i was really hoping the story about the decomposing babies would be revealed to be slightly less horrible than it is but human rights watch just confirmed it which is making me sick
the doctors left five children behind at al-rantisi (also known as al-nasr) hospital because it was being targeted by the IDF. the hrw report says it was targeted by airstrikes—testimony from a nurse who left there says they were forced to leave the babies under shelling and also rounds of live ammunition by the army to evacuate the hospital. there was also testimony that at least one parent of one of the children left behind was shot and left at the entrance of the hospital
this was a testimony from one of a doctors without borders nurse after they were forced to evacuate.
i distinctly remember another written testimony by a doctor stating that they had left the five children behind at the ICU, and that they had informed the israeli army and asked for them to be evacuated but were specifically asking the red cross to intervene. there is also video testimony of a doctor asking the red cross to intervene before the hospital was evacuated.
one doctor explicitly stated that they had rehooked a child to one of the remaining battery-powered machines before leaving.
this was november 10th.
on november 28th, during the ceasefire, families were finally able to go back to north gaza and get into the hospital, only to discover that the five children left behind had been left to die and were found decomposed in their beds.
Gaza health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra told AFP that Israeli soldiers had blocked access to the intensive care unit at Al-Nasr paediatric facility, and doctors were finally “able to get into the ward on Tuesday night”.
There, Qudra said, “the occupation (Israeli) forces left five premature babies” who were found “partly decomposed”.
“The soldiers forbade the families from going near” the newborns before Tuesday, he said.
there’s been an outpouring of anger at the red cross, which was the only international entity capable of intervening. instead, the red cross claimed it was not responsible for evacuating the hospital. they have not provided any assistance to thousands of palestinians in north gaza who were asking for help. the red cross released this statement:
However, their statement in Arabic was far worse, translated here:
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“Our teams did not make any commitment to participate in these processes” essentially means the red cross (the only entity capable of evacuating a hospital the israeli military had beseiged) had simply abdicated its duties.
for comparison, because of the public outrage at al-shifa where 39 NICU babies were also beseiged by the israeli military, the red cross was involved in transporting the remaining babies to egypt after eight had already died. the red cross is capable of it, they just didn’t care.
worth noting that since then israel has left al-shifa after filming some humiliating propaganda videos proving there was no “hamas headquarters” at the hospital and left al-nasr after finding nothing as well. this is not because the idf failed to find hamas, it’s because the idf had succeeeded in its primary goal to make gaza unlivable and prevent palestinians from being able to access healthcare. finding hamas was never a real goal, and anyone who repeats this lie is either an idiot or a propagandist.
destroying a hospital and evacuating patients and medical staff is already a war crime. but leaving five children to slowly die alone of suffocation in a hospital bed and then leaving their dead bodies to decompose for over two weeks is unforgivable. this is what occupation does, what israel does. a war crime committed first by soldiers carrying arms, and then completed by international aid organizations that abandon palestinians in their time of need. it is not possible without international complicity allowing israel to continue committing unspeakable horrors against palestinians with impunity.
and today, december 1st, the ceasefire ended and bombing gaza has resumed.
just found out from my dad today that when n*xon died and they did the 21-gun salute at his funeral my grandma said “they should aim at the coffin to be sure”
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