On Monday, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published an editorial calling for the Israeli military to stop targeting hospitals in Gaza, titled “Leave Gaza’s Hospitals Alone.”
The editorial came out just a few days after the Israeli military destroyed the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beith Lahia, northern Gaza, and forced the hospital workers and patients to clear out, setting the facility on fire and killing at least five staff members in the process. The hospital’s director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safia, has been arrested by Israeli troops and is believed to be at the notorious Sde Teiman torture prison.
The IDF claimed that it arrested 250 “terrorists” at Kamal Adwan, but the editorial points out the only “evidence” released to back up the assertion was a photo of two pistols and a knife.
“This meager haul does the opposite of supporting the IDF’s claims. For two pistols and a knife, you don’t evacuate dozens of patients and doctors from a hospital and march them in their underwear, on a cold night, before the cameras in order to humiliate them,” the editorial reads.
The editorial acknowledges that the real purpose of the destruction of hospitals in north Gaza is ethnic cleansing. Since early October, the IDF has placed Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun, and Jabalia under a total siege and ordered all civilians to leave under the threat of death, whether by bombing, shooting, or starving to death. The IDF has also been demolishing every building in sight, so Palestinians have nowhere to return.
“It is fair to assume that the deliberate damage to hospitals in Gaza has a different purpose. It appears that as part of the ethnic cleansing of the northern Strip, during which the army destroyed almost all the area’s housing and infrastructure to prevent the return of hundreds of thousands of those expelled from there, it was decided to destroy the hospitals as well,” the editorial says.
The editorial noted that the Fourth Geneva Convention affords a special status to hospitals during wartime. “The presence of small arms and ammunition in a hospital does not justify attacking it, nor does the presence of enemy fighters who are hospitalized there,” it reads.
Israel has targeted hospitals across Gaza since launching its genocidal war in October 2023. The US has continued to provide military aid and political support to Israel despite the campaign against medical infrastructure.
In October, 99 American healthcare workers who volunteered in Gaza wrote an open letter to President Biden and said they saw no evidence of militant activity. “The 99 signatories to this letter spent a combined 254 weeks inside Gaza’s largest hospitals and clinics. We wish to be absolutely clear: not once did any of us see any type of Palestinian militant activity in any of Gaza’s hospitals or other healthcare facilities,” the letter reads.
Good for Haaretz! Keeping a fair and balanced view of the situation.
Too Little… Too Late…!
No more hospitals in northern Gaza.
No more hospitals in northern Gaza.
Sadly True…!
Monsters will monster on!!!!!! This crew is worse than anyone could have imagined by doing theie enthusiastic slaughter of tens of thousands women & kids
It is indeed GENOCIDE.
I’m a Christian and I have hope that those who are lost can and will be saved…
This is Uncle Sammy's genocide.
End the Zionist stranglehold on US government, politics, media and culture!
Like its hegemon, Israel, the US began a genocide and will end a genocide.
… And would suffer the consequences…!
one begins to doubt that.
Not in a long run…!
I can no longer bring myself to read the litany of genocide, day by day murder. I skip over Antiwar because it is just too upsetting.
Isreal must cease to exist as a Jewish State. It failed to honor any of the UN Resolutions founding it and settling conflicts, from the very first one that required return of Palestinians. It also dishonored the Balfour Declaration, which explicitly protected the Palestinians.
There is no other remedy but the end of this genocidal criminal regime.
Well, diplomacy has failed to stop Israeli genocide…! They would need a few Oreshniks to end 150 or so politicians for the World self defense…!
" Haaretz "
Where have they been, all the hospitals have already been bombed, there is nothing left? There is no medical supply like anthesis supply, did the editors not know that? Where are the Israeli people, are all of them sadistic Zionists like their leading war criminal Netanyahu?
The IDF killed and bombed hospitals and medical caregivers from the start, demolished schools and ambulances, was there any editorial about the war crimes at the start and last hospital now?
Actually Haaretz has been opposing the genocide from October 7th and years before. One of Haaretz's editors and columnists is a frequent contributor to antiwar.com. Gideon Levy and other Haaretz contributors have been writing about the genocidal treatment of the Palestinians for many years.
Yes, you are right, but what about the editorial board? The Zionists had to allow at least some limited critic to keep some credibility.