US medics who volunteered in Gaza demand arms embargo over ‘unbearable cruelty’ inflicted by Israel

Doctors and nurses say death toll is more than 92,000, describe gruesome injuries and a sick and traumatized people

By Chris McGreal
25 Jul 2024

Dozens of US doctors and nurses who worked in Gaza have written to Joe Biden claiming that the true death toll from Israel’s months-long assault is much higher than previously reported, demanding the US withdraw diplomatic and military support for Israel until there is a ceasefire.

The eight-page letter, delivered on Thursday and addressed to Biden, the first lady, Jill Biden, and the vice-president, Kamala Harris, said the medics saw evidence of widespread violations of laws governing the use of US weapons supplied to Israel, and of international humanitarian law.

Forty-five surgeons, emergency room physicians and nurses who volunteered in several Gaza hospitals over recent months laid out what they described as the “massive human toll from Israel’s attack on Gaza, especially the toll it has taken on women and children”.

“We cannot forget the scenes of unbearable cruelty directed at women and children that we witnessed ourselves,” they wrote.

“Every single signatory to this letter treated children in Gaza who suffered violence that must have been deliberately directed at them. Specifically, every one of us on a daily basis treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head.”

Several of the signatories previously told the Guardian they believed Israeli snipers were targeting children and reported the devastating impact on civilians of weapons designed to spray high levels of shrapnel.

The medics, who volunteered with the World Health Organization and other relief groups, told the president the real death toll is much higher than the Palestinian ministry of health’s casualty figure of more than 39,000 people killed, the majority being women and children.

“It is likely that the death toll from this conflict is already greater than 92,000, an astonishing 4.2% of Gaza’s population,” they wrote.

The medics added almost no one in Gaza has escaped the consequences of the Israeli attack.

“With only marginal exceptions, everyone in Gaza is sick, injured or both. This includes every national aid worker, every international volunteer and probably every Israeli hostage: every man, woman and child,” they said.

The letter warned that “epidemics are raging in Gaza” and described Israel’s repeated displacement of a malnourished and sick civilian population to areas without running water and toilets as “absolutely shocking”.

At the beginning of the letter, the medics preempted accusations of sympathy for the 7 October Hamas assault on Israel in which 1,139 people, mostly Israelis, were killed and 251 abducted. It is unclear how many of the captives are still held by Hamas in Gaza and whether they are alive.

“None of us support the horrors committed on October 7 by Palestinian armed groups and individuals in Israel,” the letter said.

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