Israel can’t claim any moral high ground in Gaza | READER COMMENTARY
Shame on The Baltimore Sun for publishing the commentary, “Hospital use reveals the moral high ground in the Israel-Hamas war” (April 16). Israel has destroyed the health care system in Gaza by bombing hospitals into rubble and killing health care providers, patients and civilians in the surroundings in shocking numbers. NPR just reported on the mass graves outside Al Shifa, once Gaza’s “biggest and most advanced medical complex.” It is now totally destroyed, as are some of the neighborhoods around it, which have become “heaps of twisted metal.” Bodies and equipment lay in the courtyard.
Not surprisingly, the author, who mostly quoted the Israel Defense Forces, for the source of his claims started his public relations career with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). When the Associated Press reported on the destruction of the hospital, it was careful to add that though the IDF says the hospital lost the protection guaranteed under international law because it is a command and control center, “rights groups and international lawyers say evidence to support this claim have been faulty and insufficient.”
The Gaza health care system almost resembles Hiroshima’s after the atomic bomb. There is nothing moral about destroying your enemy’s hospitals and health care system. Nor is it moral to withhold food, water and electricity from a whole population for months, slowly starving the people.
The op-ed is hardly more than a propaganda piece. What the Israeli government has done to Gaza’s health care system is a “shanda” (Yiddish for shame or disgrace) as is the fact that The Sun chose to print this commentary.
— Gwen L. DuBois, Baltimore
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