As a mother and retired physician, I join other health care workers from Maine, the U.S. and world who are horrified by the escalating death toll in Gaza. Innocent women, children and extended families are desperately trying to fend off starvation as bombs and weapons supplied to Israel by our country annihilate them.
Have people seen the photos and video clips from international health care workers of orphaned children pulled from rubble, covered in blood, only to have limbs amputated without anesthesia, antibiotics or sterile dressings? This is a human-made catastrophe, a genocide, that is rapidly worsening as Israel refuses to let humanitarian aid in (trucks full of aid idle at the Rafah border, refused admission), as hospitals are bombed and health care workers killed at point blank range, or taken away and tortured. They are not terrorists, just another accusation attempting to numb us as the IDF carries out atrocities against innocent civilians and against humanitarian law.
I find it hard to sleep at night, seeing the eyes of the children. I have seen starvation up close in Haiti. We are supplying the means to make this happen. I believe our country, our democracy, our humanitarian nature, can wake up, see what is actually happening right now, and pledge to stop it, quickly, before it is too late. Two million lives are at stake.
Beth Ackerson M.D.
Phippsburg
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