Women, children casualties

DR AAYESHA Soni of the Media Review Network – a well known anti-Israel lobby group – wrote about a paramedic shot during the riots in Gaza recently (The Star, June 11).

She calls the attempted breaking down of an international barrier and thousands of Palestinians invading a sovereign state a “peaceful protest”, where clear TV footages and press photographs show the opposite.

The question that Dr Soni might ask is why, after clear warnings by the Israeli authorities, Hamas leadership send not only their operatives but thousands of women and children into a conflict zone with the knowledge that casualties would result.

But what she won’t admit to, and surely knows, that this is the strategy of the Hamas leadership to have as many “innocent” Palestinians, especially children, killed.

This strategy elicits no criticism from Soni who as a doctor writing her piece, talks about the value of human life?

She cites the Forth Geneva Convention that affords special protection to medical personal. That very same convention also protects wounded soldiers and soldiers held in captivity something that both Hamas and Hezbollah ignore.

During the 2014 Gaza war I was hosted by the medical director of Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon where Israelis and Arab patients are treated sharing wards and facilities.

The doctors at this hospital were in daily contact with doctors in Gaza exchanging critical data that saved many lives. Dr Soni as a medical doctor, don’t tell us you are not aware of the medical collaboration between practitioners in Gaza and Israel. Allan Wolman Rosebank, Joburg