Since October 2023, the Netanyahu regime implemented an array of strategies, operational techniques, and methods to achieve Palestinian elimination. These include the weaponization of starvation, denying aid access to victims, the systematic bombing of Palestinian localities, the shooting of ambulances, and the burning of shelter homes and refugee camps. 

Another chilling technique that has been operationalized amid a lack of criticism from Western capitals is the torture, killing, maiming, and illegal confinement of Palestinian doctors, physicians, medics, nurses, and staff by the Zionist occupation forces. This strategy, which has contributed to the collapse of Gaza’s teetering health infrastructure, is aimed at depriving Palestinian patients of their final ventilators and confining them to their coffins. 

'State-sponsored' medical terrorism 

Whether it is Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza or Al-Awda Hospital in the north of the enclave, doctors, orthopedics, medics, physicians, nurses, and paramedics have been routinely rounded up by Israeli occupation forces, wantonly arrested and taken as prison inmates. Harrowing accounts have surfaced of Ofer prison guards dumping naked, bruised, and brutalized Palestinian doctors in prison yards. According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, at least 310 Palestinian healthcare workers have been detained by the occupation forces, while 885 others have been killed since October 2023. The imprisoned doctors suffer from a lack of food and water, sexual violence from prison guards, and indefinite confinement in the absence of credible charges.

With hospitals in Gaza collapsed or operating at minimal capacity due to high fuel costs and resource crunches, the Israeli Zionist machinery is seen preventing medics from reaching an ailing Palestinian population and providing them with lifesaving treatment. The reported instances of abuse, torture, rape, and confinement by the occupation forces are another proof of "Israel's" intent to eliminate Palestinian patients, as well as scores of generations, knowing that several dozens of other cases have not been reported by Western media outlets. 

Domestic approval of medical terrorism

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However, acts of rounding up, torturing, or killing Palestinian doctors and medics in prisons are not at all surprising. 

The plight of the doctors and medics is enabled by a Netanyahu cabinet with far-right demagogues long calling for the mainstreaming of prison abuse tactics. This includes the Police Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is behind the occupation force’s prison torture spree. Recall that since October 2023, Ben-Gvir’s leadership has coincided with a surge in maltreatment of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons, which are nothing short of hell holes as per the detainees. Through Ben-Gvir, "Israel" institutionalized a policy whereby anyone who is ethnically Palestinian (regardless of their political affiliation or their humanitarian commitments), deserves to be "rounded up, declared a terrorist, imprisoned, and tortured."

Such domestic approval of medical terrorism and prison torture has been pointed out by "Israel’s" own nonprofit organization, B’Tselem which calls the practice of rounding up and imprisoning Palestinian doctors, medics, physicians, and nurses ‘systematic’ and part of a ‘network of torture’ camps. Yet for figures such as Ben-Gvir, such reports are meaningless and doctors who are quintessentially humanitarian workers have to be subjected to harrowing torture techniques as every Palestinian is a ‘terrorist’, according to his bigoted ideology. In truth, torturing and killing doctors in prisons is not about counterterrorism but is a deliberate strategy by the Zionist regime to destroy Palestinians through medical deprivation. The lack of calls for domestic inquiries and investigations into Israeli prison torture of Palestine doctors from the Netanyahu administration further indicates that such strategies are deliberate and have official backing from the authorities.  

Western apathy and double standards

Ideally, the killing of doctors who are apolitical in their orientation and have no connection with terrorism should have elicited a stronger response of condemnation from Western capitals. However, beyond organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, domestic advocacy groups, and individual castigation calling out Israeli atrocities, there has been no official condemnation of "Israel’s" crimes of widespread prison torture of Palestinian medical professionals. 

Such apathy can be explained in light of Washington D.C. greenlighting or ignoring all forms of prison abuse from the occupation forces. 

This is ironic. 

These champions of human rights, for example, have often been quick to castigate prison abuse by Chinese authorities against ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang but remain criminally silent when "Israel" commits graver crimes in its prisons that violate the Third Geneva Convention, including obligations of prisoners of war such as the right to humane treatment, respect, free medical attention and protection of their civil rights. However, the US and its allies will respond to "Israel’s" medical terrorism as they responded to the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former Security Minister Yoav Gallant.

The Trump administration brazenly called the arrest warrants a 'disgrace', essentially greenlighting the continuous imprisonment, torture, and killing of doctors, physicians, and medics by "Israel". Such a response comes despite the fact that in the absence of skilled medical professionals, generations of Palestinians are at risk of complete elimination as basic medical supplies remain in short supply and existing health infrastructures are collapsing. 

"Israel", however, wishes to eliminate Palestinians by persisting with yet another genocidal technique which is medical deprivation. This constitutes "state-sponsored" terrorism or the deliberate attempt to ethnically cleanse an entire population. 

This is not only abhorrent but a reflection of a mindset in an entity that believes in finishing off an entire population it has occupied.