MEDICAL RELIEF FOR GAZAN CIVILIANS
Inexplicable horrors
Agostino Gemelli University Polyclinic Hybrid Operating Theatre, Rome, Italy. Image by Pfree2014, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication
Contrast medical care in a modern, immaculate, antiseptically clean, hospital with rested and caring medical staff, and pain-free surgical procedures with the scenario below in a bomb-ruined Gaza hospital:
Wounded children and adults in blood-stained rooms— flies buzz about, sterility is merely suggested. Men and women in tears carry burned and bloodied infants and small children. No privacy for child victims with scant clothing writhing in fear and pain, some awaiting treatment with blank expressions of shock. Those on gurneys treated alongside deceased victims bundled in sheets on debris-strewn floors beneath them. Children writhe in pain as nurses assess their wounds. A man in tears gazes at his crying baby resting on a gurney. Nurses without surgical masks hold down a wounded and screaming child while tubes are driven into his side without anesthetics. Young people pulled from collapsed buildings emerge covered with dust resembling breaded meat.
Exhausted medical staff overwhelmed by the flow of casualties cry out: “Help us. Help us. Please cease fire. Please stop this massacre.” Paramedics are struck by bombs; some are killed and those who are wounded are treated by peers too busy to grieve over them. Modern clinical equipment lies destroyed and medical workers make do with what is at hand— victim recoveries hinge on sheer luck. Many workers have lost spouses, children, siblings, other family members yet continue to help others.
And stripped-down hospital workers have been shot in cold blood by the invaders.
Hospital rooms crowded with wounded, full stretchers everywhere— no morphine, no fentanyl block pain. Rooms piled up with odds and ends serve as workshops for on-demand manufacture of surgical tools. Destroyed imaging equipment denies accuracy in diagnosing victim injuries. Serious but survivable injuries await treatment of the more seriously injured— delay leads to needless amputation of limbs where maggots thrive on infected wounds.
In this chaos, what happens to those Gazans seeking attention for non-combat medical conditions, such as heart, circulatory, and pulmonary disease; strokes; respiratory infections; cancers; diabetes; Alzheimer’s and dementia; dehydration; dysentery; tuberculosis; cirrhosis; and other communicable diseases?
What about prenatal and post-natal care for mothers and newborns?
Yet, in this chaotic butcher-shop atmosphere, among victims and medical staff you find kindness, compassion, generosity, love of the other, good will, forgiveness of the aggressors. Physically and emotionally scarred, they seek peace, healing and find joy in the everyday things as conditions allow.
Watch this video (graphic) by an American physician— your perspective may well change.
Press for relief for these afflicted human beings; for entry of medical and humanitarian supplies; for evacuation of injured civilians for follow-up treatment; for protection of the medical infrastructurre from attack.
There's something missing. Not that you're missing it, Manuel. But rather the drum beat of Israel's oppression, which is obvious, eclipses the other reality - Hamas. I don't have the words yet for how all of this horror gives Hamas cover - they remain in power, they await underground for the world to play out the drama. The Palestinian people suffer and die. Even the three countries coming forward last week to recognize a Palestinian state (something I fully support) without comment about Hamas' abuse of their own people speaks volumes. I'm not sure what I'm after here ... TY for giving a space for my unformed thoughts. This is the poem I wrote:
SPLIT SCREEN
No abstraction, no curious riddle, or hummingbird’s love song.
Only hard truth – voiceless images.
I put on a red dress that day – she loaded a pot and blanket onto an ox cart.
Who believes miracles come in packages labeled tragedy?
Neatly wrapped up in chaos and starvation, children losing limbs, parents buried alive…
I made a cappuccino – she didn’t watch the sunrise.
Stumbling amid the dust of crumbling buildings; she coughed up the blood of war.
While she wondered how the world would end,
I prayed the revelation would begin.
Everyone focuses on how Hamas started this "war" to wipe out the Israelis, while ignoring the fact that it is Israel's stated purpose, according to Netanyahu, to wipe out the Palestinians; he calls them all Hamas, and under that criteria feels justified in his inhumane drive to wipe them from Gaza completely. Yes, Israelis should have a homeland, but to "move" the occupants into a small strip of land and then systemically proceed to shrink it, to terrorize those living in it, is contemptuous and something that no one has been willing to address. Its seems as though the world feels so guilty over allowing the Holocaust to occur that they have created a monster that feels vindicated in subjecting others to the same horrors. Netanyahu needs to be removed. Maybe then the healing can begin.