Model Email to Solicit More Signers

Subject: Asking you to be a signer of an open letter calling for freedom for Palestinian Dr. Abu Safiya

 

We're inviting you to be one of the signers of an open letter calling for freedom for abducted Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who was taken from Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza 12/27/24.  "We" are the Campaign to Free Dr. Abu Safiya started in Connecticut by the Middle East Crisis Committee, Promoting Enduring Peace and other organizations. This is not a petition.  We're hoping a letter signed by academics, doctors, cultural figures, ministers, rabbis, other clerical leaders, etc. would have the important impact.

See current signers [over 100] here:    https://www.FreeDrAbuSafiya.org/signers

Currently the signers include two Nobel peace prize laureates, doctors, members of the clergy, professors, artists and several members of the CT legislature among others.

If you don't know about Dr. Abu Safiya's case, see this piece that appeared in many Connecticut newspapers on 12/4/25.   https://www.freedrabusafiya.org/published   In January 2026 the doctor was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The open letter is below.  If you'd like to sign it send an email to mail@thestruggle.org  with your full name and a line of identification. (We'll include the usual disclaimer that any institutions named are for purposes of identification of the signer.)

 

We the Undersigned call for Freedom for Palestinian Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya

 

On December 27, 2024, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital and his remaining hospital staff, finally surrendered to Israeli forces. by then, Kamal Adwan had been made inoperable by the IDF who threatened worse destruction. Dr. Abu Safiya has been in a series of Israeli prisons ever since. His attorney says he’s lost a third of his body weight and has suffered assault and beatings. He has not been charged with any crime but is being held under a dubious Israeli “Unlawful Combatants” provision. No evidence has been offered that he’s a combatant of any kind. Amnesty International calls for Abu Safiya’s release.

Abu Safiya had written several opinion pieces in the New York Times. In the last one, published a few weeks before his arrest, the Times described him as the lead physician in Gaza for the humanitarian organization MedGlobal. He’s a pediatrician but a few days earlier he had to perform the first surgery of his life. He wrote, “The human mind cannot imagine all the death and body parts and blood that surround us around the clock. But it remains our responsibility to keep on providing humanitarian services.”

In the fall of 2024, the Israeli military decided to empty the hospital. It bombarded parts of the facility and ordered it to be evacuated. Abu Safiya and his medical staff refused.  Dr. Abu Safiya said, ‘I will stay inside my hospital until the last moment." The attacks continued. His 15-year-old son Ibrahim was killed on hospital grounds by an Israeli drone. The doctor himself was seriously wounded in another attack inside the hospital suffering six shrapnel wounds to his leg. Finally, when it looked like the whole hospital would be leveled Dr. Abu Safiya agreed to leave. There’s video of him walking through rubble into the maw of an Israeli armed personnel carrier. 

Israeli authorities claim he’s being held under suspicion of being a “Hamas terrorist operator.”   Yet after a year of “investigation” and interrogations no evidence of any terrorist activity on the part of Dr. Abu Safiya has been revealed.  The doctor is as he appears to be, a person performing courageously and upholding the very best of medical ethics.

We call on the United States government, which supplies Israel with armaments, intelligence and full diplomatic backing, to insist that Dr. Abu Safiya be freed along with other medical staff from the former Kamal Adwan Hospital.

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To sign the open letter please send an email indicating your approval to mail@thestruggle.org  and include your full name and a line of identification.