Gaza Doctor Says Hospitals Have to Choose Who Lives and Who Dies Amid Worsening Humanitarian Crisis
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 31, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/31 ... transcript
As Israeli tanks and other ground forces enter Gaza, we speak with a doctor in the besieged territory. Dr. Hammam Alloh is working at Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in the area, and says tens of thousands of people have sought shelter to escape Israel’s heavy bombardment. He describes making harrowing decisions with rapidly dwindling supplies, such as not resuscitating a patient who went into cardiac arrest because of a lack of ventilators. He also remains steadfast in staying at the hospital, despite Israeli demands to evacuate south. “You think I went to medical school and for my postgraduate degrees for a total of 14 years so I think only about my life and not my patients?” he says. “This is not the reason why I became a doctor.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Top United Nations officials are expressing growing alarm over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza as the enclave’s last remaining hospitals are on the verge of shutting down due to a lack of fuel, as Israel intensifies its ground invasion while rejecting growing calls for a humanitarian ceasefire. Palestinian health officials say over 8,500 people, mostly women and children, have been killed over the past 26 days. The head of UNICEF said, “The lack of clean water and safe sanitation is on the verge of becoming a catastrophe.” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestine refugees, repeated his call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, saying it’s, quote, “become a matter of life and death for millions.”
PHILIPPE LAZZARINI: The current siege imposed on Gaza is collective punishment. Two weeks of full siege followed by the trickle of aid last week mean that basic services are crumbling, medicine is running out, food and water are running out, fuel is running out. The streets of Gaza have started overflowing with sewage, which will cause a massive health hazard very soon.
AMY GOODMAN: In north Gaza, Israel attacked areas next to the Indonesian Hospital Monday, where Dr. Moaeen al-Masry said the staff is struggling to treat patients.
DR. MOAEEN AL-MASRY: [translated] The damage has been caused to more than one area in this unit. The damage has directly led to the disconnection of the electricity line of this unit. As you know, this means no electricity for the patients and injured here, which directly threatens their lives and could lead to the death of many of these patients. … In a few hours from now, the power will be cut due to the limited fuel available in the generators. Running out of fuel means power will be cut, meaning certain death for many of the patients in the ICU, some of whom need respirators, as well as patients in the surgical suites and patients in other units who numbered around 240 or 250.
AMY GOODMAN: We go now to Gaza City, where we’re joined by Dr. Hammam Alloh, who works at Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest hospital in Gaza.
Dr. Alloh, thanks so much for joining us. I know you’ve just left the hospital a few minutes ago. You told Jewish Currents yesterday, “I had to stop the resuscitation of a patient who went into cardiac arrest in the dialysis unit, because if she made it back to life, we had no ventilator to offer her. We have to prioritize patients who are younger, healthier. We have lost the ability to provide true care.” If you can talk about the situation right now at your hospital and overall?
DR. HAMMAM ALLOH: Hey. Thank you for contacting me.
This is not an incident I would really love to keep remembering, but this is — what you just said was exactly what happened to me. As physicians, we are trained to resuscitate patients who go into cardiac arrest, hoping they would make it back again to life, and consequently put them on ventilators to help them live again, go back to life. But I had to stop my co-nurses and my physicians from doing this. They asked me, “Why are you asking us to stop resuscitating the patients? It’s like you’re asking us to kill her.” I told them, “We have no better options. We have no other choices, because in case she makes it back to life, we have no ventilators to offer her. And if there is any, we would prevent a younger, healthier injured patient from entertaining that victory — I mean the ventilator.” So, I don’t know if you would imagine the amount of regret, the amount of sadness I’m living with since this happened with me, but I’m sorry to say there was no better options to go for except stopping that resuscitation.
And if this tells us anything, this tells us how things are really getting worse and worse. I was talking to a journalist an hour ago or so, and he kept asking me, “You told me a week earlier that things are bad. And are these now the same? Because you’re telling me things are very bad, as well, now.” I told him, “Yeah, this was probably a very strange answer from my side, because things were really bad one, two weeks into war, but now they are getting really worse.” We have patients admitted to emergency departments where they shouldn’t be admitted, where there should be vacant beds for newcomers, for new patients. We have patients admitted to dialysis unit. You know, dialysis unit is a closed unit where you offer a service, and when you’re done with your patients, you close your doors. But we can’t do this anymore. We are allowing people to live in the unit, actually. And we are admitting now patients who need care other than dialysis patients.
As the few trucks that were allowed in with aid to Gazan people actually is almost nothing compared to what we need, and there was — many of the contents of these trucks that were allowed into Gaza had water, gloves and gauze, and this is not what we are looking for. We are looking for devices, medications, things of really major help and concern for providing real healthcare for people in need. Number of injured patients is increasing. The number of people with chronic medical illnesses who need regular follow-up and regular maintenance of and the provision of medications is increasing. We are not capable of providing the care, other than keeping people dying from death. This is the only thing we can do. And we can’t properly provide this care, because we are getting — we are running out of medications and supply.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Hammam Alloh, you’ve said, “Every day, I see a fear in their eyes that I can’t do much about. It’s very painful. If you have kids, you know how horrible it is not to be able to comfort them, to ensure they are alright, to make them hope for anything beyond living one more day.” If you can talk about that in the hospital, which, as you said, is not just a hospital for sick people? Thousands are taking refuge at Al-Shifa and al-Quds and the other hospitals. And also, we’re talking to you as you just left Al-Shifa. How do you comfort your family? What’s happening to your family as you’re at the hospital?
DR. HAMMAM ALLOH: I tell them at least we still have a house with a door to close. But many thousand refugees, people like us, who used to live in dignity have no longer houses and no doors to close to protect them as they are surrounded by wastewater, by garbage. They don’t have a liquid, continuous supply of clean water to drink. Many of them have a lot of missing members of their families. They don’t know if they are alive or not. I tell them at least we still have a house to live in, but they don’t have. And surprisingly, my 4- and 5-year-old kids, they accept this as a comfort, as a better situation compared to those refugees living — they are living actually in hospitals, but it’s not like they are living inside the hospital departments. Many of them do not have enough space to go into hospital hallways, so they are living around the buildings and in the garden. So, yeah, surprisingly, my very young kids accept this.
AMY GOODMAN: The Israeli military has dropped thousands of pamphlets warning people where you are, in northern Gaza, to leave. Why don’t you go with your family south?
DR. HAMMAM ALLOH: And if I go, who treats my patients? We are not animals. We have the right to receive proper healthcare. So we can’t just leave.
AMY GOODMAN: The World Health Organization talked about this issue of telling doctors to leave their patients, choosing your own lives over your patients. Can you talk about that choice, since so many patients can’t leave — for example, babies in incubators?
DR. HAMMAM ALLOH: You think I went to medical school and for my postgraduate degrees for a total of 14 years so I think only about my life and not my patients? I’m asking you, Ma’am. Do you think this is the reason I went to med school, to think only about my life? This is not the reason why I became a doctor.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what’s happening to the hospitals? Just in our headlines today, we talked about, and in the last few days, the attack on the Indonesia Hospital. The Turkish Hospital is the only cancer hospital?
DR. HAMMAM ALLOH: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the significance of these places, both as a sanctuary, thousands of people taking refuge, and for patients?
DR. HAMMAM ALLOH: Yeah. Indonesian Hospital is providing healthcare for over 400,000 citizens in the Gaza Strip. And this part of the Gaza Strip is being split from the rest of the Gaza Strip. If this hospital stops providing care, so we are exposing many thousand Palestinian souls to the dangers of disease and death.
Turkish Hospital, with its very modest capabilities even before war, was the only hospital providing care and medications for cancer patients from around the Gaza Strip. It was airstruck yesterday. I don’t know how many patients and healthcare professionals were wounded. And many patients are dying now because they are not safe with their families to go to receive care and to continue their chemotherapy.
Ministry of Health has declared two hours ago also that the electricity would be cut off from Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest hospital, representing 40% of the healthcare power in the Gaza Strip and providing services for many machine-dependent patients, like the ventilated patients and the hemodialysis patients. So, if electricity is cut out from this hospital, so we are directly deciding those patients are going to necessarily die. Ventilated patients will die in minutes. Dialysis patients will die in hours to days after stopping their hemodialysis. Many patients are now being treated with the modest supplies we have. Many diabetic patients are now being admitted to hospital because of their insulin is not being kept in the refrigerator, so it’s not working. We are out — we ran out of many medications, like antifungal medications. We have a patient who died earlier this week with mucormycosis. This is an invasive, ugly type of fungal infection that killed her because we had no amphotericin to offer her. So, my very simple answer to your question is that death is coming to so many people in the Gaza Strip, in hours to days, if this continues the same way it’s going on.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Alloh, the Middle East Eye reports on a baby who died, says, “His death certificate has been issued before his birth certificate.” A 1-day-old baby has been killed by Israeli bombing in Gaza. Israel, the military, the government, says that Al-Shifa, your hospital, is Hamas —
DR. HAMMAM ALLOH: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: — the site of Hamas command and control. Can you respond to that, Dr. Alloh?
DR. HAMMAM ALLOH: I’ve been working this hospital for over two years, and I never saw this. So, I’m no lawyer, I’m no attorney, but this is how I am simply replying. I never saw this for over two years. If this is true, I would see at least a clue.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you about the shipments of aid coming in. Normally, in normal times — if there’s ever a normal time in Gaza — over 400 trucks a day. We’re talking about a trickle of trucks now, maybe a dozen, maybe eight in a day. Have you ever seen this aid arriving at the hospital? And can you talk about what you need right now?
DR. HAMMAM ALLOH: Well, that number you just mentioned that was allowed into Gaza Strip is actually — is actually what you were referring to. It is nothing compared to what we need, nothing compared to the shortage in supplies, machines and medications we are in need for. The only thing, came just as I was leaving the hospital today, was a carton of IV fluid bottles. This is the only thing I saw. And I don’t really know if this came through the aid trucks in the few couple of days, or that was from the stores of the Ministry of Health. In addition, I happened to ask about in the hospital administration, and what they mentioned that was all about the gloves and gauze. And this is not what we are actually only in need for. This is what maybe the least we care for, the least we are in need for. So this is, again, nothing compared to what we are in need for in terms of supplies and medications.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Dr. Hammam Alloh, your message at this point to the United States, where we’re based, and to the world?
DR. HAMMAM ALLOH: Actually, the message hasn’t changed since the beginning of this war. First, we need this war to end, because we are real humans. We are no animals. We have the right to live freely.
Second, if you were, and your citizens, to live under these circumstances, what would you do for them? This is what we exactly would like you to do for us as a superpower country, as the United States, because we are really as human as your U.S. citizens are.
We were expecting more — earlier, I mean, solutions for that humanitarian and healthcare catastrophes and the crises, but what we are seeing, mainly through trucks allowed into Gaza, is nothing compared to us. So, we are being exterminated. We are being massly eradicated. And you pretend to care for humanitarian and human rights, which is not what we are living now. To prove us wrong, please do something. Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Hammam Alloh, speaking to us from Gaza City, where he works at the largest hospital, Al-Shifa Hospital. Please be safe.
DR. HAMMAM ALLOH: I hope I will be. Let’s hope, both together, I will be. Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Thank you. Coming up, we speak to the Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, author of many books, including The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “Palestine Will Be Free” by the Lebanese Swedish singer Maher Zain, who sung at an Istanbul solidarity protest on Saturday.
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Israeli Historian Ilan Pappé on Gaza War, Hostages & the Context Behind Current Violence
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 31, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/31 ... transcript
We speak with Israeli historian Ilan Pappé about Israel’s escalating war on Gaza, as well as a leaked document from the country’s Ministry of Intelligence that suggests permanently expelling Gaza’s entire population to the Sinai Desert in Egypt. “This is a massive operation of killing, of ethnic cleansing, of depopulation,” says Pappé. He also says the only way to secure the release of the more than 200 hostages held by Hamas is to agree to an all-for-all swap for the thousands of Palestinian political prisoners held by Israel, including many women, children and elderly people. “This is the only way to release the people who were taken.” Pappé is a leading critic of the Israeli occupation, a professor of history and the director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter. His books include The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples and The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge.
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.
Internal Israeli government documents have revealed the Israeli Ministry of Intelligence is recommending the forcible transfer of the entire population of Gaza to the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. The 10-page document, which is dated October 13th, has been published in full by the Israeli news outlets Local Call and +972. The document recommends transferring all Palestinians to Egypt, then setting up a, quote, “sterile” zone of several kilometers near the border between Egypt and Gaza. In addition, the document recommends Israel then prevent the, quote, “return of the population to activities/residences near the border with Israel,” unquote.
Fears of a new Nakba, or Catastrophe, have been growing ever since Israel ordered all Palestinians living in Gaza City and in north Gaza to vacate their homes and head south. On Monday, Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour accused Israel of trying to depopulate Gaza.
RIYAD MANSOUR: They want to depopulate the Gaza Strip completely from the entire population and throw them in the lap of Egypt in the Sinai Desert. … No one should justify our killing or find reasons to give more time to the killer. Call for an end of this assault on an entire nation. Stop the killings in the West Bank by settlers and occupation forces and the forced displacement underway there.
AMY GOODMAN: We go now to Haifa in Israel, where we’re joined by the Israeli historian Ilan Pappé. He’s professor of history and the director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter. He’s the author of several books, including The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine and A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, as well as The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge. Fifty years ago, Ilan Pappé fought in the Israeli military during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, has since become a leading critic of Israel’s occupation.
Professor Pappé, welcome back to Democracy Now!
ILAN PAPPÉ: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: If you can start off by talking about your take on what’s happening today? You just heard the doctor in Gaza, who just left Al-Shifa a few minutes ago.
ILAN PAPPÉ: Yes, I think — Amy, it’s good to be back on your program. Thank you for having me.
I think what we are seeing now, what unfolds in front of our eyes, is a genocidal situation, by which people are targeted, whether they are children, babies, in hospital or in schools. And this is a massive operation of killing, of ethnic cleansing, of depopulation. The pretext for that kind of savagery is revenge for what the Hamas did on the 7th of October, but I think the real intention here is not just revenge but trying to exploit what happened on the 7th of October to create new realities in historical Palestine. You called it a new Nakba. I think that this is — the Nakba has never really ended for the Palestinians, so it’s a new horrific chapter in the ongoing Nakba that the Palestinians are suffering here. So, this is a really horrific situation that can only be stopped from the outside, because there is no motivation inside Israel to stop the operations, nor to care more about the lives of innocent people, despite what the Israeli army claims to do in the field itself.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to play a short clip of Prime Minister Netanyahu speaking over the weekend.
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember, and we are fighting. Our brave troops and combatants, who are now in Gaza or around Gaza and in all other regions in Israel, are joining this chain of Jewish heroes, a chain that has started 3,000 years ago, from Joshua ben Nun until the heroes of 1948, the Six-Day War, the ’73 October War and all other wars in this country. Our hero troops, they have one supreme main goal: to completely defeat the murderous enemy and to guarantee our existence in this country. We have always said, “Never again.” Never again is now.
AMY GOODMAN: And I want to play Netanyahu from last night.
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: Calls for a ceasefire are calls for Israel to surrender to Hamas, to surrender to terrorism, to surrender to barbarism. That will not happen.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you respond to the Israeli prime minister, Professor Pappé?
ILAN PAPPÉ: Yes. I think the main attempt here is to make sure that people do not understand the context in which the Hamas operation occurred, to totally dishistoricize that event, to forget about the 15 years of inhuman siege on Gaza, of 56 years of a ruthless occupation and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, and 75 years of not allowing refugees to come back to their homes. I think this is an attempt to Nazify the Palestinians, which is not new, by the way. The Israelis, every now and then, use it. If you remember, Menachem Begin compared Yasser Arafat in the bunker in 1982 to Hitler in the bunker. The Nazification of the Palestinians is meant to, first of all, license Israeli policies without any consideration to international law or human rights, and, secondly, to divert us from talking about the real issue here, which is not the Hamas or its actions on the 7th of October, but rather the situation that bred this kind of violence. Rather than talking about the symptom of violence, we should talk about the source of violence. And the source of violence has not changed. We have millions of Palestinians for years being oppressed, ruled and controlled by Israel, and they are fighting with the means that they have. And this is going to go on, unless, of course, there is a willingness to go back to the negotiation table and ask why the violence erupted in the first place and what are the best ways to prevent another cycle of violence in the future.
There’s a second reason for Netanyahu’s rhetoric. Of course, he doesn’t want the Israeli media or the international community to deal with his own problems, that were very acute before the 7th of October, and to say, “This is now a situation where you cannot at all — well, this is a domestic issue. You cannot talk about me or my failures. This is a moment of existential threat to Israel.” And therefore, this kind of rhetoric will continue. And it’s very dangerous, not to mention the fact that it abuses — when they use the Holocaust, it abuses the Holocaust memory, because with all the horror of what happened on the 7th of October, this is not the Holocaust. And there’s no comparison between Palestinians, who act after years of oppression and siege, to Nazis, who just target Jews because they are Jews. There’s no comparison. This whole language is not the one to be used. And I think that Netanyahu is trying to galvanize a very vindictive Israel behind him. And the results of this kind of policy are unfolding in front of our eyes, and we just had this horrific and very moving kind of report that you had with the doctor from Gaza before me.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Pappé, can you talk about the hostage families? They don’t get a lot of attention, what they’re calling for, though they get tremendous attention for who these hostages are, and the people who were killed on October 7th. But there are many. For example, we interviewed Noy Katsman, the brother of Hayim, who was killed by Hamas on October 7th. He said his brother was a peace activist, and he himself said, “Not in my brother’s name.” He called for a ceasefire. And I wanted to ask you about this force of the hostage families and about the everybody-for-everybody proposal. On Friday, just after we got off the broadcast, it said, you know, “imminent major release.” And some thought that Netanyahu was pushing forward with the invasion more quickly because he didn’t want this possibility to happen. But explain the proposal of all hostages, over 200 of them, in return for all Palestinian prisoners, and who these prisoners are, close to 7,000 of them.
ILAN PAPPÉ: Yes, I think that not everybody among the families, because I don’t think they’re all made of the same cloth, but many of them understand that the only way to bring their dear ones back home is this kind of an exchange of prisoners. We are talking about thousands of Palestinians who are incarcerated in Israeli jails, many of them without trials. And they are kind of — the allegations against them vary, from actual participation in guerrilla or violent actions against Israeli citizens or soldiers, and those who are incarcerated for being a member of a Palestinian organization. Some of them are very young. Some of them are women. Some of them are very old and have been there for a very long time. And some of them were just recently incarcerated without trial in the West Bank. They are all part of the Palestinian liberation movement. And it needs a very different Israeli perception of the Palestinian struggle and those who participated in its struggle to be able to say, indeed, this is only way forward — namely, to release all of them, to the last one, and receive all of the people who were taken by the Hamas on the 7th of October.
What I can tell you, Amy, which is very interesting, is that former generals in the Israeli army, former heads of the Israeli Mossad and Shabak, the secret service, are supporting this kind of exchange. And this is a very important position that they are holding. And that may explain the fear on Netanyahu’s side to let this issue extend longer, because the voices that are calling for such an exchange are not coming from the extreme Israeli left or the liberal Zionists. They’re coming from some very powerful people, who were heading some of Israel’s most important institutions, such as the Mossad, the army and the secret service.
Will it take place? I don’t know. It depends very much on how things unfold on the ground itself with the invasion, that nobody in Israel gives the Israeli public any details of how it goes on, but it seems that it doesn’t go as well as the Israelis claim it does, and depends a lot, of course, on the international community, because quite a few of the people who are held by the Hamas have also dual citizenship. But there’s no doubt, Amy, this is the only way to release the people who were taken on Saturday. Neither Israeli commando salvage operation nor piecemeal deal will bring all the people back. This is a situation where you can solve the problem and not delay it for another five or six years, with babies and old people who might not survive a long stay in captivity.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Pappé, you were born to German Jewish parents who fled German persecution, the Nazis, in the 1930s. You fought in 1973 in the Israeli military. Can you talk about your life trajectory and how you came to write a book talking about the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and the response in Israeli society, your university, University of Haifa, and how you ended up at Exeter?
ILAN PAPPÉ: Yes, it was — Amy, it was a journey. There was no one moment of epiphany or awakening that makes you actually take positions which will frame you as a traitor in your own society, and definitely would leave you with no reference group in your own society. For me, it was a journey that had many important stations, such as spending some time as a postgraduate student outside of Israel; having an Arab supervisor; looking, as an historian who was interested in the history of my own country, in the documentation that became available about 1948. So, all these possibilities outside to meet Palestinians on equal footing, to be able to research as a professional historian history or documentation that revealed evidence that contradicted, in a very significant way, the narrative on which I grew up on, all this led me to a moment where I thought that I understand what is going on in historical Palestine, what went on in historical Palestine. And I saw quite clearly, at least from my perspective, who were the victimizers, who were the victim, who was the colonizer, who was the colonized, who was the ethnic cleanser, and who was the victims of ethnic cleansing.
And because my parents came from Germany, and because we lost a lot of people in the Holocaust, exactly because of that legacy, I felt I could not be indifferent to the suffering of the Palestinians, nor did I want to be part of the society that caused this suffering. And I think that as the years go by and the research becomes more and more intensive, and my understanding and relationship with the Palestinians become increased and widened, I am even more confident today than I was in the early years of my career, either as an activist or as a professional historian, that I’m very at peace with my moral positions toward Israel and Zionism.
In 2006, that position led to pressure from my university to leave the university and to resign. So I had no choice. I had to resign, and I had to leave. I was very lucky to be offered a position in a university in Britain, where I founded the Centre for Palestine Studies. I am still a citizen of Israel. I’m still going to Israel and spending time in Israel and spending time in Britain, trying to divide between the two places. And I still believe that what I cherish as human rights, as human morality, is the only basis for better life for everyone concerned, Jews and Palestinians alike, in a state in the future that would be based on equality, that would not discriminate against people because of their nationality, religion or culture, and one which will rectify past evils and would allow refugees to return, and hopefully build a state that would radiate and influence the Middle East as a whole.
AMY GOODMAN: Ilan Pappé, we want to thank you for being with us, professor of history, director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter, author of many books, including The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine and Gaza in Crisis, which he co-wrote with Noam Chomsky.