Israel has continued its attacks on hospitals across Gaza in its effort to destroy Hamas after the 7 October invasion that resulted in the deaths of 1,200 Israelis.

The hospital attacks and the blockade preventing fuel and medications from entering the coastal city, has sparked near-universal condemnation. 

French President Emmanuel Macron broke from the U.S. pro-Israel Congress and in the Biden administration and called for a ceasefire.

“De facto—today, civilians are bombed—de facto,” Macron said, according to the BBC. “These babies, these ladies, these old people are bombed and killed. So there is no reason for that and no legitimacy. So we do urge Israel to stop.”

Dr. Marwan Abu Sada, the head of surgery at Al Shifa Hospital, spoke to the Associated Press by phone from the facility on Saturday and held the receiver in the air so the reporter could hear the “hammering of gunfire and artillery shelling” from outside. 

These hospitals in Gaza do not only treat the sick and injured, but are also used by thousands of Gazans as refugees from the fighting because hospitals are traditionally off-limits during wartime. (See “ISRAEL CONTINUES TO TARGET AMBULANCES” 7 Nov 2023, “MASS MURDER AND GENOCIDE: ISRAEL’S GAZA CARPET BOMBING MURDERS TENS OF THOUSANDS, WOUNDS SCORES OF THOUSANDS OF PALESTINIANS” 7 Nov 2023, and “BODIES PILE UP IN GAZA AS ISRAEL’S RELENTLESS BOMBING CAMPAIGN, TERROR BLOCKADE CONTINUES” 31 Oct 2023.)

Israel claims that the bombings and attacks on these hospitals and ambulance convoys are regrettable but needed because Hamas uses these facilities as staging grounds for attacks. Israel claims that Hamas’s main headquarters is located beneath the hospital—which Hamas and the health ministry deny.

The World Health Organization announced that it lost communication with officials at Al Shifa—the city’s top hospital. As of early Sunday, the hospital was experiencing some of the fiercest fighting since the start of the war. 

“WHO is gravely concerned about the safety of health workers, hundreds of sick and injured patients, including babies on life support, and displaced people who remain inside the hospital,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO head, said. “WHO again calls for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza as the only way to save lives and reduce the horrific levels of suffering. WHO also calls for the sustained, orderly, unimpeded and safe medical evacuations of critically injured and sick patients.”

The Palestinian health ministry said on Saturday that two babies have died in an incubator at the hospital after the facility lost power. About 39 other babies were said to be at risk inside the hospital. 

Israel announced that it will evacuate at-risk babies inside these hospitals after a request from hospital officials. 

“We contacted the Red Cross and informed them we ran out of water, oxygen, fuel, and everything,” Muhammad Abu Salmiya, the hospital’s director, told Al Jazeera TV. “The premature babies, patients of the intensive care, and even wounded people couldn’t survive with the lack of electricity… If the occupation forces want to evacuate the wounded people to any place in the world that is safer than the Gaza Strip, we are not against that.”

TRENDPOST: While President Joe Biden declared last week that he has “no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using” in death toll in Gaza as a result of Israel’s bombing raids produced by the Palestinian Ministry of Health, U.S. officials are now saying that the actual death toll could be much higher than the 11,000-plus figure. 

The New York Times reported that the UN alone lost 100 staff members located in Gaza to assist the refugees. The paper also noted that at least 40 journalists have been killed in the fighting.

Israel gets away with killing dozens in each airstrike because it can claim that it was targeting Hamas fighters alongside civilians. And Palestinian lives don’t matter. Imagine the outrage if the over 11,000 killed in Gaza—mostly women and children—were Jews being bombed by Palestinians… or if they were Ukrainians being bombed to death by Russia? 

There would be political and media outrage, but since they are Palestinians, the mainstream media and the Western leaders support their slaughter and homes being bombed to ruin.