Around 500 health workers and other Palestine campaigners gathered in central London on Saturday, 28 December. They came to show their horror and fury at the Israeli destruction and burning of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza the day before.
This was the last major functioning hospital in northern Gaza. Israeli troops drove people from it on Friday 27 December. Earlier airstrikes around Kamal Adwan had killed dozens of people.
Hospital director Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, now held as a prisoner, said Israel had slaughtered about 50 people. The massacre is the mark of an army that is set on wiping out all human life in an area.
“It feels like the media aren’t interested any more and politicians are content to enable a continuing genocide,” London nurse Lubna told Socialist Worker on Saturday’s protest.
“I don’t have much time off over the holidays. But I can’t sit at home while the Israelis are ethnically cleansing Gaza and actually stepping up their murders.”
The protest was advertised as a vigil and there was deep sorrow at the appalling suffering. But there was also righteous anger.
Doctor Asad told Socialist Worker, “The Israelis did this, but I hold Keir Starmer, Joe Biden and all the politicians responsible. Unless they have worked to stop all arms to Israel, I say they are to blame for every death and for the murder of children.”
Student Michael said, “This level of destruction is treated as normal it seems. We can’t allow this to fade into a background of ‘acceptable mass murder’.”
Almost 450 days since the genocide began, the Kamal Adwan horrors are still shocking.
Ismail al-Kahlout, a nurse who was working at the hospital, told Al Jazeera news that the Israeli military detained staff and patients. Soldiers stripped many of them naked in the cold. The Zionist forces beat people, including those who were wounded or sick.
When women refused orders to lift their clothing for inspection, Israeli soldiers slapped them in the face.
“We were not allowed to go to the toilets. We live in humiliation. We are exhausted. We are tired. Enough is enough,” al-Kahlout said.
Ezzat Ramadan, who was staying at the hospital, said he walked around for two hours in the cold with few clothes on. He then reached the place where he and others were interrogated.
“They took photos of all of us. They spat on us. They humiliated us,” he said. “Before releasing us, they put a number on everyone’s chest and back.”
Shorouk al-Rantisi, a hospital staff member, said Israeli soldiers tied them up and blindfolded them. “We could hear people screaming but we could not know who exactly was being beaten,” she said. “I was waiting for my time to be beaten as well.”
The Times of Israel newspaper reported on Saturday that Israel has “vastly expanded” a military corridor cutting Gaza in half. This suggests it intends to occupy the area indefinitely.
The corridor now covers almost 50 square kilometres—18 square miles—roughly 13 percent of the area of the Gaza Strip. It has more than a dozen military outposts, the report said. These bases “featured everything one would expect at a well-entrenched position for troops to remain indefinitely except that nothing seemed to be permanently attached to the ground”.
Health Workers 4 Palestine and the Palestinian Forum in Britain called the London protest. It demanded “an end to aggression, urgent medical aid, treatment for Gaza’s wounded, accountability for war crimes and for people to raise our voices against this brutal genocide”.
