
Children who are fortunate enough to survive their injuries are discharged into a Russian roulette of a hundred different ways that they could be killed... another bombing, starvation, dehydration, disease. Now we have alarming reports of an outbreak of polio. Polio is something that we were able to eradicate on the majority of this planet decades ago.
"And yet we continue to fund this," Haj-Hassan added. "History is watching us. The world is watching us. I cannot make sense of this. I suspect you cannot too. And I hope that the Democratic Party recognizes the irony and the hypocrisy of what we continue to fund and chooses to finally stand by the values of human rights and justice that we claim to stand by."
Harris has expressed sympathy for Palestinians suffering what she called a "humanitarian catastrophe" in Gaza. However, like Biden, she's also proclaimed her "unwavering" support for Israel. When asked earlier this month if Harris would support a suspension in weapons transfers, one of her national security advisers said that "she will always ensure Israel is able to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups" and "does not support an arms embargo on Israel."
Human rights advocates fear that if elected to a second term, former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, would be even more supportive of Israel's obliteration of Gaza than the Biden-Harris administration.
According to Palestinian and international officials, at least 40,173 Palestinians have been killed—most of them women and children—and nearly 93,000 others have been wounded during Israel's 319-day assault and siege on Gaza. Gaza officials say that at least 10,000 other Palestinians are missing, believed to be dead and buried under the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out homes and other buildings.
Almost the entire Gaza population of 2.3 million has been forcibly displaced. Hundreds of thousands of Gazans are starving;
dozens have died from malnutrition, dehydration, and lack of medicines and healthcare amid a crippling Israeli siege that has been cited as evidence during Israel's genocide trial at the International Court of Justice. The blockade has also exacerbated the spread of contagious diseases including measles, hepatitis, and polio.
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Uncommitted Movement Demands DNC Speech for Doctor Who Volunteered in Gaza
"As American bombs fuel violence and suffering in Gaza, it is imperative that the Democratic Party hear directly from those who witness the atrocities firsthand."
Aug 01, 2024
The Uncommitted National Movement on Thursday launched a campaign demanding that the Democratic Party allow a doctor who spent two weeks volunteering in a Gaza Strip hospital to speak at the Democratic National Convention later this month.
Uncommitted—a coalition of pro-Palestine, peace, and progressive groups that urged people to vote "uncommitted" in U.S. Democratic presidential primaries in a bid to pressure the Biden administration to push Israel for a Gaza cease-fire—and its 30 delegates want Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, an American pediatric intensive care physician, to address the DNC in Chicago.
"As American bombs fuel violence and suffering in Gaza, it is imperative that the Democratic Party hear directly from those who witness the atrocities firsthand," said Uncommitted, which launched its campaign with a Thursday morning press conference on Zoom.
Haj-Hassan—who volunteered for two weeks at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip—said that as physicians, "we have been trained to protect and preserve human life."
"But what has become absolutely clear is that that is utterly impossible amidst this military campaign that is destroying life and everything needed to sustain it," Haj-Hassan continued. "I am not a politician but am hoping to provide moral witness to the delegates of the Democratic National Convention because an end to this military campaign is the only way to protect and preserve civilian life."
"It is vital that the most powerful decision-makers in the world hear firsthand accounts of the impact of our foreign policy decisions on civilians," she added.
In a March interview with Democracy Now!, Haj-Hassan said that "it's really difficult to describe in words the horrors that we saw in our two weeks" in Gaza.
"Experiencing in real time entire family structures collapsing, entire families being wiped off the civil registry, having to tell a father or a mother that their entire family, their lifelong partner and all of their children, have just been killed and you weren't able to resuscitate them, is something that was very difficult to experience and something that I hope I never have to experience again," she said.
Describing "one incident where we received a young boy who the side of his face had been blown off, and we were providing care for him while providing care for his sister in the adjacent bed," Haj-Hassan said:
His sister had 96% of her body burned. Their parents and all of their other siblings had been killed in the same attack. And he kept asking for his family, and he had a distant cousin who was at his bedside, who kept saying... "They're going to be fine." And he kept saying, "Where's my sister?" He could see the patient next to him. He just couldn't recognize her, because she was so badly burned. But that was his sister. She unfortunately died despite our efforts... And he is still in the hospital receiving reconstructive surgery for his neck and face.
So many Palestinian children have lost their entire families to Israeli attacks that English-speaking medical volunteers in Gaza have coined a new acronym to describe them: WCNSF, or wounded child, no surviving family. At least 16,000 children are among the more than 39,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza, according to Palestinian and international officials. Overall, more than 140,000 Palestinians are dead, maimed, or missing in Gaza,
At least 1,000 children wounded by Israeli bombs and bullets have had one or more legs amputated, the U.K.-based charity Save the Children reported. Many more have lost arms, hands, and feet. Due to a lack of medication caused by Israel's siege, many little limbs have been sawed off without anesthesia.
The siege—which has been cited in an ongoing International Court of Justice genocide case against Israel led by South Africa—has also resulted in the death of dozens of Gazan child patients from malnutrition, dehydration, and lack of medical care.
"This is not a humanitarian crisis. This is the worst of what humanity is capable of, and it's entirely all man-made," Haj-Hassan told Democracy Now!"And when you witness it firsthand, it's an unbearable injustice."
"This is an utter and complete failure of humanity, and, to be frank, I feel ashamed to be an American citizen," she added. "And I am very much hoping and looking forward to the moment where we decide to take a courageous stance and put an end to this massacre."
Uncommitted delegates said the Democratic convention presents an opportunity for courage.
"The Democratic Party has an opportunity to embrace the concept of moral witness by allowing firsthand accounts of the humanitarian and political crisis in Gaza to be shared within its ranks," Michigan delegate Abbas Alawieh said Thursday.
"Hearing directly from individuals like Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, who has witnessed the atrocities and suffering in Gaza, is crucial for understanding the full scope of the crisis," he added. "This moral witness will provide the party with the essential human perspective needed to formulate policies grounded in compassion, justice, and a firm stance against authoritarianism."
June Rosenbaum, a Jewish American Uncommitted delegate from Rhode Island, said that "for most of my entire life, I was raised learning about the history of Israel and Palestine without ever hearing the perspective of Palestinians. The first time I did, it completely changed my views towards the conflict."
"That's why it is so important for the American people and members of the Democratic Party to hear the voices, and the pain, of people on the ground in Palestine," she added. "Because Palestinian suffering over the last 10 months would not have been possible without our taxpayer dollars."
Uncommitted—which won nearly 20% of the Minnesota Democratic primary vote and garnered hundreds of thousands of votes across the nation—is urging Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee, to take a clear stance against U.S. weapons transfers to Israel and for Palestinian rights.
However, there is very little evidence that Harris would abandon President Joe Biden's staunch support for Israel, which both have described as "unwavering," even as they lament the civilian suffering in Gaza.
While the convention is scheduled for August 19–22, Harris is expected to be the official nominee before then, due to a virtual roll call that began Thursday and is set to end Monday.
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