Release Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya!
JVL Introduction
Northern Gaza has been under intense siege and bombardment since October. Now the last functioning hospital has been destroyed with patients and staff forcibly evacuated by Israel’s military forces. The hospital has been burned down and many hospital staff arrested with some who were released describing torture.
As the final act, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, Director of Kamel Adwan Hospital has been “detained”. He had refused multiple Israeli orders to evacuate the hospital. He had been previously arrested and released after a short time when Israeli forces stormed that hospital in October. “During that same operation, Israeli forces killed Abu Safia’s son, Ibrahim, in a drone attack on the gate of the hospital. Abu Safia was wounded by shrapnel from another Israeli attack on the hospital on November 23, but he continued his work, keeping the world informed on the developments in the hospital.”
According to Israel he is detained because they suspect his involvement with Hamas. There is no evidence of this and calls for his release – and of others still under arrest – must be taken up by governments and heeded by the Israeli State.
LL
This article was originally published by Al Jazeera on Sun 29 Dec 2024. Read the original here.
Calls for the release of Gaza hospital director detained by Israel
Palestinians and campaigners express concern after Abu Safia and others from Kamal Adwan Hospital are detained by Israel.
Calls have been made for the release of Hussam Abu Safia, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, who was detained on Saturday with dozens of others by the Israeli military during a raid on the facility in northern Gaza.
Fears are growing over the safety of Abu Sufia, whose whereabouts remain unknown since he was detained from the last barely functioning medical facility in northern Gaza, which has been pulverised by relentless Israeli bombings during a weeks-long military siege of the area.
The last picture of Abu Safia, widely shared on social media, showed him walking towards an Israeli tank near the Kamal Adwan Hospital, which was burned down by Israeli forces during the violent raid on Friday.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that Abu Safia was held for questioning, on suspicion of “being a Hamas terrorist operative”. It arrested more than 240 people from the hospital premises.
Location unknown
Zaher Sahloul, the president of MedGlobal, said in a statement that Abu Safia’s arrest was “unjust and a violation of international humanitarian law”.
“His arrest is not only unjust – it is a violation of international humanitarian law, which upholds the protection of medical personnel in conflict zones. MedGlobal urgently calls for the immediate and unconditional release of Dr Abu [Safia].”
Agnes Callamard, the secretary-general of Amnesty International, said Abu Safia is considered a human rights defender by Front Line Defenders, an Irish-based organisation that works to protect people who are “at risk for their peaceful and legitimate human rights work”.
The raid was also the latest on a hospital during the war, in which Israel targeted healthcare complexes.
“The systematic dismantling of the health system and a siege for over 80 days on north Gaza puts the lives of the 75,000 Palestinians remaining in the area at risk,” the UN health agency said in a statement.
Dr Ali Elaydi, an orthopaedic surgeon originally from Gaza, says Israel’s raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital and the arrest of Dr Abu Safia are aimed at emptying the north of the enclave of its residents.
“It essentially robs the entire population of northern Gaza of any sustainable medical care. I believe this is truly intentional to force the people out of northern Gaza,” Elaydi told Al Jazeera from the US city of Dallas.
“It is a warning to every other physician to not speak out for their patients.”
On Friday, Hamas dismissed Israel’s assertion that its fighters had operated from the hospital throughout the 15-month Gaza war, saying no fighters had been in the hospital.
WHO said the Kamal Adwan Hospital’s remaining 15 critical patients, 50 caregivers and 20 health workers were transferred on Friday to the nearby Indonesian Hospital, which it described as “destroyed and non-functional”.
It said WHO would undertake an urgent mission to the Indonesian Hospital on Sunday, partly to move the critical patients to Gaza City.
On Sunday, an Israeli attack on the upper floor of al-Wafaa Hospital in Gaza City killed at least seven people and wounded others, some critically, according to Gaza’s civil defence.
“The seven Palestinians who were killed in al-Wafaa Hospital are obviously patients because the hospital treats the elderly,” Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary said from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.
“And after the war started, it started admitting people with chronic diseases and functioned as a rehabilitation centre.”
The Israeli military claimed the attack on the hospital targeted a Hamas “command and control centre”.
Killing of Adnan al-Bursh
Abu Safia, who is a paediatrician by training, has refused multiple Israeli orders to evacuate Kamal Adwan Hospital.
He was briefly arrested and released when Israeli forces stormed Kamal Adwan in late October.
During that same operation, Israeli forces killed Abu Safia’s son, Ibrahim, in a drone attack on the gate of the hospital.
Abu Safia was wounded by shrapnel from another Israeli attack on the hospital on November 23, but he continued his work, keeping the world informed on the developments in the hospital.
This is not the first time the Israeli forces have attacked a hospital and medical professionals. Adnan al-Bursh, a prominent Palestinian orthopaedic surgeon and the head of orthopaedics at al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest medical facility before it was destroyed, was killed reportedly due to torture in an Israeli prison.
He was working at the al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza in December when he and other medics were arrested by the Israeli army.
If we are to write to our MPs or stand convicted of hate crimes under the Terrorism legislation we need facts which will dislodge the identification, in Zionist mindsets, of resistance to Israeli supremacy – any spontaneous Palestinian self organisation – as terrorism . It is a further question whether , given this is the treatment of a besieged population , whether any organisation not controlled by Israel is perceived as insurrection , and hence need for facts about Gazans in Israeli prisons , (where the Hamas leader emerged as part of Netanyahu’s strategy to expand Israel and control Palestine) . It’s unbelievable that UK is still supporting this genocide , there must be strong pressure on MPs to deny / interpret the facts . The immense harm this is doing seems nothing in comparison to the numbers and global threats , unless all the optimistic technological economists are to make capitalism work for everyone : for that we might need to get rid of all the humans that make investments risky .
This is horrendous, unimaginable that every single hospital in Gaza is actually being burnt down and razed to the ground so it prevents rebuilding or restoration. The accusations get more absurd and are absolutely false, reminiscent of the made up lies about 40 beheaded babies and the mass rapes of Israeli women. Nothing that the Israeli army says can be believed as no evidence has been produced to validate their dangerous nonsense, repeated on the BBC and other media as if they were viable. Further Israel has not allowed the UN or other observers in to investigate their claims, but kills journalists who are there to report what is actually happening.
How normal can they try to make it
that at this very moment
we are waiting to find out
whether a hospital doctor has been arrested
or is being incarcerated
or being hurt?
How difficult can it be
for the authorities to tell us
what is happening to the hospital doctor?
How much doubt and mystery
can they spread about this moment
so that enough people in the world
might think that the hospital doctor
is a terrorist in disguise as a hospital doctor?
How many social media posts
can announce that the hospital doctor
is dangerous
because he has treated terrorists,
as if it’s the job of hospital doctors
to prosecute, try and sentence people,
so that, if they find someone guilty,
they should leave them to die?
How normal is this
that we watch this
and the story should leave us
being suspicious of the hospital doctor
and thinking that the army officers
who’ve ordered the hospital doctor
to be arrested
are doing good things?
What’s worse than worse?
It was months ago
they said that
that things had got worse.
But then they said things got worse
after that.
And then they said things were getting worse
last week.
And things got worse than last week
yesterday.
And things are worse today
than yesterday.
And things are worse now
than a moment ago.
It’s always worse.
It’s always getting worse.
When does it get to a point
where it can’t be more worse?
When does it get to a point
where worse becomes
the worst?
this has to be investigated and he must be released unharmed. all of us must call out our so called Labour Gov now and call on all humanity that this horror is stopped . Maybe a peace force should be deployed but for the sake of humanity it must be stopped. How can this be allowed to carry on any more regardless. Israel I dont think can ever recover from this in its present form.
Ethnic cleansing / Genocide.
I have written to my MP Harriet Cross Conservative to ask her to speak up for the hospitals in northern Gaza as even Al Ahli hospital a Christian hospital was hit by Israel and top floor damaged this weekend further reducing its capacity to care for injured patients in northern Gaza. I especially asked her to call for release of Hussam Abu Safia. Unfortunately when I emailed her a couple of weeks ago calling again to stop giving arms to Israel I got the standard reply from her that Israel had the right to defend itself!!!! Humza Youssef was not long being the first minister of Scotland but he did his best calling for an end to this genocide in Gaza. As a former nurse I call for the release of this courageous and dedicated doctor even when his own son was killed and he was injured. Throughout this awful suffering of the people of Gaza I have been so humbled by the doctors and nurses who have worked tirelessly and with little food to try and save the lives of their patients
Where is humanity?