When Healthcare Workers for Palestine - Chicago asked to meet with the American Medical Association (AMA) in December 2023, nearly 350 Palestinian healthcare workers had been murdered by Israeli occupation forces. Most recent death tolls indicate 587 healthcare workers have been murdered, and an additional 420 are missing and presumed dead as of October 2024. Hundreds more have been forcibly disappeared and are being held in Israeli military prisons and torture camps. Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh, an orthopedic surgeon at Al-Shifa Hospital, was kidnapped by Israeli forces, forcibly detained, and subjected to physical, sexual, and mental violence before being killed in custody. Most recently, occupation forces stormed, burned, and destroyed Kamal Adwan Hospital in North Gaza. All patients were forced to leave, regardless of their condition, and medical staff were murdered or kidnapped. Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, is now believed to be held at Sde Teiman, an infamous torture camp run by the Israeli military.

While mainstream news outlets continue to cite Palestinian death tolls at 45,000, The Lancet cited 186,000 dead as of July 2024. In a December 2024 interview with Democracy Now, Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta cited a potential death toll in excess of 300,000 Palestinians. Every medical institution must exhaust all possible resources to combat this genocide and uphold their oaths as centers and practitioners of healing.

The AMA has been identified as an institution that has engaged in the suppression of its employees, members, and delegates in their attempts to denounce and defy this apparatus of genocide, and such acts of suppression obstruct the legal and ethical duty of healthcare workers, as enshrined in domestic and international law. 

In its founding documents, the AMA references H-515.950 in which it pledges to “act to reduce the incidence of antagonistic actions against physicians.” In policy D-65.993 the AMA explicitly states that it will “condemn the military targeting of health care facilities and personnel and using denial of medical services as a weapon of war, by any party, wherever and whenever it occurs.”

The American Medical Association must take a stand against Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people just as it condemned Russian attacks on Ukrainian hospitals and doctors. Patients and medical staff are no less deserving of international support because of their religion, race, or country of origin.

On October 20, 2023 Dr. Mahmoud Abu Nujaila wrote on a whiteboard used to schedule surgeries at Al-Awda Hospital: “Whoever stays until the end will tell the story we did what we could. Remember us.” Dr. Abu Nujaila was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Al-Awda Hospital one month later.

Please sign this petition to honor the words and legacy of Dr. Abu Nujaila and thousands of other Palestinian healthcare workers.

-Healthcare Workers for Palestine - Chicago (hcwforpalestinechi@gmail.com)