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‘HISTORY IS WATCHING’: GAZA DOCTORS URGE HARRIS TO BACK ISRAEL
ARMS EMBARGO AT DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION  
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Brett Wilkins
August 20, 2024
Common Dreams
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_ "We are here to deliver a policy that saves and improves lives,"
Uncommitted National Movement co-founder Abbas Alawieh said in opening
remarks at a press conference on the sidelines of the DNC. _

A Palestinian boy reacts at the damages at a UN-run school sheltering
displaced people, following an Israeli attack, in Jabalia in the
northern Gaza Strip, November 2, 2023. , [Fadi Whadi/Reuters]

 

As humanitarians opposed to the U.S. government's support for Israel's
assault on Gaza [[link removed]] continued to
protest during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on
Tuesday, American doctors who recently volunteered in the besieged
enclave implored the party's presidential nominee Kamala
Harris—based on the carnage and heartache they have witnessed—to
embrace an arms embargo on Israel
[[link removed]] and an immediate
cease-fire.

during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the Uncommitted
National Movement held a Tuesday press conference at which American
doctors who volunteered in Gaza implored Vice President Kamala Harris
[[link removed]], the Democratic
nominee, to embrace an arms embargo on Israel and an immediate
cease-fire.

"We are here to deliver a policy that saves and improves lives,"
Uncommitted National Movement co-founder Abbas Alawieh said in opening
remarks at Tuesday's press conference. "We are here because we want to
win a better world."

Alawieh slammed the "hypocritical action" of Biden administration
officials who, while "saying they want a cease-fire," continue "to
send more and more weapons" to far-right Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu's "murderous government," which "is using those
weapons to kill civilians" and is "preventing any hope for all
captives, Israeli and Palestinian, to be reunited with their
families."

Such support, Alawieh added, is also "preventing any hope of a
departure from the horrors that we are seeing our siblings in Gaza
experience with more than 16,000 children... being killed using U.S.
weapons."

"The Uncommitted National Movement mobilized Democratic voters—more
than 740,000 nationally—specifically around the idea that our
candidate, regardless of who they may be, needs an updated approach to
their Gaza policy," Alawieh continued. "Specifically, our stance is
that our government should embrace an arms embargo. Stop sending
weapons that are being used to kill civilians."

"Vice President Harris is engaging with us on this issue," Alawieh
added. "Her team is engaging with us on this issue. We do view that as
a positive step in the right direction. We want to be very clear that
what we need to see urgently is for the bombs to stop. Stop sending
bombs if you want us to believe that you want a cease-fire."

There are 30 Uncommitted delegates attending the DNC after being
elected in Democratic primaries in states like Minnesota, where the
movement received [[link removed]] 18.9%
of the vote, and the key swing state of Wisconsin, where it won 13.3%.
As polling reveals
[[link removed]] that
Democratic and Independent voters in crucial swing states would be
more likely to vote for Harris if she backs an arms embargo on Israel,
her campaign has made some moves to accommodate Uncommitted voices,
including providing space at the DNC.

Dr. Tammy Abughnaim, a Chicago-based emergency physician, said she
asked Palestinians what she should tell people in the United States
about Gaza, where she saw the aftermath of "massacre after massacre"
and "suffering on an entirely unprecedented scale."

"Tell the world what you saw," she said they told her. "We cannot
afford another day of this."

On Monday, the DNC held its first-ever panel
[[link removed]] on
Palestinian rights, which featured testimony from some of those who
spoke at Tuesday's press conference, including Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan,
an American pediatric intensive care physician who volunteered for two
weeks at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza
Strip.

On Tuesday, Haj-Hassan said that the American doctors who worked in
Gaza "cannot unsee what we witnessed, it gives us nightmares."

"I can personally testify that I have never seen anything so horrific,
so egregious, so inhumane," she stated. "We decided to come here and
bear moral witness with the unfortunate recognition that the only way
to protect civilian life is through putting pressure on the U.S.
government to stop militarily supporting Israel in its campaign."

Haj-Hassan continued:

For the past 10 months, we have witnessed civilian casualty after
civilian massacre after civilian massacre. The bread massacre
[[link removed]].
The Nuseirat massacre
[[link removed]]. The
multiple school massacres
[[link removed]], where
internally displaced people, who have been forcibly transferred, a war
crime in and of itself... finally sought shelter only to be
massacred. Entire families
[[link removed]] exterminated. Humanitarian
workers
[[link removed]] and healthcare
workers
[[link removed]] and journalists
[[link removed]] killed
in record numbers. Children with their extremities amputated
[[link removed]] traumatically
in record numbers...

Over 17,000 children have lost one or both parents
[[link removed]] in Gaza
since October. We have treated children who are the only surviving
members of their entire family who were killed in the same bombing. I
have personally held the hands of children taking their last final
gasps with no family alive... unable to comfort them during their
final agonizing breaths... This phenomenon of children having their
entire families killed and arriving to the emergency department is so
frequent it actually has an acronym
[[link removed]]... wounded child, no
surviving family, given the acronym WCNSF.

Children who are fortunate enough to survive their injuries are
discharged into a Russian roulette of a hundred different ways that
they could be killed... another bombing, starvation, dehydration
[[link removed]], disease
[[link removed]]. Now we have
alarming reports of an outbreak of polio
[[link removed]]. Polio is something
that we were able to eradicate on the majority of this planet decades
ago.

"And yet we continue to fund this,
[[link removed]]"
Haj-Hassan added. "History is watching us. The world is watching us. I
cannot make sense of this. I suspect you cannot too. And I hope that
the Democratic Party recognizes the irony and the hypocrisy of what we
continue to fund and chooses to finally stand by the values of human
rights and justice that we claim to stand by."

Harris has expressed sympathy for Palestinians suffering what
she called
[[link removed]] a
"humanitarian catastrophe" in Gaza. However, like Biden, she's also
proclaimed her "unwavering
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support for Israel. When asked earlier this month if Harris would
support a suspension in weapons transfers, one of her national
security advisers said
[[link removed]] that
"she will always ensure Israel is able to defend itself against Iran
and Iran-backed terrorist groups" and "does not support an arms
embargo on Israel."

Human rights advocates fear that if elected to a second term, former
President Donald Trump
[[link removed]], the Republican
nominee, would be even more supportive of Israel's obliteration of
Gaza than the Biden-Harris administration.

According to Palestinian and international officials, at least 40,173
Palestinians have been killed—most of them women and children—and
nearly 93,000 others have been wounded during Israel's 319-day assault
and siege on Gaza. Gaza officials say that at least 10,000 other
Palestinians are missing, believed to be dead and buried under the
rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out homes and other
buildings.

Almost the entire Gaza population of 2.3 million has been forcibly
displaced. Hundreds of thousands of Gazans are starving; dozens have
died
[[link removed]] from
malnutrition, dehydration, and lack of medicines and healthcare amid
a crippling Israeli siege
[[link removed]] that has
been cited as evidence during Israel's genocide trial
[[link removed]] at
the International Court of Justice. The blockade has also exacerbated
the spread of contagious diseases including measles, hepatitis, and
polio.

_Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams._

* Israel-Gaza War
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* Arms embargo
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* Gaza
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* doctors
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* DNC
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