U.S. HEALTHCARE WORKERS CALL FOR AN END TO GENOCIDE AND GENOCIDE COMPLICITY OF US MEDICAL INSTITUTIONS, ASSOCIATIONS, AND SOCIETIES
We are a collective of US-based Healthcare Workers practicing healthcare across a myriad of institutions, hospitals, and clinics in cities throughout the United States. We understand as healthcare workers, that it is our professional obligation to do everything in our capacity to preserve the sanctity of human life and end the genocide in Gaza. We recognize that Israel is waging a campaign of genocide against Palestinians that has destroyed every social determinant of health, guaranteeing the destruction of the entire population. Moreover, we condemn Israel’s belligerent violations of international humanitarian law in order to achieve this catastrophic reality. As our healthcare institutions, societies, and associations remain silent amidst the most documented genocide in history, we refuse to be silenced or complicit in genocide.
As of April 3, 2024 the death toll in Gaza exceeds 41,000 Palestinians and includes 15,370
children – we know this is an gross undercount given the decimation of the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Every hospital in Gaza has been targeted and there remain only a handful of field hospitals or partially functioning hospitals to serve 2 million sick, wounded, and starving civilians. The destruction of Al-Shifa Hospital Complex in March 2024 marked the most recent in Israel’s systematic destruction of healthcare. As of March 12, 2024, Israel had killed 458 Palestinian healthcare workers. More than 100 medical personnel have been detained; testimonies of torture in detention are emerging from released healthcare workers. According to Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, what is happening in Gaza at this moment “is a direct targeting of healthcare workers.” We consider these, our colleagues, to be civilian hostages, taken in contravention of international law. We condemn these attacks and demand the immediate and safe release of our colleagues.
While many legislative bodies and humanitarian organizations have called for the US administration to call for an immediate ceasefire, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Child/Adolescent Psychiatry, the American College of Surgeons, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and other major medical bodies have yet to call for a medically necessary humanitarian ceasefire.
In the midst of what is clearly a genocidal assault on an entire civilian society, these bastions of healthcare excellence have lost their ethical framing. Any professional voice from their collective leadership has been rendered wholly performative. The hypocrisy of the AMA to speak out repeatedly against the attacks on healthcare in Ukraine while repressing similar advocacy for Gaza is now infamous. Ignoring the rank and file of physicians marching, protesting, bearing witness at city council meetings, and speaking up among colleagues, the AMA has established itself firmly as a complicit player in the genocide of Gaza. Genocide is a healthcare issue and health equity in Palestine is predicated upon the Palestinian legally-recognized right of return, ending the illegal Israeli occupation, and ending the crime of apartheid.
Our demands to our US healthcare institutions and US medical governing boards, including but not limited to the AMA, AACAP, ACOG, ACP, AAFP, ACR, ACS, and ANA, are clear:
1. Publicly call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire
2. Insist that Israel immediately restore electricity, water, food, medical supplies, telecommunications, and fuel, and allow unhindered humanitarian aid to the population; Insist that the US reinstate funding for UNRWA;
3. Unequivocally condemn the attacks on healthcare facilities and call for their protection. Condemn the abduction, detention, torture, and killing of healthcare workers and demand their immediate release;
4. Divest from investments and all holdings and biotech companies that sustain Israel’s occupation and apartheid regime; that profit from or sustain its illegal settlements; or that have provided Israel with military equipment, weapons, or funding;
5. Call for international sanctions against Israel, bilateral arms embargoes, and cutting off of all diplomatic ties with Israel.
End the genocide. End institutional complicity.
Read the full text with references here.
Written by members of HCW4Palestine.
