[Blog] Prayers for Dr Hussam Abu Safiya

Since the murderous onslaught on Gaza, Israel has killed more than 1000 health workers and abducted several hundreds of others. One of the last to be abducted is Dr Hussam Abu Safya. 

Dr Safiya is a pediatrician working for MedGlobal, a Chicago- based humanitarian organization providing health services in zones wracked with conflicts. He was the director of Kamal Adwani Hospital, the last medical facility that was still doing its best to cater for the sick and wounded in North Gaza. It was targeted a number of times by the Israeli forces. On 25 October 2025 they carried out a brutal intimidation campaign.  They surrounded the hospital, bombed adjacent buildings, stormed into the wards and detained medical staff as well as a number of patients. Dr Safiya was ordered to 

evacuate and threatened with dire consequences but he adamantly refused to abandon his patients.  As he related "they demanded that I evacuate the hospital completely but I refused ...57 of the medical staff were arrested...so we are suffering from a severe shortage of doctors, especially surgeons. It is a huge challenge to work under these circumstances. I refused to leave the hospital and sacrifice my patients." (Frontline Defenders). 

Instead of abandoning his patients, he seized the opportunity to make videos of the Israeli morbid dance of infusing fear, intimidation, brutality, humiliation and terror among the staff and patients. In one video he shows the blown out windows of the ICU Unit where shrapnel had blown a nurse's skull while attending to patients. In another are shown robots equipped with 

explosives detonating buildings while in others one can see quadcopter drones dropping Usa - supplied bombs. 

For his heroic stance of standing with his patients and staff, he was "rewarded" with the death of his son. Fifteen year Ibrahim was smacked by an Israeli drone while sheltering with the family in the compounds of the hospital, deemed to be protected under international law. It is not difficult to imagine how shattered was the father and the pangs and sorrows he went through. 
Then came the ultimate attack on 27 December 2024. Backed by tanks, drones and quadcopters, the Israeli forces surrounded the hospital, killed five staff members and gave the seriously ill, the wounded and those about to give birth only 15 minutes to "unhook their drips, get out of their sick beds, and walk out to 

the rubbled yard". The last one to leave was Dr Safiya. He could be seen still dressed in his white coat, walking with dignity towards a tank ready to shell and waiting for him. That was the last public image of the doctor. Then the soldiers set fire to the hospital. 

Dr Safiya disappeared in limbo as Israel denied any knowledge of his whereabouts. Under international pressure, however, it later admitted that the doctor was being detained incommunicado. 

Luckily, a CNN reporter managed to lay hands on a freshly released Palestinian detainee who confirmed that Dr Safiya was being detained at the notorious Sde Teiman detention centre. He related that when the doctor arrived, he was in a very bad shape and could hardly speak. He further described the horrible conditions prevailing at the detention center: "limbs 

of prisoners amputated due to injuries sustained from constant handcuffing, medical intervention performed by unqualified medics, air filled with the odour of neglected wounds left to rot", deprivation of food and sleep and subjection to severe cold. Torture was the order of the day: detainees were forced to sit continuously in painful positions, pepper was regularly discharged in the eyes of prisoners, ferocious dogs were unleashed at them and physical and verbal abuse were common. 

It was at this hellish center that a Gazan detainee was gang raped by Israeli soldiers. It was so terrible that even an Israeli guard acted as a whistle blower to denounce the horrible conditions at Sde Teiman. All this is reminiscent of the notoriously famous Abu Gharib prison where American soldiers tortured, abused, sexually assaulted and even raped Iraqi prisoners of war.

The abduction of Dr Safiya has been denounced by Amnesty International, WHO,  UN and several humanitarian organizations.  The fear is that he might end like his colleague, Dr Adnan Bursh, head of the orthopedic section of Al Shifa Hospital, who after a detention of 4 months at the Israeli Ofer prison, was dumped by the guards in the yard, "naked from the waist, bleeding and unable to stand". He did not survive a few days more.

What Israel is doing in Gaza is a relic of another period, of horror of another age, of actions of tyrants of the past such as Atilla , Genghis Khan, Nero, Caligula and other blood-thirsty monsters.

Azize Bankur