I do not know how it is in your household, but in mine we have developed the practice over the past nine months of reciting to one another the most appalling of the news bulletins from Gaza that come our way from a great variety of sources. It is rather miserable to think life has come to this, reading aloud daily accounts of atrocities, but there is no turning away from the depths to which terrorist Israel has dragged the whole of humanity.
The subtext of each of these recitations is, “Can you believe this is happening? Can you believe the U.S. participates in this? Can you believe this is normalized?” It is indeed difficult to believe the things we read of are part of life in the third decade of the 21st century, and may this remain so: When it is no longer difficult to read or watch videos of the Israelis’ merciless barbarities, the Zionist army will have bombed and bulldozed our consciences as thoroughly as it has any Gazan or West Bank village.
Over the weekend my partner told me she had read something that was simply too much even for our recitation routines. It was a piece Politico had published Friday, July 19, and it had arrived courtesy of Jonathan Cook, the estimable British journalist. “We Volunteered at a Gaza Hospital. What We Saw Was Unspeakable” was written not by journalists, but by two American surgeons who had volunteered last spring for humanitarian work in Gaza by way of the Palestinian American Medical Association. Mark Perlmutter is an orthopedic surgeon from North Carolina. Feroze Sidhwa is a trauma and critical care surgeon who practices in Northern California.
“I haven’t been able to mention this until now,” my partner began, her voice cracking. Then, holding back tears, she told me about the Politico piece. She related the stories of two Palestinians the American surgeons treated during their time at the European Hospital. The European Hospital sits at the southeastern edge of Khan Younis, the city in central Gaza where the Israeli Occupation Forces earlier directed Palestinians to evacuate, then bombed, then left, and now, Khan Younis having been resettled, is now being bombed again.
Here are the stories. (more...)
Gaza, We Cannot Remain Silent Any Longer
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