I am deciding to take time off from my work as a family doctor, to join the global march to Gaza, because Gaza deserves it.
Gaza deserves food, clean water, medicines, medical supplies and proper medical care.
The Palestinian people deserve freedom from this ongoing Israeli siege, blockade, starvation, famine, occupation, apartheid, and genocide.
Liberation is good medicine.
I don’t know what else to do in this moment than to join the global march to Gaza. To demand that humanitarian aid enter Gaza, which Israel has and continues to systematically deny to the Palestinian people.
Over a year ago, I made the journey into Gaza through the Rafah border crossing to work in primary care clinics in central Rafah. Before I crossed the border, I saw the aid trucks lined up for kilometres upon kilometres at the border as we drove up. These aid trucks would be systematically held up by Israel from entering, some with their supplies and food expiring, only to have the aid be dumped at the border before it even reached Palestine.
It was initially the plan to work at Nasser hospital, but it was surrounded by Israeli tanks and later besieged and forcibly evacuated by the Israeli military. Now, as healthcare workers continue to do what they can in these impossible situations, Nasser hospital is on the brink of collapse, with healthcare workers donating their own blood in attempts to save their patients. Five days ago, the World Health Organization called for urgent protection of Nasser hospital and Al-Amal hospital, the last two functioning public hospitals in Khan Younis, where currently most of the population is living.
A few months later, after my initial journey into Gaza, I was planning to try to re-enter Gaza through the Rafah border crossing, and I watched videos of the Israeli military occupy and destroy the Rafah border crossing on the Palestinian side. The Israeli military has continued their invasion and occupation of Gaza, and repeated and further forced displacement of the Palestinian people into smaller and smaller pieces of land.
I am seeing ordinary citizens of the world, the people of conscience, take it upon themselves to deliver aid and demand an end to the famine and genocide in Gaza. While the international community has utterly failed to prevent and stop genocide in Gaza. Israel has previously killed activists and bombed past freedom flotillas for attempting to bring aid in. The latest freedom flotilla was not the first attempt to bring humanitarian aid into Gaza by water, nor will it be the last. We all have a collective responsibility to do what we can, to do everything we can, to help bring an end to the famine and genocide in Gaza.
In a few days, we will march collectively to the Rafah border crossing. This time, I won’t be attempting to cross it with a small medical team, as I know that doctors can’t stop a famine or end a genocide. This time, I will be with thousands of other volunteers and activists from all over the world demanding that the thousands of aid trucks be let in. Because this is what is needed to stop the famine and starvation. And for governments like our own in Canada, to end complicity in this genocide – for example, Canadian companies sold $18.9 million dollars worth of military goods to Israel in 2024 alone. Because this is what is needed to end the genocide.
Because when the people of conscience around the world organize, we are powerful to push our governments to help bring this genocide to an end.
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