This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: We begin today’s show in Gaza, where a sixth baby has died from severe cold as the death toll tops 45,500 and Israel’s assault on medical infrastructure continues in the besieged territory. On Sunday, an Israeli attack on the upper floor of al-Wafa Hospital in Gaza City killed at least seven people and wounded several others.
On Friday, Israeli troops stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital, northern Gaza’s last major functioning hospital. The director of Kamal Adwan, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, was arrested, and his whereabouts remain unknown. Many staff and patients were reportedly forced to go outside and strip in winter weather. This is nurse Waleed al-Boudi describing Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya’s arrest.
WALEED AL-BOUDI: [translated] Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya was arrested from Al-Fakhoura School after he had stayed with us and refused to leave. Even though they told him to and that he was free to go, he told them that he won’t leave his medical staff. He took all of us and wanted to get us out at night. But they yelled at him and arrested him, a man of great humanity. We appeal to the entire world, all of the world, all the human rights organizations to stand by Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the great man, the man who planted, within us and within our hearts, patience so we can persevere in our steadfast north. I swear we wouldn’t have left, but by force. We cried blood on the doors of Kamal Adwan Hospital when we were forced out by the occupation army.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: A person who was with Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya shared testimony that, quote, “The Israeli forces whipped Dr. Hussam using an electrical wire found in the street after forcing him and others from the medical staff to remove their clothes,” unquote.
This is Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya in one of his final interviews before being detained, produced by Sotouries.
DR. HUSSAM ABU SAFIYA: [translated] I always say the situation requires one to stand by our people’s side and not run away from it. Gaza is our homeland, our mother, our beloved and everything to us. Gaza deserves all of this steadfastness and deserves all of the sacrifices. It is not just about Gaza, but we deserve to be a people that deserves freedom just like every other people on Earth. I think the occupation wants us to get out and for us to ask them to get us out, so they can publicly say that the healthcare system is the one asking to leave and that it wasn’t them who asked us to, but we are aware of that. But we will not leave, God willing, from this place, as I said, for as long as there are humanitarian services to be provided to our people in the northern Gaza Strip.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya in one of his last interviews before Israeli forces arrested him Friday in a raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital along with at least 240 others in a raid which left the hospital nonoperational.
Israel’s military alleged that Hamas militants were using Kamal Adwan Hospital. The World Health Organization is calling on Israel to end its attacks on Gaza hospitals. Earlier today, the World Health Organization’s chief, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, said, quote, “People in Gaza need access to health care. Humanitarians need access to provide health aid. Ceasefire!” Last week, World Health Organization spokesperson Dr. Margaret Harris was asked on Channel 4 News whether there is any evidence of the Israeli claim that the hospital is a Hamas stronghold.
DR. MARGARET HARRIS: So, whenever we send a mission, we go and we look at the health situation. Now, I’ve not had at any point our healthcare teams come back and say that they’ve got any concerns beyond the healthcare, but I should say that what we do is look at what the health situation is and what needs to be done. But all we’ve ever seen going on in that hospital is healthcare.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, for more, we go to Cairo, Egypt.
AMY GOODMAN: Nermeen, thanks so much. I am here with a man who knew Dr. Abu Safiya well and is in constant contact with people on the ground in Gaza, particularly the medical professionals. Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah is with us here, British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon. He worked last year in Gaza for almost — for over a month with MSF, Médecins Sans Frontières — that’s Doctors Without Borders — in two hospitals. He worked at Al-Shifa, the main hospital in Gaza, as well as Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital.
Welcome to Democracy Now! You’ve been in touch with family of Dr. Abu Safiya. If you can talk about where he is right now, believed to have been arrested by the Israeli military, and then the crisis just right now on the ground with the closing of Kamal Adwan and more?
DR. GHASSAN ABU–SITTAH: So, unfortunately, the family is afraid that he has been moved to the infamous Sde Teiman torture camp, an internment camp where, before him, Dr. Adnan al-Bursh was tortured, and tortured to death, Dr. Iyad Rantisi was tortured to death, where there is documented evidence of not just Israeli guards taking part in torture, but even Israeli doctors taking part in the torture of Palestinians. And so, that is the fear that not just the family has, but all of us have.
And what we’ve seen in this process, in this destruction, systematic destruction of the health system, with the total destruction of all of the hospitals in the north, so not just Kamal Adwan, before that, the Indonesian Hospital and Al-Awda Hospital, and, immediately after, the targeting of al-Wafa Hospital and then the targeting again of Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, which was the first hospital the Israelis targeted on the 17th of October. The targeting of al-Wafa Hospital was intended to kill medical students from Gaza’s Islamic University who were sitting in exam in that hospital. And luckily for them, the Israelis got the wrong floor. And then the targeting of Al-Ahli Hospital, which is now the last hospital functioning in that whole arbitrarily created northern part of Gaza, is a sign that the Israelis will now move towards the Ahli Hospital for destruction.
I just want to highlight there is research that is about to be published that shows that the chances of being killed as a nurse or a doctor in Gaza during this genocidal war is three-and-a-half times that of the general population. So it’s been obvious from the beginning that Israel has been wiping out a whole generation of health professionals in Gaza as a way of increasing the genocidal death toll but also of permanently making Gaza uninhabitable.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, you, of course, as we mentioned, as Amy mentioned in the introduction, you have worked in two Gaza hospitals. You’ve just talked a little bit about what’s recently — the recent Israeli attacks on medical infrastructure in Gaza, but if you could explain, just to give a sense of what’s happened overall since October 7th, 2023, if you could say the scale of the destruction of medical infrastructure, as well as the systematic attacks on medical personnel, as you said, this new research that’s coming out that shows that they’re three to four times more likely to be killed than the general population? So, if you could just say, begin from October 2023 to now?
DR. GHASSAN ABU–SITTAH: So, what happened on October the 12th is that the Israeli army started to call by phone medical directors of all of the hospitals, telling them that unless they evacuated the hospitals, the blood of the patients would be on their hands. And I remember that day I was with Dr. Ahmed Muhanna from Al-Awda Hospital, who’s still been arrested now for over a year, an anesthetist and a medical director, and he received a phone call from the Israeli army to tell him to evacuate Al-Awda Hospital.
Of course, we realized at that point that the destruction of the health system was going to be a prerequisite for the kind of ethnic cleansing that the Israelis wanted in Gaza. I was in Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital on the day of the 17th of October, when the Israelis bombed that hospital, killing over 480 patients. And then we had the whole narrative about Shifa Hospital, the siege of Shifa Hospital, the destruction of three pediatric hospitals in the north, and then the first attack on Shifa Hospital. And then, after that, 36 hospitals in Gaza have now been reduced to the three partially working hospitals in the south and only a remnant of Al-Ahli Hospital in the north. We have had over a thousand health workers — doctors, nurses, health professionals — killed, over 400 imprisoned, and then the destruction of the health infrastructure, the destruction of water and sewage, the use of water as a tool of collective punishment in order to create the public health catastrophe that exists in Gaza in terms of infectious diseases, and the intentional famine.
And so, at the moment, we have in Gaza what the doctors are referring to as the triad of death: hypothermia because of the winter, wounding because of the injuries, and malnutrition. And with the three, what happens is that people die of — at higher temperatures, people die of lesser injuries, because the coexistence of these three conditions means that the body is depleted of any physiological reserve. And so, that’s why we’re watching over seven kids in the last week die of hypothermia, an adult nurse die of hypothermia, not because the temperatures are subzero — the temperatures are just hovering above zero — but because they’re so malnourished and they’re injured and a lot of them have infectious diseases, and so they’re dying at the same time. Israel has created a genocidal machine that takes Palestinian lives beyond the injury, beyond the bombs, beyond the shrapnel. And so people are dying of infectious diseases. People are dying because of the health system has collapsed, and so their chronic diseases become medical emergencies. And people are dying from the famine and the malnutrition.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, in light of that, Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, if you could comment on the fact that so many people now, an increasing number of people, are questioning this death toll of 45,500, over that number who have been killed in Gaza since or who have died in Gaza since October 2023? People are saying that is a vast undercount. From what you’re saying, that seems almost certain. If you could comment as a medical professional? You know, what do you think might be a more accurate figure?
DR. GHASSAN ABU–SITTAH: So, 45,000 are people whose bodies were taken to a Ministry of Health hospital, and they were taken by people who witnessed or who recognized them, and a death certificate was issued. This 45,000 excludes the tens of thousands who are still under the rubble, more so in the north, where the emergency services were targeted by the Israelis and so are now completely unable to function. And so, we see pictures of dogs eating bodies of those killed in the streets. And so, not only people under the rubble, people who have been killed and not reported, or their bodies have not been retrieved. When you drop 2,000-pound bombs, there’s very little of the human body that is left. And so there are people who literally pulverized by these bombs.
Then you have those whose chronic illnesses, once untreated, became deadly, so the kidney dialysis patients, the heart disease patients, the diabetics, who were no longer able to get treatment. It doesn’t take into account the women who are dying from maternal care, from obstetric injuries during delivery, because they’re delivering in makeshift hospitals, they’re delivering in the tents, and they’re malnourished when they give birth, and so them and their babies have a higher rate of maternal mortality, of infant mortality. And then you have those who are dying of infectious diseases, of the thousands who have hepatitis at the moment, of the polio, and those who are dying not immediately from their injuries but from the wounds that do not have access to healthcare to stop the infection setting in, and then, eventually, the infection becoming sepsis and killing them.
The number is closer to 300,000. This is around 10 to 12% of Gaza’s population. France, at the end of the Second World War, 4% of its population were killed. This is literally and mathematically a genocidal project. This is not a political term. This is a literal and mathematical term, where you want to eliminate the population and to ensure that whoever is left is incapable of becoming part of a society, because they’re tending to their wounds or they’ve been so severely debilitated by the injuries and the neglected injuries.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Abu-Sittah, you have asked, “How can a live-streamed genocide continue unhindered?” What is your response to that question right now?
DR. GHASSAN ABU–SITTAH: Right now with the arrest of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, where is the British Medical Association? Where is the American Medical Association? Where are the royal colleges? Where are the French Medical Association? Western medical institutions, their moral bankruptcy has become so astounding during this genocide. For them to become part of a genocidal enablement apparatus, for their silence and, in a lot of times, their collusion to silence those who speak out against the genocide, for me, as a health professional, you’re shocked at how completely empty of any moral value these medical associations have become, when they have become complicit in a televised genocide which targets doctors.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, I’m speaking to you here in Cairo. In May, Germany did not allow you in to speak. You are a British Palestinian doctor. Since you were in Gaza last year, you’ve been speaking out about what’s happening. Explain exactly what happened. I mean, Human Rights Watch and other groups were demanding that this ban be lifted. They banned you from where?
DR. GHASSAN ABU–SITTAH: So, I was invited to speak at a conference in Germany. I was stopped at Berlin Airport and was told that I’m banned from going into Germany for a month, and I was deported at the end of that day back to the U.K. A few months later, I had an invitation from the French Senate. When I arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport, I discovered that the Germans, a few days after they deported me, had put in a ban for the whole of the Schengen — and Schengen is the EU plus Norway, plus Sweden, plus Switzerland — using an administrative law so that they wouldn’t have to put it in front of the judge. We then were able to challenge that and have it overturned.
But at the same time, pro-Israel groups, like UK Lawyers for Israel, submitted multiple complaints against me with the General Medical Council to have my medical license removed, submitted complaints against me with the Charity Commission in the U.K. to have me banned for life from ever holding office in a U.K. registered charity.
This is what — this is why this genocide has continued unhindered and unchallenged for over 14 months. There are apparatus of genocide enablement that exists in the West, either through collusion or by actively targeting. Over 60 doctors in the U.K. have had complaints against them with the General Medical Council to have their medical licenses removed as a result of their support of the Palestinians during the genocide.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Dr. Abu-Sittah, Jimmy Carter died yesterday at the age of 100. He wrote the book in the 2000s, which is quite amazing, but after he was president, Palestine: Peace [Not] Apartheid. I’m going to rejoin Nermeen for the end of the show, an interview I did with him on that issue. But your thoughts on President Carter?
DR. GHASSAN ABU–SITTAH: The logic of the relationship between the Zionist colonialist movement and the Palestinian Indigenous population has always been that of elimination. At a certain point — and that’s unfortunately now behind us since the 7th of October — apartheid separation was the chosen method of elimination of the Palestinians. On the 7th of October, the Israelis crossed that genocidal Rubicon that settler-colonial projects cross. And once the genocidal Rubicon is crossed, the elimination of the Indigenous population by the settler-colonial project then purely becomes genocidal. Israel, even at the end of this genocidal war in Gaza, will not be able to deal with the Palestinians in a nongenocidal way. Once the settler-colonial project becomes genocidal, it cannot undo itself. We’ve seen that in North America with the killing of the children in Canada. We’ve seen that in Australia. We’ve seen that everywhere.
AMY GOODMAN: And Carter, again, as we just have 30 seconds, writing the book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid?
DR. GHASSAN ABU–SITTAH: Well, Carter had a historic opportunity to change the course of this struggle, had he insisted that part of the Camp David Accords was the creation of a Palestinian state. And no amount of recantation will ever change that missed opportunity. He could have forced on the Israeli government, and the first right-wing Israeli government at that point, under Begin — he could have forced the creation of a Palestinian state, but he failed to do that.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And finally, Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, we just have 30 seconds. You just said that a genocidal settler-colonial project cannot undo itself. How do you see this ending, then?
DR. GHASSAN ABU–SITTAH: You see, the world has a choice, because surplus populations like the Palestinians, like refugees crossing the Mediterranean, like the poor people in the favelas and in the inner-city slums, these will either be dealt with through a genocidal project, as Israel has dealt with the Palestinians in Gaza — and this kind of response or this kind of template will become part of the military doctrine that is taught to armies across the world in dealing with these surplus populations.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, thank you so much for joining us, a British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon who worked in Gaza as a volunteer with Doctors without Borders treating patients at both Al-Shifa and Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital. Amy will rejoin us for our last segment talking about her interview with former President Jimmy Carter, who died Sunday at age 100.
But up next, we’ll speak to Israeli American scholar Omer Bartov, professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, who’s just back from Israel and says it’s carrying out a combination of, quote, “genocidal actions, ethnic cleansing and annexation of the Gaza Strip.” Back in a minute.
