More than 100 Israeli medical workers are voicing their opposition to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ongoing military offensive in Gaza, rebelling against what they describe is a widespread culture of silence and fear of punishment among Israelis who want the government to stop killing Palestinians in their name.
In a letter addressed to the White House and first obtained Tuesday by HuffPost, 117 medical workers in Israel expressed support for their colleagues in the United States who earlier this month demanded the Biden administration stop funding and arming the ongoing military offensive in Gaza. The American workers had all provided medical aid to Palestinians in Gaza at some point over the past year.
“Unfortunately, as Israeli civilians, we cannot offer any medical assistance or support to the thousands of Gaza patients in need, not even to many chronically ill patients who had been treated in Israeli hospitals before October 7th,” read the Tuesday letter signed by physicians, nurses, therapists and surgeons.
The massive destruction of Gaza began after Hamas militants killed 1,200 people and took about 250 hostage in an attack on southern Israel last year. Many of the Israeli medical personnel testified that they have treated casualties related to the current turmoil, including returned hostages.
Since then, the Israeli military has rained bombs and gunfire on the Palestinian territory ― eviscerating the infrastructure, killing more than 42,000 people and creating a humanitarian catastrophe. But while civilians in much of the West openly protest Israel’s rapidly spreading military campaign, those in Israel who share the same position fear the government’s very real consequences for doing the same.
Yasin Akgul/AFP via Getty Images
“I don’t think they’d heard much of proper Israeli opposition to the war. They’ve heard about hostages, they’ve heard about evacuees. They’ve heard about the missiles that are targeted against Israel,” said Dr. Michal Feldon, a pediatric rheumatologist in Tel Aviv who organized the letter. “They’ve heard about all our sorrows and griefs and difficulties ― which are there, by the way, we take care of them daily ― but I don’t think they’ve heard that there is a sector in Israel that opposes the war.”
Feldon spoke of how Israel’s culture of silence affects everyone who opposes the offensive, and estimated the letter would only get 10 signatures. The doctor found that recruiting her Arab colleagues for the letter understandably brought the most resistance, due to the likely severe persecution they’d face for speaking out against the violence their loved ones face in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Part of why it’s so difficult to speak with other Israelis about the horrors in Gaza is because of the government’s mammoth effort to filter the kind of information civilians receive about the war. Israeli propaganda has led many in the country to not actually know just how catastrophic the offensive has been for Palestinians, particularly women and children, Feldon said.
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“Even though the Israeli media doesn’t broadcast anything that’s happening in Gaza or Lebanon, if people wanted to know, they could know,” she said. “Just like I know, right? You can open CNN and know. Most people don’t want to know.”
“But that’s the biggest frustration, that’s the biggest thing that I can’t get over. You can’t talk to people if they don’t know what you’re talking about,” Feldon continued. “You can’t talk to people if they don’t know that people were burned alive a week ago in a refugee camp, in a hospital. There’s no way to have a discussion if they don’t know what’s happening.”
The letter by Israeli medical workers supports the one sent on Oct. 2 to the White House by almost 100 American health care workers, which included data to back up their testimonies from Gaza. That data is partly why Feldon decided to create the Tuesday letter, because those statistics were not “numbers we [Israelis] know.”
Notably, the letter holds back on making its own specific demands, citing the ongoing anti-government protests that appear to have made little to no difference for Netanyahu. Instead, the letter aims to make it known that there are Israelis who see the violence their military is inflicting on their behalf, and that despite fears of retaliation, they can no longer stay silent in their opposition to it.
“We want our colleagues in Gaza to know that we support them, and I want my Arab colleagues to know that I support them, that I understand the fear,” Feldon said. “Part of this is us telling the world, ‘Hey, we are also here.’”
