HEALTHWORKERS 4 Palestine and Amnesty International UK staged a mass solidarity protest outside St Thomas’ Hospital in London on Friday night.
The protest was to highlight the ongoing ordeal of 179 Palestinian medical workers, the majority of whom are from Gaza, being held without charge or trial by the Israeli authorities.
179 protesters in medical scrubs knelt down in a powerful vigil to highlight the plight of the Palestinian healthcare workers detained by Israeli forces
They called for the release of Dr Khaled Al Serr, a surgeon detained by Israeli forces at Khan Younis’ Nasser hospital, as well as a suspension of UK arms to Israel.
Actor Juliet Stevenson and human rights campaigner Richard Ratcliffe addressed the protest.
Among those who took part outside the central London hospital were Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah, Dr Khaled Dawas, Amira Nimerawi, Dr Rebecca Inglis, Professor Nick Maynard, Dr Deborah Harrington, Dr James Smith and Dr Swee Chai Ang, co-founder of Medical Aid for Palestinians.
During the protest, Juliet Stevenson read out very emotional testimonies from recently-released Palestinian health workers, while Richard Ratcliffe told the protest that Palestinian health workers were effectively being held as ‘hostages’ by the Israeli authorities.
The protest, held on International Day of the Disappeared, saw the 179 in distinctive medical scrubs kneeling down – a visual allusion to disturbing images which have emerged from Gaza of Palestinians being detained by Israeli forces.
Healthcare workers held aloft A4-sized letters spelling out ‘FREE GAZA MEDICS’ as well as the names and professions of some of the detained Palestinians.
Other placards at the protest included ‘Free Dr Khaled Al Serr’.
Dr Al Serr is a Palestinian surgeon from the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis detained by Israeli forces in March, along with several other medical personnel.
He has reportedly been repeatedly beaten by Israeli soldiers and prison guards, and has not been charged or given any other information about why he is being held or his current legal status.
Despite a large body of evidence that Israeli forces are committing war crimes in Gaza amid mounting signs of genocide, the UK has refused to halt arms transfers to Israel.
Medics at the protest also called for an immediate suspension of UK arms transfers to Israel, holding aloft ‘STOP ARMING ISRAEL’ placards.
Dr Rebecca Inglis, an intensive care doctor who has been visiting Gaza to teach medical students and junior doctors since 2017, and who helped organised the protest, said:
‘The intentional targeting of doctors, nurses and paramedics is completely inexcusable.
‘We as healthcare workers are appalled by the ongoing detention and torture of healthcare workers, many of whom were abducted from hospitals or ambulances while on duty.
‘Israel is showing utter disregard for the specific protections that ought to be afforded to healthcare workers during times of conflict, in what appear to be repeated, egregious breaches of international humanitarian law.’
Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah made a very powerful speech saying: ‘Today I wanted to speak about one of the 179 health workers in detention.
‘I want to speak about my friend and my colleague Dr Ahmad Muhanna. He was arrested in December and his family only found out whether he was still alive back in April, when Dr Mohammad Abu Silmiyah was released and he testified he had seen him in prison.
‘Dr Ahmad Muhanna is like many of these doctors who has spent his life and his career going from one Israeli attack to another and are now being held hostage and are being tortured, and abused as part of Israel’s deliberate destruction of the Palestinian health system, which aims at making Gaza uninhabitable.
‘It is a genocidal war where the sick die of disease and infectious diseases spread with the intentional policy of wiping out Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
‘We watched how the UK government and the US government float these temporary ceasefire negotiations, every time political pressure increases for the war to stop until that pressure goes away and then we see how the genocide continues.
‘Dr Muhanna like many colleagues are now in Israeli prisons still being tortured.
‘It is an indictment of the medical establishment across the globe, of the British Medical Association and the Royal Colleges.
‘It is an indictment of the American Medical Association, all of whom have stood silent in the face of the targeting of Palestinian health workers.
‘The medical associations either find Dr Muhanna and his colleagues unimportant because of the pigment of their skin, or they consider the torture and the arrest of doctors does not constitute a crime against humanity.’
Tom Guha, Amnesty International UK’s Crisis Response Campaigner, said: ‘The plight of Dr Khaled Al Serr and scores of other Palestinian medical workers detained by Israel can’t and won’t be tolerated.
‘These dedicated health professionals, whose work is needed now more than ever, have been “disappeared” by Israel.
‘The UK government must demand that Israel reveals their whereabouts and releases them immediately.’
There are numerous reports of Palestinians being tortured and otherwise abused while being held by the Israeli authorities in indefinite incommunicado detention after being apprehended in Gaza.
Last month, Amnesty documented the cases of 27 Palestinian former detainees who had been held for periods of up to four-and-a-half months without access to their lawyers or contact with their families.
Those detained included doctors taken into custody at hospitals for refusing to abandon their patients.
- Professor Ghassan Abu Sittah, a renowned British-Palestinian plastic and reconstructive surgeon, has been vindicated after an application to suspend him from practicing medicine during an investigation against him by the General Medical Council was resoundingly rejected by the ‘Interim Orders Tribunal’.
The initial complaint was made by the pro-Israeli lobbying and ‘lawfare’ organisation UK Lawyers For Israel (UKLFI).
The group claimed that posts he had allegedly made on social media impaired his fitness to practice medicine, and sought for his medical license to be suspended.
This smear was designed to bring Dr Abu Sittah’s distinguished reputation into disrepute, and it would have undermined his prominent profile as a public figure in the British Palestinian community.
It also sought to undermine Dr Abu Sittah’s rights to freedom of expression.
In response to the complaint, Dr Abu Sittah argued that it was political in nature.
He also made it clear that he was not the author of a number of the posts in question, and that others had been translated inaccurately.
The Tribunal were concerned by UKLFI’s inability to provide verification of translations of the Arabic language posts in question.
The Tribunal also dismissed UKLFI’s arguments that there was a risk to patients or members of the public due to the social media posts, as there was no evidence that patient safety would be compromised.
Conversely, several impressive testimonies suggested the opposite, including one by a British-Israeli colleague who spoke of Dr Abu Sittah’s fair treatment of patients.
Dr Abu Sittah was represented by a legal team from Bindmans LLP, 11KBW and Furnival Chambers. including Tayab Ali, Axel Landin, Zac Sammour and Soraya Bauwens.
Dr Abu Sittah volunteered his medical services in Gaza during the genocide for forty-three days from the 9th October 2023.
Upon his return to London, he spoke at a press conference organised by the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians, where he told his story of the horrors he had witnessed during the genocide, including amputating six different children in one night and being forced to use vinegar as antiseptic, and intravenous paracetamol as pain relief for surgeries.
