A brand new report by United Nations specialists says Israel has carried out “genocidal acts” towards Palestinians in Gaza, together with the destruction of ladies’s healthcare services, meant to forestall births, and the usage of sexual violence as a technique of struggle. This comes as talks on resuscitating the ceasefire deal proceed in Qatar and as Israel continues its complete blockade of meals, gas, medication and different humanitarian support into the Palestinian territory. For extra, we converse with two American medical doctors volunteering at Nasser Medical Advanced in Gaza. “It’s a really tough state of affairs, and the assaults on the healthcare system that have been completed up to now 16 months have actually undermined its potential to assist individuals,” says trauma surgeon Dr. Feroze Sidhwa. We additionally converse with Dr. Mark Perlmutter, an orthopedic and hand surgeon, who says about 350 Palestinian medical employees who stay in Israeli prisons with out cost should be freed. Many who’ve been launched describe horrific abuse. “The bodily and psychological torture … presents an amazing weight on the healthcare system right here,” says Dr. Perlmutter.
TRANSCRIPT
This can be a rush transcript. Copy is probably not in its remaining kind.
AMY GOODMAN: That is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Struggle and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
The United Nations has launched a report that Israel carried out genocidal acts by systematically attacking and destroying sexual and reproductive healthcare services in Gaza, together with a fertility heart, maternity wards, maternity hospitals, and stopping entry to obligatory medicines and tools to make sure protected pregnancies, deliveries and neonatal care.
The Geneva-based Impartial Worldwide Fee of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, together with East Jerusalem, and Israel mentioned, quote, “Israeli authorities have destroyed partially the reproductive capability of the Palestinians in Gaza as a gaggle, together with by imposing measures meant to forestall births,” unquote.
The report describes Israel’s shelling of the Al-Basma IVF Heart in Gaza Metropolis in December 2023, that destroyed 4,000 embryos, as intentional and, quote, “a measure meant to forestall births amongst Palestinians in Gaza, which is a genocidal act underneath the Rome Statute and the Genocide Conference,” unquote.
Describing the hurt to pregnant, lactating and new moms as “unprecedented,” the fee mentioned Israeli safety forces, quote, “intentionally inflicted situations of life … calculated to carry in regards to the bodily destruction of Palestinians in Gaza as a gaggle, … [one of the] classes of genocidal acts within the Rome Statute and the Genocide Conference,” unquote.
The U.N. report additionally accuses Israel’s safety forces of utilizing compelled public stripping and sexual assault as a part of their customary working procedures to punish Palestinians because the starting of the struggle.
Israel’s Everlasting Mission to the U.N. in Geneva rejected the allegations within the report as unfounded and biased.
For extra on the assault on Gaza’s fragile healthcare system, and as Israel’s complete blockade of the Gaza Strip enters its twelfth day, with no meals, medication or gas allowed in, we go now to Gaza, the place we’re joined by two volunteer medical doctors. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa is a trauma surgeon volunteering at Nasser Medical Advanced in Khan Younis, Gaza, with MedGlobal. He’s often based mostly in California. And Dr. Mark Perlmutter is an orthopedics hand surgical procedure specialist volunteering additionally at Nasser Medical Advanced, with the charity Humanity Auxilium. Final 12 months, they each volunteered on the European Hospital in Khan Younis throughout Israel’s lively assault on Gaza.
We welcome you each to Democracy Now! Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, let’s start with you. You’ve simply heard this breaking information of the U.N. report calling Israel responsible of genocidal acts, significantly concentrating on maternity hospitals, the IVF clinic and, total, the healthcare system in Gaza. In the event you can reply to, coming again to Gaza now, the way you discovered the hospital, and your response to what they’ve discovered?
DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Sure, the hospital in Gaza is — we’re at Nasser Medical Advanced on the western facet of Khan Younis, and it’s definitely higher than after we have been at European Hospital final 12 months. The entire hospital isn’t filled with refugees and displaced individuals, so there’s some — the hospital can really operate.
However this hospital was really attacked in February and March of final 12 months. The dialysis ward was destroyed. Quite a lot of tools for brand spanking new working rooms was destroyed. And proper now the blockade is de facto affecting the supply of devices and disposables within the working room, and it’s making life very tough for individuals right here.
You recognize, past the healthcare system, the costs out there are going up once more. The supply of sure kinds of meals goes down. Meat and different proteins are very arduous to come back by now. Eggs are a couple of greenback apiece out there simply outdoors the hospital that I noticed yesterday. So, it’s a really tough state of affairs. And the assaults on the healthcare system that have been completed up to now 16 months have actually undermined its potential to assist individuals.
AMY GOODMAN: And might you speak in regards to the Israeli vitality minister simply chopping off electrical energy to Gaza?
DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: It hasn’t been an apparent drawback within the hospital, as a result of we’ve got a generator. However the electrical energy is now clicking on and off, I don’t know, thrice a day, 4 instances a day, whereas earlier than it was not doing that. So, yeah, no, chopping off electrical energy to a complete inhabitants captive in an open-air jail goes to have —
AMY GOODMAN: It appears like we simply misplaced the video to Gaza, to Khan Younis. It’s exceptional that we have been even capable of make that connection. …
We simply reconnected with Gaza — we’ll see how lengthy we are able to preserve them on — to return to our dialog with two American medical doctors who’re volunteering at hospitals in Khan Younis. That is now the twelfth day since Israel has fully blockaded the Strip, chopping off all meals, medication and gas.
Dr. Feroze Sidhwa and Dr. Mark Perlmutter, welcome again to Democracy Now! Dr. Perlmutter, we final spoke to you in North Carolina after you had returned from Gaza. You might be again. Are you able to discuss what’s taking place, and significantly in regards to the medical workers, the medical doctors, the nurses, the workers, these, for instance, who’ve been arrested by Israel, even one, I perceive, who you’ve talked to, who was just lately launched?
DR. MARK PERLMUTTER: Proper. I’ve a colleague, an orthopedic surgeon, makes a speciality of pediatric orthopedics, who was kidnapped from the hospital, from the working room, in February of 2024. He was simply launched. When he was arrested, he was strip-searched, marched bare in entrance of his colleagues, crushed every day in an Israeli jail, crushed extra intensely when he requested to talk to a lawyer, and much more intensely after he spoke to his lawyer. He had his fingers damaged and his hand. He had, whereas handcuffs on, guards step on {the handcuffs} to torque them into the nerves of his hand, ruining the nerves in his operative arms.
And if the bodily day by day beatings and the lack of his hand operate wasn’t sufficient, the psychologic torture, which is their specialty, based on nearly all people who’s been launched — and there are nonetheless roughly 350 healthcare employees in Israeli prisons, all with out fees — the psychologic torture is immense. They confirmed him images, surveillance images, of his spouse, and mentioned, “We’ll carry her right here and gang rape her in entrance of you for those who don’t admit that you just’re Hamas,” which is what their request was once they have been breaking particular person finger bones. After which they confirmed him a GPS picture of his home and mentioned that they’d ship a drone via his bed room window, killing his spouse and children, if he didn’t admit that he was Hamas. So, the bodily and psychological torture, which is supported by many healthcare employees that have been launched, and remains to be clearly happening in Israeli prisons, presents an amazing weight on the healthcare system right here.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Mark Perlmutter, you’re a Jewish American. You might be urging him, this orthopedic surgeon, to sue American Israeli — you understand, American IDF troopers in a civil swimsuit, making them personally financially liable for what has taken place? Once more, you’re additionally presently president of the World Surgical Basis, fast previous president of the Worldwide School of Surgeons. A civil lawsuit?
DR. MARK PERLMUTTER: Effectively, it’s one thing that’s creating now. You recognize, we’ve all been to D.C. and spoke to our feckless senators and congressmen. We discover them — I personally discover them to be spineless and, together with our previous two presidents, immediately liable for the carnage that we’ve witnessed right here. I feel quickly that American 2,000-pound bombs will probably be dropping right here once more when the ceasefire ends. And Israel has ruined each ceasefire that has ever been declared of their historical past with Palestine. And I feel that when that carnage restarts, many years from now, historical past will keep in mind particularly our previous two presidents and our present spineless Senate and Congress because the murderers that they honestly are by not having the center to face as much as Israel.
And it’s not an anti-Jewish stance. It’s an anti-Zionism stance that they should take. And each time any person protests in favor of a Palestinian, similar to this story that you just simply broadcast, it’s interpreted as an antisemitic stance and never an anti-Zionism stance. And the 2 are fully totally different. The truth is, Zionism is the foremost trigger for the destruction of Judaism.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Sidhwa, you’re assembly with the U.N. secretary-general and demanding to know or pushing for data on the place Dr. Abu Safiya is, the top of the Kamal Adwan pediatric hospital?
DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Sure. Dr. Abu Safiya was taken after Kamal Adwan had been laid siege to for 80 or 90 days. Your complete hospital has been fully destroyed at this level. And yeah, he’s only a pediatrician, nothing particular about him. He was really taken by the Israelis earlier within the struggle and let go, exactly as a result of he’s not a menace to anyone. However then they determined to arrest him once more, determined to torment him, as effectively, similar to they’ve with so many others.
However sure, we have been capable of meet with António Guterres, the secretary-general of the U.N., in addition to Tom Fletcher, the under-secretary-general for OCHA. And Secretary-Basic Guterres may be very within the case. He had requested Mr. Fletcher to look into it, which he did. Mr. Fletcher raised the problem with the Israelis, met with Dr. Abu Safiya’s household, fairly publicly, really. And nonetheless no phrase on Dr. Abu Safiya’s launch date. The Israelis preserve pushing again his courtroom dates and issues like that. However we’re very a lot hoping that he will probably be launched quickly. This territory wants each physician, each nurse that it may presumably muster.
It’s true that the bombs have stopped falling, and a lot of the capturing has stopped. The Israelis are nonetheless killing about half a dozen individuals a day, however the bombing has, thank God, stopped for essentially the most half. However everybody right here remains to be homeless. Everybody right here remains to be hungry. Everybody right here remains to be thirsty. And as you talked about originally of the hour, the Israelis have lower off all entry and exit to Gaza once more. That is — you’ve obtained 1.8, 1.9, 2 million individuals locked in a cage, and so they can’t entry something from the surface world. They will’t survive like this.
Persons are turning on one another right here. Palestinian society may be very communal and really — there’s plenty of solidarity in it, however there’s limits to the whole lot. Simply final night time, we really had a mass capturing between two totally different households. Over what? Who is aware of? However persons are simply at their breaking level with the requirements of life simply being unavailable, not for per week or a month or a 12 months, however for 16 months now. It has to finish. And what the US is doing about that is simply shameful. It’s backing Israel all the way in which. And it’s obtained to cease. It’s obtained to cease.
AMY GOODMAN: And the entire chopping off of support now into Gaza, which has been condemned by humanitarian teams all over the world, Dr. Sidhwa?
DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Yeah. I imply, you understand, like, I’m right here with MedGlobal. It’s a gaggle that brings medical doctors in. However regardless that I used to be capable of get in, half of my very own group was denied entry. So, solely two out of the 5 medical doctors that have been scheduled to come back are right here now. Dr. Mark Perlmutter, your hand surgical procedure colleague was additionally denied entry. It’s simply — you understand, what’s being allowed in and never being allowed in, who’s being allowed in and never allowed in, it simply appears to be —
DR. MARK PERLMUTTER: Arbitrary.
DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: — fully random and arbitrary. And it’s wreaking havoc on the entire society. I imply, once more, the entire — individuals can’t survive with nothing. That’s not how human life works. And the US must cease backing this insane isolation of two million individuals, half of whom are youngsters, most of whom are refugees, that didn’t do something to anyone. Simply cease treating them this manner.
AMY GOODMAN: I wish to thanks each for being with us, Dr. Feroze Sidhwa and Dr. Mark Perlmutter, each U.S.-based surgeons again in Gaza to volunteer. They’re presently volunteering on the Nasser Medical Advanced in Khan Younis. To see Dr. Sidhwa’s op-ed in The New York Occasions, we’ll hyperlink to it at democracynow.org.
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