Global groups urged to condemn the destruction of Gaza health services
SA health and social justice advocates are among more than 40 organisations that on Tuesday published an open letter calling on global health organisations to condemn Israel’s targeting of health workers and infrastructure in Gaza.
They also called for a boycott of Israeli pharmaceutical manufacturer Teva, the suspension of Israel from the World Medical Association and a pause on research with Israeli organisations.
The more than four-month war between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas has devastated much of Gaza, forced nearly all of its 2.3-million inhabitants from their homes, and destroyed most of its health infrastructure.
Gaza’s hospitals have come under frequent attack from Israel, which said they had been sheltering Hamas militants and weapons, an allegation Hamas said was a pretext for destroying the health system.
“The purposive and systematic destruction of the health system … the targeting of health workers, hospitals … ambulances and patients, and blockades on life-saving medical supplies by the Israeli Defence Forces amount to war crimes and genocide,” said the letter.
Among its SA signatories are the People’s Health Movement, the Health Justice Initiative, the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society, the Rural Health Advocacy Project, the Treatment Action Campaign, Section 27, Equal Education and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign SA.
“Israel is deliberately creating conditions under which preventable sickness and death will accelerate even further, particularly among the most vulnerable … in furtherance of its genocide,” they said, drawing attention to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling in January, which found some of the acts and omissions alleged by SA to have been committed by Israel in Gaza could fall within the provisions of the Genocide Convention.
The ICJ stopped short of ordering a ceasefire, but instructed Israel to refrain from any acts that could fall under the Genocide Convention, ensure its troops did not commit genocidal acts, and restore humanitarian aid to Gaza.
The letter’s signatories urged health workers and organisations around the world to support calls for a sports, arts, cultural and academic boycott of Israel, and to advocate for an immediate and sustained ceasefire.
They called on them to publicly call for the immediate scaling up of humanitarian aid to Gaza, an arms embargo and trade sanctions against Israel.
“The consequences of the targeting of health facilities are clear to all. Palestinians of all ages have died from lack of care, lack of equipment or treatment options because of the blockade, inability to operate because of damage to generators, lack of electricity to run critical equipment in ICUs and for neonatal incubators,” the letter’s signatories said.
They called on HIV patient groups and activists to target Teva for boycott, divestment and sanctions, and called on patients using Teva’s generic HIV prevention products to switch to pre-exposure prophylaxis medicines made by other companies.