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Protesters hold banners and photographs of Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya during a sit-in in Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, January 9, 2025.Did you know that Truthout is a nonprofit and independently funded by readers like you? If you value what we do, please support our work with Dr.
Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, has lost about 55 pounds since Israeli forces abducted him in December, and is suffering from a serious case of scabies, according towhich visited him last week. The renowned pediatrician was given a new pair of clothes for the first time on September 25, the morning of his visit with PHRI, the group reported. Abu Safiya’s request to see a doctor for the scabies and heart problems have been ignored, according to PHRI.. “According to him, detainees receive very small amounts of food, many of them have lost a significant amount of weight, and they have been held in dirty clothes for months.”“Six months have passed since the publishing of our report, which documented the arbitrary detention of more than 100 medical personnel from Gaza,” the group continued. “Since the report’s publication, our organization has visited more than 25 of them and gathered additional testimonies about ongoing physical violence, repeated cell raids, lack of food and medical treatment, and months of detention in dirty clothes.”Israeli forces targeted Kamal Adwan Hospital long before the military abducted Abu Safiya in December. A year before his abduction, in December of 2023, Israeli forces conducted their first raid on the hospital and abducted its then-director, Dr. Ahmed Kahlout, according to a new documentary,Israeli intelligence contacted Abu Safiya numerous times to try to get him to leave the hospital, as per the documentary. But the beloved pediatrician was undeterred. He spoke out about Israel’s genocide, the miltiary’s attacks on Kamal Adwan Hospital, and pleaded for help from the international community. On October 25, 2024, Israeli forces raided the hospital again, and beat and interrogated more than 40 staff members, including Abu Safiya, according to“Everyone in the hospital,” the Israeli military said on a loudspeaker, as per footage in the documentary. “The army surrounds you. You are surrounded.”. “And it started firing. It was firing forward, firing and turning. And then they pointed the muzzle through the reception door and it was patients.” At about 6 a.m., Israeli forces demanded to see Abu Safiya. Video captured him walking over rubble to the tank, wearing his white coat. The military ordered him to get everyone out of the hospital; with no other choice, he complied. At the time, about 350 patients, caregivers, and health care workers were in the hospital. That night, the army stripped, shackled, blindfolded, and beat the male members of the medical staff, including Abu Safiya, as per the documentary.hundreds of health care workers. Israel’s blockade has deprived doctors of necessary medical supplies, forcing them to perform operations, including amputations, without anesthesia. Those held in Israel’s prisons, where soldiers routinely torture Palestinians, have included “irreplaceable consultants and specialists in essential specialities like General Surgery, Vascular Surgery, Orthopaedics Surgery, Anaesthesiology, Intensive Care, Cardiology, Paediatrics, and Obstetrics and Gynaecology,” according to aby Healthcare Workers Watch , an organization that tracks Israel’s systematic and brutal attacks on Gaza’s health care system. “Every healthcare worker who was interviewed by HWW following their release from detention in Israel described being subjected to severe pain and suffering while detained, in acts that amounted to inhumane treatment and torture,” the group wrote. Health care workers told HWW that they had been beaten; subjected to deafening music, sleep deprivation, and extreme cold; sexually assaulted with foreign objects; sexually humiliated; threatened with rape; and hung from ceilings. One nurse said that they were taken to a “10 x 6 metre room with four large loudspeakers and an air conditioner blasting extremely cold air, along with large fans.” “We were so cold and in so much pain that we couldn’t stop moaning, but every time we made a sound, the soldiers would beat us,” the nurse said. A paramedic told HWW when soldiers removed their blindfold, they saw at least 20 people in diapers, hanging from a warehouse ceiling. “ll the detained had their heads down while they were hanging by their hands,” the paramedic said. “There were more than 10 more than 20, the whole warehouse had people hanged, everywhere I looked on the right, on the left, in front, in the back, it was an overwhelming number. From the screams it indicated dozens. He wanted me to see the torture and pain, he said this was only the first phase.”“They put me in an overall that had electricity wires around it and put, like a headband with wires on my head,” they said. “I swear, it was so degrading, it was unbelievable. I was helping people as a paramedic, I never expected something like this.”As Trump cracks down on political speech, independent media is increasingly necessary. Truthout produces reporting you won’t see in the mainstream: journalism from on the ground in Gaza, interviews with grassroots movement leaders, high-quality legal analysis and more. Our work is possible thanks to reader support. Help Truthout catalyze change and social justice — make a tax-deductible monthly or one-time donation today.
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