UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, International Criminal Court Prosecutor, International Court of Justice President: Investigate the Possibility that Israel is Committing the Crime of Genocide Against the Indigenous Palestinian People.
As one of the few international observers allowed into Gaza, I can tell you; spend just five minutes in a hospital there and it will become painfully clear that Palestinians are being intentionally massacred, starved, and stripped of everything needed to sustain human life. Collectively for the past 14 months, we have treated people subjected to civilian massacre after civilian massacre at the few remaining, partially functioning hospitals in Gaza. Entire families have been eliminated. Wiped off of the civil registry. Our healthcare and humanitarian colleagues are being killed at record numbers. We have treated countless children who have lost their entire families. A phenomenon so frequent in Gaza that it has been given a specific name. Wounded Child No Surviving Family. We held the hands of children as they took their last breaths with no one but a stranger to comfort them. Those who recovered enough to leave the hospital continue to face the obvious risk of death, be it through another bombing, starvation, dehydration, or disease. History has clearly shown us that doctors can’t stop genocide. This is why it’s called The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. And this is why I, as a doctor, am here today, pleading to you.
One of the first posts on @GazaMedicVoices, a social media page that provides firsthand accounts from healthcare workers on the ground in Gaza, was shared on October 12, 2023. It presented the testimony of a consultant surgeon in Gaza, dated to just three days into Israel’s extermination campaign—before, to many, it was recognizable as such. “Having spent five days without leaving the hospital, I find myself at a loss for words,” the surgeon pleaded. “Never before in my entire life have I witnessed anything like this, and I am unable to articulate what I have seen. I am left speechless.”
