“This Carnage Needs to Stop”: Israel Bans Aid Groups from Gaza, Kills Over 1,000 in North Gaza Siege

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s in northern Gaza, where Israel’s three-week siege has killed over 1,000 Palestinians, most women and children. Gaza health officials say almost 43,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since October 7th, more than 100,000 wounded, though the toll is likely far higher. On Saturday, Israeli forces withdrew from north Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, one day after raiding it. Health officials say soldiers detained dozens of male medical staffers and some of the patients. This is a nurse describing how Israeli forces detained the hospital’s director.

MAYSSOUN ALIAN: [translated] They called Dr. Hussam and asked him to let the male medics out. So he did, and they left. This was also very, very humiliating for them since they were also without clothes. There were around 70 male nurses that left here. They took them to the external clinic. They started to destroy things. And we were the only nurses in the hospital without the rest of the medical team.

AMY GOODMAN: The nurse mentioned Kamal Adwan Hospital’s director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, a pediatrician. After Israeli forces retreated from the hospital Saturday, he buried his young son Ibrahim Hussam Abu Safiya, who was reportedly killed Friday in an Israeli strike on Jabaliya in northern Gaza.

DR. HUSSAM ABU SAFIYA: Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. As-salamu alaykum. Allahu Akbar. As-salamu alaykum. Allahu Akbar.

AMY GOODMAN: The doctor praying and mourning his son in his white hospital coat.

This comes as the World Health Organization reports the Israeli government has barred six medical NGOs from entering Gaza. One of them, the Palestinian American Medical Association, released a statement, saying, quote, “We urgently demand that the Israeli authorities rescind this decision immediately and urge the U.S. State Department, along with international bodies, to advocate for the immediate reinstatement of these vital medical services, which constitute a fundamental human right protected by international law and the moral fabric of our global community,” unquote.

For more, we go to Houston, Texas, where we’re joined another head of another organization, one of six medical aid groups Israel has banned from entering Gaza. Mosab Nasser is the CEO of FAJR Scientific. He helped lead one of the largest medical missions to Gaza in August of 2023. He was last in Gaza in May during Israel’s invasion of Rafah. Nasser also helped renovate parts of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. He is himself originally from Gaza.

Thank you so much for being with us. As we watch the director of Kamal Adwan, a man you know well, mourn his son, praying at his grave in his white medical coat, can you talk about who he is and the significance of Kamal Adwan Hospital?

MOSAB NASSER: Good morning, Amy. Thank you for having me.

Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya is a Palestinian hero. He is an amazing, amazing doctor that I have known now maybe for about four years. And I had several meetings with him when I was in Gaza in 2022 and helped, as said, renovate the Kamal Adwan Hospital’s emergency room and the external clinics, as well as the rehabilitation room for children. Dr. Hussam is the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, who, by the way, has a foreign passport. He had the choice, like, you know, many Palestinians, to leave from there at the beginning of the war, but he refused. He stood his ground at the Kamal Adwan Hospital to save lives and save limbs and take care of those children who are left stranded in this carnage.

Kamal Adwan Hospital is the only children’s hospital in north Gaza. It actually serves about 400,000 or 500,000 people in north Gaza, and there is really no other children’s hospital. It has the ICU. It has a large room for premature babies with incubators. And it’s a central hospital. If that hospital is not functional, you’re talking about thousands of children, again, left without any medical support.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, we were just speaking with another Mosab, the poet Mosab Abu Toha, on Friday, who talked about bringing his young children to this hospital and talked about the director being a pediatrician, that it’s basically the children’s hospital there. Mosab Nasser, if you can describe what has happened there in northern Gaza and what happened to this particular hospital, the Israeli forces raiding it, and this description of the doctors and medical aides being stripped naked in front of the others?

MOSAB NASSER: Amy, FAJR Scientific is a humanitarian apolitical organization. We are actually specialized in surgical — in complex surgeries. We’ve been operating in Gaza even before the war. And we have a team in the north, a local team, that actually serves the different hospitals, including the Indonesian Hospital.

And the news that we get from the team on the ground, that Kamal Adwan Hospital was attacked by the Israeli army. I believe more than 30 medical staff members were actually kidnapped by the Israeli army, including Dr. Hussam briefly, and then he was turned back. So, he’s left maybe with a few — a couple of doctors and a few nurses to take care of over 150 patients at the hospital.

The news that we received also that the Israeli army stripped those doctors naked and literally took them into no one knows where, similar to what happened to our colleagues at Nasser Hospital and Shifa Hospital. I still have many Palestinian colleagues. I’d like to name a few: Dr. Ghassan Abu Zuhri from Nasser Hospital, who’s one of the top surgeons in Gaza, orthopedic surgeons, no one knows his whereabout until today; Dr. Hani Abu Taima, the head of the surgical department at Nasser Hospital; and many others, many others across Gaza. So, the disturbing news that also we have received is that the Israeli army destroyed the oxygen concentrators and tanks at Kamal Adwan Hospital, leaving children in the ICU and in the incubators without oxygen. Many of them actually have died.

AMY GOODMAN: Have you been meeting with U.S. government officials? And what have they said? Also, do you know how Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya’s son died? We heard died in an Israeli airstrike on Jabaliya.

MOSAB NASSER: Regarding your first question, yes. In fact, I just came back from D.C. this past Thursday, where I met with — visited the offices of a few congressmen and senators. And before, in fact, I’ve also visited the State Department in this past visit, trying to advocate for lifting the ban or the denial on the humanitarian medical organizations that were actually denied entry by Israel, especially at this time where we are actually needed on the ground the most.

And that decision to ban or deny entry to now six organizations — in fact, initially, the initial number that we’ve heard was eight organizations — it’s mind-boggling. Especially with what’s happening in north Gaza, why would you prevent such organizations from coming to provide their services? Especially the healthcare infrastructure is destroyed. Many of the doctors, the local doctors, have been either killed or kidnapped. The patients are left stranded; no one is providing any help to them. And especially we — in FAJR Scientific, we’re actually specialized in surgical interventions. And many of the injuries that come to the hospitals across Gaza are blast injuries — broken bones, broken skulls, you know, all kinds of multiple degrees of burns. So, those patients require an immediate attention. And if you don’t provide this attention to them, many of them actually will die a slow and painful death because of infections.

Regarding Dr. Hussam’s son, I really don’t know the details surrounding his death, but I was told that he was — you know, he was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Jabaliya, as you mentioned.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, I wanted to ask you about a tweet of yours. You’re talking about a girl. “Mazyona is one of the children FAJR has been trying to evacuate out of #Gaza for months now. She sustained devastating injuries to her face—her face was nearly torn off. #Surgeons have held the remaining structure together, but she urgently requires a medevac for specialized care and bone surgery. [She] also still has shrapnel in her neck. She is of course in immense pain, [and] her condition is worsening. The platinum used surgically to rebuild her face is coming out, [and] doctors have stated [that] she needs surgeries outside [of] Gaza to save her life. Mazyona has been denied medical #evacuation four times. Authorities suggested that the medevac could proceed without Mazyona’s mother accompanying her. However, when her father attempted to take the next steps, Mazyona was again denied.” Explain her fate right now where she is.

MOSAB NASSER: That is another heartbreaking story, Amy, that I have been personally, as the CEO of the organization, following closely and advocating for Mazyona’s evacuation for almost three months now. I can’t tell you how many times I visited the State Department, how many times I talked to congressmen, how many times I’ve tried to reach to the Israeli authorities to try to evacuate her out of Gaza, with no results.

Mazyona was injured in the face — in her face, a serious injury. I mean, she has a viral video on Instagram and YouTube that you see how — when she was brought to the hospital, how she was bleeding. Initially, we submitted her mother as a companion. The mother was rejected by COGAT, the Israeli authority effectively. Then we submitted her father’s name. Then her father was rejected. Then we submitted the father’s aunt; then it was rejected. And then we submitted another aunt of the father; it was rejected. So, we are kind of left without any options. I don’t know — to the point, actually, I proposed my name to be a companion for Mazyona to get her out, and still we have not been able to get her out. In fact, the recent update we got from the local team on the ground, that she has potentially an infection, and if this girl is not evacuated as soon as possible, she could die.

Mazyona is one out of thousands, Amy. In fact, we have 12 children like Mazyona with serious injuries, some of them actually with a bullet settled in the head, that we wanted to take out, and we have not been able to take any of them. So far, since May, since the closure of the Rafah border, we were able — I mean, generally speaking, only 125 children were evacuated out of Gaza out of 2,500, if not more, needed an immediate evacuation. So, this carnage needs to stop.

AMY GOODMAN: Mosab Nasser, I want to thank you for being with us, CEO of FAJR Scientific, one of six medical humanitarian organizations Israel has barred from entering Gaza. He’s based in Houston and originally from Gaza.

Next up, we turn to Israeli political scientist Neve Gordon. He’s in London. He’s one of more than 3,000 signatories to an open letter titled “We Israelis are calling for global pressure on Israel to force an immediate ceasefire.” Back in 20 seconds.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Box of Rain” by the Grateful Dead. The band’s founding bass player Phil Lesh died Friday at the age of 84. In 1965, Lesh was volunteering at Pacifica Radio station KPFA in the Bay Area when he met his future bandmate, Jerry Garcia.