As a family doctor myself, I think about why so many of my colleagues went into the field of healthcare, and it is to do the work of caring for patients who seek out a diagnosis or want to improve their health, require treatment and management of their illnesses, or simply need someone to truly see them as a full human being with complex health and social needs that aren’t being met.
I want to tell you about a medical colleague, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who is facing imminent death at the hands of the Israeli military for committing to this kind of care work because he chose to provide medical treatment for his patients and his people despite ongoing Israeli attacks on the healthcare system in Gaza.
A few days ago, we received an update from Physicians for Human Rights Israel that Dr. Abu Safiya is facing an immediate threat to his life following a visit by his lawyer to the underground interrogation unit “Rakefet” inside Nitzan prison on July 2, 2026. During this visit by his lawyer, he had injuries and bruises to his head, face, and neck making him difficult to recognize and was struggling to breathe and speak on the verge of losing consciousness several times. Dr. Abu Safiya’s words to his lawyer was: “This is the last time you will see me… They brought me here to kill me. I do not see myself leaving here alive. This is the end.”
Dr. Abu Safiya is a Palestinian pediatrician and the Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. He has been held in Israeli captivity since December 27, 2024, without charges and without criminal proceedings against him. Before his capture by the Israeli military, he experienced the death of his 15-year-old son Ibrahim who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the hospital’s entrance. He buried his son in the hospital courtyard, and continued working as a pediatrician in the hospital, refusing to abandon his patients and his people. At the request of the Israeli military, he walked up to an Israeli tank and calmly greeted his captors before he was taken into captivity which has lasted over 555 days now.
In December 2024, I met Dr. Abu Safiya on a webinar hosted by Doctors Against Genocide, learning about his work in establishing a pediatric critical care unit in Gaza against all odds with the existing Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip since 2007.
He spoke about the conditions in northern Gaza and the medical cases he and his team were seeing, including many children who required surgery, but no surgical supplies were available nor any surgeons for that matter because they had either been killed by the Israeli military or abducted and were being held hostage in Israeli torture camps. He shared his own witnessing of targeted and deliberate attacks on civilians and many healthcare workers, including the horrific scenes of bodies of dead children being eaten by dogs.
When he spoke, I was reminded of the patients I saw with my own eyes in the intensive care unit at European Gaza Hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza in February 2024, where I met multiple children who sustained sniper gunshot injuries to the head and chest, kill shots by the Israeli military who were so clearly targeting killing young children.
This year in June 2026, the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel produced a report titled, “The essence of childhood has been destroyed”: Israel’s deliberate targeting of Palestinian children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 7 October 2023. Dr. Abu Safiya, like so many other Palestinian doctors have raised the alarm bells of attacks on Palestinian children, long before the independent commission or other international organizations have since arrived at the same conclusion. Because he spoke up and refused to abandon his patients, he is being punished and made an example of by the Israeli military.
There are other Palestinian doctors and healthcare workers who have been killed in Israeli captivity, and many others who still remain in Israeli custody. Daily airstrikes and bombings by the Israeli military continue to kill, maim, and terrorize the Palestinian people in Gaza.
There is a responsibility for the international and Canadian medical community to strongly denounce these ongoing attacks against healthcare workers, because even in times of war, healthcare must not be a target. However, as many international human rights and humanitarian organizations have called what is happening in Gaza a genocide, healthcare has become a direct target of the aggressor to prevent even the healers to continue their work being the last line of defense for their people from extermination.
Healthcare workers from all over the world have previously called for Dr. Abu Safiya’s immediate release from Israeli captivity, including organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Physicians for Human Rights Israel, and independent United Nations officials. However, the institutional silence by organizations that say they represent the Canadian medical community is deafening.
I was on the board of the Canadian Medical Association in 2023 and requested that the organization put out a statement condemning the Israeli airstrike on the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza on October 17, 2023. After all, the Canadian Medical Association previously denounced Russian-led military attacks and urged for protection for Ukrainian healthcare workers and patients. No such statement for the protection of Palestinian healthcare workers and patients has been made still yet to this day.
Dr. Abu Safiya is my medical colleague, as he is a colleague for all of us who work in healthcare around the world. The deliberate attacks on Palestinian children is abhorrent. The deliberate attacks on Palestinian healthcare workers is abhorrent. Our Palestinian healthcare worker colleagues deserve every bit of our solidarity. Collectively as a medical community, we must clearly and coherently demand for the release of Dr. Abu Safiya and all other healthcare workers unlawfully detained by Israel. Our shared humanity and commitment to healing is what brings us together, and to fail to meet this moment with meaningful solidarity and action pushes us further away from a future where justice, accountability, and human rights for all can prevail.
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