An open letter from
@FerozeSidhwa
& I as we serve on a humanitarian mission in Gaza, you can read the letter in image form or read the 🧵:
On March 25 the two of us, an orthopedic surgeon and a trauma surgeon, traveled to the Gaza Strip to work at Gaza European Hospital.
We urge anyone who reads this to publicly oppose sending weapons to Israel as long as this genocide continues, until the Israeli siege of Gaza is lifted, and until an end to the occupation can be negotiated.
@linzibee
@ParisDaguerre
Would you accept someone cutting a hole in your neck to attach your ventilator or perhaps zipping up the body bag of your significant others?
As humanitarian surgeons we thought we had seen all manner of cruelty in the world, but neither one of us has ever experienced anything like what we found when we arrived in Gaza.
We exited the van into a sea of children, all shorter and thinner than they ought to have been.
Israel has dropped so much American ordinance on Gaza that it now exceeds the explosive force of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. More children have been killed in Gaza than were killed in all war zones in the entire world in the past four years.
We walked through the wards and immediately found evidence of horrifying violence deliberately directed at civilians and even children. A three-year-old boy shot in the head, a 12-year-old girl shot through the chest, an ICU nurse shot through the abdomen...
Voltaire quipped that “no snowflake feels responsible for the avalanche”, but we as Americans must acknowledge that we are responsible for this crime against humanity that is unfolding in front of the entire world.
No conflict of any size in history has ever been this deadly to journalists, healthcare workers, or paramedics. Indeed, we and our entire team live in constant fear that Israel will attack this hospital directly, as it has with so many others.
We made the short journey from the Rafah crossing to Khan Younis, where Gaza European Hospital stands as one of the last remaining semi-functional hospitals for the 2.5 million human beings - half of them children - in the Gaza Strip.
Now we know the pain of being unable to properly treat a child who will slowly die, but also alone, because she is the only surviving member of an entire extended family. We have not had the heart to tell these children how their families died: burnt...
Even over their screams of joy at meeting new foreigners, the snowmobile-like hum of Israeli drones could be heard overhead. That background noise is a constant reminder that violence and death can rain down on anyone at any time in this besieged and ransacked territory.
It leads to Gaza European Hospital & to 2 trauma surgeons realizing that the blood on the floor of the trauma bay & the operating room is dripping from our own hands, as we provide the crucial funding, weapons, & diplomatic support for a genocidal assault on a helpless population
The two of us continue to hope against hope that American politicians, and especially President Biden, will abandon their support for Israel’s war on the Palestinians. If they do not, then we have learned nothing from the history of the past hundred years.
...powerful explosion. The timing of these explosions always coincides with “iftar”, when families in this overwhelmingly Muslim county break the daily fast of Ramadan and are most vulnerable.
Our limited sleep is constantly interrupted by explosions that shake the hospital’s walls and pop our ears, even well after the United Nations Security Council declared a ceasefire must be implemented. When warplanes scream overhead everyone braces for a particularly loud and...
The United States has heavily funded and overwhelmingly armed what is called “the occupation” of Palestine, but the term is misleading. Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, declared that the existence of the Palestinians was simply “a matter of no consequence.”
As humanitarian trauma surgeons we have both seen incredible suffering.Collectively we were present at Ground Zero on 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the Boston Marathon Bombing, and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti on the first day of these disasters.
...of dirt & debris. With the environment literally embedded in our patients’ bodies we have found infection control to be impossible. No amount of medical care could ever compensate for the damage being inflicted here.
This long experience taught us that there was no greater pain as a humanitarian surgeon than being unable to provide needed care to a patient. But that was before coming to Gaza.
Thirty years later, Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan told the Israeli cabinet that the Palestinians “would continue to live like dogs…and we will see where this process leads.” Now we know: this is where it leads.
...all by some of the best-trained marksmen in the world. Every square inch of the hospital’s floor is taken up with makeshift tents where displaced families live. They are the lucky several hundred who get to live indoors...
... until they resembled blistered hotdogs more than human beings, shredded to pieces such that they can only be buried in mass graves, or simply entombed in their former apartment buildings to die slowly of asphyxia and sepsis.
We have worked in the depravation of southern Zimbabwe and the horrors of the war in Ukraine. Together we have worked on more than 40 surgical missions in developing countries on three continents in our combined 57 years of volunteering.
...unlike the tens of thousands sheltering outside on the hospital’s grounds.
As we got to work we were shocked by the violence inflicted on people. Incredibly powerful explosives ripped apart rock, floors, & walls & threw them through human bodies, penetrating skin with waves...
“We cry and hurt with the people of Gaza and Palestine”
Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss decried the Israel’s ongoing onslaught on Gaza at the European Summit for Palestine in Istanbul, refuting the claim that the war is in the name of Judaism.
#zionism
#israelpalestineconflict
#gaza
If a rat is found inside of an Israeli orphanage, would Netanyahu burn down the entire orphanage and incinerate all of the children within it merely to exterminate the single rat? Hamas is 0.01% of Gaza & the extermination of its population is a genocidal war crime.
Al Jazeera banned in Israel. It has never been more important to support independent journalism so that the truth of what is happening in Gaza can be presented to international criminal courts. Plz support independent journalism by sharing and donating.
Above are just a small percentage of the patients I saw just this week. The carnage inflicted by the IDF is immeasurable and it is both purely genocidal and paid for exclusively by United States and German tax dollars. Mia culpa.
Alba Silva flew into Honduras from Ecuador where we are doing surgery this week. I haven’t seen her since she was 5 years old when I separated 8 of her fingers that were fused together. She returned my investment into her and so today, DOCTOR Alba Silva became my colleague!!
This 85-year-old anesthesiologist has been helping me since I had arrived in Honduras. Although he had retired 20 years ago, he has volunteered every day since then to help the children. My new hero!
Tomorrow I head home from San Pedro Sula with many new friends! Thanks to all of you who helped us care for the hearts attached to the 28 hands and 4 feet we operated on!
@SenFettermanPA
I am an American surgeon of Jewish heritage and I worked in Gaza witnessing the genocide firsthand. I can only pray that people in power like you base their decisions on genuine facts and not your AIPAC funded bias.
@DrEliDavid
You’re as much a physician as Josef Mengele. All fighters are treated preferentially. The famine was caused by your food deprivation, מְטוּמטָם
@DrEliDavid
@shlomo_karhi
Shutting down media has always been the tool of fascist governments such as Netanyahu’s, which is trying to be a theocracy while pretending to be a democracy.
@Kahlissee
Below is an orthopedic surgeon who was shot in the knee, while refusing to leave his patient in the operating room when ordered to do so by an IDF soldier.
@texastoughgirl1
Muslims fought in the US revolution. They were here probably before your ancestors. You stand as proof that bigotry and stupidity are symbiotic.
Many thanks to the Pacira Corp. for their benevolent donation of Exparel. Their generosity will be measured by the countless tears that were never shed!
Expanding global surgery efforts into low and middle income countries that have limited or no postoperative pain medication resources presents a unique problem that the Picara Corporation steps up to solve with amazing benevolence.
@DrEliDavid
70% of my surviving family is Jewish! I am hardly anti-Semitic, but I am anti-Zionist! I am anti-Netanyahu and the right wing politic that keeps them in power.
My attached photograph should make the IDF’s job easier:
@kawilliams2021
AOA is meaningless and no patient has ever asked me where I did my residency or fellowship! Patients will measure only what matters. So should we. Remember, “Dr.” Scott Atlas is a division Chief at Stanford!
@BenMFreeman
“We cry and hurt with the people of Gaza and Palestine”
Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss decried the Israeli state’s ongoing onslaught on Gaza at the European Summit for Palestine refuting the claim that the war is in the name of Judaism.
#zionism
#israelpalestineconflict
#gaza
@DrLoupis
Again today I have seen firsthand the carnage inflicted on innocent woman and children in Gaza. You are not a gift. You suck up my tax dollars under the pretense of adding security to the Middle East when you are the major source of its bloodshed.
@markshrime
@SenFettermanPA
As a surgeon working in Gaza, and I’ve personally seen 100 of the 20,000 children shredded by IDF bombs! If a rat enters an orphanage in Tel Aviv, will Netanyahu burn down the entire orphanage incinerating all the children, or just simply remove the rat?
@kawilliams2021
1/2 Trust me, being a member of AOA has contributed nothing to my professional life or happiness. “Achieving” the residency program of your choice… Equally nothing!
@DrEliDavid
And may be America should reconsider selling everything to Israel! Where would your Air Force be if it wasn’t for us? Who in the hell do you think funded your iron dome? Israel would be weak and doomed. If it wasn’t for my taxpayer dollars which now go to slaughter children.
@BenMFreeman
“We cry and hurt with the people of Gaza and Palestine”
Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss decried the Israel’s ongoing onslaught on Gaza at the European Summit for Palestine in Istanbul, refuting the claim that the war is in the name of Judaism.
#zionism
#israelpalestineconflict
#gaza
@MonikLam2
@MSF
Helicopter, machine guns and bombs have been shredding innocent civilians all day outside of this Gaza hospital. I am now in the ER, which is filled with mutilated women and children.
@DrEliDavid
As I sit in the operating room in Gaza at this very moment, I hear Apache gunships shooting their machine guns into noncombatant neighborhoods. Abraham is crying.
@ponyandshark
@MSF
If a rat enters an orphanage, do you burn down the whole orphanage and incinerate all of the children just to kill the rat? “Oh, but you knew the rat was there children, why didn’t you say something?“
@ProudJew001
All the Jews of the world unite! We should recognize in unison that we are responsible for the needless murder of Palestinian children. The attached photograph should make their job easier:
@LAnative4ever
@ProudJew001
And if your parents were still alive as surgeons, they can help me so together the 100 children that were shredded by Israeli bombs just this week. How contradictory you are.
@ProudJew001
Standing with Israel does not mean that you have to stand with your right wing government committing genocide. I am an American surgeon of Jewish heritage, and I see every day the atrocities that both of our countries are committing. Don’t be blinded by Netanyahu‘s bullshit.