Israel’s actions in Gaza ‘require a whole new vocabulary’
Dr James Smith, an emergency physician who returned from a medical mission to Gaza in June, says he never saw anything like what is going on in the enclave over the course of his career as a doctor working in the humanitarian system.
He said what is happening in Gaza “requires a whole new vocabulary”.
“There is no way to effectively describe what Israel is doing to the Palestinians in Gaza,” he told Al Jazeera, adding that the Israeli strikes on a Gaza City school sheltering people is the latest Israeli “massacre” in the enclave.
“The definition of a massacre is a deliberate brutal barbaric attack on a large group of people. Typically a massacre provokes or prompts a widespread condemnation and action,” he said.
“It is inconceivable to me that we are talking about hundreds of massacres that have happened in the course of the last 10 months,” he added.
“It is absolutely wild to me that the US government can publicly state ‘deep concern’ while providing military support for the violence that Israelis enacting against the Palestinian people.”
‘The more you move, the more suffering and destruction you see’
Salim Oweis, a communications officer at UNICEF’s Middle East and North Africa office, has recently returned from Gaza and tells Al Jazeera the reality is much worse than what people see on TV screens.
“We don’t see on the screens the depth of the deaths and destruction, the depths of people suffering and their daily struggles for the basics of the basics,” he said. “So the situation there is really dire.”
“I was based in Deir el-Balah and Khan Younis and also north of Gaza, and to be honest, the more you move, the more suffering and destruction you see. The situation is really beyond description,” he said.
He described the impact of repeated attacks on schools as devastating.
“Those schools are not schools any more. They are very basic shelters for so many families, and we have unfortunately seen in the last 10 months so many of those attacks on schools, on hospitals, on civilian infrastructure that children and families rely on, which makes life even more miserable.”
