I'm an American trauma surgeon. One year ago today I was volunteering at Nasser Medical Complex in Gaza when Israel fired a missile into the room of my 16-year-old patient, Ibrahim Barhoum. The missile killed him instantly. If it had hit the room 90 seconds later it would have killed me, too. Today the US and Israel are still blocking medical supplies from entering Gaza, and are repeating the assault on hospitals and healthcare workers across Lebanon.
This is nothing but barbarism. It must be stopped.
We, UN Independent Experts, urge Member States to protect the Flotilla—whose members are doing what humanity demands, international law protects, and governments too often choose to forget.
Breaking the siege is a collective responsibility.
In front of the camera, a life, barely a new name, unaware that she came into a world that despises her. Despises her mother, father. Unaware of the heavy thing crushing her. That no one can hear her cry. That no one can save her from the heavy thing. Behind the camera, AnasAlSharif0, a native son of the land who risks his life every day to tell her story as he watched his friends get murdered by Israel, falling from his side day after day, knowing he may be next. There only crime is that they are were born Palestinian, born indigenous, belonging to a land and history that foreigners covet. These colonizers can never possess their roots, and so they kill them. It’s that simple. Colonial hatred. Jealousy. Blinding inhumanity.