Keir Starmer should listen to the testimony of a doctor in Gaza before judging what is or isn’t genocide

On 13 November in Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs), independent MP Ayoub Khan asked about Israel’s genocide in Gaza:

On the 28 October the foreign secretary denied that a genocide was even taking place and suggested that the Israeli army had not yet killed enough Palestinians to constitute a genocide… Will the prime minister share his definition of genocide with this House? And will he state what further action he is prepared to take to save lives of desperate and starving men, women and children?

Keir Starmer replied:

It would be wise to start a question like that with reference to what happened in October of last year. I’m well aware of the definition of genocide and that’s why I’ve never referred to it as genocide.

On the previous day, a Commons committee heard an eye-witness account of genocidal atrocities.

Mamode: 1.4 million people trapped by Israel in Gaza

Professor Nizam Mamode, former clinical lead of transplant surgery at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust in London, testified at the first meeting of the International Development Committee about his experiences working as a volunteer surgeon in the Nasser hospital in southern Gaza from August to September.

Professor Mamode spoke of bombings every hour or two. There was no battle frontline, just “1.4 million people trapped there – they cannot leave – having bombs dropped on them on a daily basis, and then drones coming in and shooting them”.

Living in tents, the people faced the prospect of evacuation orders sent out to mobile phones in a message saying “Area number whatever, evacuation order” and people had to run, not knowing if the Israeli army would attack in hours or minutes.

Professor Mamode said that he and his colleagues “had one or two mass casualty incidents a day, which meant 10 to 20 dead and 20 to 40 seriously injured… and 60-70% of the people we treated were women and children.” They saw this as, Mamode said, “clearly persistent, deliberate targeting of civilians… One of the surgeons… had been to Ukraine five times and said, ‘This is ten times worse’”.

Children shot, hospitals destroyed

Professor Mamode spoke of the constant whine of surveillance drones:

This was day after day after day of operating on children who would say, ‘I was lying on the ground after a bomb had dropped, and this quadcopter came down and hovered over me and shot me.’

The drones would shoot small cuboid pellets, which don’t act like bullets:

What I found is that they would go in and they would bounce around, so they would cause multiple injuries.

And:

We saw a number of children with sniper injuries—a single shot to the head, but no other injuries; so clearly deliberately targeted by Israeli snipers. That was day after day.

Nasser was probably the best hospital in Gaza, but even there surgical operations were done with lack of the most basic equipment:

I remember, one Saturday night, operating on an eight-year-old who was bleeding to death. I asked for a swab and they said, ‘No more swabs’… I did amputations on people who just had to take paracetamol after the operation as pain relief. That medical aid was sitting at the border and not being allowed in… Basic things like soap and shampoo are also not being allowed in. I do not know how many wounds I saw with maggots in; one of my colleagues took maggots out of a child’s throat in intensive care. There were flies in the operating theatre, landing in the wounds … You just do the best you can. But a large number of our patients – perhaps the majority; I don’t know – would survive the operation and die of infections afterwards.

A doctor in his 30s working in intensive care got hepatitis A, a disease of poor hygiene for which there is a vaccination, but he could not get treatment and he died in his own intensive care unit. “We asked for him to be evacuated, but he wasn’t”.

Professor Mamode spoke of over 160 documented examples of ambulances being targeted:

So many people never got an ambulance. People would carry casualties in; sometimes they would bring them in on donkey carts.

Israel is committing a genocide – despite what Starmer claims

For him and his colleagues the biggest danger was travelling in and out of hospital on a UN convoy in armoured vehicles, clearly marked and carefully organised with a predetermined route given to them by the Israeli army. He said:

There is a radio check at the start before they leave, during the journey and at the end, so the Israeli army know that they are there and where they are. Despite that, they have been shot at five times [by the Israeli army].

People starved with no escape, forced into tents and bombed relentlessly, drones shooting injured children on the ground, snipers shooting children in the head, ambulances attacked trying to give aid, hospitals denied basic medical supplies: what word sums up such atrocity?

Israel doesn’t let foreign reporters into Gaza, and has gunned down as many as it can of those who do enter.

We wait to hear Keir Starmer’s definition of genocide, while his government continues to deny the evidence and to supply Israel’s jets and drones and even, through the RAF, to aid the lethal surveillance.

Perhaps Sarah Champion, as chair of the committee who were so moved by what they have heard, can bring Starmer nearer to facing the truth. If he continues to support Israel he will bring international condemnation of the UK for complicity in genocide.

See for yourself the International Development Committee’s transcript of Professor Mamode’s testimony and video of the meeting.

Featured image via the Canary