A conspiracy of silence

The subject of this post is not directly about Scotland but the silence from the international medical community about the genocide in Gaza should, nevertheless, concern all Scots.

The funding ‘pause’ by the US, UK and several western nations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees in the near east (UNRWA) hit the headlines this past week. Never mind that no hard evidence has been produced showing UNRWA complicity with Hamas – only confessions by Palestinian detainees, most likely extracted through torture.

But there’s been scant media coverage on how this cut will impact desperate, injured and starving Palestinians, bombed out of and driven from their homes, at least the ones who didn’t die instantly or lie buried under rubble.

The Gazan health care system has been destroyed. Israel made sure of that by bombing hospitals, clinics, and ambulances, killing 400 doctors, nurses and health workers and detaining, torturing or ‘disappearing’ over 100. 152 UNRWA employees have been killed, the largest ever loss of UN staff during a conflict, and 141 facilities have been demolished.

Netanyahu claimed UNRWA has been entirely infiltrated by Hamas and “needs to depart from this world.” Noga Arbell, a former Israeli foreign ministry official said last month, “It will be impossible to win the war if we do not destroy UNRWA.” The reason Israel must destroy UNRWA is that without it, it will be harder to defend the Palestinians’ refugee status, jeopardising the ‘Right of Return’ to their former homes in what is now Israel.

Worse than the media silence is the silence of the international medical community, with a few exceptions. To its credit, in January the British Medical Association sent a letter to Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron in which it called for a ceasefire and faced a backlash from some of its members.

Pleas from Palestinian doctors with medical organisations around the world, have been met with silence and even attempts to justify Israel’s war crimes.

Robert Jay Lifton explains in his book, “The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide,” that genocides don’t happen without the active participation of the educated elites. Doctors, scientists, engineers, lawyers, professors, the clergy, business and military leaders together construct not only the technology of genocide and also its ideological rationale and moral justification.

That’s why 100 Israeli doctors defended bombing hospitals. It’s why US medical school deans and the American Medical Association (AMA) have failed to condemn what’s happening. The AMA has called for ‘medical neutrality,’ yet discarded neutrality when Russia invaded Ukraine, saying then that “targeting civilians and health care in war is unconscionable.”

The few who have spoken out have been branded anti-Semites, lost their positions, been denied fellowships, sued and harassed by the Israel lobby.

That’s why the majority remain silent. They are afraid of losing prestige, employment and funding. Their collective fear reflects a moral vacuum in the institutions representing a profession that is supposed to ‘do no harm.’ Their fearful silence not only permits the genocide to continue but makes them complicit.