US State Department silent on hospital director’s disappearance

Michael F. Brown Rights and Accountability 4 January 2025

A woman holds aloft a sign calling to free Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya as other protesters join her

Medical professionals around the world, including in this Barcelona demonstration, have called for Israel to free Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya.

Marc Asensio Clupes ZUMAPRESS

Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahiya and lead physician for MedGlobal in Gaza, has been disappeared into the Israeli prison system by US-funded Israeli death squads operating in the occupied coastal territory. These Israeli forces have killed over 46,000 Palestinians since October 2023, approximately 17,000 of them children.

The famed and widely respected pediatrician was seized on 27 December and, say witnesses, showed “signs of having undergone torture and beatings.” Abu Safiya’s family said he had been subjected to “humiliation and mistreatment.”

Israel stands plausibly accused of genocide and two leaders – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant – have been issued with arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and war crimes. There is good reason for concern for Abu Safiya.

No official news has emerged as to Abu Safiya’s whereabouts since his initial arrest and transfer for “questioning.”

Eyewitness reports, however, placed Abu Safiya at the notorious Sde Teiman torture facility. Yet inept Israeli officials denied any knowledge of his detention according to Physicians for Human Rights-Israel on Thursday.
Israel’s apartheid army reversed its claim of not knowing about his detention the next day.

The US State Department disregarded specific questions about the physical well-being of Abu Safiya from The Electronic Intifada and instead on Monday responded with generalities that never named the doctor. A State Department spokesperson merely noted, “We are aware of reports and still gathering information.”

Against all evidence to the contrary, that spokesperson added: “We do not want to see firefights in hospitals where innocent people and patients receiving medical care are caught in the crossfire.”

Citing “consultations” with the Israeli military on the matter, the spokesperson added, “We call on all parties of the conflict to respect the protected status of these facilities and to avoid harm to civilians receiving treatment and humanitarian workers providing that care.”

“Bombs away”

Florida state senator and US congressional candidate Randy Fine, who is expected to represent his district in the US House of Representatives later this year and is endorsed by president-elect Donald Trump, enthusiastically backs such violence.

His view is sadistic, but honest.

Fine tweeted “bombs away” after unsubstantiated allegations emerged of Abu Safiya being a Hamas colonel. It was unclear whether Fine meant to bomb Abu Safiya (though already detained), what remains of his hospital, or all of Gaza.

Fine, the self-described “Hebrew Hammer,” has directed similarly violent rhetoric at Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, his likely future colleagues and the only two Muslim women in the US Congress. His vile and racist wording is reminiscent of the ethnic cleansing language employed by Israeli politicians against Palestinians in Gaza.

The allegation against Abu Safiya is particularly odd as the Israeli military briefly detained the hospital director in October, only to release him after assaulting him and interrogating him for hours. Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard notes that he was also “interrogated briefly” in December 2023. “At the time, not a single Israeli source accused Dr. Hussam of anything.”

On Thursday she warned that Abu Safiya should now be regarded as “enforced disappeared, and as such at great risk of torture and ill-treatment.”

Now, with his stature having grown in recent months on account of courageous steadfastness on behalf of his patients, the Israeli military is charging that he’s “suspected of being a Hamas terrorist operative.”

Ahmad Tibi, a Palestinian member of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, insisted, “We must not abandon Dr. Abu Safiya.” He raised up Abu Safiya as “the man who stayed with his patients until the very last moment,” while warning of “harsh detention conditions, reports of widespread torture, and dozens of deaths in custody, including Dr. Adnan al-Bursh earlier this year.”

The State Department spokesperson, rather than address anything to do with Abu Safiya, his well-being or the Israeli claims, offered empty words about remaining “deeply concerned with the scale of civilian casualties in this conflict.” The spokesperson urged that “all parties must not only comply with international humanitarian law but must take all feasible precautions to protect civilians.”

Yet the Biden administration continues to fund the Israeli military as it engages in the violent targeting of hospitals and tent encampments in Gaza.

Despite the ongoing military assistance to Israel, the spokesperson maintains, “We have consistently urged Israel at the highest levels that they must do significantly more to ensure the protection of civilians, and that they must investigate credible allegations of violations whenever they arise.”

Do better, the American message seems to be, but by all means take more US weapons and do more of the same.

The spokesperson concluded with the standard US government talking point: “Israel has an unusual burden in fighting this war because Hamas uses hospitals and schools and other civilian facilities for military purposes and has built a vast network of military tunnels under civilian areas. That puts innocent civilians in the crossfire. That creates an added burden for Israel, but it does not lessen Israel’s responsibility under international humanitarian law, to distinguish between terrorists and civilians, and to protect the lives of innocent people, and that is the overwhelming majority of the people in Gaza. Israel has a responsibility to do everything in its power to protect civilians.”

This assertion about hospitals is belied by the reporting of The Washington Post regarding the claims Israeli officials made about al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City being a command and control center. That debunking article noted “the evidence presented by the Israeli government falls short of showing that Hamas had been using the hospital as a command and control center.”

UN concerns about hospitals

The UN Human Rights Office raised serious concerns about Israel’s actions against hospitals in a report released Tuesday. The report “found that Israel’s pattern of deadly attacks on and near hospitals in Gaza, and associated combat, pushed the healthcare system to the brink of total collapse, with catastrophic effect on Palestinians’ access to health and medical care.”

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk added, “This report graphically details the destruction of the healthcare system in Gaza, and the extent of killing of patients, staff and other civilians in these attacks in blatant disregard for international humanitarian and human rights law.”

The UN Human Rights Office also raised concerns in its press release about Israel’s actions at Kamal Adwan hospital, though that assault and forced evacuation took place after the time period of 12 October 2023 to 30 June 2024 studied in the report.

“The appalling destruction wrought by the Israeli military’s attacks on the Kamal Adwan hospital last Friday [27 December] – leaving the population of north Gaza with almost no access to adequate health care – reflects the pattern of attacks documented in the report. Staff and patients were forced to flee or were taken into custody, with many reports of torture and ill-treatment. The director of the hospital was taken into custody and his fate and whereabouts are unknown.”

Tlaleng Mofokeng, UN 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, said on 2 January: “We are gravely concerned with the fate of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, yet another doctor to be harassed, kidnapped and arbitrarily detained by the occupation forces, in his case for defying evacuation orders to leave his patients and colleagues behind. This is part of a pattern by Israel to continuously bombard, destroy and fully annihilate the realization of the right to health in Gaza.”

The concern for Abu Safiya is widespread with medical professionals from around the world taking up his cause on social media and demanding his freedom.

A follow-up question Thursday from The Electronic Intifada regarding the well-being of Abu Safiya went completely unanswered by the State Department.

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Michael F. Brown

Michael F. Brown is an independent journalist. His work and views have appeared in The International Herald Tribune, TheNation.com, The San Diego Union-Tribune, The News & Observer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Washington Post and elsewhere.