{"id":285111,"date":"2025-01-13T12:00:32","date_gmt":"2025-01-13T12:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=285111"},"modified":"2025-01-13T06:59:31","modified_gmt":"2025-01-13T06:59:31","slug":"dr-abu-safiya-symbolized-humanity-in-gaza-israel-and-the-west-are-destroying-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/01\/dr-abu-safiya-symbolized-humanity-in-gaza-israel-and-the-west-are-destroying-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr Abu Safiya Symbolized Humanity in Gaza–Israel and the West Are Destroying It"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Concerns grow after Israeli forces detain the director of besieged Gaza hospital, Dr Husam Abu Safiya.\u00a0 NBC News<\/p><\/div>\n

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Israel isn\u2019t eradicating \u2018the terrorists\u2019. It\u2019s turning Gaza into a wasteland, a hellscape, where doctors no longer exist, aid workers are a memory, and compassion a liability.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

8 Jan 2025 <\/em>– If there was an image from 2024 that captured the year\u2019s news, it was this one: Dr Hussam Abu Safiya<\/a>, in a white lab coat, picking his way through the wreckage of the Kamal Adwan hospital he ran \u2013 the last surviving major medical facility in northern Gaza \u2013 towards two Israeli tanks, their gun barrels aimed at him.<\/p>\n

The past year has been dominated by the death and destruction Israel has wrought throughout the tiny enclave.<\/p>\n

It has been marked by the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinians \u2013 the deaths we know about \u2013 and the maiming<\/a> of at least 100,000 more; the starvation<\/a> of the entire population; the levelling of the urban and agricultural landscape; and the systematic erasure of Gaza\u2019s hospitals and health sector, including the killing, mass arrest and torture of Palestinian medics.<\/p>\n

2024 was dominated, too, by a growing consensus from international legal and human rights authorities that all this amounts to genocide.<\/p>\n

Here was an image, from the very final days of the year, that said it all. It showed a lone doctor \u2013 one who had risked his life to keep his hospital operational as it was besieged by Israeli forces, battered by Israeli shells and drones, and had its staff picked off by Israeli snipers \u2013 bravely heading towards his, and his people\u2019s, exterminators.<\/p>\n

He had paid a personal price, just as much as his patients and staff. In October, his 15-year-old son, Ibrahim, was executed<\/a> during an Israeli raid on the hospital. A month later, he himself was wounded<\/a> by shrapnel from an Israeli strike on the building.<\/p>\n

By 27 December, the hospital could no longer withstand Israel\u2019s savage onslaught. When a loudspeaker demanded that Abu Safiya come towards the tanks, he set off grimly across the rubble.<\/p>\n

It was the moment that the Kamal Adwan hospital\u2019s fight to protect life was brought to a sudden end; when the genocidal Israeli war machine notched an inevitable victory against the last outpost of humanity in northern Gaza.<\/p>\n

Held in torture camp<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The image was also the last known one of Abu Safiya, taken minutes before his so-called \u201carrest\u201d \u2013 his abduction \u2013 by Israeli soldiers, and his disappearance into Israel\u2019s system of torture camps.<\/p>\n