“This Militaristic Approach Has Been a Failure”: Meet Hala Rharrit, First U.S. Diplomat to Quit over Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
MAY 03, 2024
Democracy Now! speaks with Hala Rharrit, the first State Department diplomat to publicly resign over the Biden administration’s policies backing Israel’s assault and siege of the Gaza Strip. Rharrit is an 18-year career diplomat who served as the Arabic-language spokesperson for the State Department in the region. “I could no longer be a part of the State Department and promote this policy. It’s an inhumane policy. It’s a failed policy that is helping neither Palestinians, neither Israelis,” Rharrit says. “We are not authorized to send military equipment, weapons to countries that commit human rights abuses. ICJ has determined plausible genocide, yet we are still sending billions upon billions of not just defensive weaponry, but offensive weaponry. It is tantamount to a violation of domestic law. Many diplomats know it. Many diplomats are scared to say it.” She adds, “I read the talking points that we were supposed to promote on Arab media. A lot of them were dehumanizing to Palestinians.” Rharrit also discusses how “corruption” in government allows for arms sales to continue. “I could not help but be concerned about the influence of special interest groups, of lobbying groups on our foreign policy and, as well, on Congress — on the people that decide whether or not some of those shipments of arms get sent. The bottom line is that our politicians should not be profiting from war. And unfortunately, we have some institutionalized corruption that enables that,” she says.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Israel has killed at least 26 Palestinians in Gaza over the past day, including at least seven people, four of them children, in an airstrike on Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza, where over 1.4 million Palestinians have sought refuge. Nearly 35,000 Palestinians have been killed over the past nearly seven months, with 7,000 others missing and believed to be buried under the rubble. Nearly 78,000 have been wounded.
A new United Nations report called the level of casualties in Gaza “unprecedented” in such a short period of time. The report also said the world has not seen the level of destruction of housing in Gaza since World War II.
Here in the United States, a massive student protest movement with Gaza solidarity encampments in university campuses across the country has been met with public raids, mass arrests and violence. Nearly 2,200 people have been arrested at 43 colleges and universities in recent weeks. President Joe Biden addressed the protests Thursday for the first time in weeks in unscheduled remarks from the White House.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Dissent is essential to democracy, but dissent must never lead to disorder or to denying the rights of others so students can finish the semester and their college education. Look, it’s basically a matter of fairness. It’s a matter of what’s right. There’s the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos.
AMY GOODMAN: As President Biden concluded his remarks, he was asked whether the student protests would prompt him to reconsider his foreign policy.
REPORTER: Mr. President, have the protests forced you to reconsider any of the policies with regard to the region?
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: No.
AMY GOODMAN: The Biden administration’s financial, military and diplomatic backing of Israel’s assault on Gaza has sparked dissent within the U.S. government, with resignations and walkouts by government employees.
Today we’re joined by the first State Department diplomat to publicly resign over the war on Gaza. Hala Rharrit is an 18-year career diplomat who recently resigned from the State Department. She’s the third State Department employee, but the first Foreign Service officer, to do so. Hala Rharrit served as the Arabic-language spokesperson for the State Department in the region. She joins us now in her first TV interview since her resignation.
Hala Rharrit, welcome to Democracy Now!
HALA RHARRIT: Thank you so much, Amy. It’s an honor to be with you.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you start off by talking about why you have publicly resigned?
HALA RHARRIT: Absolutely. Honestly, I wasn’t intending to publicly resign. I was intending to resign. My profile at the Dubai Media Hub, my last assignment, was quite high-profile. My role was to speak to Arab media about American policy, so it inevitably made the news when I did resign. It first made the news, I believe, here in the region and in the United States.
But the reason why I resigned is really because I could no longer be a part of the State Department and promote this policy. It’s an inhumane policy. It’s a failed policy that is helping neither Palestinians, neither Israelis. And I want to stress that point, that it’s not strictly the horrific mass killings that we have all been watching over the course of over 200 days, the targeting of journalists, of healthcare workers, over 14,000 children massacred, but it’s also not keeping Israelis any safer. The hostages are still in Gaza. Israelis know that there is going to be a vicious cycle of violence after so many have been killed in Gaza. This does not help anyone.
And the militaristic policy is not the solution. As a diplomat, as someone that believes in diplomacy, in the power of diplomacy, I did everything I could from within to try to explain this on a daily basis, through reports, through cables. Nothing was working, until finally I made the decision that I could no longer be part of the system.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you feel President Biden and your boss at the State Department, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, could do right now that would be most effective?
HALA RHARRIT: They need to abide by national domestic law and international law. We have systems in place within the State Department to ensure situations like this don’t happen. We are not authorized to send military equipment, weapons to countries that commit human rights abuses. ICJ has determined plausible genocide, yet we are still sending billions upon billions of not just defensive weaponry, but offensive weaponry. It is tantamount to a violation of domestic law. Many diplomats know it. Many diplomats are scared to say it. It’s a violation of international law, what we’ve been seeing happening in Gaza.
And we cannot make exceptions for our allies. It does not help our allies to make exceptions, because, again, all that this is doing is creating a vicious cycle of violence. And it has clearly failed its objectives. It has failed. The hostages are still not back with their families where they belong. The situation in Gaza remains intensely unstable. People continue to suffer on a daily basis.
It’s time for President Biden and Secretary Blinken to realize that this militaristic approach has been a failure and they need to stop. They need to abide by U.S. law, and doing so will create a lot of leverage. If we are able to condition military aid, we will be able to pressure Israel. We will also be able to work with our Arab allies to pressure Hamas, to have real, substantive change on the ground. That’s what’s necessary at this time, not more arms.
AMY GOODMAN: Why do you think President Biden does not do that? As he says he’s heartbroken by the number of casualties and he says he admonishes the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, clearly the arms flow continues, Washington Post, New York Times reporting on, you know, the well over 100 arms transfers that are made, or arms sales, just under the threshold that would require Congress to approve it.
HALA RHARRIT: Absolutely. You make a very good point, Amy. Right under the threshold, willfully enabling the crimes that are happening in Gaza. And that’s why I could no longer be part of the State Department, because it’s willful.
It’s a very difficult answer to give you, and it’s one question that I ask myself every single day: Why doesn’t President Biden act? Why doesn’t Secretary Blinken act? If I had the answer to that, perhaps I — you know, I’d be somewhere else right now. I’d be within the system still trying to effect change.
But the bottom line to me and what it appeared like to me from within the system, and also as a spokesperson who was reading the talking points, is that, fundamentally, an Israeli life was not worth — or, a Palestinian life was not worth the same as an Israeli life. And it’s heartbreaking for me to say that as someone that has proudly served my country for 18 years. But I read the talking points that we were supposed to promote on Arab media. A lot of them were dehumanizing to Palestinians. Thirty-four thousand people killed in Gaza right now, and we’re still insisting that this is the only option, when it’s not.
Also, as a diplomat, I could not help but be concerned about the influence of special interests, of the arms lobby, of other special interests that serve foreign governments. It is very, very frustrating when you’re working on a daily basis on American foreign policy, but you know that no matter what you do and no matter what very senior officials in the department are doing, and despite all of the recommendations going up to Washington from the field, the policy is not changing. I could not help but be concerned about the influence of special interest groups, of lobbying groups on our foreign policy and, as well, on Congress — on the people that decide whether or not some of those shipments of arms get sent. The bottom line is that our politicians should not be profiting from war. And unfortunately, we have some institutionalized corruption that enables that. And as an American diplomat, my concern was U.S. national security interest. And I protested against this, but unfortunately could not effect enough change, that I had to submit my resignation.
AMY GOODMAN: You mentioned institutionalized corruption. Can you explain that further, Hala?
HALA RHARRIT: It is public knowledge that our politicians are able to profit significantly from the arms industry, from campaign contributions. That is something that is never allowed for a diplomat. We have no ability to gain any financial gain from anything, really. Everything has to be very transparent for us. We obviously have secret — top-secret security clearances. Our lives are really open book when we’re a diplomat. And that’s how it should be, because we’re serving our country. We’re not serving ourselves. We’re serving the people of the United States. We’re implementing the laws of the land. And it should be for the sake of U.S. national security, not for personal gain, not for campaign contributions. And as a diplomat, it was very concerning to me knowing that our domestic system clearly has an influence on our foreign policy, because we were not being heard.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about how the administration, to the highest levels, Blinken and, of course, ultimately, Biden, respond to criticism and how much they hear. The latest news, among a lot of other reports, more than 250 former staffers in the Obama administration and campaign workers for the Obama-Biden ticket sent a letter to their former bosses demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and calling for the U.S. to end its staunch support for Israel. You then have the number of people who have resigned publicly and more privately. I’m wondering their response to you? But have you spoken directly with President Biden, with Tony Blinken, the secretary of State, your, well, previous boss?
HALA RHARRIT: Did you ask, Amy, if I’ve spoken to them directly?
AMY GOODMAN: Yes.
HALA RHARRIT: I have not spoken to them directly, I mean, not in this particular occasion. I have in the past for Secretary Blinken, but not for this particular occasion. But what we do as diplomats is we send reporting. We send information back. That’s why we are overseas in our embassies and our consulates. And our job is to try to help Washington in making informed decisions. We do that. And we do hear from Secretary Blinken. We do hear about a culture of “We want to hear about dissent. We want to hear critical feedback.”
I can tell you that, for me, it was a mixed bag. I provided that critical feedback. I provided daily reports, for example, showing what pan-Arab media was covering in terms of the Gaza crisis, showing how American — there was growing anti-Americanism. Every single day, I could see growing anti-Americanism, which was extremely concerning. And I was trying to raise this on a daily basis to Washington, explaining we need to change course, this is hurting our own national security interests if we maintain this policy. And I was met with silencing. I was met with being sidelined. I was also met with “Thank you for your critical feedback. This is going to the highest levels of our government. We need more of this.” I was met with more silencing, more sidelining. So, for me, it was really a mixed bag.
And I have to be honest that there were people that were trying to ensure that those messages were heard, but at the end of the day and what was the most frustrating is that, in particular, with my particular role as Arabic spokesperson, I explained that our messaging posture was hurting more so than helping us, yet our messaging posture never changed. We’re still using the talking points directed to the Arab world even if it’s inflaming the tensions, even if it’s instigating people across the region, even if it’s making people across the region hate us more and be more frustrated with us, because they hear the double standard. They hear the double standard when we condemn an attack on Israeli interests, but we don’t condemn the death of Palestinians, only show concern. They are very, very in tune with these double standards. And it hurt us to continue to amplify these talking points. And it was very frustrating for me that there was the continued expectation that we would do that despite all of the data, despite the clear proof that it’s not helping America, it’s hurting America.
AMY GOODMAN: You refused to comment — you were the Arabic-language spokesperson to the Arab world. You refused to comment on U.S. policy in Gaza. Can you explain why you made that decision?
HALA RHARRIT: Absolutely. Just as I mentioned right now, I made it abundantly clear, through daily reports, of the ramifications of our messaging. Abundantly clear. I showed every day what was happening, what the reaction was. And I also was monitoring Arab social media and sharing with Washington the images that were going viral across Arab social media. And these — thank you, as well, Amy, for amplifying the voices of the Palestinian families at the top of the hour. Those are things that sometimes Washington does not hear. But it is what the Arab public is consuming on a daily basis. And these pictures of dead children, of maimed toddlers, they’re traumatizing. And my point back was, “Look at these images that people in this part of the world are consuming on a daily basis.”
There is an absolute disconnect with what people in the Arab world are seeing happening in Gaza and our talking points. There’s an utter disconnect. And it does not serve our interest to continue pretending like what’s happening in Gaza is not happening, and we keep promoting things that are just instigating. So, my role was to be a spokesperson, but I also believe my role to be to serve the United States, to advance American interests, to have effective messaging, not just messaging. And I could not in good conscience do something and go out on Arab TV knowing that it was hurting my country doing that, not helping it.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain more specifically, because this is a serious, important critique and charge, that the president, that the secretary of state are actually endangering U.S. national security with the position and the support of Israel that they are taking right now.
HALA RHARRIT: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, we had three of our troops killed in Jordan. That was in direct reaction to our Israel policy. And when that happened, I said, again, “I will not be part of this.” And then, if an attack happens on American interests in the region, I would not be able to sleep at night, because my face on that screen, on that Arab news channel, may have been the thing that prompted the person to go and retaliate or commit an act of terror.
The anger in the region is palpable, and it is traumatic. When people are consuming daily images of massacres, of people suffering, and yet they hear that the United States is willfully enabling it by continuing to send bombs, it makes people lose complete faith in the United States. And this is what was so painful to me as an American diplomat. I’ve worked for the last 18 years to strengthen ties between the United States and other countries, to advance U.S. interests, to promote America’s image. But this policy made it impossible. How can we talk about press freedom when we remain willfully silent about the killings of so many journalists? I mean, I personally worked to try to get a statement out on the killing of journalists in Gaza, and I was met with so much pushback. And I was so shocked at my own colleagues that would push back on that. It is a fundamental American value to be promoting freedom of press. We cannot have exceptions. We cannot have double standards.
As American diplomats, we need to apply our values, our standards on the situation. That is what we are supposed to be about. And until we do that, we are hurting — I keep on repeating this word, but I fundamentally believe it, and it’s a concern of mine that I expressed over the course of months. We are hurting ourselves, not just the Palestinians and not just the Israelis, but we’re hurting the United States of America.
AMY GOODMAN: You are publicly resigning, but there are others who have simply resigned, saying they don’t think they’re important enough to announce that they are resigning. Can you talk about the number of people who have left and also who have expressed, like you have, through the official channels, going all the way up, your concern?
HALA RHARRIT: I actually don’t know of any others that have resigned within the Foreign Service. There may be, and I may not know about them, but I do not know of any others, other than Josh and Annelle, who are not Foreign Service officers but were Washington-based, that have resigned. But I know for sure that a lot of people expressed frustrations of wanting to resign.
And I know this mostly from after my own resignation was announced internally. It was quite a surprise to me. I did not know how people would react to me, honestly, when I was still on the inside, because my resignation was announced internally before it became public externally. And at that point, so many people approached me and talked about how they’ve been so frustrated with the policy. They felt like they couldn’t say anything. They felt like they couldn’t do anything. They were worried about their careers. They were worried about if they spoke up internally, what would that do to them? And it was very disheartening to hear. It’s not what the State Department is supposed to be about. Many told me that they wished they could resign, because they really could not keep maintaining every single day under this policy, but that they couldn’t for financial reasons, for other considerations related to their families.
And so, it is a sad time within the department, as far as I’m concerned, and I can only share of my experience, of course. The State Department is a very large institution, but I can tell you, after 18 years of service, you get to know a lot of members of the diplomatic corps. And it’s an unprecedented time. It’s very uneasy. And I think everyone wakes up hoping that the next day will be better. But we really do need some fundamental changes to this policy, because it is such a failed policy that is just hurting all parties involved.
AMY GOODMAN: And your response to President Biden speaking out yesterday for the first time on the college campus unrest, the thousands of students who have been arrested — also professors have been arrested — saying that that protest across the country has no effect on his foreign policy?
HALA RHARRIT: Honestly, I was intensely disappointed that he would speak about constituents in that way, that he would speak about voters in that way, that he would speak about Americans in that way. He is supposed to be a representative of the people.
And the fact that these students have been dismissed, these students have been labeled — the bottom line is, I think there is a fundamental generational shift in not just the United States, but globally, because these students, much like people across this region, have been consuming on a daily basis the images coming straight out of Gaza. They’ve been seeing on their social media feeds the children that have been dying of starvation. They are seeing on their social media feeds the bloody toddlers that are being carried with an arm blown off. They’re seeing this on a daily basis. And it took them seven months to rise. If President Biden, if Secretary Blinken had solved this crisis, there would have been no student protests.
The buck stops with the president. Again, I’m going to say it: It is a failed policy. It has not succeeded in bringing home the hostages. It has not succeeded in making Israelis safer. And when students are seeing a potential, plausible, ongoing genocide, they are reacting to it. They are reacting to the fact that their academic institutions may be financially invested in the killings of innocent people in Gaza. They’re reacting to the fact that their governments — that their government is continuing to enable the killing of innocent civilians. And it is a fundamental democratic right in the First Amendment. And it was very, very disheartening to hear the president just dismissing them that way without even addressing the source of their concerns.
Of course, I am absolutely against any type of violence on campus or anywhere else. It should be inclusive. No students, regardless of their religion, of their race, of ethnicity, need to be targeted whatsoever, and that is clear, and that should go without saying. But it is also clear that there was so much community in these protests. There were Jewish students with Muslim students, with Christian students, with atheists, with agnostics — it doesn’t really matter. People were unified in calling for an end to the carnage and an end to the violence. And suppressing them in such a violent manner is horrific. And it’s also not necessary. Again, as a diplomat, I fundamentally don’t believe in solving conflicts through arms or through violence. I believe in sitting down and talking with individuals, sitting down and negotiating, not in suppression.
AMY GOODMAN: Hala Rharrit, I thank you so much for being with us. Hala Rharrit is the first State Department diplomat to resign over the Biden administration’s Gaza policy. She is an 18-year career diplomat. This is her first television interview since resigning.
Coming up, we speak with two doctors just back from volunteering at the largest functioning hospital in Gaza. Stay with us.
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AMY GOODMAN: “A Place to Stay” by Sam Burton, Palestinian American singer-songwriter form Salt Lake City, dedicated this song to his Palestinian father.
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“Dead on Arrival”: Doctors Back from Gaza Describe Horrific Hospital Scenes, Decimated Health System
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
MAY 03, 2024
Transcript
Nearly seven months of constant bombardment, siege and obstruction of aid deliveries have annihilated the healthcare system in Gaza. Last week, the Palestinian Health Ministry said that around 600,000 Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip no longer have access to any kind of healthcare. The World Health Organization has said that Israel is “systematically dismantling” the health system in Gaza. Only 11 hospitals out of 36 hospitals in Gaza are partially functioning. At both of Gaza’s largest hospitals, Al-Shifa and Nasser, Palestinians found hundreds of bodies buried in mass graves after Israel raided and destroyed the facilities. Democracy Now! speaks with Dr. Ismail Mehr and Dr. Azeem Elahi just after they volunteered at the largest hospital still operating in Gaza, the European Hospital in Khan Younis. “The healthcare system has been always in a noose, and that noose tightens at times when there’s conflict,” says Mehr. “Right now that noose has completely just hung the healthcare system.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
Nearly seven months of constant bombardment, siege and obstruction of aid deliveries have annihilated the healthcare system in Gaza. Last week, the Palestinian Health Ministry said around 600,000 Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip no longer have access to any kind of healthcare. The World Health Organization has said that Israel is, quote, “systematically dismantling” the health system in Gaza. Save the Children has reported Israel’s attacks on the healthcare sector in Gaza, at the rate of 73 attacks per month, are higher than in any other recent conflict in the world.
Only 11 hospitals out of 36 hospitals in Gaza are partially functioning. In April, Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa in Gaza City in the north, was completely destroyed following a two-week siege by Israeli forces. Then, Gaza’s second-largest hospital, Nasser Hospital, was also destroyed following another brutal siege by Israeli forces in Khan Younis. After their withdrawals, Palestinians found hundreds of bodies buried in mass graves at both hospitals.
Now the largest hospital remaining partially operating in Gaza is the European Hospital in Khan Younis. Like so many other hospitals, it’s also sheltering thousands of displaced Palestinians.
We’re joined now by two doctors just back from Gaza who volunteered at the European Hospital. Dr. Ismail Mehr is an anesthesiologist and chair of the nonprofit IMANA Medical Relief, which focuses on disaster relief. Dr. Mehr has participated in over 35 medical missions globally, has been to Gaza five times dating back to the 2008-2009 war. He’s joining us from Hornell, New York. And joining us from Charlotte, North Carolina, is Dr. Azeem Elahi, a pulmonary and critical care physician who was part of the team of doctors volunteering at European Hospital with Medical Relief. Dr. Elahi has participated in several humanitarian medical mission trips to various parts of the world, was previously in Gaza in 2019.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Dr. Mehr, let’s begin with you. Describe what you saw.
DR. ISMAIL MEHR: First of all, thank you, Amy, for having both of us.
And describe what I saw, a very common question. Immediately when we entered and in the mornings went to go to work, the first sight was all the amputees, the children, from children through the adults. Seeing the number of amputees, double amputees, with 30,000 people living outside or inside that hospital, was our first sights, the first thing that we saw. And, you know, my experience in Gaza — this was my fifth time there — I had never seen something like this, including my visits to Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen in the past, you know, conflict zones, areas under tense circumstances. I have never seen this number of amputees, destruction, and people just seeking refuge. It was an experience like no other.
AMY GOODMAN: If you can tell us about a few cases and also talk about patients coming from other hospitals and what you heard about Nasser and Shifa, this horrifying report we got in the last week of mass graves discovered at both major hospitals?
DR. ISMAIL MEHR: Yeah, you know, you make a lot of friends as you travel back and forth to Gaza, I mean, people that I was deathly sick and worried about if they were still alive. And when I was at European Gaza Hospital, I ran into some of my friends. I saw them there. They had shifted down from the north. And they shared some of the horrors of Shifa Hospital. They shared that they were there when forces came in, and some of the stories and what took place. And they shared with me the, you know, people that were friends of ours that had passed away, like Dr. Mehdat, the plastic surgeon who was killed. And Dr. Ahmed, a young plastic surgeon, and his mother were killed at Shifa, and their bodies were found there. They shared those stories with us. And we paused, and we grieved, and then we got back to work.
Patients, you know, Yassin, 11-year-old boy, was a double amputee. He’s 11 years old. You know, I have children. Those watching have children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews. Imagine your 11-year-old family member losing both his legs. And now in Gaza there were only two prosthetic centers that would help these amputees throughout the Gaza Strip, and those no longer exist.
And as you mentioned earlier a systematic dismantling of healthcare, you know, we saw it. We incurred it. Every night we would hear the bombings, the strikes, the drones, the artillery. And like clockwork, myself and Dr. Azeem and my other two colleagues, Dr. Shazia and Dr. Shariq, would know it’s time for us to get to the emergency department. And we would work long hours, into the early-morning hours, helping the local doctors at European Gaza Hospital try to save lives as mass casualties would come in. Some would be dead on arrival, and then some would die while we were working on them, and then others we’d be able to save. And, you know, as we started the show earlier about the recent bombing strike in Rafah, it brought back vivid memories, like, and I could recall myself and Azeem in that emergency department going through what takes place.
And to follow up, yes, European Gaza Hospital is the only tertiary, only high-level hospital remaining. It is not a massively huge hospital like Shifa was or Nasser was. And now when strikes take place in other places, there is no place that can stabilize or take care of such mass casualties besides European Gaza Hospital. So, from Rafah, they’re brought to European Gaza Hospital, which is probably about five to eight kilometers probably, and then receive care. So, you know, this is life in Gaza as a healthcare worker right now trying to deal with all this.
AMY GOODMAN: This is a short video your team filmed of some of the children and people taking shelter inside European Hospital. Many of them have set up makeshift tents in the hallways.
DOCTOR: Another day in EGH, Islamic — how are you?
PALESTINIAN CHILD 1: How are you?
PALESTINIAN CHILD 2: How are you?
DOCTOR: Hey!
PALESTINIAN CHILD 3: How are you?
PALESTINIAN CHILD 4: How are you?
DOCTOR: These are people, they’re living in the hospitals.
PALESTINIAN CHILD 5: How are you?
DOCTOR: Probably another 20,000 at least outside. Hey. How are you? So, they’ve lost everything.
PALESTINIAN CHILD 6: How are you?
DOCTOR: They live in the hospitals. They’re not patients. They make makeshifts on the side. There’s people up on the stairs like this. This is life in Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s inside European Hospital. Dr. Azeem Elahi, if you can describe the atmosphere, not only the patients, but the people taking refuge, and then what people are dying of? You’ve got the airstrikes directly, but then you also have disease, and you have this imminent famine. Talk about that, Dr. Elahi.
DR. AZEEM ELAHI: Amy, thank you for inviting us to share our experience.
I was listening to that clip in my ears, and immediately a smile came on my face, just because it took me back to those moments when we’d walk through the hallways. It’s as equally happy as it is sad, because these are displaced people who have arrived to the hospital for shelter, for electricity, for food, with broken families. When you sit down and actually interact with the people that you encounter in these corridors, you realize very quickly that the families are extended families, and they’ve been brought together because of injured family members or family members who have passed away as a result of the war.
The corridors are lined, just like you see in that video. In every nook and cranny, every staircase, every space in the hospital where you’re taking care of patients, where the radiologist is reviewing scans, is occupied by displaced persons. The situation there is dire, because it does, in fact, interrupt medical care when you have this cohabitation of sterility and medical treatment with just life. And it’s a truly amazing parity to see in real life, because you can hear in the video the amazement and the joy and the laughter that you can hear from the children’s voices, but when they are tucked in behind those curtains, I can assure you that their life is very different than what their faces show.
AMY GOODMAN: And the issue of disease and people weakened by hunger, in addition to the direct — the morbidity from direct strikes?
DR. AZEEM ELAHI: The type of patients we would admit to the intensive care unit were oftentimes blast injury patients. I’m an adult critical care physician. And when I joined the European Gaza Hospital ICU, I realized the majority of our patients were actually pediatric patients. More than 50% of the patients in that ICU were under the age of 16, mainly because they were involved — when these bombings and the bombardment occurs, they’re typically in the evening, when the family units are sleeping together, and the patients that would make it to the hospital are the lucky ones. And just as Dr. Mehr pointed out, many of them would arrive dead, and the few that were able to survive would end up in the ICU.
The injuries we would see were trauma-related. So they had brain injuries, subarachnoid hemorrhages, subdural hemorrhages, traumatic brain injuries. They required mechanical ventilation because they weren’t able to breathe on their own. A lot of infections, especially in the postoperative setting, when your nutrition is affected — and this is true in the U.S., in the U.K., as it is anywhere else in the world. Every surgeon wants their patient to be as nourished as possible. We know, with clear-cut data, that patients who are malnourished are at higher risk of developing postoperative infections, postoperative morbidity.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to put the same question to Dr. Ismail Mehr, the question of the injuries people are suffering either from direct airstrike or from disease.
DR. ISMAIL MEHR: Yeah, I mean, Azeem was just a remarkable member of our team as was, like he shared, in the ICU. My role was, you know, I was in the operating room as an anesthesiologist. But with our experience and our team’s experience, we manned the ER quite often.
And what I want to really share with the viewers and the world, and my message is, is it’s very sexy to look at the bombings, the strikes, you know, and I share that — I’m being sarcastic, but, you know, that’s — the world focuses on traumatic stuff. What we forget is a grandmother who died from urinary tract infection. I had to do CPR on her and code her in the emergency department and then look at her son and say she died. He was like, “She just had an infection.” Because, as you shared earlier — excuse me — there is no healthcare system intact any longer. EGH is bursting at the seams — it’s not bursting, it has bursted.
And as you and I, when we get sick, or your child or grandchild or niece or nephew or aunt or uncle, you take them to the doctor. Gaza had a healthcare system in place, not always the most robust due to the embargo, but you could still go and see your doctor, get your glucose medicine. There was a gentleman, a mid-aged gentleman, that we had to do an amputation on because he had been barefoot for months, got an infection, learned that he never — he did not take his Glucophage or metformin. Those of you who are diabetics know those medicines. They’re for managing sugar. He got gas gangrene of his foot, came in so late that we thought he was going to die that night, operated on him early in the morning. He died six hours later.
What about the 20-year-old patient — I believe her name was Amna — who had fulminant liver failure from hepatitis A, not even — you know, hepatitis B and C are very severe forms of hepatitis. Hepatitis A is from unhygienic water and food. And she was dying in front of us in that emergency room. The mother who developed a blood clot in her leg because she’s been immobile living in a tent, and then she had a pulmonary embolism or a clot to her lung.
Every day there were people we were declaring dead in that emergency room who were dying of simple, basic things that in Gaza could be treated. I have seen them treated in Gaza before in my experience. And there’s no voice for those people. Yes, people are dying from the strikes every day, but the world is failing to see the implications of those who are the unaccounted for.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you both to stay with us, because we have other questions about how this compares to other medical trips you have made as you volunteer in conflict zones around the world. And on Monday, we will discuss the Abu Ghraib decision. So, we have to break one more time. Dr. Ismail Mehr and Dr. Azeem Elahi, stay with us. They’re just back from volunteering at Gaza’s European Hospital with the IMANA Medical Relief team. Back in 20 seconds.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “Mum Sing to the Wind” by Nai Barghouti. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, as we continue with the two doctors just back from Gaza volunteering at European Hospital: Dr. Ismail Mehr, anesthesiologist, chair of the nonprofit IMANA Medical Relief, which focuses on disaster relief — Dr. Mehr has participated in over 35 medical missions globally, has been to Gaza five times dating back to 2008 and '09 — and Dr. Azeem Elahi is with us from Charlotte, North Carolina, pulmonary critical care physician who is just back also from European Hospital. Dr. Mehr, you've been in dozens of conflict zones around the world. How does Gaza compare?
DR. ISMAIL MEHR: There is no comparison. You know, you say you’ve seen — you know, in a long career, that when you’ve seen everything, you know your career is complete. And I thought at one point that I’ve seen everything, and when I walked into Gaza, I’m not even close. I can compare it to Gaza 2008, 2009, to 2022, 2023. You know, I had the opportunity to go Deir al-Balah. It’s a little bit north of Khan Younis, and I had to drive through Khan Younis to deliver supplies and medications that we had for different hospitals. And as far as I could see, it looked like Armageddon. There was not a single building, single structure, single gas station, single hospital, single school, single university that remained standing. And then, the despair that you see around you at European Gaza Hospital, I can’t do justice to describe it. I just — maybe Azeem can or someone else can. I just — it’s — you can’t describe it.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to one of the people you met at European Hospital, as you were just describing, Rafat Badwan, describing what he and his relatives were sleeping, targeted by an Israeli strike. His son survived, but severely injured.
RAFAT BADWAN: My brother and his wife and his all children, two daughters and one son, are killed. Es Tesh’hedu, Inshallah. Also, my sister’s son are killed by them. We don’t do anything. Hasbunallahu wa ni’mal wakeel. Our Gaza and all the health sector need your support. There’s many injured and a shortage in medical supplies. We all need your help.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Rafat Badwan, Dr. Mehr. If you can also talk about how Gaza has changed in the many times that you have been there back to 2008, ’09?
DR. ISMAIL MEHR: Yeah, I think people fail to — forget — everyone thinks everything started October 7th. This has gone back to — you know, 78, 75, 76 years ago, since 1948, and then, Gaza specifically, down back to the early 2000s with the embargo.
The healthcare system has been always in a noose, and that noose tightens at times when there’s conflict, or it loosens up, but it remains around the neck of the healthcare system. And right now that noose has completely just — you know, has hung the healthcare system.
I mean, people say “partially.” People use words as it’s “semi-functional” or “remaining hospitals.” Yes, there’s structures, and there’s amazing colleagues and brothers and sisters from healthcare that are doing amazing job, but a functional healthcare system to save lives has been extinguished. You know, I can’t describe what the situation is there.
And that gentleman, Mr. Badwan, he’s a pharmacist. And I remember that night vividly, and I’m sure Azeem does, as well. It was multiple casualties came in — children with depressed skull fractures, mothers. You know, some of them were his family members. Others were just others and his neighbors. And luckily, our team was there from IMANA and HEAL Palestine. You know, we partnered with HEAL Palestine in this mission. And we were able to work along and help save some lives that night. But what hurts me is, is that every day this is happening, and every day there are innocent people losing their lives.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Elahi, I wanted to get your final comment and your message as you come back to your practice in Charlotte, North Carolina, how this has changed you and what you’ll be telling the medical community here.
DR. AZEEM ELAHI: I would say, from 2019’s experience and our current experience just now, what you’ll realize from the people in Gaza is they just want the world to know and understand what they’re going through. You heard it in this gentleman’s voice, that he’s just expressing a plea to the world to provide help to the people of Gaza, see what’s happening there. And when I come back to the comfort of my home and the comfort of my family and the comfort of a modern healthcare system, it is —
AMY GOODMAN: Ten seconds.
DR. AZEEM ELAHI: — really difficult to understand what’s happening. I think we just have to open our eyes, share with the world what’s happening there, and open our hearts for them.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Azeem Elahi and Dr. Ismail Mehr, back from volunteering at Gaza’s European Hospital with the IMANA Medical Relief team.