Gaza: US doctors write letter to Biden and Harris

According to the letter, many members of the group have backgrounds in public health and volunteer experience in other conflict zones such as Ukraine and Iraq. “We believe we are well placed to comment on the heavy human toll of the Israeli attack on Gaza, particularly the toll it has taken on women and children,” reads the letter posted on X Thursday by Dr. Feroze Sidwa, who co-authored the letter with the other doctors.

The doctors and nurses’ letter calls on the Biden administration to participate in an arms embargo on Israel and all Palestinian armed groups, and to suspend all military, diplomatic and economic support to Israel until a permanent and immediate ceasefire is reached. CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.

The announcement comes at a crucial time for the White House, which has been urging the Israelis to accept a ceasefire deal. Biden met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday, a day after the Israeli leader addressed the US Congress about the conflict. Sources told CNN that the president is expected to be as forceful as ever in pushing Netanyahu to accept a deal.

“We believe that our government is obligated to do this, under both U.S. law and international humanitarian law, and that it is the right thing to do,” the letter said.

Dr. Adam Hamawy, a US plastic surgeon and former US Army combat trauma surgeon, told CNN on Thursday: “No one but doctors can get first-hand accounts. We feel like we have to speak out because… we’re seeing this.”

“In Gaza, there is no independent observer,” he said. “If you don’t believe the Palestinians, then you should believe the 50 doctors who went there at different times and different places.”

Apart from Palestinian journalists living in Gaza, no media outlet has had access to the enclave since October 7, with a few exceptions: entry under official escort.

Hamawy signed the letter to recount what he saw with his own eyes. “We all witnessed the total devastation of a society, of people’s lives, of the health care structure,” he said.

Hamawy worked as a surgeon in Sarajevo, in New York on 9/11 and in Iraq, where he performed life-saving surgery on U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth in 2004 after her helicopter was hit by a rocket launcher. But he said those experiences in other conflict zones were not comparable to what he witnessed in Gaza, adding that 90 percent of the people he saw killed there were women and children.

Hamawy worked at the European Gaza Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis in May this year, where he performed around 115 reconstructive surgeries and treated mainly children under the age of 14. He worked on amputations, burns and gunshot wounds to the face, he said.

The surgeon says a gunshot wound to the face of one of his patients, a teenager, likely came from an M16 or sniper rifle because the injury was a small entry wound. CNN has reached out to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for comment on the allegation.

Hamawy also recounted how a little boy took what he thought was a can of tuna to take back to his family in Rafah. But the metal object was actually an unexploded cluster bomb, according to Hamawy, who said that after opening it in front of his family, the boy lost his left arm, both legs and three fingers on his right arm.

Dr. Mark Perlmutter, a Jewish-American orthopedic surgeon from North Carolina and president of the World Surgical Association, told CNN he decided to travel to Gaza after receiving photographs of an X-ray of a poorly performed operation in the devastated enclave.

The photos were sent to him by a first-year medical resident who had been forced to perform the surgery and had sought Perlmutter’s expertise. When Perlmutter asked why the senior surgeons had not performed the operation, the resident explained that they had been killed in a bombing raid.

Perlmutter told CNN that during his trip he witnessed significant violence against children, who made up about 90 percent of those coming to the emergency room while he was working at the European Hospital in Gaza.

Describing an overwhelmed hospital, Perlmutter said that after each bombing he found wounded children lying on the floor, their relatives panicked and crying.

“Some have died, some will die before your eyes, and some you can save. Try to save those you can save,” Perlmutter said.

He recalled two patients, aged about six, who had been shot in the head and chest, injuries that suggested they had been deliberately targeted, he said.

“No child gets shot twice by mistake by a sniper,” Perlmutter said, adding that the shots were “right in the center” of their chest.

CNN has contacted the Israeli military for comment on the allegations.

As Perlmutter tried to treat the children with head injuries, he said, their “brains poured out” into his hands, in what he described as a personally traumatic moment.

In signing the letter, Perlmutter told CNN that he hoped “the average American can feel the pain that we feel every day. They will never see what we saw, but they should feel what we saw.”

Launched in response to Hamas terror attacks in Israel on October 7 that killed at least 1,200 people, the Israeli military offensive in Gaza has left more than 39,000 Palestinians dead, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The letter’s signatories estimate that the true death toll from the war could exceed 92,000, including deaths from starvation or disease and bodies still buried under the rubble.

Last week, the World Health Organization announced that the polio virus had been detected in sewage samples, putting thousands of Palestinians at risk of contracting a disease that can cause paralysis.

For months, Gaza’s health system has been collapsing under relentless Israeli airstrikes, power outages and shortages of medical supplies, according to the United Nations and previous CNN reporting.

Under these conditions, American doctors warned that outbreaks could kill tens of thousands more children. Moving populations to areas without running water and toilets “would almost certainly result in widespread mortality from viral and bacterial diarrheal diseases and pneumonia, particularly among children under five years of age,” the letter said.

“In Gaza, everyone is sick, injured or both,” with a few exceptions, their letter reads. “We are not politicians. We do not claim to have all the answers. We are simply doctors and nurses who cannot remain silent about what we have seen in Gaza,” the letter reads.

Reporting by Tala Alrajjal, Sam Fossum and Eugenia Ugrinovich.