Mutually Assisted Destruction
It is painful and nerve-wracking to watch what is happening in Gaza, Israel, and the West Bank. I feel a moral obligation to do more than sign petitions for a ceasefire, write my representatives and senators in Congress and keep up with my colleagues in Palestine. My colleagues on the West Bank, where I worked just a year ago, are living under tight constraints. Their cities shut down for days at a time after local attacks. Unable to leave their homes, they cannot go to work and their children are not in school. Going outside to play is impossible. This is also traumatic for the soldiers who are forced to follow orders without question and will face PTSD later in life. As a physician I feel some responsibility to speak out about the atrocities on all sides. What is happening cannot end well.
I have been meeting virtually with family physicians, largely in the UK, who come from a multitude of faiths and like me have worked in Palestine to support the development of family medicine. What is and has happened in Israel and Gaza is horrendous and we are trying to articulate a way to respond. There are no easy answers and stereotypes and dehumanization of individuals and populations in order to rationalize the violence fly on all sides. Long histories of trauma and marginalization make the way forward even more impossible.
Bio-ethicist Matthew Wynia calls physicians and health care professionals to action.
This is why our primary responsibility in war as in peace is saving lives, regardless who they are or how they have been injured. In this respect, in wartime our profession must remain the living embodiment of religious injunctions to treat every life as sacred, because to save a single life is to save an entire world.
The recent Statement from the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War says:
The long-term physical, mental and social health consequences of this war will be severe and long-lasting.
While we focus on the horrors in Israel and Palestine, Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court reminds us that what is happening in the Ukraine, Sudan, etc. are equally concerning.
We are currently experiencing a moment of profound human suffering globally. A pandemic of inhumanity has taken hold, from Darfur to Ukraine, from the plight of women and girls in Afghanistan to the seemingly forgotten voices of Rohingya refugees in Myanmar, and now the intolerable tragedy that is deepening in Israel and the State of Palestine and threatening to spread wider. These human rights emergencies are interconnected. At their heart they are driven by a common crisis: a failure to give value to the lives of all people.
Two of my UK colleagues offered this call to action recently published in the BMJ:
The conflict in Gaza transcends faith, race, and nationality, and we need to have the moral courage to rise above divisive identity politics and polarising narratives to recognise our shared human values and hold space for each other. As healthcare professionals committed to principles of dignity, compassion, respect for life, and alleviating human suffering, we should be at the forefront of these discussions and peace efforts. BMJ blog post
The MAD group will continue to meet every fortnight. We are supporting each other in our despair and are committed to developing a programme of work to publicise the many serious adverse health impacts of the disastrous situation unfolding in Gaza and the West Bank on all involved. We are sharing our concern with our circles of contacts and organizations.
Please take and share what parts of this blog are helpful to you. We are calling ourselves Physicians Against Mutually Assisted Destruction and plan to hold an international virtual workshop on this subject, hopefully sometime in the early Spring of next year.
For updates on the current Israel/Gaza situation you can sign up for emails at OCHA
In the name of peace . . .