With the approach of one year of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, on October 2, 2024, 99 physicians, surgeons, nurse practitioners, nurses, and midwives from the U.S. who had spent time in Gaza wrote an open letter to President Biden and Vice President Harris. 

It ends:

Every day that we continue supplying weapons and munitions to Israel is another day that women are shredded by our bombs and children are murdered with our bullets. President Biden and Vice President Harris, we urge you: end this madness now! (Here and throughout, boldface and emphasis are in the original.)

The letter presents infuriating, heartbreaking, and damning testimony from what these medical professionals observed. And its horrific assertions are documented in a detailed appendix. It presents “probative evidence [proof] that the human toll in Gaza since October is far higher than is understood in the United States. It is likely that the death toll from this conflict is already greater than 118,908, an astonishing 5.4% of Gaza’s population.”

And it demands: “A ceasefire must be imposed on the warring parties by withholding military support for Israel and supporting an international arms embargo on Israel and all Palestinian armed groups.”

The letter is six pages. Every single sentence documents historic, depraved crimes against humanity by Israel. 

The following are excerpts from the letter:

I’ve never seen such horrific injuries, on such a massive scale, with so few resources. Our bombs are cutting down women and children by the thousands. Their mutilated bodies are a monument to cruelty.
—Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, trauma and critical care surgeon, Veterans Affairs general surgeon

With only marginal exceptions, everyone in Gaza is sick, injured, or both. This includes every national aid worker, every international volunteer, and probably every Israeli hostage: every man, woman, and child. While working in Gaza we saw widespread malnutrition in our patients and our Palestinian healthcare colleagues. Every one of us lost weight rapidly in Gaza despite having privileged access to food and having taken our own supplementary nutrient-dense food with us. We have photographic evidence of life-threatening malnutrition in our patients, especially children, that we are eager to share with you.

Virtually every child under the age of five whom we encountered, both inside and outside of the hospital, had both a cough and watery diarrhea. We found cases of jaundice (indicating hepatitis A infection under such conditions) in nearly every room of the hospitals in which we served, and in many of our healthcare colleagues in Gaza. An astonishingly high percentage of our surgical incisions became infected from the combination of malnutrition, impossible operating conditions, lack of basic sanitation supplies such as soap, and lack of surgical supplies and medications, including antibiotics.

Malnutrition led to widespread spontaneous abortions, underweight newborns, and an inability of new mothers to breastfeed. This left their newborns at high risk of death given the lack of access to potable water anywhere in Gaza. Many of those infants died. In Gaza we watched malnourished mothers feed their underweight newborns infant formula made with poisonous water. We can never forget that the world abandoned these innocent women and babies.

Every day I saw babies die. They had been born healthy. Their mothers were so malnourished that they could not breastfeed, and we lacked formula or clean water to feed them, so they starved.
—Asma Taha, pediatric nurse practitioner

We urge you to realize that epidemics are raging in Gaza. Israel’s continued, repeated displacement of the malnourished and sick population of Gaza, half of whom are children, to areas without running water or even toilets available is absolutely shocking….

Gaza was the first time I held a baby’s brains in my hand. The first of many.
—Dr. Mark Perlmutter, orthopedic and hand surgeon

[E]very one of us who worked in an emergency, intensive care, or surgical setting treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head or chest on a regular or even a daily basis. It is impossible that such widespread shooting of young children throughout Gaza, sustained over the course of an entire year is accidental or unknown to the highest Israeli civilian and military authorities….

The pregnant and breastfeeding women we treated were particularly malnourished. Those of us who worked with pregnant women regularly saw stillbirths and maternal deaths that were easily preventable in any developing country’s healthcare system. The rate of infection in C-section incisions was astonishing. Women underwent vaginal deliveries and even C-sections without anesthesia and were given nothing but Tylenol afterwards because no other pain medications were available....

[I]srael has destroyed more than half of Gaza’s healthcare resources and has killed nearly one thousand Palestinian healthcare workers, more than one out of every 20 healthcare workers in Gaza. At the same time healthcare needs have increased massively from the lethal combination of military violence, malnutrition, disease, and displacement....

These observations and the publicly available material detailed in the appendix lead us to believe that the death toll from this conflict is many times higher than what is reported by the Gaza Ministry of Health. We also believe this is probative evidence of widespread violations of American laws governing the use of American weapons abroad, and of International Humanitarian Law. We cannot forget scenes of unbearable cruelty directed at women and children that our government is a direct participant in.

As we met our healthcare colleagues in Gaza it was clear that they were malnourished, and both physically and mentally devastated. We quickly learned that our Palestinian healthcare colleagues were among the most traumatized people in Gaza, and perhaps in the entire world.… All were acutely aware that their work as healthcare providers had marked them as targets for Israel. This makes a mockery of the protected status hospitals and healthcare providers are granted under the oldest and most widely accepted provisions of International Humanitarian Law….

The 99 signatories to this letter spent a combined 254 weeks inside Gaza’s largest hospitals and clinics. We wish to be absolutely clear: not once did any of us see any type of Palestinian militant activity in any of Gaza’s hospitals or other healthcare facilities....

We appreciate that you are working on a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, but you have overlooked an obvious fact: the United States can impose a ceasefire on the warring parties by simply stopping arms shipments to Israel, and announcing that we will participate in an international arms embargo on both Israel and all Palestinian armed groups. We stress what many others have repeatedly told you over the past year: American law is perfectly clear on this matter, continuing to arm Israel is illegal.

President Biden and Vice President Harris, we urge you to immediately withhold military, economic, and diplomatic support from the State of Israel and to participate in an international arms embargo of Israel and all Palestinian armed groups until a permanent ceasefire is established in Gaza, including the release of all Israeli and Palestinian hostages, and until a permanent resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is negotiated between the two parties. Vice President Harris, as the likely next president of the United States, we urge you to publicly announce your support for such a policy, and to state publicly that you are duty-bound to uphold the laws of the United States even when doing so is politically inconvenient.

President Biden and Vice President Harris, we are 99 American physicians and nurses who have witnessed crimes beyond comprehension. Crimes that we cannot believe you wish to continue supporting. Please meet with us to discuss what we saw, and why we feel American policy in the Middle East must change immediately.

Read and share the full letter.

Challenges

For people living in this country, which arms and funds Israel and  covers up and justifies every single one of these crimes as “Israel’s right to defend itself,” this letter should be taken as a challenge to escalate the struggle to STOP this genocide NOW. And to refuse to measure our work and struggle by anything less than that.

The letter from the medical professionals is addressed to Biden and Harris. It does not tell people whether or not to vote in the upcoming (scheduled) election. But coming at the time that it does, this letter is a needed injection of reality and morality into a situation where far too many people have shut down their minds and consciences to enlist behind the “lesser of two evils.”

So, read the letter people, and wake the fuck up. And while you’re at it, wake up everyone around you!

And then I have a further challenge for everyone who refuses to accept the horrors documented in this letter, ever, anywhere: It is time to seriously engage the argument that an actual revolution is necessary and much more possible in this rare time. The place to go for that: @BobAvakianOfficial.