Above photo: Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Hussam Abu Safiyeh (middle), holds up his hands during the Israeli invasion of the hospital, October 26, 2024. Screenshot/Social Media.
Humanity Must Not Look Away.
We stand with Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, in pleading with the international community: Do not remain silent as Gaza’s healthcare system is systematically destroyed.
Editor’s Note: The following is a statement from the Palestine Mental Health Networks and Doctors Against Genocide.
The Palestine Mental Health Networks and Doctors Against Genocide stand with Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, in pleading with the international community: Do not remain silent as Gaza’s healthcare system is systematically destroyed. The relentless assaults on Kamal Adwan Hospital—a sanctuary meant to save lives in northern Gaza—are part of a deliberate genocidal campaign. These attacks on hospitals and clinics, places meant for healing and shelter, are not accidents of war; they are the cold calculations of those who would see an entire people erased.
For 15 months, Gaza’s hospitals and clinics have been turned into crime scenes. Airstrikes shatter operating rooms mid-surgery. Children gasp for air as oxygen lines are cut off. Parents search through rubble for their loved ones while doctors stand helpless, their surgical gloves empty-handed and their hearts heavy. These are not “tragic byproducts”—they are intentional crimes against humanity. They shred the promise of international humanitarian law, reducing the Geneva Conventions to hollow words.
The world looks on, as Gaza’s healthcare system buckles under siege and bombardment. Medical supplies blocked at borders. Ambulances banned from reaching the injured. The simplest lifesaving tools withheld. This is not mere negligence; it is a brutal strategy of attrition, starving a people’s capacity to live, heal, and resist. The mental toll is immeasurable. Imagine the terror in a child’s eyes when the bombs fall again, the despair in a surgeon’s voice when forced to turn away a bleeding patient. Families bury their children in silence, their cries muffled by international indifference.
We echo Kamal Adwan Hospital’s urgent, anguished appeal:
1. Open a humanitarian corridor now. Let medicine, surgical equipment, and ambulances reach those who are dying for lack of the most basic care.
2. Protect healthcare facilities and workers immediately. Demand that the international community enforce the laws meant to guard medical spaces and staff from harm.
3. End the blockade of Gaza. This decades-long siege has turned Gaza into an open-air prison where even survival is treated as a privilege, not a right.
Humanity cannot pretend not to see. Neutrality in the face of genocide is complicity. Every bomb that slams into Kamal Adwan Hospital, every nurse forced to watch a child slip away, every life lost from denied treatment indicts us all.
The world is watching. Will it once again stand idly by as another hospital crumbles, another child’s breath is silenced, another fragile hope is extinguished? Or will it finally rise to restore the sanctity of life and the universal right to health?
Please take action:
- Sign this urgent petition regarding “Not Another Hospital”. https://ujoin.co/campaigns/3307/actions/public?action_id=4319
- Sign petition “No Child A Target-Internationa” https://ujoin.co/campaigns/3351/actions/public?action_id=4410
- Write to your representatives, follow this link https://ujoin.co/campaigns/3331/actions/public?action_id=4369
- Please share this article with at least 10 individuals in your network
In solidarity and profound sorrow,
Doctors Against Genocide
The Palestine Mental Health Networks (Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Egypt, France, Germany, Iraq, Ireland, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, South Africa, Sweden, Turkiye, United Kingdom, United States)