US doctors call on Biden to ban arms to Israel

NEW YORK: A group of doctors who recently returned from the Gaza Strip called on US President Joe Biden and his administration to immediately impose an arms embargo on Israel. This came at a press conference held by American doctors participating in the Democratic National Convention held in Chicago. The doctors said that the Israeli attacks have devastated Gaza, and that if the United States does not impose an immediate arms embargo on Israel, it will 'continue to be its accomplice in the crime.' Tami Abu Ghanem, one of the doctors who came from Gaza, said that the ongoing Israeli attacks for more than 10 months 'have made the life of any civilian in Gaza literally impossible.' He added, 'We cannot do our job while bombs are falling, Israeli snipers are targeting children and civilians, and Israeli helicopters are landing on groups of civilians. Because Israel has made our job impossible with direct support from the United States.' Abu Ghanem's colleagues attended the press conference and stressed that the 'horrific dimensions' of what happened in Gaza cannot be fully conveyed. In turn, Dr. Feroz Sidhwa, in response to journalists' questions, stated that she was in Gaza from March 25 to April 8, and witnessed firsthand 'genocidal violence.' She continued, 'I saw children's heads torn off not once, not twice, but literally every day, by bullets that we paid for. I saw the terrible, systematic destruction of the entire city of Khan Younis.' At the press conference, a letter from Mark Perlmutter, an American Jewish doctor working in Gaza, was read. 'I have never seen a small child shot in the head and then in the chest before. I never imagined that I would see two such cases in less than two weeks. I have never seen dozens of small children screaming in pain and terror… I never imagined what a hospital would look like when it was turned into a camp for displaced persons.' Perlmutter noted in the letter that 'the United States government continued to fund this terrible massacre, not for a week or a month, but for almost a year.' Source: Palestine News and Information Agency – WAFA