Thanks for reading Judy Haiven’s Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. For a second, you don’t notice. Then you do. A pretty girl, who looks startled, worried. She’s maybe 18 months old. She sits on her cot on the tidy red bedspread. Bandaged stumps above her knees. You look away. The next photo is just as shocking. A young boy, in absolute misery – terror and helplessness. Every day, at least ten children in Gaza lose one or both legs because of being bombed by the IDF. In the midst of the constant death horror, some smaller things, like stumps, fly under the radar. In Gaza, more than 5,000 children have lost one or both legs because of Israel’s bombs, armed drones and shelling from tanks, in what Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, rector of Glasgow University and a British-Palestinian plastic surgeon calls the “biggest cohort of pediatric amputees in history.”
DARA doctors deny genocideBut let’s jump back to Canada for a minute — what do the 555 doctors who proudly and publicly self-identify as Jewish, in DARA (Doctors against Racism and Antisemitism), have to say about this? As a reminder, these 555 Jewish doctors affiliated with the Temerty Faculty of Medicine (TFOM) at the University of Toronto, members of DARA, have pledged to guard against antisemitism, to ensure anyone that criticizes Israel will be punished, and want assurances that Jewish doctors should be able to work openly as Zionists. Of course, no one has ever stopped them from being open zionists. DARA’s founder or leader, Dr Phillip Berger, has publicly railed against the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, calling it “the epicentre of antisemitism at the University of Toronto.” DARA opposes academic boycotts of Israel and “racial or geopolitical bias” –which means criticism of Israel. According to Toronto Sun columnist Lorrie Goldstein, Jewish doctors in DARA “stand firm with Jewish faculty and learners who live in fear in the TFOM.” However, the silencing of doctors comes not from TFOM, but from DARA, which has worked to silence any Canadian doctors or health care workers who have criticized Israel for its genocide against the Palestinians. I’ve written several newsletters here, here and here about the disciplining and firing of some Ontario-based doctors such as Dr Yipeng Ge, and Dr Ben Thomson and even a fourth-year nursing student at the University of Manitoba. If 90% of DARA doctors are parents, can they imagine their children as amputees?My guess is that 90% or almost 500 of the 555 DARA doctors are parents themselves. Can any of them imagine their son or daughter lying in a bed, suffering with two amputations? Can any DARA doctor imagine living under a plastic sheet for almost two years, sleeping on the broken concrete surrounding a half-destroyed hospital – and being the target of a two-tonne bomb, or their families victims of a deadly firestorm created by attacks of Israel’s armed drones? Your son loses one or both legs. Your daughter is shot in the head by an IDF sniper. Today’s news is that each day, the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) target a particular part of the Palestinians’ bodies – child or adult — such as the head, the legs, or the genitals. Dr Nick Maynard, who has served as a surgeon in Gaza for 15 years, says he and other doctors have observed clusters of similar injuries — head wounds one day, abdominal wounds the next — raising questions about the intent behind the shootings. Yesterday, Dr Maynard said,
Michael “Lefty” Morrill, the organizing director of New Hampshire Peace Action wrote that Dr Maynard describes
Can one of the 555 Jewish doctors imagine his or her partner. or 12-year-old son (or grandson) walking for a day to get to the food distribution point, then to queue for hours for one 10 kg bag of flour and two tins of beans? Only to be killed, like 92 Palestinians on Sunday and over 1,000 Palestinians who have gathered to seek food aid since 1 June, by targeted IDF (and GHF) gunfire. On Twitter, one DARA pediatrician posted a cartoon of the Road Runner and the words “beep beep motherfucker” – lauding the Israelis for the exploding pagers which killed 12 and injured 2,800 – mainly in Lebanon last fall. How is it that a pediatrician, presumably someone who loves children– or at least wants to treat, cure and comfort children– can take such delight in the wanton injury to children, many of whom were victims of the pager blowups in Beirut? Indeed, two children died and scores were injured. Is there any humanitarian response to the genocide in Gaza by DARA or by the Jewish Medical Association of Ontario (JMAO)? Not at all. Everything is about THEM. Everything is about silencing the truth about Israel’s starving, bombing and incinerating Palestinians.
For example, The Canadian Medical Association publishes the Canadian Family Physician( CFP), a peer-reviewed medical journal. According to family physician Dr Michael Kalin whose interview in the Canadian Jewish Newswas published Monday:
Dr Kalin was furious – in the interview he says he’s not upset with what Israel is doing, and the murders of likely more than 100,000 Palestinian civilians. He is upset that a “Lebanese physician” (code for an antisemite) published an article about caring for patient victims of the Pager blowups—some of whom may have been in Hizbollah. Kalin all but spits out, “We are talking about courageous Hezbollah fighters in a Canadian family medicine journal, and this has no place.” And that’s not all. A third of Ontario’s Jewish medical practitioners say they are considering leaving Canada because of what they call antisemitism in their field, according to a Jewish Medical Association of Ontario (JMAO) survey in Dec. 2024. Though short on specifics on antisemitism, 31% of the 1,000 Canadian Jewish doctors, medical students, and residents surveyed by JMAO are thinking of abandoning the country! Before Oct 2023, only 1% said they wanted leave Canada. One doctor noted, “I feel I no longer belong in Canada and may need to flee,” Really? Flee Canada? For where? 540 dead Palestinian children for every dead Israeli childDo the 555 Jewish doctors in DARA dare to say that the shootings are acceptable because Israel has a right to defend itself – even against children and babies? That since perhaps a total of 37 Israeli children were taken hostage or killed on 7 Oct—that justifies Israel killing 20,000 children in the next 20 months. 540 dead Palestinian kids for every 1 Jewish child. Does that sound right? Why worry, as Gideon Levy a columnist at Haaretz noted sarcastically on the weekend, “No Jews were hurt.” That’s the key – not one Jew hurt (except for the brave 887 IDF soldiers sacrificed). Ask one of the 555 Jewish doctors. For a list, contact me. I wonder if even one would admit to Israel’s—the country whose military they defend right or wrong — genocide. Cartoon at the top: From Cradle to Grave is a Journey of a Day, by Joe Sacco (6-24).
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