Ninety-nine American healthcare workers who worked in Gaza have written a letter to the Biden-Harris administration demanding a ceasefire and arms embargo on Israel.
Since October 2023, dozens of American healthcare professionals have volunteered in Gaza, offering critical medical aid.
They urged President Biden and Vice President Harris to meet with them to discuss what they saw and how American policy should change.
The letter says the human toll in Gaza since October 2023 is far higher than reported “It is likely that the death toll from this conflict is already greater than 118,908, an astonishing 5.4% of Gaza’s population,” it says.
“A ceasefire must be imposed on the warring parties by withholding military support for Israel and supporting an international arms embargo on Israel and all Palestinian armed groups.”
The letter adds that everyone in Gaza is sick, injured, or both. The medics said they witnessed malnourished mothers feeding their underweight newborns infant formula made with poisonous water: “We can never forget that the world abandoned these innocent women and babies.”
The medics add: “Israel’s continued, repeated displacement of the malnourished and sick population of Gaza, half of whom are children, to areas without running water or even toilets available is absolutely shocking.
“President Biden and Vice President Harris, we wish you could see the nightmares that plague so many of us since we have returned: dreams of children maimed and mutilated by our weapons, and their inconsolable mothers begging us to save them. We wish you could hear the cries and screams our consciences will not let us forget. We cannot fathom why you continue arming the country that is deliberately killing these children en masse.”
The website housed letters from Canadian and British healthcare workers who sent similar letters to their governments in August.
The letter is accompanied by a detailed appendix summarising the publicly available information from media, humanitarian, and academic sources on Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
Lebanon healthcare workers say Israel targeting them
Lebanese medical professionals and first responders say they are being deliberately targeted by Israel, which has already killed many of their colleagues.
On Friday. three hospitals in the country’s south were evacuated as Israel continued to press ahead with its invasion of the country.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said Israel killed 28 healthcare workers in just 24 hours.
“Health care continues to come under attack. In Lebanon alone, 28 health workers have been killed in the last 24 hours,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus during a press briefing in Geneva on Wednesday.
At least 50 paramedics have been killed in Lebanon over the last two weeks.
The UN said Israel forced 40 out of 317 health centres and two hospitals across Lebanon to close due to the violence.
With repeated strikes on emergency workers, Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati announced a series of diplomatic contacts to “pressure the Israeli enemy to allow rescue and relief teams to reach the sites of air strikes and to facilitate the transport of victims and the wounded”.
Mikati condemned “the Israeli enemy’s violations of international laws and humanitarian norms”.
So far, Israeli forces have killed 1,600 people, including over 100 children, since it started its latest attacks on Lebanon two weeks ago. An estimated 1.2 million people have been displaced by the invasion.
