Al Mamdani Hospital Massacre
Statement
18-10-2023
Words fail to express our horror at the carnage committed by Israel on the night of October 17th 2023 against the innocent civilians of Gaza. The Al Mamdani Hospital massacre will go down in history as one of the most vile crimes ever committed against humanity.
In violation of every human value and myriad principles of international law, Israel, led by the terrorist regime of Benjamin Netenyahu, targeted the Al Mamdani hospital in Gaza, also known as Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, which, in addition to housing regular patients and scores of wounded Gaza civilians, had been sheltering large numbers of Palestinians fleeing IDF violence elsewhere in Gaza.
The Israeli military strike on Al Mamdani hospital, killed at least 471 civilians, the majority (70%) of whom were women, children and the elderly, and more than 314 were injured, excluding 28 in critical condition, according to numbers announced at the time of writing this statement. This act of genocide was carried out after the Israeli regime’s official, repeated, and documented threats to bomb the few hospitals left in Gaza since it began its undisguised ethnic cleansing campaign on Gaza on October 8th.
The numbers of lives lost in this massacre are expected to increase, as victims remain trapped under the rubble. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health’s statement at 3:00 p.m. on October 18th, the total number of victims of Israeli aggression on the 12th day – today – so far has reached 3,478 killed and more than 12,065 injured.
Dr. Ashraf Alqudra, the spokesperson of the Palestinian Health Ministry, had confirmed before the bombing of Al Mamdani hospital that “Israeli forces have wiped out the entire lineages of 371 families… (and) authorities have registered about 1,200 reports of missing people under the rubble of houses, including about 500 reports of missing children”.
The Regional Coalition for Women Human Rights Defenders in South West Asia and North Africa (WHRDMENA) calls on local, regional and international human rights and feminist groups, movements and organizations to join us in calling for holding all parties responsible for this inhumane war crime equally accountable. This includes the Apartheid regime of Israel, the government of the United States, and European governments who continue to support the illegal occupation of Palestine and the unabated attempts at ethnic cleansing of Gaza by Israel.
We hold responsible all European and American officials who continue to support Israel’s genocidal acts via public statements, crass double standards, and via directly providing the Apartheid regime with military equipment and weaponry. We denounce the audacious and insolent statements of US President Joe Biden on the morning of October 18th, proclaimed from Tel Aviv where he went to publicly support his criminal Israeli allies, and we vehemently refuse all attempts at victim-blaming and truth-twisting.
We call on all US-based human rights organizations and all human rights organizations and feminists worldwide to hold Joe Biden accountable for his aiding and abetting in the slaughter of hundreds of innocent Palestinian civilians.
We reaffirm the righteousness of the Palestinian struggle for liberation, and reassert the right of Palestinians to struggle against and resist colonial violence by any means necessary. We declare, along with all free peoples of the world, that colonialism and Apartheid are an abasement to human civilization and the major evil in the way of creating a free, humane and just world.
