Planned Parenthood workers organized to expose the limits of the nonprofit industrial complex.
By Nicole Froio
January 10, 2025
Source: Yes! Magazine
Photo: Mohammed Zaanoun
On Dec. 5, 2023, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) released an official statement condemning what they called “atrocities committed by Hamas,” citing violations of bodily autonomy both in Israel and in Gaza and characterizing Israel’s aggression on the Gaza strip as “the war on Hamas.” In the days that followed, many workers within the national Planned Parenthood organization and its affiliates across the United States organized a response to this statement through a group chat on Signal.
According to Cherry, a PPFA worker who requested a pseudonym out of fear of retaliation, unionized PPFA workers were “really upset” by their employer’s public and internal statements on Israel’s aggression on Gaza. A Signal group was created to work on an open letter that circulated later that month.
The Dec. 5 statement was PPFA’s first public comment about Gaza, but Cherry says, “[PPFA] had sent a couple of internal all-staff emails before that one that very much deprioritized the historical context and experience of Palestinians over the last nearly a century.” Cherry adds, “As workers, we wanted to demonstrate that the PPFA statement does not necessarily reflect those of us in the national office.”
The collectively written open letter was drafted by both unionized and non-unionized PPFA workers, as well as workers from PPFA affiliates. Letter writers urged for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and unequivocally called Israel’s aggression on Gaza a genocide. Signed by more than 500 patients, volunteers, organizers, health care providers, donors, supporters, and workers, the letter also called out the hypocrisy of the organization’s stance.
“For PPFA to ignore the Israeli government’s war crimes against the Palestinian people stands antithetical to their purported mission to fight for the dignity, safety, and rights of all people,” the letter reads. “We urge PPFA’s leadership to follow the lead of other reproductive health, rights, and justice organizations in calling for a ceasefire and an end to the U.S. funding of the Israeli government’s occupation and genocide in Gaza.”
According to the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), 50 percent of pregnant Palestinian women who were displaced to shelters in Gaza suffered from thirst and malnutrition, and health care and vaccinations for newborns were scarce. Though PPFA is a member of the IPPF, the latter has no governance power over the former.
In July 2024, the Palestinian Family Planning and Protection Association estimated that miscarriages had risen at least 300 percent since October 2023. If PPFA leadership and its affiliates—independently incorporated local Planned Parenthood clinics supported by PPFA—refused to take a stance for a ceasefire, the letter signers wanted to make clear that not all workers and supporters of the organization were content to be silent in the face of a genocide.
“The other thing that bothered me and made me want to write and sign the letter is that we’re a reproductive rights organization and we were completely out of step with the IPPF,” says Emma, a worker in the national Planned Parenthood office who also requested a pseudonym out of fear of retribution. Emma felt PPFA should be more supportive of the international organization, which called for a ceasefire in November 2023, citing the violation of women and girls specifically.
“The IPPF is a global reproductive rights organization that has been very vocal about the maternal mortality rates [in Gaza], the lack of period sanitation products, [and] how people have to experience C-sections without anesthesia,” says Emma. “Just all these things the PPFA is supposed to be an advocate for and is just completely ignoring, and then when it stopped ignoring what’s going on, it chose to just spout propaganda.”
For some workers at PPFA and its affiliates across the U.S., the lack of reproductive health care in Gaza was difficult to ignore in day-to-day operations. The PPFA’s official statement on Gaza and the lack of internal discussion of the issue was what pushed Aseel Houmsse, research and clinical training coordinator at the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts (PPLM), to organize with other workers, sign the open letter published last December, and send a letter to their affiliate’s equity department.
Houmsse, a first-generation immigrant to the U.S. who is of Middle Eastern descent, says they expected conversations about Palestine to happen in Planned Parenthood employee affinity group meetings due to the organization’s commitment to diversity, equality, and inclusion. Houmsse expected those conversations to be “geared toward advancing equity and advancing the idea of health care for all,” but was surprised to encounter complete silence about the issue at their affiliate. “That’s when I decided to organize with others who were concerned about the silence,” Houmsse explains.
Houmsse and other workers wrote an internal letter to the equity division of PPLM that they say was “rejected immediately with no feedback.” Houmsse felt not only the organization-wide silence and its general chilling effect, but its particular impact on workers with roots in the Middle East and North Africa. Houmsse found PPFA’s response “incredibly disappointing,” before adding that it “goes against the idea of how we need to talk about the uncomfortable things.”
This continues a pattern Houmsse has witnessed all their life: a systemic refusal to discuss Palestine in left-wing and liberal spaces. “[T]hese… groups… are meant to tackle uncomfortable conversations in a way that’s functional.”
That is the reason Houmsse thought it important for unions and workers to come together and sign the open letter to PPFA leadership. “What I love about unions is that they provide, ideally, a sense of psychological safety,” Houmsse says. “I think especially when we work in areas that are highly stressful like an abortion clinic, for instance, I think it’s really nice to know that there is an entity out there that has your back, that is able to keep your security, safety, all these things in mind.” (Neither PPFA nor PPLM responded to YES! Media’s requests for comment.)
Autonomy and Cybersecurity
PPFA leadership ignored the first open letter. In May 2024, I wrote a Prism Reports feature breaking the news that PPFA had a cybersecurity contract with Raytheon, a notorious corporation that, according to the American Friends Service Committee, makes “missiles, bombs, components for fighter jets, and other weapon systems used by the Israeli military against Palestinian civilians.”
The story raised questions about whether liberal nonprofit organizations defending human rights should work with a company that manufactures military weapons. In addition, PPFA workers were concerned about their lack of participation in the hiring of a company that handles data essential to the daily operations of reproductive health care.
“Seeing [the connection between Planned Parenthood and Raytheon] laid out so directly was devastating,” says Casey, a unionized worker from an East Coast affiliate who requested a pseudonym. “I can speak for my fellow union members and workers [that], generally, we love this work. To know that our labor was, in this very direct way, going to this frankly evil company was just horrible. The next day in the clinic, we were all crying and were like, ‘Alright, what can we do?’”
The collective despair motivated PPFA workers to send another letter to leadership in July, this time demanding PPFA’s divestment from Raytheon as well as “full transparency about its business dealings with cybersecurity companies.” Workers requested a say on the cybersecurity company hired to handle highly sensitive data that could, in some cases, further marginalize Planned Parenthood clients who are undocumented or could be criminalized for getting an abortion. The letter also charged the organization with “co-opting the language of freedom and self-determination while maintaining relationships with warmongers and military arms profiteers.”
For Emma, PPFA’s contract with Raytheon exposed a gap of values between workers providing on-the-ground reproductive health care and PPFA leadership. “I won’t deny that Planned Parenthood affiliates provide so many health care services, but it’s the workers who … are on the ground doing that,” Emma says. “There definitely should be a distinction, but as a larger institution, I’m not even disappointed. I’m furious.”
The fractures over Gaza and the Raytheon contract made distinctions between leadership and workers clearer. While leadership seemed preoccupied with putting out neutral messaging on Israel’s siege on Gaza to protect the organization, workers were watching videos of children, men, and women being massacred and disabled by weapons closely related to their workplace’s choice of cybersecurity provider.
According to Casey, organizing with unionized and non-unionized workers, as well as Planned Parenthood supporters and donors, has offered PPFA workers opportunities to learn from each other and clarify how workers in the U.S. can show up in solidarity with Palestine.
“It really gave us learning and growing opportunities to better understand the idea of solidarity and what unions do,” Casey says. For them, this movement was evidence that unions are more than an “insurance policy for workers—they exist to build our working-class power.” And it made them realize how workers have “so much power collectively, but we have to get to that place where we believe that and can mobilize it.”
This can be true for unions across the U.S. “We can [all] mobilize to make material changes for Palestinian liberation,” Casey says.
The Palestinian solidarity movement within Planned Parenthood is an example of how working-class power can be used to clarify connections between struggles, even when they seem to be disconnected from our own workplace, geographically or otherwise. Through organizing and community building, Planned Parenthood workers helped expose the nonprofit-industrial complex operating within the U.S. empire, demonstrating how diversity, equity and inclusion efforts fail when imperialism and colonialism aren’t tackled head on.
By reminding their employer of the organization’s own mission, organized workers and unions pushed for rights and justice outside U.S. borders.
Nicole Froio is a reporter, researcher, and translator based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Doctors Against Genocide Hold Global Sick-Out to Highlight Atrocities in Gaza
Photo: Mohammed Zaanoun
On Dec. 5, 2023, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) released an official statement condemning what they called “atrocities committed by Hamas,” citing violations of bodily autonomy both in Israel and in Gaza and characterizing Israel’s aggression on the Gaza strip as “the war on Hamas.” In the days that followed, many workers within the national Planned Parenthood organization and its affiliates across the United States organized a response to this statement through a group chat on Signal.
According to Cherry, a PPFA worker who requested a pseudonym out of fear of retaliation, unionized PPFA workers were “really upset” by their employer’s public and internal statements on Israel’s aggression on Gaza. A Signal group was created to work on an open letter that circulated later that month.
The Dec. 5 statement was PPFA’s first public comment about Gaza, but Cherry says, “[PPFA] had sent a couple of internal all-staff emails before that one that very much deprioritized the historical context and experience of Palestinians over the last nearly a century.” Cherry adds, “As workers, we wanted to demonstrate that the PPFA statement does not necessarily reflect those of us in the national office.”
The collectively written open letter was drafted by both unionized and non-unionized PPFA workers, as well as workers from PPFA affiliates. Letter writers urged for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and unequivocally called Israel’s aggression on Gaza a genocide. Signed by more than 500 patients, volunteers, organizers, health care providers, donors, supporters, and workers, the letter also called out the hypocrisy of the organization’s stance.
“For PPFA to ignore the Israeli government’s war crimes against the Palestinian people stands antithetical to their purported mission to fight for the dignity, safety, and rights of all people,” the letter reads. “We urge PPFA’s leadership to follow the lead of other reproductive health, rights, and justice organizations in calling for a ceasefire and an end to the U.S. funding of the Israeli government’s occupation and genocide in Gaza.”
According to the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), 50 percent of pregnant Palestinian women who were displaced to shelters in Gaza suffered from thirst and malnutrition, and health care and vaccinations for newborns were scarce. Though PPFA is a member of the IPPF, the latter has no governance power over the former.
In July 2024, the Palestinian Family Planning and Protection Association estimated that miscarriages had risen at least 300 percent since October 2023. If PPFA leadership and its affiliates—independently incorporated local Planned Parenthood clinics supported by PPFA—refused to take a stance for a ceasefire, the letter signers wanted to make clear that not all workers and supporters of the organization were content to be silent in the face of a genocide.
“The other thing that bothered me and made me want to write and sign the letter is that we’re a reproductive rights organization and we were completely out of step with the IPPF,” says Emma, a worker in the national Planned Parenthood office who also requested a pseudonym out of fear of retribution. Emma felt PPFA should be more supportive of the international organization, which called for a ceasefire in November 2023, citing the violation of women and girls specifically.
“The IPPF is a global reproductive rights organization that has been very vocal about the maternal mortality rates [in Gaza], the lack of period sanitation products, [and] how people have to experience C-sections without anesthesia,” says Emma. “Just all these things the PPFA is supposed to be an advocate for and is just completely ignoring, and then when it stopped ignoring what’s going on, it chose to just spout propaganda.”
For some workers at PPFA and its affiliates across the U.S., the lack of reproductive health care in Gaza was difficult to ignore in day-to-day operations. The PPFA’s official statement on Gaza and the lack of internal discussion of the issue was what pushed Aseel Houmsse, research and clinical training coordinator at the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts (PPLM), to organize with other workers, sign the open letter published last December, and send a letter to their affiliate’s equity department.
Houmsse, a first-generation immigrant to the U.S. who is of Middle Eastern descent, says they expected conversations about Palestine to happen in Planned Parenthood employee affinity group meetings due to the organization’s commitment to diversity, equality, and inclusion. Houmsse expected those conversations to be “geared toward advancing equity and advancing the idea of health care for all,” but was surprised to encounter complete silence about the issue at their affiliate. “That’s when I decided to organize with others who were concerned about the silence,” Houmsse explains.
Houmsse and other workers wrote an internal letter to the equity division of PPLM that they say was “rejected immediately with no feedback.” Houmsse felt not only the organization-wide silence and its general chilling effect, but its particular impact on workers with roots in the Middle East and North Africa. Houmsse found PPFA’s response “incredibly disappointing,” before adding that it “goes against the idea of how we need to talk about the uncomfortable things.”
This continues a pattern Houmsse has witnessed all their life: a systemic refusal to discuss Palestine in left-wing and liberal spaces. “[T]hese… groups… are meant to tackle uncomfortable conversations in a way that’s functional.”
That is the reason Houmsse thought it important for unions and workers to come together and sign the open letter to PPFA leadership. “What I love about unions is that they provide, ideally, a sense of psychological safety,” Houmsse says. “I think especially when we work in areas that are highly stressful like an abortion clinic, for instance, I think it’s really nice to know that there is an entity out there that has your back, that is able to keep your security, safety, all these things in mind.” (Neither PPFA nor PPLM responded to YES! Media’s requests for comment.)
Autonomy and Cybersecurity
PPFA leadership ignored the first open letter. In May 2024, I wrote a Prism Reports feature breaking the news that PPFA had a cybersecurity contract with Raytheon, a notorious corporation that, according to the American Friends Service Committee, makes “missiles, bombs, components for fighter jets, and other weapon systems used by the Israeli military against Palestinian civilians.”
The story raised questions about whether liberal nonprofit organizations defending human rights should work with a company that manufactures military weapons. In addition, PPFA workers were concerned about their lack of participation in the hiring of a company that handles data essential to the daily operations of reproductive health care.
“Seeing [the connection between Planned Parenthood and Raytheon] laid out so directly was devastating,” says Casey, a unionized worker from an East Coast affiliate who requested a pseudonym. “I can speak for my fellow union members and workers [that], generally, we love this work. To know that our labor was, in this very direct way, going to this frankly evil company was just horrible. The next day in the clinic, we were all crying and were like, ‘Alright, what can we do?’”
The collective despair motivated PPFA workers to send another letter to leadership in July, this time demanding PPFA’s divestment from Raytheon as well as “full transparency about its business dealings with cybersecurity companies.” Workers requested a say on the cybersecurity company hired to handle highly sensitive data that could, in some cases, further marginalize Planned Parenthood clients who are undocumented or could be criminalized for getting an abortion. The letter also charged the organization with “co-opting the language of freedom and self-determination while maintaining relationships with warmongers and military arms profiteers.”
For Emma, PPFA’s contract with Raytheon exposed a gap of values between workers providing on-the-ground reproductive health care and PPFA leadership. “I won’t deny that Planned Parenthood affiliates provide so many health care services, but it’s the workers who … are on the ground doing that,” Emma says. “There definitely should be a distinction, but as a larger institution, I’m not even disappointed. I’m furious.”
The fractures over Gaza and the Raytheon contract made distinctions between leadership and workers clearer. While leadership seemed preoccupied with putting out neutral messaging on Israel’s siege on Gaza to protect the organization, workers were watching videos of children, men, and women being massacred and disabled by weapons closely related to their workplace’s choice of cybersecurity provider.
According to Casey, organizing with unionized and non-unionized workers, as well as Planned Parenthood supporters and donors, has offered PPFA workers opportunities to learn from each other and clarify how workers in the U.S. can show up in solidarity with Palestine.
“It really gave us learning and growing opportunities to better understand the idea of solidarity and what unions do,” Casey says. For them, this movement was evidence that unions are more than an “insurance policy for workers—they exist to build our working-class power.” And it made them realize how workers have “so much power collectively, but we have to get to that place where we believe that and can mobilize it.”
This can be true for unions across the U.S. “We can [all] mobilize to make material changes for Palestinian liberation,” Casey says.
The Palestinian solidarity movement within Planned Parenthood is an example of how working-class power can be used to clarify connections between struggles, even when they seem to be disconnected from our own workplace, geographically or otherwise. Through organizing and community building, Planned Parenthood workers helped expose the nonprofit-industrial complex operating within the U.S. empire, demonstrating how diversity, equity and inclusion efforts fail when imperialism and colonialism aren’t tackled head on.
By reminding their employer of the organization’s own mission, organized workers and unions pushed for rights and justice outside U.S. borders.
Nicole Froio is a reporter, researcher, and translator based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Doctors Against Genocide Hold Global Sick-Out to Highlight Atrocities in Gaza
By Chris Walker
January 7, 2025
Source: Truthout
Image by John Avalos, Healthcare workers for Palestine, Bay Area
Doctors and health care providers across the globe are engaging in a day of action, calling in sick and taking part in other demonstrations against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
The “Sick From Genocide” global vigil, organized by Doctors Against Genocide (DAG) and several other organizations demonstrating against Israel’s thus-far 15-month genocidal war on Gaza, features pop-up clinics in cities across the world, including in the U.S. Health care workers participating in the event are urging others in their profession to take a day of mental health leave “to reflect on the immense moral injury of funding a genocide and engage the most important aspect of treatment: publicly demanding an end to the genocide in Gaza.”
“After witnessing 15 months of relentless violence and destruction in Gaza, we can no longer carry on as if everything is normal,” the account for DAG wrote in a post on X. “The international system has failed, and we are sick — sick from genocide, sick from complicity, and sick from silence.”
“To all healthcare workers, professionals, and allies — stand with us. Pause. Grieve. Demand change,” the post added.
In a press release, DAG stated:
As healthcare workers, we have witnessed unimaginable atrocities: hospitals destroyed, patients and colleagues targeted, and entire communities left in ruins.
…
This is not just a day off — it is a call to action. Together, we will demand accountability, justice, and an end to the ongoing genocide. Organizing to end genocide is not only our responsibility — it is our path to healing.
The effects of Israel’s extermination campaign in Gaza, including its attacks on health care facilities, have been horrific. Just last week, the Israeli military forced the evacuation of the last two functioning hospitals in northern Gaza, leaving around 75,000 people trapped in that area without access to health care of any kind.
The official death toll from Israel’s genocide, which began in October 2023, sits at over 45,000 people. However, other estimates suggest that the true death toll could be much higher, with thousands of Palestinians missing and presumed dead under the rubble. Another 100,000 have fled the region, and an estimated 107,000 have been injured by Israeli attacks, according to Gaza officials, dropping Gaza’s population totals by a devastating 6 percent.
Rupa Marya — a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who is currently on paid suspension after condemning the U.S.’s financial backing of Israel’s genocide — provided a statement to Truthout regarding Monday’s call to action.
“Since October 2023 we have watched in horror as Israel has targeted our Palestinian colleagues and destroyed hospitals under false pretense,” Marya, who is the author of “Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice,” said in her statement. “The Israeli military has rounded up physicians and other healthcare workers and tortured them, some to death such as Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh, professor of orthopedic surgery.”
“Currently the Israeli military has abducted our colleague, pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya and sent him to the same torture facility where Dr. Al-Bursh was killed,” Marya pointed out. “We are calling for his immediate release and the release of the hundreds of healthcare workers who the Israeli military has detained.”
According to witness reports, Safiya, 51, was abducted by Israeli soldiers from the hospital he managed in northern Gaza, beaten with batons, and forced to strip and wear prisoner garb before being taken away.
Marya went on to reference other first-hand accounts of physicians who have been to Gaza, stating:
Physicians report that Israeli soldiers throw drones into the hospitals to kill patients in their beds and staff in the act of care. Israeli soldiers enter the hospitals to attack the machinery — lab machines, hemodialysis units, CT scanners. These actions together with bombing the hospitals and setting them on fire render them completely useless for patient care.
“As human beings we are wired for empathy. … To ignore this is to ignore our very humanity,” Marya concluded. “We cannot and will not sever our care for one another. And as we care, we are sickened by this violence.”
Other DAG members and supporters also spoke about their reasons for taking part in the sick-out on Monday.
“We are answering the call from Gaza and Doctors Against Genocide. Release all the abducted Palestinian healthcare workers taken hostage by Israel. End the attacks on hospitals. End the genocide. End the occupation. Free the people of Palestine,” wrote Ottawa-based primary care doctor Yipeng Ge in a post on Bluesky.
In a separate post, Ge added:
The only cure is an end to genocide, justice for the victims, and accountability for those responsible, and spending tax dollars on housing, healthcare and education, NOT genocide and occupation.
The Schiller Institute, a think tank based in Germany that aims to “defend the rights of all humanity to progress” also published its support of the DAG “Sick From Genocide” global vigil.
“With urgency, the Schiller Institute adds its voice to those of dozens of organizations and thousands of individuals worldwide in support of the demand by Doctors Against Genocide (DAG) that the ongoing genocide being perpetrated in Gaza must stop immediately,” the institute wrote.
Hannah Janeway, an emergency physician in Los Angeles, spoke to Truthout about the DAG action on Monday.
“The truth is that health is not apolitical. It’s affected by policies that reflect the distribution of power and denial/inequality of health services and infrastructure has been used to oppress people historically and in the present,” Janeway said. “As healers, doctors have a moral and ethical imperative to provide healthcare to all, even when it goes against the dominant political will and even when it gets us in trouble with those systems of oppression that uphold it.”
They added:
We aren’t just fighting for our colleagues who have been maimed and killed en masse in Gaza. We are working in solidarity with them and with the people of Gaza to assure basic rights to health and wellbeing, which have been systematically denied through the genocide occurring there.
“Equity will never be achieved until we are willing to risk our privilege in service of our mission to heal,” Janeway said.
Chris Walker is a news writer at Truthout, and is based out of Madison, Wisconsin. Focusing on both national and local topics since the early 2000s, he has produced thousands of articles analyzing the issues of the day and their impact on the American people.
Source: Truthout
Image by John Avalos, Healthcare workers for Palestine, Bay Area
Doctors and health care providers across the globe are engaging in a day of action, calling in sick and taking part in other demonstrations against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
The “Sick From Genocide” global vigil, organized by Doctors Against Genocide (DAG) and several other organizations demonstrating against Israel’s thus-far 15-month genocidal war on Gaza, features pop-up clinics in cities across the world, including in the U.S. Health care workers participating in the event are urging others in their profession to take a day of mental health leave “to reflect on the immense moral injury of funding a genocide and engage the most important aspect of treatment: publicly demanding an end to the genocide in Gaza.”
“After witnessing 15 months of relentless violence and destruction in Gaza, we can no longer carry on as if everything is normal,” the account for DAG wrote in a post on X. “The international system has failed, and we are sick — sick from genocide, sick from complicity, and sick from silence.”
“To all healthcare workers, professionals, and allies — stand with us. Pause. Grieve. Demand change,” the post added.
In a press release, DAG stated:
As healthcare workers, we have witnessed unimaginable atrocities: hospitals destroyed, patients and colleagues targeted, and entire communities left in ruins.
…
This is not just a day off — it is a call to action. Together, we will demand accountability, justice, and an end to the ongoing genocide. Organizing to end genocide is not only our responsibility — it is our path to healing.
The effects of Israel’s extermination campaign in Gaza, including its attacks on health care facilities, have been horrific. Just last week, the Israeli military forced the evacuation of the last two functioning hospitals in northern Gaza, leaving around 75,000 people trapped in that area without access to health care of any kind.
The official death toll from Israel’s genocide, which began in October 2023, sits at over 45,000 people. However, other estimates suggest that the true death toll could be much higher, with thousands of Palestinians missing and presumed dead under the rubble. Another 100,000 have fled the region, and an estimated 107,000 have been injured by Israeli attacks, according to Gaza officials, dropping Gaza’s population totals by a devastating 6 percent.
Rupa Marya — a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who is currently on paid suspension after condemning the U.S.’s financial backing of Israel’s genocide — provided a statement to Truthout regarding Monday’s call to action.
“Since October 2023 we have watched in horror as Israel has targeted our Palestinian colleagues and destroyed hospitals under false pretense,” Marya, who is the author of “Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice,” said in her statement. “The Israeli military has rounded up physicians and other healthcare workers and tortured them, some to death such as Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh, professor of orthopedic surgery.”
“Currently the Israeli military has abducted our colleague, pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya and sent him to the same torture facility where Dr. Al-Bursh was killed,” Marya pointed out. “We are calling for his immediate release and the release of the hundreds of healthcare workers who the Israeli military has detained.”
According to witness reports, Safiya, 51, was abducted by Israeli soldiers from the hospital he managed in northern Gaza, beaten with batons, and forced to strip and wear prisoner garb before being taken away.
Marya went on to reference other first-hand accounts of physicians who have been to Gaza, stating:
Physicians report that Israeli soldiers throw drones into the hospitals to kill patients in their beds and staff in the act of care. Israeli soldiers enter the hospitals to attack the machinery — lab machines, hemodialysis units, CT scanners. These actions together with bombing the hospitals and setting them on fire render them completely useless for patient care.
“As human beings we are wired for empathy. … To ignore this is to ignore our very humanity,” Marya concluded. “We cannot and will not sever our care for one another. And as we care, we are sickened by this violence.”
Other DAG members and supporters also spoke about their reasons for taking part in the sick-out on Monday.
“We are answering the call from Gaza and Doctors Against Genocide. Release all the abducted Palestinian healthcare workers taken hostage by Israel. End the attacks on hospitals. End the genocide. End the occupation. Free the people of Palestine,” wrote Ottawa-based primary care doctor Yipeng Ge in a post on Bluesky.
In a separate post, Ge added:
The only cure is an end to genocide, justice for the victims, and accountability for those responsible, and spending tax dollars on housing, healthcare and education, NOT genocide and occupation.
The Schiller Institute, a think tank based in Germany that aims to “defend the rights of all humanity to progress” also published its support of the DAG “Sick From Genocide” global vigil.
“With urgency, the Schiller Institute adds its voice to those of dozens of organizations and thousands of individuals worldwide in support of the demand by Doctors Against Genocide (DAG) that the ongoing genocide being perpetrated in Gaza must stop immediately,” the institute wrote.
Hannah Janeway, an emergency physician in Los Angeles, spoke to Truthout about the DAG action on Monday.
“The truth is that health is not apolitical. It’s affected by policies that reflect the distribution of power and denial/inequality of health services and infrastructure has been used to oppress people historically and in the present,” Janeway said. “As healers, doctors have a moral and ethical imperative to provide healthcare to all, even when it goes against the dominant political will and even when it gets us in trouble with those systems of oppression that uphold it.”
They added:
We aren’t just fighting for our colleagues who have been maimed and killed en masse in Gaza. We are working in solidarity with them and with the people of Gaza to assure basic rights to health and wellbeing, which have been systematically denied through the genocide occurring there.
“Equity will never be achieved until we are willing to risk our privilege in service of our mission to heal,” Janeway said.
Chris Walker is a news writer at Truthout, and is based out of Madison, Wisconsin. Focusing on both national and local topics since the early 2000s, he has produced thousands of articles analyzing the issues of the day and their impact on the American people.
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