We are in some of the darkest days of this genocide. The Israeli military is currently carrying out a systemic extermination campaign in north Gaza, committing massacre after massacre while completely cutting off humanitarian aid and banning UNRWA.
On October 29, 2024, an Israeli airstrike killed 93 Palestinians in Beit Lahia, north Gaza. Those injured in the massacre have no access to medical care, because on October 26, 2024, Israeli forces attacked Kamal Adwan Hospital and abducted 44 of its 70 staff. Our latest visual highlights the continuous targeting of Palestinian healthcare workers and facilities by Israeli forces in Gaza, focusing on the enforced disappearance, torture, and murder of Dr. Iyad Rantisi, the director of the maternity department at Kamal Adwan Hospital.
Dr. Rantisi is one of at least three Palestinian doctors murdered in Israeli custody since October 2023. Israeli attacks on hospitals and health workers, which initially shocked and outraged the world in 2023, have now become a constant, routine feature of this genocide. By devastating the health system in Gaza, Israeli forces are “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” as described by the genocide convention. In these conditions, those who are not immediately killed by direct violence are more likely to die slowly due to lack of access to medical services, denial of humanitarian aid, mass starvation, untreated traumatic injuries, and disease.
This is the third visual in a series raising awareness about Israel’s practices of mass incommunicado detention and torture of Palestinians. Our first visual illustrates the testimony of Fadi Bakr, a law student from Gaza City, who was captured by Israeli soldiers in early January and spent more than 30 days in Sde Teiman, part of a network of Israeli torture camps. The second visual captures the testimony of Palestinian women from Gaza who were arbitrarily detained and held incommunicado by Israel.