A row between the Democratic Party establishment in the US and pro-Palestinian advocates lays bare the party's longstanding hypocrisies when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, an American doctor who recently returned from the decimated Gaza Strip told Anadolu.
Delegates from the Uncommitted National Movement, many of whom are longstanding Democratic operatives disenchanted by President Joe Biden's handling of Israel's war on Gaza, had been lobbying the party to allow a Palestinian-American to address the Democratic National Convention (DNC), but were stonewalled by party officials.
Dr. Ahmad Yousaf, a pediatrician from Arkansas who volunteered in the besieged coastal enclave for three weeks, joined the movement on the convention's sidelines this week, alongside about a dozen other medical professionals who treated the wounded in Gaza's devastated hospitals.
Many of the movement's delegates sought to pressure Biden and his vice president, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, into changing course on their unwavering support for Israel.
Short of that, the Uncommitted movement pushed for convention organizers to make space for a Palestinian-American to address the thousands of assembled party delegates and supporters.
The appeal was supported by a wide variety of Democratic personalities and stalwarts, including Jewish-American actor Mandy Patinkin, who starred in the hit Showtime television series Homeland as a veteran CIA officer, and the highly influential United Auto Workers labor union.
As the convention drew to a close Thursday night, one thing was clear: the chorus of voices pushing for a Palestinian voice would go unheard.
No Palestinian-American was granted stage time by a party that touts itself as one of inclusivity.
“What we've seen is that, though they say they are a place for everyone, when it came to this issue specifically, they've explicitly chosen that the Palestinian voice, and the voice against the active genocide, is not one that they want on their party platform … It's the ultimate hypocrisy,” Yousaf told Anadolu.
“The Democratic Party, based upon what they've done in the last 24 hours and the last 10 months beyond that, have consistently demonstrated that they do not value a Gazan life as much as they do others.”
- ‘Children in pieces every single day'
As witnesses to the extreme suffering caused by US-made weapons in Gaza, Yousaf and the other doctors who assembled in Chicago this week made an emotional appeal for Biden and Harris to impose an arms embargo on Israel, a change they said is needed to end Washington's active complicity in Israel's war.
“What we saw was the damage done by bombs made in America that were directly shipped from the Biden presidency over the course of the last 10 months, including a $20 billion package that was just discussed a few days ago by (US Secretary of State Antony) Blinken. So, they aren't just passively allowing this to happen. They are actively involved, and I would say, in some environments, bragging about it, on stage with the right people when it's politically expedient,” he said.
“How could I find a place on that stage as somebody who's trying to speak on behalf of a people that have been silenced, unheard and demonized? I could never do that in good conscience and sleep at night,” he added.
Yousaf, who heads an intensive care unit in Arkansas, spent the better part of a month in Gaza volunteering with the nonprofit MedGlobal.
He worked out of Al-Aqsa Hospital in the central Gazan city of Deir al-Balah, one of the few hospitals that are still operating in Gaza, even if just so.
Among the injuries Yousaf and his colleagues treated were multiple cases of children directly shot in the head by snipers.
He described seeing “children in pieces every single day” as Israeli warplanes dropped bombs on areas crowded with civilians. There were also multiple cases in which male patients were treated for gunshot wounds to their groins.
Based on what he observed, Yousaf said there is no doubt that the Israeli military is intentionally targeting civilians.
“When you have multiple children with head wounds that are directly targeting them, that's not by accident, right? When you have quadcopter injuries to the groin of young men in hopes to either permanently maim them, make them sterile, and for just causing suffering, and that was reported by multiple physicians on the ground, by eyewitnesses, including a urologist who was with us in the hospital,” he said.
“I did see, every single day, children in pieces, like I described during the press conference, children in pieces every single day from bombs that were dropped on civilian centers. We're not talking about a targeted bomb strike on a building. I'm talking about bombs dropped in markets where (there were) children about in the street, and their families eating dinner in their homes. This was the everyday reality for the country in the last 10 months,” he added.
- Israeli restrictions are ‘by design'
Many of the wounded were treated in makeshift conditions in the overcrowded Al-Aqsa Hospital amid acute shortages of badly needed medical supplies that continue to be restricted by Israel.
As patients continued to pour in day after day, Yousaf said he felt the need to shift his role solely from a medical professional to a witness, so that the stories of suffering Palestinians would not go unheard.
“I don't want to be a journalist. I don't want to be a witness to these things. I don't want to be a politician or a military (strategist). I want to be a physician that goes in and takes care of people. That was my initial intention, but I wasn't able to do that well either, right? If you don't have medical supplies, you can't help people,” he said.
“There were days where the injuries and the volume of patients coming in were so high there was no way we were going to be able to help the people … At the very least, I could record what I saw, both in my memory forever and in writing, and then an opportunity like this, where I get to share with people outside of that world, where, by design, there are no, very few, limited international eyes.”
Yousaf said Israeli forces prevented him from bringing medical equipment into Gaza that would have been critical in providing care to patients suffering from some of the worst trauma imaginable, including ultrasound machines, antibiotics, sedatives, gauze and catheters.
“Things like the ultrasound machines are things that could actually have a significant impact on the quality of care for trauma patients, that could be used for no other utility. That's the important thing, right?” he said.
“To say it out loud, Hamas can't use an ultrasound machine for something harmful. It's an ultrasound machine for patients to check for internal injuries, right? It's a silly endotracheal tube. There is no other utility for the supplies that I was bringing. Bandages and gauze have no other utility other than to treat wounds, right?” he asked rhetorically.
Israel's prohibitions extended to recording devices, with Yousaf saying he was prevented from bringing a GoPro camera along with him into Gaza as part of a general effort to prevent documentation of the harrowing conditions.
“When you go through Rafah, and you see the level of annihilation and destruction of infrastructure, everything – schools, police stations, personal homes, apartment buildings – nothing (is) untouched,” he said.
“It just doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what they're doing. They're destroying every bit of Gaza and making it unlivable … I could imagine that's a very scary thing from a narrative perspective if I were Israel, because the truth is just so apparent.”
Over 40,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 93,000 wounded in Gaza over the course of Israel's war, according to official figures. The vast majority of the dead have been women and children.
The true death toll, however, is feared to be significantly higher than the official tally, with many missing Gazans feared dead under the millions of tons of rubble, or buried in haphazard graves.
Israel has largely prevented international media from entering Gaza, with the exception of curated military tours, but local journalists have braved death to do their jobs as scores of their colleagues have been slain. That includes at least 116 journalists, according to preliminary data from the Committee to Protect Journalists.
