SICK FROM GENOCIDE

Dx: Repression --- Rx: COURAGE

As I prepare events to support our colleagues calling in SICK FROM GENOCIDE on January 6th, I reflect on 15 months of my own experience of repression at my university where I am a professor of medicine with an expertise at the intersection between climate, health and society—specifically colonialism and health. I unravel my story as if I were at a doctor’s office, to arrive at a diagnosis. I try to remember back to where the pathology started and where the dis-ease is today.

In October 2023, self-avowed Zionists at UCSF were emailing me and cold calling me to ask me to explain my tweets, feigning academic interest in my knowledge of colonialism as a subject matter. The tone soon shifted into accusing me of Jew hatred when I would not stop tweeting about the attacks on healthcare in Gaza.

As I decried the bombing of Al-Ahli hospital on October 17th, having knowledge that the IDF bombed it because I was speaking to the surgeons who were INSIDE the hospital who reported that the IDF called two days prior and said "We are going to bomb the hospital in two days," these people said I was making the world unsafe for Jews with my claims that Israel bombed the hospital.

I kept speaking.

Then came the letters from administration that I was under investigation for my social media behavior, as I decried JAMA putting out Wynia's article providing moral cover for Israel bombing hospitals, which followed on the heels of Israeli doctors calling to bomb all of Gaza’s hospitals. Through our response to the article and the call for the resignation of so-called Health Equity leader Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo who is JAMA's editor, the administration called me unprofessional and said I was contributing to a hostile environment on campus.

Then came UCSF's famed social media attack on me on a Sunday evening across 3 accounts and 3 social media sites. I shared my analysis as a scholar who assesses how power dynamics around oppression impact health outcomes for oppressed people. UCSF’s attack was coordinated with CA state Senator Scott Wiener and landed me on the Canary Mission. UCSF's largest donor—the rightwing Zionist Diller Foundation—funds all three of these entities.

I kept talking. Then the white lady who stood up for me—Denise Caramagno—decried UCSF's abusive attack on me and subsequently got placed on the launching pad to be fired. When I spoke to her about her stance, which was also framed by the administration as Jew hatred, she said she was proud to get fired for sticking up for me. Insurgent white women have always played a crucial role in our collective liberation.

She kept talking. So did I.

Then came my suspension for naming that med students were afraid because they didn't know the status of someone on campus who had just come from a genocide zone--did they participate? Military service is mandatory. Med students all over the country are afraid of this, because some of their professors are actually going to serve in the genocide like this professor of surgery at Emory, who went to serve in a combat and medic unit during the ongoing genocide. He returned to work as if it was the most normal thing in the world to do. The students who are speaking up are getting hammered too.

The same people leading the charge to get me fired at UCSF by stating I'm a danger to patients are the same people who were feigning interest in October 2023 about my expertise in colonialism. In 22 years I have no record of lack of safety to patients. I give excellent care.

Then October 2024, they suspend my clinical privileges which puts a direct threat to my medical license. This is unnecessary because I'm already banned from campus and cannot practice medicine without being in the hospital. This was a malicious attempt to damage my livelihood. At this time, colleagues called me to share that they had received an odd email from my superiors asking them to fill out an incident report about my clinical care. They refused to fill out any reports, because they said there were no incidents to report. Things are getting ugly now.

I kept talking. And I lawyered up even more.

Now my license is fine because they cannot report a "false report" to the California Medical Board. UC Regents tried that and lost, when they slandered another doctor who blew a whistle and they got upset. The UC's had to pay out $13.7 million. Your tax dollars hard at work! Imagine how much denied patient care could have been covered with that pay out.

Still I keep talking, because there is a genocide raging, as confirmed by the UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other experts in genocide, including Israeli experts. It was clear to me in October 2023 that this was a genocide unfolding, with the targeted attacks on healthcare and complete siege which prevented food, water, electricity and medicine from getting into Gaza. Doctors do not need a year to figure out how people are being killed. We have an understanding of life that is primal, and we need a seat at the table to prevent genocides from going further as we see them start. This is the incredible work of an organization I joined in this struggle—Doctors Against Genocide.

I am morally, professionally obligated to speak up for life. I am protected by International Humanitarian Law which requires that we speak up to stop a genocide, as signers of the Geneva Convention and the US laws that enshrine those commitments. We must speak up.

Bullies wither at the sight and feeling of courage. It is the kryptonite. They only have power because we give it to them through our fear. Throughout the past 15 months, I have been in touch with Dr Ghassan Abu Sitta, the surgeon who was in Gaza’s hospitals communicating with me daily throughout October and November 2023. He gave his testimony to the Hague which led to their assessment of plausible genocide.

Dr Abu Sitta was checking in on me throughout my ordeals as his license in the UK was also attacked—twice. In October 2024, he was in Lebanon's hospitals, patching up children injured in the heinous pager attack and dodging bombs as Israel attacked these hospitals too.

I shared with him my insight that once I stopped being afraid, I saw how the game totally changed.

His response: Welcome.

The diagnosis is clear. Repression.

The prescription is simple but hard, like every good cure. COURAGE.

Healthcare workers, we must cultivate our courage. We must learn from the doctors in Gaza. Speak up and stop the violent attacks on our colleagues, profession and the children. The repression of healthcare workers in the West facilitates the genocide in Gaza—it is a part of the genocide. When our voices are silenced, the killing that targets our colleagues can continue uncontested. The health institutions and universities that silence us must be held accountable for genocide abetment.

This is the Genocide Enablement Apparatus.

What will stop the killing, as Dr Mads Gilbert articulated last year is “an avalanche of solidarity.”

BREAK YOUR SILENCE.

Join me January 6th and call in SICK FROM GENOCIDE. Take leave. Gather and grieve. Organize a pop up free clinic and treat the people in the US who do not have healthcare while we send $360 billion to Israel, where they have free healthcare. Our tax dollars go to Israel’s healthcare system, while we are forced into medical debt—the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the US—so that health insurance corporations in the US can make record profits denying our patients care. During Covid, nurses got shafted through unsafe patient ratios, doctors got pay freezes and cuts, patients were denied care and hospital systems lost money. Meanwhile, the insurance companies saw record profits. Let that fully sink in for a moment. It is no wonder our patients are enraged. We have also endured too much of the moral injury. Pause and reflect on the changes we need. Connect the dots.

Speak up about these grave health injustices. Speak up about your outrage of the abduction and torture of hundreds of healthcare workers, including Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, a pediatrician who I had the honor of listening to several times from his post at Kamal Adwan Hospital, the beloved hospital he directed before Israel destroyed it and kidnapped him. Demand his release and the release of all of our detained colleagues. Organize a medical boycott of Israel until our profession is back to where it belongs—protected by the International community. Learn from movement workers how to launch a campaign and win. We cannot let this attack on healthcare and flagrant debasement of International Humanitarian Law to become the new normal during armed conflict.

End this genocide.