The Lancet, one of world’s biggest journals, runs Gaza ‘Healthocide’ as October front cover

The Lancet, one of the world’s oldest and most respected medical journals and one of the world’s most high-impact journals in any category, has as its front cover for this month the Gaza ‘healthocide‘ – Israel’s deliberate, systematic and devastatingly thorough destruction of Gaza’s health system alongside its slaughter and starvation of Palestinian civilians, which the same journal recently calculated from Israeli military data, to be rapidly approaching 700,000 killed and an untold number maimed or permanently disabled, almost all of them civilians.

In their introductory summary to its study on the healthocide, the Lancet’s Alessandro Vitale et al describe:

• Israel’s almost eight hundred attacks on healthcare facilities and its destruction or extensive damage to 94% of Gaza’s hospitals.
• Its siege of what remains that is depriving medics and those they try to save of medicines, anaesthetics, and has forced Palestinians and international doctors to choose even among children who will receive treatment and who will be left to die in agony.
• Israel’s lies about hospitals being used by Hamas.
• Its unprecedented slaughter of more than fifteen hundred health workers.

The Lancet: a healthocide in Gaza

The Lancet concludes that politicians and medical governance bodies alike have failed in their duty to protect civilians and uphold international law – and they call on health workers and the bodies that represent them to be “remembered for our solidarity, not our silence”:

The catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Gaza, with the apparent deliberate targeting of health-care infrastructure and personnel, has highlighted a profound challenge to the global medical community. Hospitals are under siege and clinicians are operating without basic supplies, power, or safety.^1,2 We are all deeply concerned about the suffering civilian population in Gaza and Israeli hostages, who are both living under inhumane conditions after the massacre of Oct 7, 2023.²

WHO and UN agencies have reported at least 772 attacks on health care,³ with 94% of hospitals damaged or destroyed² and more than 1500 health-care workers killed⁴—the highest toll ever

recorded.^5,6 No independent or neutral organisation has provided evidence that Hamas deliberately used hospitals or other civilian facilities as human shields.⁷ Even if proven in the future, such claims could never justify systematic attacks on the health-care system. This is a violation of international humanitarian law and demands explicit condemnation.^1,2 Most medical and surgical societies worldwide have remained silent or issued vague statements about Gaza’s healthocide. A recent analysis found that only 24·5% of US speciality societies commented publicly on the Gaza conflict,⁸ in contrast to previous crises in which medical societies mobilised resources and expressed support.^9–12

The value of human life should not depend on nationality, religion, or political alliances. In fact, both Israeli and Palestinian physicians took care of those injured during the tragedy of Oct 7, 2023—proof that health care can be empowered to build bridges of trust.¹³ Organisations should also try to balance action to end the Gaza catastrophe with an attempt to support physicians and scientists in Israel who are making an effort to change the situation from within.

This is beyond politics; this is about care. Some say that medical societies must remain apolitical. However, ignoring political issues that affect health means ignoring real barriers to care. Staying silent while pretending to be neutral is, in effect, a form of complicity.

The principle of medical neutrality, grounded in international humanitarian law, does not mean indifference; it obliges us to condemn any erosion of this norm as a threat to both care and ethics. As the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Geneva affirms, physicians must act in the interest of humanity, especially in times of crisis.¹⁴

The Israeli Medical Association urges the provision of medical assistance to all humans indiscriminately.¹⁵ As doctors, we must support all victims of conflict, denounce attacks on medical staff and facilities, and ensure care reaches those in need (appendix).

Let us be remembered for our solidarity, not our silence. This is a decisive moment. Future generations will judge whether we defended life or looked away. Medicine is more than science—it is a moral duty. And when that duty is under threat, silence becomes betrayal.

Every day, Israel slaughters and maims more civilians, especially children. Every day it murders the medics, rescue workers, paramedics who try to save the victims – and the journalists who report on its crimes. Yet the UK government continues to side with the perpetrators, refusing to acknowledge even the existence of the genocide and waging an ever-escalating war on those in this country who try to expose and resist Israel and its collaborators.

They belong on trial in the Hague, down to the last man or woman who colludes. Maybe, just maybe, one day the Lancet’s evidence will help to put them there.

Featured image via the Canary