UN experts appalled by relentless Israeli attacks on Gaza’s healthcare system
The targeted destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system by the Israel Defense Forces amounts to “medicide,” UN experts* said today, accusing Israel of deliberately attacking and starving healthcare workers, paramedics and hospitals to wipe out medical care in the besieged enclave.
“As human beings and UN experts, we cannot remain silent about the war crimes committed before our eyes in Gaza,” said Tlaleng Mofokeng, Special Rapporteur on the right to health and Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.
“In addition to bearing witness to an ongoing genocide we are also bearing witness to a ‘medicide,’ a sinister component of the intentional creation of conditions calculated to destroy Palestinians in Gaza which constitutes an act of genocide,” the experts said.
The system of apartheid targeting Palestinians in the occupied territory and the continuous attacks on the healthcare system in Gaza are straining the last remaining resources in the besieged and devastated enclave, the experts warned.
“Health and care workers have been continuously targeted, detained, tortured and are now, like the rest of the population, being starved,” they said.
The UN has reported that health and care workers have fainted due to lack of food and starvation, a violation not only of their own right to health, but one that curtails their ability to perform their duties and compromises the care and healing conditions necessary to treat their patients.
The World Health Organization has reported 735 attacks on health care in Gaza from 7 October 2023 to 11 June 2025, that have killed 917 persons and injured 1411, affected 125 health facilities, and damaged 34 hospitals.
“Deliberate attacks on health and care workers, and health facilities, which are gross violations of international humanitarian law, must stop now,” they said.
“The disregard towards the crimes Israel continues to commit in Gaza sends a stark message to the world that the people of Gaza do not count and their life does not matter. Palestinians in Gaza are being denied their right to dignity, to existence, and to food,” the experts said.
“There is a moral imperative for the international community to end the carnage and allow the people of Gaza to live on their land without fear of attack, killing and starvation, and free from permanent occupation and apartheid,” the Special Rapporteurs said.
“States have failed in this duty, and Palestinians trapped in Gaza’s hellscape are paying the ultimate price for that failure and indifference.”
“Ceasefire, now, as a first step to hold Israel accountable,” the experts said, calling on the international community to save what is left of Gaza’s healthcare ‘system’ and prevent the extermination of its population.
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Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.
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