On Dec. 20, Sen. Jeff Merkley, speaking on the Senate floor, decried the unrestricted flow of enormous bombs which the Israel Defense Forces drop on civilians as Israel maintains its siege on Gaza.
He questioned why we have sent more than 14,000 2,000-pound bombs (and thousands of 500- and 250-pound bombs) to attack Palestinian civilians. When picturing the area the IDF is bombing, know that Gaza measures 141 square miles and Jackson County encompasses about 2,800 square miles.
The senator stated that the Biden administration breaks U.S. and international laws when transferring the bombs and other offensive weapons to Israel, since Israel has been blocking the entry of humanitarian aid to 2.1 million Gazans for over a year.
Then Merkley addressed what’s lacking in Gazan health care: water, sanitation, food, electricity, anesthesia, medicine and equipment.
Since Christmas, the has IDF torched and raided northern Gaza’s last functioning hospital. The IDF marched patients outside and abused some of them. Male hospital staff — including the hospital director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, well-known for his New York Times letters to the editor — were stripped and disappeared. The IDF arrested and transported multiple medical staff, including Abu Safiya, to a location still unknown more than a week later. Many fear that they face the same fate as Palestinian surgeon Adnan al-Bursh, who died in May after more than four months of imprisonment in an Israeli prison.
A recent study reveals that in Gaza the war death toll of health care workers is three to four times as high as that of the general population. Oregon’s Sens. Merkley and Ron Wyden could call for the release of Dr. Abu Safiya, and they need to hear from Oregonians that the lives of health care workers in Gaza matter.
(Regarding the last two paragraphs above, see the Dec. 30 Democracy Now! interview with Doctors Without Borders volunteer Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah.)
Brenda B. Gould
Ashland
