After witnessing crimes against humanity, I could not vote for starving and killing Palestinians – Mondoweiss

Last week, US citizens had the opportunity to vote for their next president. After my recent visit to Palestine and working closely with Palestinian colleagues on the ground who were daily exposed to the horrors and sheer brutality of the Israeli regime, I found that I simply could not bring myself to vote for those who would have aided, abetted and abetted the ongoing crimes against humanity and genocide.

All views expressed here are my own and do not reflect the views of any organization with which I have been involved.

In my role as a medical researcher, volunteer, and educator working on issues affecting underserved communities, Palestine was a natural calling for me as I watched a genocide unfold through the screen of my phone. This work took me to the West Bank last summer, where the situation in the occupied West Bank has escalated dramatically since before October 2023, even as Gaza dominates the news and with good reason given the genocidal violence against its people. “routine” levels of apartheid. The level of brutality and unpredictability is a cornerstone of Palestinian life.

During my time in the West Bank, I witnessed Palestinians being harassed while walking on the street, a soldier pulling a child aside and burning a cigarette into his arms, or being publicly harassed and sexually abused in unique and creative ways. This was often accompanied by the gloating and joyful expressions on the faces of the soldier or settler who committed the crime – in some form a violation of the basic principles of human dignity – and it is all about getting from one street to another. Refusal of entry, rejections and being pushed back and forth from one place to another at gunpoint or the threat of being shot or actually being shot at are, even for foreign nationals who may appear to be “Palestinians”, i.e. Arabs, become everyday occurrences or are of Muslim origin or racialized as such.

In this context, I have worked with Palestinian high school students, medical students, nurses, doctors and educational administrators throughout Gaza and the West Bank and continue to support them both remotely. Your safety is of utmost importance to me and therefore I feel compelled to write in broad strokes. So many young people, including and especially children, have shared with me their hopes, wishes and dreams – be it attending a school abroad, starting a postdoc, completing their medical training or even seeing an open sea and swimming in it it without fear of an airstrike or shot. Every day I see images from their tents, their hospitals, the cases they see with orthopedic fractures accompanied by infections, gunshot and blast wounds, and severely malnourished children dying as a result of weakened immune systems.

Not to mention the horrors I have heard from medical colleagues in northern Gaza during this final month of genocide.

The medical staff, especially those at Kamal Adwan and Indonensian Hospitals, have asked me in recent weeks to share their news with the world and coordinate media attention by sending me what they consider to be their final texts, wishes, dreams have. and hopes. They convey to me their good wishes, their hope of seeing my face in the afterlife, and ask my forgiveness for any wrongs they may have committed. In reality, it is those whom we have completely failed and whose forgiveness we should seek.

In one case, when I was coordinating with journalists and media outlets to raise awareness of the crisis in hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip, a nurse repeatedly apologized to me, assuming that her statement about the government's rationing of the little food available Perceived as a hospital would be a criticism of the aid and humanitarian organizations that work to provide access. She feared that what little aid was given to them as they starved for days for water and a bite of bread during the siege of hospitals in northern Gaza could be withdrawn because they appeared “ungrateful.” Others like Dr. Hussam Abu Safiyeh, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, sends videos reporting daily on the situation of his employees and finds the courage to do so for the sake of his patients, even if his own son has just been killed.

A constant type of message I receive from my colleagues in Gaza are WhatsApp voice notes with no words, just the sound of buzzing drones overhead filling the night sky. It is a constant reminder of the psychological toll inflicted on Palestinians every day. Even if their homes are not destroyed, their family members are not kidnapped, raped, killed, tortured, shelled, starved, besieged or bombed, there is still a sound that drives away the mind. Lack of sleep is just one of many illnesses that have become widespread in Gaza. Some of the doctors try to joke to me about how they have undiagnosed “insomnia” or how they are “infection experts” because they have endured so many respiratory illnesses in the last year.

Visiting medical teams and local staff handle cases with such horrific orthopedic trauma that sometimes you don't even know what they're seeing. Infection rates following a fracture are high, and the wound presents in such a complex manner that it can be difficult to even know the series of blows or shots that led to the case manifestation seen in a hospital. This only applies if they even make it to the hospital. Children, women and older men often arrive in smaller numbers at a hospital after an airstrike, as many of the more vulnerable populations die on impact. They are therefore not even seen by a clinical team to operate on, let alone recorded or counted, and their bodies, or what remains of them, may be scarred beyond recognition.

Another factor that is less talked about is the impact this has on patients with pre-existing conditions such as dementia or cancer. Many die from otherwise preventable causes due to a lack of basic medication. Mothers become pregnant without anesthesia and suffer miscarriages due to the sheer trauma of an air raid. The smallest wound can lead to fatal infections and the disease is rampant, and overcrowding in the remaining hospitals can be a death sentence.

So many have indescribable wounds in their hearts. Sometimes I don't even dare to ask how many of their relatives have been slaughtered or kidnapped, whether in Gaza or the West Bank. Some willingly tell their stories, others look at me and tell me, “You are more Palestinian than us,” or that they would give me their Hawiyehs (Palestinian ID card) because of my passion for their cause. And yet I have to painfully remind them that I am still an American. They warn me to be careful with my words because they are used to the brutal consequences that come with just liking a social media post, let alone writing or speaking. But I have to remind them again that I'm still an American.

Where on the 2024 US presidential election ballot could I have expressed this opinion to bring about significant change? I'm not sure there was a simple answer, and yet it became increasingly clear that the choice was not Kamala Harris. The Biden-Harris administration chose to remain faithful and steadfast in its support for Israeli policies, unwilling or unable to deviate in the slightest, even symbolically for electoral purposes, from that pledged support. No amount of protests, polls and appeals seems to have resulted in a change in foreign policy, and it was against this backdrop that I cast my vote on November 5th. I couldn't bring myself to vote for the starvation and rape of my friends, Palestinian health workers and children.