Hospitals, health and death in Gaza
Abstract
Human rights violations harm dignity and inflict suffering by causing loss of health and/or life. Thus, illness and death are the most tangible and irrefutable evidence of the commission of these crimes. The mounting death and injury toll from Israel's siege of Gaza, as well as its relentness and indiscriminate shelling against civilian population is part of a cruel and unjustified collective punishment of Palestinians. Any honest health worker could use the figures of civilian deaths and injuries caused by the Israeli army every day, to count on enough arguments to refute the lukewarmness and ambiguity with which the spokespersons of several country governments and international organizations hesitate to demand a ceasefire and to denounce this massacre as a crime against humanity or a genocide.
Although the armed actions led by Hamas militants may have been driven by desperation and rejection of the passive acceptance of the suffocating occupation and apartheid that Israel has imposed on the Palestinians since 1967, the deaths of the Israeli civilians who were killed on October 7 cannot be justified. However, from that very day, the Israeli government launched a cruel and disproportionate military operation of punitive revenge; not only against Hamas militants, but against all Palestinians.
