When burning hospitals are no longer news | Israeli-Palestinian conflict

This morning I opened social media to look for news from Gaza. I had to scroll through my news feed for a while before I saw the first mention of my homeland.

Yet the news we get from Gaza through friends, family and social media is no less grim than it was a year ago. His people continue to cry for help, hoping the world will hear them.

For three months, Dr. Hussam Abu Safia, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza, sent appeals for help to the world while the Israeli army besieged the hospital, cut off supplies, bombed it, massacred people near it and injuring some of the medical staff and patients inside.

In a video appeal published on December 12, Dr. Abu Safia complained: “We are now without any capacity and providing a low-level service. I hope there are listening ears. We hope there is a living conscience that hears our plea and facilitates the humanitarian corridor to the hospital so that Kamal Adwan Hospital can continue its work of providing services.”

But his cries for help fell on deaf ears. On the day after Christmas, Israeli bombing killed a woman at the front door of the hospital and five medical workers: Dr. Ahmed Samour, a pediatrician; Esraa Abu Zaidah, laboratory assistant; Abdul Majid Abu al-Eish and Maher al-Ajrami, paramedics; and Fares al-Hudali, maintenance technician. Shrapnel shattered the skull of nurse Hassan Dabus at the hospital, putting his life in danger.

Yesterday, Israeli soldiers stormed the hospital and set it on fire, expelling 350 patients and kidnapping Dr. Abu Safia and other medical staff.

This appalling news barely made it to the international media; there were no reactions from foreign governments or leading institutions, except for a few Middle Eastern countries and the WHO. Israel has apparently succeeded in normalizing its brutal attacks, the destruction of Palestinian hospitals and the killing of Palestinian patients and medical staff.

There was also no reaction from the world when earlier this month Dr. Said Judeh, the last remaining orthopedic surgeon in northern Gaza, was killed on his way to work at the barely functioning Al-Awda Hospital in the Jabalia refugee camp. Dr. Jude was a retired surgeon who felt compelled to return to work due to the desperate shortage of doctors caused by Israel's targeted killings.

Just a week before his murder, he learned that his son Majd had been killed. Despite his grief, Dr. Joude continued his work.

Israel seeks to eliminate all aspects of civilian life in northern Gaza as part of a policy to depopulate it. For this reason, it targets civilian infrastructure in the north and impedes its functioning. The few medical facilities were the last remaining vestiges of civilian life.

In addition to trying to kill medical workers, the Israeli army also systematically blocks civil defense teams and ambulances from saving lives in the north, often beating and killing them when they try to do so.

And it's not just calls from the north that are being ignored.

All of Gaza is starving as Israel has drastically reduced the number of humanitarian and commercial trucks entering the Gaza Strip. Hunger is ubiquitous and affects even those who may have the means to buy food but cannot find it.

My cousin, a UNRWA teacher, recently told me about his visit to his sister who was sick and displaced in Deir el-Balah. While he was visiting, he couldn't sleep. He hadn't eaten bread in 15 days, but he wasn't kept awake by his own overwhelming hunger as a diabetic. It was the cry of his sister's children, who begged only for a piece of bread. Desperately trying to comfort them, my cousin told them story after story until they fell asleep. But he remained awake, haunted by their hunger and his own.

In addition to food, Israel also blocked the supply of much-needed materials for the construction of shelters. There are four babies already frozen to death since the beginning of this month.

Against the background of hunger and harsh winter, the Israeli bombardment of the homes and tents of the displaced does not stop.

On December 7, a distant relative, Dr. Mohammed al-Nairab, lost his wife and three daughters when the Israeli army struck their home in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, west of Gaza City. Two of his daughters, Sally and Sahar, were doctors and helped save lives. They can't anymore.

When my niece, Noor, a mother of two, approached her uncle, Dr. Mohammed, to express her condolences, she found the pain of his loss unbearable. I spoke to her shortly after. Her words pierced the despair like a scream: “When will the world hear and see us? When will these massacres matter? Aren't we human?'

On December 11, another family was hit not far from Dr. Mohammed's home in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood. This Israeli attack killed Palestinian journalist Iman al-Shanti, together with her husband and three children.

Days before his murder, Iman shared a video of itself, reflecting the reality of genocide. “Is it possible for this level of failure to exist? Is the blood of the people of Gaza that cheap?” she asked the world.

There was no answer. Just as war crimes against Palestinians have been normalized, so has Palestinian death and pain. This normalization not only silences their suffering, but also denies their humanity.

Yet for Palestinians, the pain of loss is anything but normal—it remains, searing, raw and unrelenting, echoing those who have lost, both in Gaza and beyond. It is a transnational pain, a grief that crosses borders and defies borders, linking Palestinians in exile with those living through the horrors of genocide.

In a December 3 social media post, journalist Dayana al-Mughrabi, who is currently displaced in Egypt, captured the endless grief of the people of Gaza: “Our loved ones don't die once, they die many times after their actual death. A man died the day he died, then died again the day his watch, which I had worn on my wrist for years, was broken. He died again when the cup he was drinking from broke. This man died again on the day that reminds us of his actual date of death, and after their funeral, when the coffee residue was washed from his last cup, and when I saw someone collecting the rest of his medicine to get rid of it. Those we love go on dying many times over – they never stop dying – not a single day.”

As this repetition of death occurs more than 45,000 times, the world seems ready to move on from Gaza. Fifteen months after this genocide began, defenders and activists around the world are devastated and exhausted by the endless destruction in Gaza and the prevailing silence and acceptance of it.

As a Palestinian by birth and a third-generation Palestinian refugee, despite the indelible scars left on the soul by the genocide—scars that time cannot erase—I refuse to lose hope. I am reminded of the words of the Czech dissident Vaclav Havel: “Hope is definitely not the same as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.”

South Africa's case against the apartheid regime at the International Court of Justice and the work of the International Criminal Court are not only significant – they are critical in establishing Israel's status as a pariah, one of the nations that seek to exterminate entire peoples. The world must not forget Gaza. Now, more than ever, his cries must be heard and the call for justice must be answered.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.