We reproduce an edited version of a speech made by Doctor Josie Shakur at a Health Care Workers Glasgow vigil for Palestine on March 23rd.
We are the Health Care Workers Palestine-Glasgow.
The most intense famine since World War Two is happening in real time in Gaza.
I’d like to share the words of the UN special rapporteur, Michael Fakhri, on the right to food. He called out the UN Human Rights Council recently for doing nothing to stop the starvation in Gaza. He spoke more forcefully than any other UN official to date.
His words: “The images of starvation in Gaza are unbearable and you’re doing nothing.
You talk and you talk and you talk and you give us lovely words. How is it that the human rights council is not addressing a situation where we’ve never seen a civilian population go so completely hungry at any time in modern history?
“We’ve never seen children pushed into malnutrition so quickly. This is on your watch.
“Please turn your words into action. We’ve heard the call for ceasefire. We know what we need is unhindered humanitarian access. You know what needs to be done.
- Arms embargo: Stop sending weapons and money to Israel. Those countries that are sending weapons are complicit in genocide and starvation. You know this.
- All those countries that express their support for the people of Palestine and the people of Gaza – many of your countries have economic and political and diplomatic ties with Israel. I commend those countries that have started to break off those diplomatic ties. It’s time for sanctions.
“Real action. Real pressure. This is what ended apartheid in South Africa. This is what put pressure on the fascist regime in Portugal.”
There is a bill, as I understand, underway in the US to freeze UNRWA funding until March 2025 .
Let’s be clear: 100% of Gazans are hungry and they freeze funding? Words fail.
The current siege in Al Shifa hospital follows the pattern of so many: war crime after war crime; deaths and detention of so many.
Ezz Lulu, a 5th year medical student, posted on Instagram an appeal for help from the Red Cross, the European Human Rights Council and “anyone who calls themselves a human being.”
He detailed how families leaving the hospital are targeted and killed. He described “martyrs without shrouds in the hospital courtyards.” Medics cannot leave the hospital to treat the injured as they will be shot.
Ezz added: “No water, food, electricity. They have cut us off from everything.“
He appealed for help before the hospital is turned into a mass graveyard. He said all of this with dignity, an eerie calmness and desperation in his eyes, that made me feel so ashamed to watch.
A Gazan man outside Al Shifa also spoke about people trying to find the missing parts of killed children in the rubble whilst themselves dealing with the trauma of the massacre on the doorstep of Al Shifa.
There are so many harrowing reports. We hear from visiting medics about rooms full of silent babies dying from malnutrition – silent because malnourished babies don’t have the energy to cry. It is an excruciatingly painful death without pain relief.
Professor Nick Maynard, an Oxford surgeon, recently returned from Gaza and gave an account of a little girl with the most severe burn injuries he has ever seen.
He could see her facial bones as the skin had melted away. She was going to die but there was no morphine to administer. Nothing to ease her pain and ultimately her fate would be to die a painful death on a corridor floor as there was no space elsewhere in the hospital.
These are barbaric acts perpetrated on innocent children. Hospitals and civilians are supposed to be protected under international law.
50% children in Gaza had chronic traumatic stress disorder before this siege, now it will be 100%.
A medical team who visited Gaza recently reported that children can’t sleep and have stopped dreaming. They asked the children to think of something positive to draw, something that what would lift their spirits. Most drew their home and some drew schools.
The world should weep at the ruin of lives.
As difficult as it is, we need to hear and see more of these atrocities on mainstream media. We need to teach the teachable about the reality behind the statistics. We need to end the slaughter of innocent lives.
On day 169 of this siege, to all the people in Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, Yemen: we are so sorry that we are still calling for a permanent and immediate ceasefire. We will be your voice
To our Irish brothers and sisters who declined their invite to Joe Biden’s cosy St Patrick’s Day: we salute you.
To Omar Yaser Ismail: well done for being the first Palestinian taekwondo player to qualify for the Olympics. These things matter to elevate Palestinian faces.
To Rachel Corrie the ever-23 year old American activist and her parents marking the 20th anniversary of her savage murder in Rafah by an Israeli bulldozer, supplied by the USA, we send our heartfelt blessings.
A permanent, immediate ceasefire is first and foremost needed to end this massacre.
We must keep the Palestine narrative alive. Thank you and keep sharing. Free, free Palestine!
Labour Hub 