Sample Elected Letter

Health Professionals Letter to Senator Warren for Ceasefire in Gaza, Investigation of Israeli Crimes and to Deter Incitement of Genocide

We, the undersigned, write to urge you to call for an immediate and lasting ceasefire in Gaza, an end to the Israeli-made humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza, and to ask you to call for an investigation into Israeli crimes and to deter incitement of genocide against Palestinians living in Gaza. On October 19th, 2023, genocide scholars and 100 international civil service organizations (CSOs) sent a letter to urge Karim Khan, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, to issue arrest warrants and investigate Israel for crimes of genocide in occupied Palestinian territory. 

According to Save the Children, one child dies every 15 minutes in Gaza. If we do not take steps to end this massacre, we are complicit.

Acting on the ethics of our profession, we condemn all violence against civilians and attacks on healthcare, including the violence of the Israeli military occupation of Palestine, the Israeli siege of Gaza, and the Israeli apartheid system, the attacks on Israeli civilians and taking of hostages by Hamas. We also acknowledge that this is not a “war” between two equal parties, but rather an enormous escalation of the colonization and occupation of Palestinian land by the settler colonial state of Israel, which boasts one of the top 10 most powerful militaries in the world. 

We commend the brave leadership of members of our Congressional delegation who have spoken out for deescalation and/or ceasefire, including Representative Pressley and Senator Markey. The U.S. is the one world superpower standing in the way of deescalation. As U.S. taxpayers, whose government sends $3.8 billion per year to Israel in military aid, we must hold Israel accountable for its actions. The Leahy Law clearly prohibits the U.S. Government from using funds for assistance to foreign security forces, which have been credibly implicated in gross violations of human rights (GVHR). 

Since October 7th, Israel has:

• Cut off access to water, food, essential medicines and fuel to Gazan civilians, which Human Rights Watch has indicated is a war crime

• Killed at least 5791 Palestinians in Gaza, 68% of them women and over 2000 children and 1550 people under the rubble including 870 children 

• Issued evacuation orders to 23 hospitals in Gaza, which the WHO calls a “death sentence for the sick and injured.” 

• Destroyed or damaged 42% of Palestinian homes in Gaza

• Forced displacement of 1.4 million Palestinians in Gaza

• Repeatedly attacked healthcare facilities and medical personnel, in an ongoing pattern of illegal military targeting of healthcare

• Bombed Palestinians evacuating to Southern Gaza along designated “safe routes”

Although we appreciate Senator Warren’s expression of humanitarian concern towards Gaza, the only way to truly address humanitarian concerns is to end Israel’s siege, which Human Rights Watch has decried as collective punishment of a civilian population and a war crime. Aid convoys cannot adequately address the unprecedented catastrophe Israel has created by cutting off all water, food, electricity and essential medicines to Gaza. Humanitarian aid groups warn that 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza are experiencing life-threatening shortages. Humanitarian convoys can barely scratch the surface. The convoy on October 20 brought water for 22,000 people for one day (less than 1% of the daily need for the entire population). 

As healthcare workers, we urge our elected officials and health institutions demand an end to Israel’s systematic attacks on the Palestinian health system, which represent a historic pattern:

• Hospitals in Gaza are ceasing to function because they are running out of water and fuel for generators, while being overwhelmed by huge numbers of casualties and civilians seeking shelter from Israeli bombing. Surgeons are operating without anesthetic, by the light of cellphones, and using vinegar for antiseptic

• Between October 7 and 25 there have been at least 171 attacks on health care in occupied Palestinian Territory, reported by the World Health Organization (WHO) 

• Israel has issued evacuation orders to 23 hospitals in Gaza, which the WHO calls a “death sentence for the sick and injured,” 

• At least 26 health facilities have been damaged, including 17 hospitals, 4 of which had to be evacuated and are no longer operational 

• 28% (1554) of all attacks on healthcare in the world occurred in occupied Palestinian territory since the WHO started tracking them in 2017.

• Palestinians face systematic health inequities in infant, child and maternal mortality, life expectancy, among others, most related to Israel’s military occupation of Palestine

We urge Senator Warren to review the definition of genocide, which the United Nations Genocide Convention defines as follows: 

“In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

1. Killing members of the group;

2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

Israeli officials at the highest levels have also made dehumanizing comments inciting violence against Palestinian civilians, through military force as well as restricting food, water and fuel:

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to reduce Gaza to “rubble”, and told besieged Palestinians to leave Gaza. 

• Israeli military spokesperson R. Adm. Daniel Hagari made the startling admission that “hundreds of tons of bombs” had already been dropped on the Gaza Strip on October 10, 2023, adding that “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.” 

• Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, stated: “We are imposing a complete siege on [Gaza]. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel – everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly.” 

• Nissim Vaturi, member of the Knesset for Likud, called for “erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth. Those who are unable will be replaced.” 

• Another member of the Knesset for Likud, Ariel Kallner, called for another Nakba: “Right now, one goal: Nakba! A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 48. Nakba in Gaza and Nakba to anyone who dares to join!”  

• Israel’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Eli Cohen, promised that “[a]t the end of this war, not only will Hamas no longer be in Gaza, the territory of Gaza will also decrease.”

• At the beginning of the siege on Gaza in 2006, Dov Weisglass, then a senior advisor to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, explained that Israeli policy was designed “to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”

With 1.4 million Palestinians already displaced, it is impossible not to see the historical parallels with the 1948 Nakba that involved the violent displacement of more than 750,000 Palestinians from over 500 villages by Zionist settlers, when the state of Israel was created. 

66% of the US public agrees, across party lines, that the U.S. should call for an immediate deescalation of violence and ceasefire in Gaza. We are aghast that as our government has slashed food stamps and health insurance for millions of Americans, the White House may ask for an additional $10 billion to Israel to continue bombing Palestinian civilians. 

In closing, we urge you to take immediate action for a lasting ceasefire, and an end to the siege on Gaza, and to move towards a meaningful resolution of the injustices at the root of the violence in Palestine and Israel. Every minute we wait is a moment too late.