RUTHFULLY YOURS

Last week hundreds of Australian doctors circulated a call to the Australian government for action against Israel. We want to believe that all were motivated by universal humanitarian concerns. But their call made minimal demands of Hamas and claimed that Palestinian terrorists held by Israel are hostages. The doctors’ repeated misinformation that has its sources in Hamas propaganda.The Gaza Health Ministry information office, its data and its doctors are deeply complicit in the Hamas disinformation campaign. They are extensively supported in their spread of disinformation by Hamas-affiliated Gazan journalists who, in turn, are contracted by our own media. They accuse the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) of atrocities by “targeting children, women, the elderly and civilians”. There is no such evidence concerning Gazan casualties in the armed conflict, as we have detailed in depth in a report for the Henry Jackson Society noted under this masthead.

A controlling presence of Hamas military command at Gazan hospitals reflects its control over health information and its misuse of civilians in a human-shield policy, which accounts for many civilian casualties. Their presence is also a Hamas crime against hospitals, which lose their status as sites protected for humanitarian functions when they are repurposed as military bases.

A pitched armed battle between Hamas and the IDF at Kamal Adwan Hospital that took place over the 2024/2025 new year resulted in the deaths of 19 identified terrorists and the arrests of 240 others. Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Ahmed Kahlot, and his successor, Hossam Abu Saffia, held ranks within Hamas of Lieutenant-Colonel and Colonel respectively.

Hamas’ control of the Kamal Adwan Hospital was confirmed by the account of a visiting Kurdish volunteer doctor, Baxtiya Baram, in May 2024. “I saw with my own eyes that hospitals were used to hide Hamas leaders,” he reported. “We saw them and even spoke with them.”

Gaza’s biggest hospital, Al-Shifa in Gaza City, was a major Hamas military base and the scene of other pitched battles. It is also where Israeli hostages were held and where spaces were dedicated for military command, prisoners, interrogations, communications, and military transport (by ambulance). Its administrator was a Hamas appointee. 

Even the Palestinian Authority’s security forces spokesman Adnan Al-Damiri has criticised Hamas for using Gaza’s hospitals as military bases, specifically for publishing notices for named people to report to Nasser Hospital for interrogation by Hamas intelligence.

Hamas combatants are mainly adult males. Men form a quarter of the Gazan population and children comprise a half. But official records of Kamal Adwan Hospital show that extraordinarily high adult male deaths indicate that they were likely fallen combatants who were active in hostilities.

Yet foreign doctors far removed from the conflict and the facts on the ground disregard all this and instead propagate Hamas disinformation. A New York Times opinion piece by Dr Samer Attar in May 2024 described an international delegation of doctors who volunteered in Gaza’s hospitals during April 2024. He claimed that, when he was at Kamal Adwan Hospital in April 2024, “I did not see fighters … I had no idea anyway … Most people I treated were women and children.”

Dr Mark Perlmutter, a US surgeon who led a delegation to the European Hospital in March 2024, claimed, “Our victims were children. I would say 70-75 per cent of the people that we operated on were elementary school age or younger.” Yet, the statistics for that European Hospital show children were the group with least number of injuries, which reflects that the IDF was taking preventive measures to reduce incidental harm to them.

It is convenient and comforting to assume that foreign physicians are impartial humanitarians working for universal good. However, they often come to Gaza with a political agenda on visits organised by anti-Israel advocacy organisations. Dr Feroze Sidhwa has been a prominent American organiser within the current international medical campaign against Israel and a longtime anti-Israel activist. His letter to then-President Biden (signed by 99 doctors) urged action against Israel and absurdly multiplied the casualties Hamas’s own inflated published datasets.

Medical Aid for Palestinians that recruits surgeons to volunteer in Gaza in coordination with the Hamas Ministry has connections with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a prescribed terrorist organisation. Even Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) brings well-established partisan anti-Israel policies.

Unfortunately, the anecdotal impressions of visiting physicians and the assertions of those parroting Hamas statistics are misleading or mistaken. The tragic reality is that disinformation is Hamas’s greatest strategic victory in the awful months since October 7, 2023.

Hamas will continue to sacrifice its civilian population so that memes about ‘Zionists’ thirst for blood’ can work their evil against Israel at the UN, with governments and in the courts. Australian doctors might not appreciate they are rebottling sick medieval anti-Semitic libels for today’s market, but that is exactly what they supporting.

Gregory Rose is an Honorary Professor of Law at the University of Wollongong. Lewi Stone is a Professor of Mathematical Epidemiology at RMIT University