We are a group of US-based healthcare providers and trainees. We call on the international healthcare community to sign in support of the below statement.

We stand unequivocally in solidarity with the Palestinian people. We are devastated by the violence the Israeli government has carried out against them. We recognize the asymmetry of power between the colonizer (the Israeli state) and the colonized (the Palestinian people) and the indiscriminate violence. Drawing on statements made by Palestinian, Israeli, and global news sources and agencies, we understand that the system of Israeli apartheid and settler colonialism lies at the root of the many deaths of Israelis and Palestinians. In 2012, the United Nations issued a dire warning that if the Israeli blockade continues, “the consequences can be negative: social tension, violence, and extremism…This is the scenario in Gaza, unless the political and economic situation changes substantially.” Israel, however, repeatedly ignored such warnings and maintained the illegal blockade.

Israeli apartheid, endorsed by the United States, harms us all. In the last week alone, 2,200 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, including 583 children, have been killed by indiscriminate Israeli bombing and 7,388 have been injured. To understand the scale of the tragedy unfolding, Israel has dropped 6,000 bombs over 6 days; this is as compared to the equally tragic and unjustified 2,500 bombs per month dropped on Iraq and Syria by the United States and allies.

The response from the medical establishment has not been one of silence but one of complicity in the crimes being committed by the Israeli state, particularly in the United States. Health systems like Mass General Brigham, Johns Hopkins and others have unequivocally denounced Hamas attacks against Israeli people. However, as the Israeli state continues its collective punishment of Palestinian people, our institutions remain silent. There has been minimal recognition of the unfolding humanitarian disaster or the pain of Palestinian trainees, faculty, or staff. US taxpayer dollars fund this regime, and thus, more than our international colleagues, we have a moral obligation to publicly denounce these blatant human rights violations. We cannot continue to prioritize the value of some lives over others.

Here, we put forth several calls to action for healthcare workers and medical institutions: 

1. To condemn the violence and destruction against the healthcare system that the Israeli State is inflicting against Palestine and the Palestinian people, in all of its forms. As healthcare workers, we cannot look away from human suffering and must turn toward it, especially in defense of the most systematically oppressed and vulnerable, and respond. We urge you, as individuals, to first and foremost, elevate the voices of those in Gaza. As Gaza is placed under internet blockade, it is paramount that we continue to amplify the horrors happening. Our power as healthcare workers is to hold our health systems accountable to the values of human rights. We ask that our colleagues take the following steps to ensure that your institutions do not remain neutral in the setting of mass displacement and mass atrocities:

1. Contact <healthcareworkerspalestine (at) gmail (dot) com> to get involved with an effort at your institution or in your region or find support to start one. You will be put in touch with others from your institution and region. We are stronger together.

2. Use this template or write your own letter to your health system’s leadership with asks such as the following: ask your leadership to contact your Senators and Representatives calling for an immediate ceasefire, an end to displacement, and to stop funding this ongoing atrocity, and collect signatures from supportive colleagues. 

2. We must materially support our international colleagues using direct aid. Palestinian people are in urgent need of food, water, fuel, and medical supplies since Israel restricted access to these materials in the Gaza Strip. We need to stay diligent in our solidarity, by amplifying and materially supporting the Palestinian people through solidarity protests, direct material aid, and economic resistance. Colleagues in touch with those on the ground have recommended the following organizations: MedicalAidPal, Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund, Palestinian American Medical Association, Palestinian Red Crescent Organization, and Doctors Without Borders

In Solidarity,

Healthcare Workers for Palestine

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