As the World Health Organization warns of an “imminent public health catastrophe” in Gaza amid Israeli attacks on medical workers and infrastructure, doctors and other frontline medics said Wednesday that only an immediate cease-fire would give them a fighting chance to save countless lives.
Responding Wednesday to the shutdown of the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital – Gaza’s only cancer treatment center – due to lack of fuel and damage from Israeli airstrikes, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that “no words can describe our concern for the patients who have just lost the only possibility to receive lifesaving cancer treatment or palliative care.”
As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proclaims in genocidal undertones his army’s “holy mission” to invade Gaza, Jewish American peace activists are ramping up their nationwide effort to bring about a ceasefire in the three-week war.
“We’re watching a genocide unfold in real-time. In just three weeks, the Israeli military has killed over 8,000 Palestinians in Gaza, among them over 3,000 children,” Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) said early Monday. “That’s more than the annual number of children killed in conflicts across the globe since 2019.”
As Israel intensified a war that’s already killed more than 7,300 Palestinians and displaced a majority of Gaza’s residents, hundreds of Jewish American protesters and allies were arrested after taking over New York’s Grand Central Station Friday evening for a sit-in demanding an immediate ceasefire.
Chanting slogans including “no more weapons, no more war, ceasefire’s what we’re fighting for” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” human rights defenders took over the station’s Grand Concourse, while others hung banners reading “Never Again for Anyone” and “Palestinians Should Be Free” from the stairway to the East Balcony.
The largest Muslim American civil rights group on Wednesday led condemnation of U.S. President Joe Biden for saying he had “no confidence” in Palestinian health officials’ Gaza casualty reports – figures deemed reliable by United Nations agencies, human rights groups, international and Israeli mainstream media, and even the U.S. State Department.
Speaking at a Wednesday afternoon White House press conference, Biden – who earlier this month declared his “rock-solid and unwavering” commitment to Israel following a Hamas-led attack that killed more than 1,400 Israelis – said that “I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed.”
As the death toll from Israel’s relentless and indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza approached 5,800 Palestinians—including over 2,300 children—a group of around 40 faith leaders calling for an immediate cease-fire led a Tuesday afternoon pray-in at the Washington, D.C. office of U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
The Christian, Jewish, and Muslim faith leaders and activists occupied the New York Democrat’s office in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill, where demonstrators opened their action with prayers for the thousands of Palestinians who have been killed since October 7.
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