Healers in Chains
Israel’s Targeted Genocidal Violence on Gaza’s Medical Workers Is a War on Life Itself
“Do not oppress, and do not be oppressed.”
The Qur’an offers that truth not as metaphor, but as law—an ethic of life and justice.
And right now, in Gaza, that truth is being shattered by a regime that views saving lives as an act of resistance and healing as a punishable offense.
A newly released report by Physicians for Human Rights – Israel (PHRI)1 reveals the systematic torture, starvation, sexual abuse, and indefinite detention of Palestinian medical workers abducted from Gaza. This is not an isolated atrocity. This is a war strategy—a genocidal tactic disguised as “security.”
Doctors Were Targeted Because They Are Doctors
Since October 2023, over 250 medical personnel in Gaza—physicians, nurses, paramedics—have been abducted by Israeli forces. The majority were seized from inside hospitals, some while actively treating patients. Others were taken from displacement zones, at checkpoints, or during home raids.
Nearly all are held without charge.
Many remain disappeared.
At least four—Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh, Dr. Iyad Al-Rantisi, Dr. Ziad Al-Dalou, and paramedic Hamdan Abu Anaba—have died in custody.
The PHRI report is clear: these professionals were not targeted randomly. They were abducted because they were medical workers—because they carried knowledge, ethics, and a refusal to abandon their patients. In the eyes of a genocidal regime, that makes them a threat.
Torture as Policy: The Disco Room, the Beatings, the Starvation
Testimonies in the PHRI report include:
Physicians beaten with rifles, shackled, and kicked in the genitals during interrogations.
Surgeons forced to bark like dogs, stripped naked in public, and made to perform “games” under threat of death.
Detainees interrogated in the “Disco Room”—a torture chamber with deafening music and bright lights used to break resistance.
Sleep deprivation, waterboarding, sexual assault, and the use of dogs in repeated beatings.
Food rations reduced to sugar and bread, with doctors resorting to fasting for survival.
Qur’ans desecrated as a form of psychological warfare.
This is not “abuse.” This is torture, conducted in facilities like Sde Teiman and Ofer Camp, both described by detainees as networks of torture camps. These are war crimes under international law, violations of the Geneva Conventions, and direct breaches of the Convention Against Torture—which Israel ratified.
Genocide by Iatrocide: The Systematic Erasure of Medical Care
The goal is not just to punish individual doctors. The goal is to destroy the entire healthcare infrastructure of Gaza—and with it, any possibility of survival for the wounded, the sick, or the starving.
Over 500 medical personnel have been killed since October 2023.
Nearly every hospital has been bombed, besieged, or forced to shut down.
Medical aid is blocked. Fuel is cut off. Patients are left to die without anesthesia, antibiotics, dialysis, or trauma care.
Detaining doctors is not a mistake. It is a method of erasure—one that ensures no one is left to document the genocide, no one is left to save the survivors, and no one is left to rebuild.
The Role of the International Medical Community
And where is the outcry?
Where are the Western hospitals, universities, health NGOs? Where are the walkouts, the open letters, the emergency appeals?
PHRI ends its report with a call to medical professionals worldwide to rise in defense of their colleagues.
But let’s be honest: most haven’t.
Most have stayed silent—lulled by bureaucratic cowardice, careerism, or the convenient narrative that Israel is “defending itself.”
Meanwhile, Gaza’s healers are being crushed, burned, buried, and disappeared.
There is no neutrality here. Only complicity.
Let the Record Reflect
Every medical worker tortured in Gaza was tortured with international awareness.
Every hospital razed was destroyed with U.S. and European weapons.
Every detained surgeon left bleeding in an Israeli prison cell was left there by a system that calls this “self-defense.”
This is not a humanitarian crisis.
It is a genocide.
And this report is not just testimony.
It is evidence—evidence of a war on care, a war on healing, and a war on those who dared to keep their patients alive while the world looked away.
To the doctors still held in chains: we see you.
To the ones who didn’t make it out: we will name every truth they tried to bury with your body.
To the world: You don’t get to pretend you didn’t know.
I suspect many healthcare workers in Canada remain silent because they fear retribution, including job loss. However, if they were to unite, speak as one, even our fascist system could not afford to take them on.