Urgent Health Updates: Consequences of war on Gaza-April 21, 2024

The Jewish Voice for Peace Health Advisory Council is sharing information on the health implications of the attacks.  We will update in a week.  Please use this information to organize & educate. This has been a particularly catastrophic week with rising deaths & injuries in Gaza, the discovery of mass graves at destroyed hospitals, continued obstruction in aid to starving Gazans, settler pogroms in the West Bank, the Iranian attack on Israel & the Israeli attack on Iran, & suppression of speech on Palestine both in Israel & the US. Positive signs are the explosion of campus protests in the US & the growing documentation of the genocide. Use this info to pressure elected officials and to join protests everywhere. Wear a white coat, a stethoscope, make it clear you are a health care worker!

Publications

Interview with Dr. Yasser Abu-Jamei, director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-gazas-largest-mental-health-organization-works-through-war

Eyewitness account of the recent attack on al-Shifa Hospital
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/04/come-out-you-animals-how-the-massacre-at-al-shifa-hospital-happened/

Important statement by the Union Theological Seminary president in the Columbia Spectator (Columbia student newspaper).
https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2024/04/20/i-have-your-back-union-theological-seminary-president-criticizes-nypd-campus-sweep/

Please sign: Petition and Video: Health Care Workers Demand an End to Complicity in Genocide by US Medical Institutions, Associations, and Societies https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSer5vRWDUqNWFl40SmEOPxbOuhmDjUJ89pASG7aiZ1hvsBF-w/viewform

Day 198

Numbers are cumulative

GAZA

·       Killed: 34,097

·       Injured: 76,980

·       Every ten minutes, one child is killed or injured in Gaza 

·       Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza 259

·       Israeli soldiers injured in Gaza: 1,582

·       249 aid workers killed

·       490 health workers killed (including ~15 included under aid workers)

·       66 civil defense staff killed on duty

·       140 journalists & media workers killed

·       Palestinian paramedics claim they received clearance from Israeli military to rescue 6-year-old girl, then they were all killed.

·       Palestinian civil defense crews retrieve 180 bodies from a mass grave inside the Nasser Medical Complex in Gaza’s Khan Younis, 2 weeks after Israeli forces withdrew from the area.

·       4/15, doctors uncovered a new mass grave at the decimated Al-Shifa Hospital. Bodies clearly belonged to patients, as some still had medical bandages & catheters attached to their dead bodies. Hundreds of bodies have been recovered from the Gaza City hospital grounds since Israeli troops ended their deadly siege on April 1. Attacks on health facilities, medical staff & patients are considered war crimes and crimes against humanity.

·       The destruction of Al Shifa Hospital has dealt a deadly blow to the healthcare system in Gaza. Ministry spokesperson Ashraf Al-Qudra accused the Israeli army of: “Deliberately targeting medical personnel & patients during its attacks on hospitals in northern Gaza.”

·       After letting a limited number of women, children, and elderly back into northern Gaza, the Israeli army opened fire on thousands of refugees who attempted to do the same, killing some.

·       Israeli military said it concluded an operation that began last week to gain control of the Netzarim Corridor, which includes a road that stretches from east to west & divides the Strip, allowing the army to control the movement of Palestinians between northern and southern Gaza. IDF said it killed the head of investigations in Hamas’ internal security system in the northern Gaza Strip.

·       Palestinian Red Crescent Society says Israeli forces prevent its teams from reaching the wounded in Gaza

·       11 of 36 hospitals partially functionally

·       6 field hospitals (4 in Rafah, 2 in Khan Younis)

·       ~39% of primary health care facilities functional

·       33% of UNRWA health centers are operational

·       23 emergency medical teams deployed across Gaza, but severe access restraints prevent scaleup in the north.

·       >1 million women & girls in Gaza are facing inhumane living conditions & critical health risks due to the lack of safe water & basic sanitation services. 

·       Dentistry program at Al-Azhar University was very selective, very demanding, & they had big plans. “We dream a lot — more than a brain can imagine,” one said. Instead of starting new jobs, they found themselves plunged into endless days of burying the dead & fearing for the living.

·       >643,999 cases of acute respiratory infections

·       >346,000 cases of diarrhea, 31% are children <5

·       >50,000 children acutely malnourished

·       Nutrition Cluster partners providing nutrition services at 21 health facilities, 235 formal & informal shelters, & 37 sites in host communities.  

·       UNICEF & 13 partners have so far expanded outpatient therapeutic program to 85 sites: 26 in North Gaza, 11 in Deir al Balah, 2 in Khan Younis, & 46 in Rafah. 

·       Distribution of fodder is ongoing in Rafah, with people each receiving a 50-kilogram sack, sufficient to feed 5 sheep for 5 days. 

·       Efforts underway to support bakeries in resuming operations, but more fuel is needed to achieve significant results. 

·       As of 4/15, an estimated 27 Palestinian children have been killed by famine, with fears many more will suffer lifelong effects, despite Israel’s promise of more aid. UN-backed food insecurity experts assessed in mid-March that famine in Gaza could set in between later that month & mid-May. Samantha Power, head of the US humanitarian and development agency, USAid, became the first American official to confirm publicly that in some areas, famine had already taken hold.

·       625,000 students with no access to education

·       90% of 563 schools directly hit, damaged, or possibly damaged

·       59% of school buildings used as IDP shelters directly hit or damaged

·       A new report by UN Women finds that Israel’s assault on Gaza has left more than 19,000 children orphaned. ,Israel struck a playground & busy market in the Maghazi refugee camp.

·       1 sq meter is average space per person in IDP shelters

·       1.1million people face catastrophic levels of food insecurity

·       1 of 3 water pipelines from Israel operational at 72% capacity

·       83% of groundwater wells not operating

·       All wastewater treatment not operational, 1 is partially operational

·       57% of WASH facilities damaged

·       270,000 tons of solid waste have accumulated across the Gaza Strip

·       >1 million children in need of mental health & psychological support

·       Between 4/1-4/19: 32 aid missions to northern Gaza facilitated by Israel, 14 denied or impeded, 8 cancelled. In southern Gaza 104 aid missions facilitated, 13 denied or impeded, 10 cancelled

·       50% of 9,762 patients who submitted requests for medical evacuation have been approved, 83% have been evacuated abroad

·       Efforts to scale up live-saving assistance & restore the health system continue to be undermined by “limited access, mission denials & delays, self-distribution of supplies among desperate crowds, & ongoing security challenges,” according to WHO. 4/13  WHO and its partners were able to reach the Al Ahli Hospital in northern Gaza, delivering nearly 20,000 liters of fuel, some of which will be provided to As Sahaba Hospital. 3 critical patients & 2 companions were also evacuated to field hospitals in Rafah.

·       Andrea De Domenico, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, said Gaza aid deliveries were facing significant checkpoint delays & that last week 41% of UN requests to deliver aid to north Gaza were denied.

·       UN World Food Program says malnutrition is spreading at record pace among children. More than 90% of young children & pregnant & breastfeeding women are subsisting on 2 or fewer food groups – mainly bread – with no access to fruit, vegetables, milk, or proteins. Gaza’s healthcare system has collapsed making malnutrition alleviation nearly impossible.

·       Pipeline forecast over the next 3 months stands at 291,028 metric tons of humanitarian aid, including 99,735 metric tons through the Egypt corridor, 35,126 metric tons through the Jordan corridor & 26,167 metric tons, exclusively of flour, from the Ashdod port. 

·       To rebuild Gaza’s healthcare system, medical students from Gaza need support. Organizations are raising money for medical students from Gaza to continue their studies abroad. Continuing their medical education is vital to ensuring the future of healthcare in Gaza.

·       A report published by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees includes accounts by its staff members who were detained in Israel of being threatened & coerced to make false confessions that agency staffers took part in the 10/7 Hamas attacks

·       In December, an Israeli shell, possibly provided by the US, hit Gaza City’s largest fertility clinic, the Al Basma IVF center. The explosion “blasted the lids off 5 liquid nitrogen tanks stored in a corner of the embryology unit”. More than 4,000 embryos were destroyed, along with 1,000 more specimens of sperm &   unfertilized eggs.

WEST BANK & EAST JERUSALEM

·       Large mobs of Israeli settlers went on a 2-day rampage against 17 villages in the region northeast of Ramallah when a settler teenager was reported missing. They burned dozens of houses & killed 2 Palestinians, while effectively blockading ~10 villages.

·       ~37 Palestinian communities across the West Bank have been affected by Israeli settler violence incidents leading to casualties &/or property damage between 9 and 15 April, triple the number of affected communities in the preceding week.

·       Human Rights Watch says Israeli soldiers are participating in the wave of settler attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank.

·       Palestinian Health Ministry said a 50-year-old ambulance driver was killed, & 2 others were wounded, in clashes between Palestinians & Israeli settlers south of Nablus.

·       Israel’s government has accelerated the construction of settlements across East Jerusalem, with more than 20 projects totaling thousands of housing units having been approved or advanced since the start of the war in Gaza.

ISRAEL

·       Iran launched a drone and missile attack on Israel, which targeted military bases & airports in a response to Israel’s bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus on 4/1, which killed 7 Iranian officials. Iranian media sources reported early on 4/19  several explosions were heard in the Isfahan province in Iran. The Israeli public broadcasting corporation later said that Israel conducted an air attack on Iran. Sources indicated that the attack targeted a military base at an airport in Isfahan, while Iranian sources said that Iran’s nuclear facilities were not attacked.

·       US media quoted US officials saying that Israel had informed Washington 2 days ago that it would attack Iran. The officials were quoted to affirm that the US did not take part in the attack.

·       Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian of Hebrew University was arrested, accused of incitement and spreading inflammatory opinions, & subsequently released, pending trial, in a campaign of harassment & intimidation against Palestinian citizens of Israel.

US

·       US House of Representatives passes $26bn in funding for Israel amid its war on Gaza & tensions with Iran, with the package to now go to the Senate for approval.

·       The New York Times editorial board called on the US to condition military aid to Israel, writing that “Netanyahu has turned his back on America and its entreaties,” and “The United States cannot remain beholden to an Israeli leader fixated on his own survival and the approval of the zealots he harbors.”

·       A special State Department panel told Secretary of State Blinken that US should restrict arms sales to Israeli military units that have been accused of human rights abuses.  He has not taken any action.

·       On 4/15 protesters blocked roads across the US to support those in Gaza. The coordinated protests across the US & around the globe were planned in part to coincide with Tax Day in the US.

·       14 students at Yale University are on a hunger strike over the school’s connection to arms manufacturers currently supplying Israel with weaponry.

·       >100 people were arrested at Columbia University – including the daughter of the Democratic representative Ilhan Omar – after the school’s president called in the New York police department to break up student protests over Israel’s war in Gaza. Tents were pitched on the central campus and hundreds of students demonstrated to call for the university to financially divest from Israel, & for an immediate ceasefire.

·       University of Southern California’s (USC) cancellation of its 2024 valedictorian, Asna Tabassum’s, commencement speech garnered attention from national and international media &represents a serious attack on Palestine when it comes to free speech. 

·       The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention has issued an “active genocide alert” over the situation for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. “Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians across Palestine,” the Lemkin Institute said earlier this month.

·       The New York Times instructed journalists covering Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” & “ethnic cleansing” & to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land, according to a copy of an internal memo obtained by The Intercept. The memo also instructs reporters not to use the word Palestine “except in very rare cases” & to steer clear of the term “refugee camps.”

·       Mohammad Subeh, an American doctor, described what he saw when treating wounded Palestinian children, many of them orphaned by Israeli attacks. He also described treating those who survived the aftermath of “mass casualty incidents” in which dozens of civilians were killed or wounded; many of these attacks appeared deliberately targeted at civilian.

·       Thousands of people have descended upon Columbia’s campus to stand in solidarity with the hundreds of students who sat zip-tied in NYPD vans just the day before.

·       Students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Miami University in Ohio, and Yale University in Connecticut have even launched solidarity encampments of their own.

·       On the opposite coast, students took to the streets after Asna Tabassum’s valedictory speech was canceled by the University of Southern California on unfounded safety concerns.

·       In the south, the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR-Georgia) & Palestine Legal brandish a civil rights complaint against Emory University for fostering a “hostile Anti-Palestinian & Islamophobic Environment” after months of student harassment and suppression.       

INTERNATIONAL

·       Germany, France & the UK called upon Israel “not to escalate” after Iran’s strike on 4/13.

·       The OPT Flash Appeal calls for US $2.822 billion for UN Agencies, INGO, and NGO partners to address the most urgent, critical needs of more than 3 million people in Gaza & the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, covering a 9-month period from April through December 2024. This represents only part of the US $4.089 billion that the UN and partners estimate is required to support the basic needs of 3.3 million people. It reflects an effort to be realistic about what will be implementable given the current operating context. 

·       Members of a UN commission said Israel was obstructing their efforts to investigate possible human rights violations on 10/7 & in the ensuing war between Israel & Hamas. But they said the commission had still shared large amounts of evidence with the International Criminal Court.

·       The Gaza  Freedom Flotilla has launched 4/19 to break the siege of Gaza.  

SOURCES

OCHAOPT, NYT, Haaretz, Mondoweiss, The Guardian, WHO, Democracy Now, The Intercept, Electronic Intifada, Ministry of Health, Washington Post, Aljazeera, Portside, Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, UNwomen.org, Freedom Flotilla Coalition