Health employees from across the Bay Area gathered at Stanford University Monday morning as a part of a nationwide “pop-up clinic to treat genocide-related illnesses” and in protest of the continued war in Gaza.
About 40 people gathered on Stanford Medical School's Alumni Lawn around 10 a.m. Several doctors wore their white coats, wore keffiyehs around their necks and cloth shields on their backs. The signs read “No more bomb, no more hospital, no more child” and other statements in red ink.
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“As a Muslim, Arab, American mother and doctor, she witnessed the targeted killing of health care providers, the killing of civilians, children and even young men and women, and the targeted destruction of hospitals and bombing of ambulances by the Israeli Defense Forces.” is absolute disgusting,” said Dr. Yusra Husain, assistant professor at Stanford Medical School. “We as healthcare providers refuse to normalize genocide. Every death and every child burned is a shock to our system.”
According to a press release, the gathering was a part of a nationwide Doctors Against Genocide movement, wherein doctors from across the country called in sick to demand an end to the war in Gaza and the discharge of 450 health care employees held captive by Israel. After just a few speeches, the gathering moved to White Plaza at Stanford, where doctors and community members once more arrange their table and signs.
The gatherings saw the inauguration of the Kamal Adwan Pop-up Clinic for Genocide-Related Illnesses, where health professionals distributed guidance on learn how to treat genocide-related illnesses: “the immense moral injury, emotional trauma and grief experienced by health workers, “when we witness genocide and other human rights violations against patients and colleagues, for example in Gaza,” says a printed guide distributed on the stand. The guide also advised doctors on learn how to provide medical certificates to employees searching for leave for “genocidal disease” and gave patients advice on learn how to request these certificates.
Dr. Rupa Marya, a professor of medication at UCSF, said she was suspended from her job for “speaking about the genocide in Gaza.” She added that her research examined how chronic inflammatory diseases similar to heart disease and dementia are brought on by damage from societal conflict.
“Racism creates structures in society that drive inflammation in marginalized people who bear the greatest burden of chronic inflammatory disease,” she said. “Genocide is the most egregious and blatant expression of racism and is literally making us sick.”
“Attacks on health infrastructure and health workers accelerate the destruction of the Palestinian people and are an act of genocide,” Marya added.
UCSF didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment on Marya's suspension Monday afternoon.
The pop-up clinic offered steps of a “treatment plan”: The plan calls for attacks on hospitals in Gaza to stop, for kidnapped medical examiners to be released, and for medical examiners in Gaza to be protected. It also calls for an arms embargo in addition to aid and reconstruction for the areas occupied by Israel.
“I am tired of genocide, tired of the silence of our government as it pushes the murderous attack while making grand promises of peace and humanity,” said Hilton Obenzinger, a retired professor and associate director emeritus of the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project Stanford . “I'm tired of how our government doesn't listen to its own people who want to end the war, how it doesn't listen to the United Nations, how it doesn't listen to human rights groups, and how it doesn't listen to American Jews who are crying out for real peace. “Ceasefire.”
Hussain also outlined protesters' specific demands for Stanford: that the university condemn “the genocide in Palestine” and the attacks on health care employees and facilities, condemn “ongoing medical apartheid in Palestine,” and adopt an ethical procurement policy that eliminates Includes purchases from corporations “involved in Israeli war crimes,” she said.
Stanford University officials didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment on the list of demands.
“There are absolutely no words that can adequately express the pain and depravity of this violence,” said Rochelle Mclaughlin, a former adjunct professor at San Jose State University’s College of Health and Human Sciences who recently resigned. “I implore my colleagues in academia and health to speak out against genocide.”
Mclaughlin added that she was “deeply horrified, heartbroken and angry” as she witnessed massacres and mutilations of youngsters within the Palestinian territories.
“We cannot and will not give up our care for each other, and as we care for each other, this violence makes us sick, and so we take up this cause to heal, to address our own inflammation, and to help each other,” Marya said. “This genocide is literally making us all sick.”
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