Now I am thousands of miles away, but my mind is still stuck in Gaza. I think of my patients all the time. I think of their faces, their names, and the conversations we shared. They occupy my thoughts regularly, and I wonder: Are they still alive, or did they succumb to their injuries, or to famine? I am stuck in the day I had to perform amputations on six children. I am stuck in the days that I had to work after receiving the news of colleagues, who I saw or worked with hours before, being killed.
After more than 200 days of this genocide, I keep thinking “surely we’ve seen it all”, and then a new atrocity is uncovered. Hospitals have been turned into rubble. They became sites of mass graves of Palestinians murdered in cold blood by Israeli forces, hands tied behind their backs. The heinous crimes committed at al-Shifa and Nasser hospitals were streamed live to our screens, but the world watched silently. Israel has faced no accountability. Countries, and academic institutions, continue to support and defend Israel. Many continue to provide it with weapons.
I completed my medical education at the University of Glasgow, ironically one of the biggest academic investors in companies that continue to sell arms to Israel. I decided to return to my alma mater and stand in the elections for the position of rector because I knew that the university’s position on Israel did not reflect the views of its students who overwhelmingly wanted to end the institution’s complicity in the mass slaughter of Palestinians. I won the election with an overwhelming 80 percent of the vote, and the students welcomed me to my new role with an outpouring of love and support.
As a result of my victory, my media appearances, and calls for accountability and justice, I have been the target of several smear campaigns and the subject of several articles that make unfounded claims about me. I was even denied entry to Germany, detained for three hours and ultimately deported. I was going there simply to speak at a conference.
I cannot comprehend the horror of the moment we live in. A genocide is taking place live on TV – a genocide in which many states, politicians and respected institutions are complicit.
Over 34,000 Palestinians have been murdered by Israel, many more have been maimed and Gaza has been bombed to rubble. Israel says it will move ahead with its planned ground invasion of Rafah, which will be disastrous for hundreds of thousands of people sheltering there. Multiple cases have been launched against Israel and its allies at the International Court of Justice. Yet Israel continues to act with a sense of complete impunity.
Israel has dismantled all parts of life in Gaza: destroying bakeries, schools, mosques and churches; blocking humanitarian aid and restricting electricity. It has done so to ensure that Gaza becomes uninhabitable even after a ceasefire. When Israeli soldiers first broke into al-Shifa Hospital they destroyed medical equipment and machinery to ensure that the hospital could not function. Now, little remains of the hospital itself.
Despite being thousands of miles away my heart and mind remain in Gaza, and to the dismay of the cheerleaders of genocide, I will never stop advocating for justice and accountability
Poster Comment:
Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah is the co-director of the Conflict Medicine Program at the American University of Beirut.