When burning hospitals are no longer news

This morning, I opened social media to search for Gaza news. I had to scroll for a while through my newsfeed before seeing the first mention of my homeland.

Yet, the news we receive from Gaza through friends, family and social media is no less grim than it was a year ago. Its people continue to cry out for help, hoping the world would hear them.

For three months, Dr Hussam Abu Safia, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza, sent appeals for help to the world, as the Israeli army besieged the hospital, cut off supplies, bombarded it, slaughtered people in its vicinity and injured some of the medical staff and patients inside.

In a video appeal posted on December 12, Dr Abu Safia lamented: “We are now without any capacity and providing a low-level service. I hope that there are listening ears. We hope that there is a living conscience that hears our plea and facilitates a humanitarian corridor to the hospital so that Kamal Adwan Hospital continues its work to provide services.”

But his cries for help fell on deaf ears. The day after Christmas, Israeli bombardment killed a woman at the hospital’s front gate and five medical workers: Dr Ahmed Samour, a paediatrician; Esraa Abu Zaidah, a laboratory technician; Abdul Majid Abu al-Eish and Maher al-Ajrami, paramedics; and Fares al-Houdali, a maintenance technician. Shrapnel shattered the skull of nurse Hassan Dabous inside the hospital, putting his life in danger.

Yesterday, Israeli soldiers stormed the hospital and set it on fire, expelling 350 patients and kidnapping Dr Abu Safia and other medical staff.

This horrific news barely made a blip in international media; there were no reactions from foreign governments or leading institutions, except a few Middle Eastern states and the WHO. Israel has clearly been successful in normalising its brutal attacks, destruction of Palestinian hospitals, and killing of Palestinian patients and medical staff.

There was also no reaction from the world when earlier this month, Dr Said Joudeh, the last remaining orthopaedic surgeon in north Gaza, was assassinated on his way to work at the barely functioning al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia refugee camp. Dr Joudeh was a retired surgeon who felt compelled to return to work because of the desperate shortage of doctors caused by Israel’s targeted killings.

Just a week before his murder, he had learned that his son, Majd, had been killed. Despite his grief, Dr Joudeh continued his work.

Israel is seeking to eliminate all aspects of civilian life in northern Gaza as part of a policy to depopulate it. For this reason, it is targeting civilian infrastructure across the north and obstructing its functioning. The few medical facilities were the last remaining vestiges of civilian life.

Apart from trying to exterminate medical workers, the Israeli army is also systematically blocking civil defence teams and ambulances from saving lives in the north, often hitting and killing them when they try to do so.

And it is not just appeals from the north that are being ignored.

The whole of Gaza has been stricken by famine as Israel has dramatically decreased the number of humanitarian and commercial trucks entering the Gaza Strip. Hunger is omnipresent and is affecting even those who may have some means to buy food but cannot find any.

My cousin, an UNRWA teacher, recently told me about his visit to his sister, who was ill and displaced in Deir el-Balah. While he was visiting, he could not sleep. He had not eaten bread for 15 days, but it was not his own gnawing hunger as a diabetic that kept him up. It was the cries of his sister’s children who begged for just a piece of bread. Desperate to comfort them, my cousin told them story after story until they drifted to sleep. But he remained awake, haunted by their hunger and his own.

Apart from food, Israel is also blocking the delivery of much-needed materials to build shelters. Four babies have already frozen to death since the start of this month.

Amid the famine and harsh winter, Israeli bombardment of homes and tents of the displaced has not stopped.

On December 7, a distant relative, Dr Muhammad al-Nairab, lost his wife and three daughters when the Israeli army hit their home in Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, west of Gaza City. Two of his daughters, Sally and Sahar, were doctors, helping save lives. They no longer can.

When my niece, Nour, a mother of two, reached out to her uncle, Dr Muhammad, to extend her condolences, she found the pain of his loss intolerable. I spoke to her shortly after. Her words pierced through the despair like a scream: “When will the world hear us and see us? When will these massacres matter? Are we not human?”

On December 11, another family was hit not far from Dr Muhammad’s home in Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood. That Israeli attack killed Palestinian journalist Iman al-Shanti, along with her husband and three children.

Days before her murder, Iman shared a video of herself reflecting on the reality of genocide. “Is it possible for this level of failure to exist? Is the blood of the people of Gaza so cheap to you?” she asked the world.

There was no answer. Just like war crimes against Palestinians have been normalised, so has Palestinian death and pain. This normalisation not only silences their suffering but also denies their humanity.

Yet for Palestinians, the pain of loss is anything but normal – it lingers, sinking into the soul, raw and unrelenting, carried in the echoes of those they have lost, both inside and outside Gaza. It is a transnational pain, a grief that crosses borders and defies boundaries, binding Palestinians in exile to those enduring the horrors of genocide.

In a December 3 social media post, journalist Dayana al-Mughrabi, who is currently displaced in Egypt, captured the unending grief of Gaza’s people: “Our loved ones don’t die once, they die many times after their actual death. A person died the day he died, then he died again the day his watch that I kept on my wrist for years was broken. He died again when the teacup he used to drink from shattered. That person died yet again on the day that reminds us of their actual date of death, and after their burial, when the coffee residue was washed from his last cup, and when I saw someone collecting the rest of his medicine to get rid of it. Those we love continue to die many times – they never stop dying – not a single day.”

While this replaying of death happens more than 45,000 times, the world seems ready to move on from Gaza. Fifteen months into this genocide, advocates and activists across the globe are devastated and exhausted by the endless destruction in Gaza and the overwhelming silence and acceptance of it.

As a native Palestinian and third-generation Palestinian refugee, despite the indelible marks left on the soul by genocide – marks that time cannot erase – I refuse to lose hope. I am reminded of the words of Czech dissident Vaclav Havel: “Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

The South Africa case against the apartheid regime at the International Court of Justice and the work of the International Criminal Court are not just significant – they are crucial in establishing Israel’s status as a pariah, one among nations that have sought the eradication of entire peoples. The world must not forget Gaza. Now, more than ever, its cries must be heard and the call for justice must be answered.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance. 

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