The Kids Were Right
Five months ago, a group of children in the Gaza Strip—speaking in English—stood in front of Al-Shifa Hospital warning the world of Israel’s evident attempts to “exterminate the people of Gaza..."
Five months ago, a group of children in the Gaza Strip—speaking in English—stood in front of Al-Shifa Hospital warning the world of Israel’s evident attempts to “exterminate the people of Gaza, their dreams and their future.”
Since then, the Zionist entity has murdered more than 11,000 children, displacing countless others, and destroyed hundreds of health care facilities, including the iconic Al-Shifa Hospital, where recently medical leaders amid ruins held an improvised press conference asking the World Health Organization and the United Nations for urgent assistance.
“Since the 7th of October, we have faced extermination, killing, bombing falling over our heads—all of this in front of the world,” one of the children said last November. “They lie to the world that they kill the fighters, but they kill the people of Gaza, their dreams and their future. Kids of Gaza run out of their hopes and wants.”
The child continued to say that he and others had come to Al-Shifa Hospital imagining the area would be relatively safe from such illegal killings, but already that assumption had turned out to be wrong. The child then told the world that the Zionist occupation was “starving” the Palestinian people.
“We come to Al-Shifa Hospital to keep us from bombing,” he said. “We suddenly run out of death more after bombing the hospital. The occupation is starving us. We don’t find water [and] food. We drink from the unusable water. We come now to shout and invite you to protect us. We want to live. We want peace. We want to judge the killers of children. We want medicine, food and education. We want to live as the other children live.”
The Zionist entity since then has exponentially exacerbated the widespread suffering and famine it continues to inflict upon the Palestinian people.
From October 7, 2023 to April 3, 2024, the Zionist entity killed more than 37,000 civilians—more than 15,000 children and nearly 10,000 women—while displacing more than 2,000,000 people in Palestine. The Zionist entity has killed 136 journalists and 349 health care professionals, wounding, detaining and kidnapping countless others.
One medical professional kidnapped by the IDF is the former director of Al-Shifa Hospital, Ahmed Abu Silmyah.
“I was chosen to be the director in charge of this hospital on the 14th of January this year, after the previous director, Ahmed Abu Silmyah, was detained and kidnapped from the hospital by the IDF,” said Dr. Marwan Abu Saada during Monday’s improvised press conference. “From the beginning of January, after the first siege, we tried to resume the work in the hospital within the reach of our possibilities… The size of the destruction in the hospital area now is so massive that all the complexes in the hospital are flattened with the earth. There are no possibilities to receive the patients—no more possibility to perform operations, nor intensive care… All the capabilities of the hospital are completely destroyed.”
Saada said Al-Shifa Hospital, which was the biggest hospital in Palestine, had a capacity of 750 beds and more than 25 “operations theaters.” Each year, he said, more than 250,000 people received emergency medical care and more than 17,000 surgical operations were performed at Al-Shifa.
“After this horrible siege, now we declare that the Al-Shifa Complex is completely destroyed and out of service forever because the complete destruction of the building and the medical equipment. It is all totally destroyed,” Saada said. “There is no other hospital in the whole Gaza Strip which can fulfill the role of the Al-Shifa Hospital… There is no possibility to do anything to resume our work.”
Saada said he and his medical team recently buried several former staffers, including Baha’a al-Kilani, chief of the hospital’s Maintenance Department; Zaher El-Nono, chief director of the Pharmacy Department; and renowned plastic surgeon Dr. Mohammad al-Makadma and his mother. Many other members of the medical team have been illegally detained by the IDF, Saada said.
“This is a systematic destruction of the medical services in the northern governorate and in the Gaza City governorate,” Saada said. “The only hospital which is functioning in the northern governorate—with a very low capacity—is Kamal Adwan Hospital.”
Saada concluded the improvised press conference with a call to action aimed at human rights organizations around the world and the broader international community.
“Due to all that is mentioned, we appeal to the World Health Organization, the United Nations and the international community to call for an official investigation of what happened in Al-Shifa and other medical centers in Gaza… Come and evaluate the destruction of the hospitals in the Gaza Strip and the targeting of medical staff by the IDF,” Saada said. “We are now in crucial need of a field hospital with a minimum capacity of 180 beds to provide health care for people in this area. It is urgent... For the time being, there is no hospital in the area with this capacity. We have no means to provide health care for the patients and the wounded… Many of us suffer now from the destruction of the Al-Shifa Hospital, the same I have been suffering for my home and my family. Al-Shifa Hospital is a part of my life and the lives of others in this place.”
Palestinian journalist Hossam Shabat, who has been covering Israeli aggression in Gaza since October, said recently via a social media post that the IDF’s two-week siege of Al-Shifa “was unlike anything [he has] ever witnessed before.”
“Israeli occupation forces executed 300 Palestinians in and around the hospital, and this morning, I witnessed hundreds of bodies outside the hospital—there wasn’t one full body—all the bodies were either pieces or heavily mutilated,” the post states. “The bodies were in horrific conditions; many had their hands and legs tied behind their backs and were flattened by a bulldozer. Many of the bodies were burned and left to be crushed to pieces. Several bodies were decomposed and partly eaten by stray dogs. Most of the bodies were unrecognizable; families could only identify them by their clothes. Al-Shifa hospital was considered the largest medical complex in the Gaza Strip, catering to many complex cases. It has been completely destroyed; they burned it down and destroyed all medical equipment. Israeli occupation forces has one goal and it’s to destroy every inch of Gaza.”
A World Health Organization convoy recently reported from the scene following Israeli aggression: “Shifa has literally become a graveyard.”
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