On October 3, 2024, 99 American healthcare workers in Gaza released an open letter to the White House pleading for an end to Israel’s bombing of little children.
The letter was sent by American physicians, surgeons, nurse practitioners, and nurses who had volunteered a combined five years to treat the besieged people of Palestine.
The letter said: “Every day that we continue supplying weapons and munitions to Israel is another day that women are shredded by our bombs and children are murdered with our bullets. President Biden and Vice President Harris, we urge you: End this madness now!”
The letter writers also said that “every one of us who worked in an emergency, intensive care, or surgical setting treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head or chest… It is impossible that such widespread shooting of young children throughout Gaza sustained over the course of an entire year is accidental or unknown to the highest Israeli civilians and military authorities.”
Dr. Mark Perlmutter said, “Gaza was the first time I held a baby’s brains in my hand, the first of many.”
A U.S. Veterans Affairs trauma and critical care surgeon said: “I’ve never seen such horrific injuries, on such a massive scale, with so few resources. Our bombs are cutting down women and children by the thousands. Their mutilated bodies are a monument to cruelty.”
The American healthcare workers also wrote: “We quickly learned that our Palestinian healthcare colleagues were among the most traumatized people in Gaza, and perhaps in the entire world… they had lost family members and their homes. Most lived in and around their hospitals with their surviving family, in unimaginable conditions.”
Because Israel claimed hospitals were sometimes used by Hamas, the letter signatories said: “We wish to be absolutely clear: not once did any of us see any type of Palestinian militant activity in any of Gaza’s hospitals or other healthcare facilities.”
The authors also estimate that more have now died from starvation and disease and untold thousands buried under the rubble than by military deaths. They estimate what they described as a very conservative total of over 118,000 who have died in the past year in Gaza. In July, the well-respected British medical journal, The Lancet, had estimated 186,00 deaths there.
On October 8, Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia professor who is one of the world’s most respected foreign policy experts, spoke on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s “Judging Freedom” podcast.
Professor Sachs is a Jew who has been a very outspoken critic of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Sachs said, “Israel is less safe today, by far, than a year ago despite 40,000, 100,000, 200,000 deaths.”
He deplored what he called the “cruel bombing of apartment buildings, hospitals, clinics, schools – it’s been horrendous.”
Sachs said, “Netanyahu is leading Israel into the greatest insecurity of its modern history – complete diplomatic isolation.” He added that “Israel can never be safe with Netanyahu’s delusional plan.”
The professor said Netanyahu has been “selling” a regional war in the Middle East for over 20 years in his speeches, writings, and congressional testimony, and that he is “counting on the U.S. military and the U.S. taxpayer” to make Israel the dominant power so it can “rule in an apartheid manner over millions of people.”
Sachs also said “the war in Iraq in 2003 was strongly promoted by Netanyahu. He wanted a war against Saddam Hussein by the United States for Israel’s sake.”
He added that America is “not served by a blind obedience to the Israel Lobby” and that Americans “do not want another disastrous Middle East War.”
Now Netanyahu has expanded his war into Lebanon, and he will go further – into Syria, Jordan, Iran and perhaps other places – if the U.S. does not stop him.
Sachs said the “American people do not want a nuclear war over Israel’s claim over Gaza or the occupied territories.”
I wish every member of Congress would read the letter from the American healthcare workers in Gaza and listen to the Judging Freedom podcast of Oct. 8. Sadly, I don’t believe any of them will read or listen to either one. Hopefully, you will.
Reprinted with author’s permission from the Knoxville Focus.
John James Duncan Jr. is an American politician who served as the U.S. representative for Tennessee’s 2nd congressional district from 1988 to 2019. A lawyer, former judge, and former long serving member of the Army National Guard, he is a member of the Republican Party.
