Al-Shifa: The house of healing, turned into a house of slaughter

It's been 6 months since I published my first note about Israel's savage assault on Gaza and the genocide of defenseless Palestinians that followed and continues to this date. On April 1st alone, Israel committed three gargantuan crimes in one day i.e. the killing of 7 foreign aid workers from World Central Kitchen , attacking Iran's Embassy in Damascus Syria in direct contravention of the Vienna Conventions, and the massacre of 400 innocent people seeking refuged or admitted at Al-Shifa Hospital.

Al-Shifa or Dar Al-Shifa in Arabic means a house of healing but ironically, it has been reduced to a house of slaughter and rubble by the genocide army. Established in 1946, the hospital was a beacon of Palestinian resilience, resistance, and history. Al-Shifa Hospital was one of the flagship medical facilities in Gaza. On Sunday 31st March 2024, Israeli occupation forces withdrew from the besieged facility after starving and massacring over 400 Palestinians including women, children, and medics often humiliating them in front of their families, crushing their bodies with tanks, and causing widespread destruction in the neighborhood. The facility is now dysfunctional and showcases an image of a ghost town from the real Hunger Games.

Personally, the hospital first came to my attention during the slaughter of Ramadan 2014 named Operation Protective Edge by the occupation army which killed over 2200 civilians including 551 children. The Israeli propaganda machine and most of the Western press tried to portray it as 'the Hamas's command and control center' even then.

The occupation's actual knowledge of the hospital is such that the then Foreign Minister of Israel and later Prime Minister Naftali Bennett was ridiculed online when he used the fake image of Shifa International Hospitals Limited in Islamabad in his viral misrepresentation of the facility and the presence of militants in the facility. Likewise, the same misrepresentation continued when Israel Defense Forces spokesman again went viral with his fake representation of weekdays in Arabic as "Hamas duty roster". The facility was also the center of attention when the iconic Norwegian doctor from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) , Dr Mads Gilbert addressed Obama in a televised interview and said;

"Dear Mr. Obama, spend one night with us in Shifa hospital, it would change history."

This will go down in history as one of the most egregious war crimes but Israel has a history of getting away with any crime including maybe, the crime of the crimes called Genocide.

Most of the Western journalists are to be blamed for the massacre who militarised health facilities and perpetuated the Israeli propaganda and lies. They have the blood of innocent patients and children on their hands including those who peddled other lies including 40 beheaded babies, children taken out of mothers' wombs, Hamas sexual violence on October 7, children put in ovens, and acts of necrophilia. Just like those lies to justify the genocide, Israel has failed to provide any credible evidence of human shielding or use of hospitals by Hamas. The systemic starvation of the population, destruction of the healthcare system, and ban on water & electricity are the hallmarks of Israel's plan to make Gaza unlivable.