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 Sufiya be freed along with other medical staff from the former Kamal Adwan Hospital.

 

(*) Institutions mentioned for identification purposes only

 

Initial Signers

 

Yigal Arens

University of Southern California (USC), Emeritus

 

Phil Brewer MD FACEP

Founding Faculty Member, Department of Emergency Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine / Yale New Haven Hospital

 

Jim Brasile
Veterans For Peace 42
Contact Coordinator

 

John Cappadona MD,

member of Health Care Workers for Palestine (Hartford vigils) and Veterans for Peace, CT branch

 

Roane Carey

Former Managing Editor and Senior Editor “The Nation” magazine

 

Mark Colville

Community organizer/activist, Amistad Catholic Worker

 

Molly Crabapple

artist and author

 

Samuel Farber

Emeritus Professor of Political Scienced at CUNY (City University of New York)

 

Bill Fletcher, Jr.

trade unionist/writer; USA

 

John T. Fussell, JD

Retired labor lawyer

 

Ira Helfand

Past President, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War

 

Rabbi Andy Kahn

Executive Director of the American Council for Judaism

 

Kehaulani Kauanui, Ph.D.

 

Rev. Tony Lorenzen

Minister,

UU Church of Meriden and UU Congregation of Danbury

 

Jennifer Sarin Loewenstein

Associate Director, Middle Eastern Studies Program & Senior Lecturer,

University of Wisconsin-Madison (ret.) and Human Rights Activist.

 

Bill McKibben

author

 

David Michel
Eyes of Steel, for Res Rei
Former CT State Representative from Stamford (HD146)

 

Paula Panzarella

New Haven CT peace and social justice activist, poet and freelance writer

 

Mitchell Plitnick

President of ReThinking Foreign Policy. 

 

Rabbi Brant Rosen

Tzedek Chicago

 

Professor Tony Rosso

retired, Southern Connecticut State University

 

Dr. Alice Rothchild

MD Harvard university, Jewish Voice for Peace Health Advisory Council 

 

Zaher Sahloul

Pulmonary & Critical Care

Associate Professor at UIC

President, MedGlobal

 

Melinda Tuhus

journalist, blogger

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