17.04.2025
White coats, red blood
Mass killing in Gaza is but a prelude to ethnic cleansing. And, aided and abetted by the US and UK, Israeli forces are committing war crimes against Palestinian medical personnel with complete impunity, writes Ian Spencer
The last fully functioning hospital in Gaza, the al Ahli in Gaza City, has been bombed by Israel. The attack destroyed its intensive care, surgical facilities, pharmacy and laboratories. The al Ahli Hospital was a small one, which is probably why it had escaped until now. However, it was caring for many more patients than it was built for, following the destruction of the Al-Shifa medical complex in April 2024.
The Israel Defence Forces issued a warning less than 20 minutes prior to the attack, on Palm Sunday (April 13), which also destroyed nearby civilian facilities, including St Philip’s Church (the Anglican Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem runs the hospital). A child died because of the rushed evacuation. UK foreign secretary David Lammy made a rare effort to criticise Israel by calling the attack “deplorable” - but apparently not deplorable enough for the UK to revoke any more arms export licences to the Zionist terrorist state.
The IDF used their customary lie to ‘justify’ their terrorism - that the hospital contained a “command and control centre used by Hamas”. As in all the other times it used this fabrication, the IDF produced no credible evidence. It is not as if the IDF has not been caught lying before about attacks on medical workers.
On March 23 the IDF attacked a convoy of Palestinian Red Crescent Society ambulances, a UN car and a fire truck from Gaza’s civil defence. 15 emergency workers were killed - an atrocity so disgusting that even Keir Starmer has called for an inquiry into the incident. It was one of his rare breaks with the US government line, just as Benjamin Netanyahu became the first head of government to visit the US president at the White House, following Trump’s mercurial imposition of tariffs across the world.1
The IDF originally claimed that that they had opened fire because the convoy was acting “suspiciously” in darkness, without headlights or flashing lights. However, mobile phone footage from one of the dead paramedics showed that all the vehicles were lit up, as one would expect of a convoy of ambulances responding to a call to rescue the wounded, following an earlier IDF attack on a car.
The phone footage lasted more than five minutes and showed the paramedics in high-visibility uniforms and included the last prayers of Refat Radwan, as Israeli soldiers were heard approaching the vehicles. The IDF account was further refuted by the testimony of paramedic, Munther Abed, who survived the murderous attack. One other paramedic, Assad al-Nassara, was forcibly abducted by IDF troops and, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, is being held “in an Israeli place of detention”.2
The IDF soldiers tried to cover up their crime by burying the bodies of the 15 medical workers “to protect them from wild animals”, according to IDF sources. After the emergence of the phone footage, originally shared by The New York Times, the IDF admitted that its original account was inaccurate, attributing the report to the soldiers involved.
On April 15, an Israeli strike hit the Kuwaiti Field Hospital in the Mawasi area of Khan Younis, killing one medical worker and wounding a further 10. As a result of all this there are now very few hospital beds left in Gaza, and many wounded are now accommodated in tents. A mere 21 out of 36 hospitals remain “just partly functional”, while the rest have been totally destroyed.3 Article 18 (4th Geneva Convention) states that hospitals must never be attacked and additional protocol I (1977) states that deliberate attacks on medical workers constitute a war crime.
Full scale
Since the resumption of full-scale genocide on March 18 over 1,000 people have been killed in Gaza. The official death toll of the war, compiled with the greatest difficulty by the Gaza health ministry (GHM), is 51,000, of which children make up 17,492. If the ‘missing, presumed dead’ are added, this figure rises to 61,700. In addition, 111,588 have been wounded - many gravely, with life-changing injuries.
Of the Gazans killed since the genocide began, only 40% have been men aged 18-59. Children make up 33.1%, women aged 18-59 18.3% and the elderly over 60 8.6%.4 It is a demographic consistent with the pattern of indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas.
However, the GHM has consistently under-reported the likely death figures from trauma because of the practical difficulty of recording data. In January 2025, a peer-reviewed article in The Lancet estimated that the GHM had, up to that point, under-estimated by 41%! Moreover, its figures “underestimate the full impact of the military operation in Gaza, as they do not account for non-trauma-related deaths resulting from health service disruption, food insecurity, and inadequate water and sanitation”.5
Since Israel violated the ceasefire on March 18, there has been a critical shortage of medical and food supplies. About 36% of the Strip has now been designated as no-go zones, and are subject to displacement orders affecting 390,000 people. Israel has blockaded humanitarian aid from entering these zones and distribution outside of them has been hindered by constant bombardment.6
There is aid available, but repeated requests to collect it from the Karem Shalom border crossing have been refused by Israel. The blockade has even included preventing the distribution of vaccines for childhood diseases - 37% of medications and 59% of medical supplies are at zero stock. The destruction of medical imaging is further hindering treatment of trauma patients, while fuel shortages shut down those hospitals dependent on generators.
Israel has cut power to Gaza’s southern desalination plant, denying clean water to 600,000 people. Unicef estimates that access to drinking water for one million people, including 400,000 children, has dropped from 16 litres a day during the ceasefire to just six, making it likely that people will have to rely on unsafe sources, just to survive. Children are, of course, particularly susceptible to death from contaminated water, due to diarrhoea-induced dehydration and electrolyte imbalance.7
Bombardment and displacement orders have closed 15% of all nutrition sites, interrupting treatment for malnourished children. This has been compounded across the strip by the destruction of crops, fishing boats and the annihilation of domestic cattle.
And, of course, the genocide is not confined to the Gaza Strip or medical personnel. A further 905 have been killed in the West Bank, 181 of whom are children, and 7,370 wounded. In Jenin the IDF targeted the Al Tafawk Children’s Centre. Education as much as health is a priority target for Israel, it seems. Genocide, after all, is not only concerned with the eradication of people, but their culture too.
Co-belligerents
From the outset of the genocide, the UK and USA have been co-belligerents alongside Israel. The Royal Airforce has conducted at least 518 intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance flights around Gaza since December 2023. The flights have taken off from RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, using 14 Squadron’s Shadow R1 aircraft.
The aircraft can track vehicle convoys, monitor buildings and gather real-time battlefield intelligence. Following questions to parliament, the UK government insists that the flights are purely to assist Israel to recover hostages taken on October 7 2023. However, once the RAF shares intelligence with Israel or the US, it loses control over how it is used. One is certainly entitled to ask, when a bomb massacres Palestinians sheltering in tents or the vicinity of a hospital, where did the intelligence for these attacks come from?
Analysis by Action on Armed Violence found that the RAF conducted 24 flights in the two weeks leading up to and including the day of Israel’s deadly attack on the Nuseirat refugee camp on June 8 2024, which reportedly killed 274 Palestinians and injured over 700. In another case, on February 13 2024, an RAF Shadow R1 most likely landed at Israel’s Nevatim Air Base, which hosts the country’s F-35 squadron, which has carried out extensive airstrikes in Gaza.
The flights have taken place under Conservative and Labour administrations, with 303 sorties under Rishi Sunak’s government and 215 under Sir Keir Starmer’s watch. At the very least, this leaves the UK government open to the charge of complicity in genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and war crimes at the International Criminal Court (ICC), where Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant are both indicted, with warrants issued for their arrest.8
The UK, as a signatory to the Arms Trade Treaty and Geneva conventions, is legally obliged to ensure that its military intelligence is not used to facilitate war crimes. The UK government has admitted in court that “Israel is not committed to upholding humanitarian law”, yet continues to support it with intelligence gathered from RAF Akrotiri.
While the UK government repeatedly stonewalls parliamentary questions about the RAF role in Cyprus and Gaza, it is also true that RAF Akrotiri is regularly used by US airforce flights of heavy transport aircraft, which facilitate the transfer of ordinance and logistical support directly to Israel, including for F-35 aircraft.9
The government acknowledges that Israel acts in violation of international law, including through the use of F-35 aircraft against civilian targets. With one eye on international courts, it has made a token gesture by restricting 50 of the 350 arms export licences to Israel, but it does not embargo parts supplied for F-35s.10
Long before and throughout the current war, Israel has been wholly indifferent to international law. Now with the support of Trump to “finish the job”, it knows that it can act with complete impunity. While criticism of ‘Genocide Joe’ may have had some marginal restraining effect due to the impending election, it now looks as if the US will let nothing stand in the way of Israel’s murder, especially when there is a real-estate opportunity for the US on the table.
Trump too has shown a willingness to abandon the rules-based order and a complete contempt for multilateral institutions, such as the UN, the World Health Organisation and both the IJC and ICC. In place of the ‘rules-based order’ we are likely to see naked force and territorial acquisition. Just as ‘manifest destiny’ was used as a justification for the genocide of native Americans, ‘MAGA’ will be used to justify Israel’s ‘final solution’ in Palestine.
Join us for the national demonstration in central London on May 17, marking the 77th anniversary of the Nakba. End the genocide!
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www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-gaza-emergency-workers-killed-video-idf-account-contradicted-rcna200355.↩︎
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impakter.com/gaza-war-deaths-the-story-behind-the-numbers.↩︎
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‘Traumatic injury mortality in the Gaza Strip from October 7 2023 to June 30 2024: a capture-recapture analysis’ The Lancet February 8 2025.↩︎
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www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-278-gaza-strip.↩︎
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www.declassifieduk.org/britain-sent-over-500-spy-flights-to-gaza.↩︎
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www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/15/uk-bases-in-cyprus-protests.↩︎
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www.thenational.scot/news/24843602.uk-told-tell-truth-cyprus-raf-base-links-israel.↩︎