A horrified Israel pounds the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the recent Hamas terrorist attack, and the 2.3 million Palestinians trapped in the tiny 25-mile stretch of land watch as their own death toll mounts.
The thing about terrorists — everyone is their victim.
Like the people of Israel, the people of Gaza are hostages to Hamas, said Zaher Sahloul, a Chicago Ridge-based physician who is a critical care specialist at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn and co-founder of MedGlobal, a south suburban, humanitarian, nongovernmental organization that provides emergency response to vulnerable populations.
“The Palestinians did not choose to live under Hamas, they did not choose to live in Gaza,” Sahloul said. “They are not allowed to leave. And now they are being bombarded nonstop by one of the most powerful war machines in the area. They are being blamed for what Hamas in Israel.
“In a few days,” Sahloul said, “there will be no more fuel, no more electricity and the local markets will be depleted.”
With entry to the territory blocked by both Israel and Egypt, Sahloul said, supplies will quickly run out. As of Wednesday, 14 ambulances and two hospitals were disabled by bombings.
“That means doctors will — I don’t know — have to return to the Middle Ages to treat people. Without dressings, without gauze, without IV fluid, without antibiotics,” he said.
Sahloul mourns with the civilians of Israel, who saw 1,200 killed and more than 2,500 wounded in the widespread attack that included slaughter and hostage taking at a music festival, but he also fears for the civilians of Gaza, most of them women and children, now caught in the retaliation crossfire.
“With the ground war underway, we are expecting things to get worse. I don’t have words to describe what is going to happen. It is beyond catastrophe,” Sahloul said.
“Of course, we have to condemn violence against the Israeli civilians but we also condemn violence against Palestinian civilians,” he said. “As humanitarians, as physicians and as people of faith, we have to look at everyone through the same eye. All people are children of God, if you believe in God.”
In 2017, Sahloul and John Kahler, a retired Palos Park pediatrician, founded MedGlobal. The organization, which sends supplies and teams made up of physicians and nurses of all faiths to help civilians, has members around the world and board members across Chicago’s suburbs.
They have a presence wherever there are huge populations of civilians trapped in impoverished, hopeless communities, including Yemen, Columbia, Syria, Bangladesh, Ukraine and, since 2018, Gaza.
“We had a team ready to leave for Gaza this week but the mission had to be canceled,” he said. “I don’t know when we’ll be able to go back.”
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They had been sending “resiliency” missions of doctors and nurses every few months to train their Palestinian counterparts on how to manage trauma patients, use technology with limited resources, manage wounds, and treat elderly patients unable to come to hospital. They also would address chronic diseases, mental health issues and childhood malnutrition.
Like many vulnerable populations around the world, Kahler said, the Palestinian people of Gaza did not choose their living situation. They also did not choose for Hamas to come to power in 2007, he added. Inside the blockaded community of mostly women and children, 60% live below the poverty line and 70% of young adults are unemployed, he said.
Despite the harsh living conditions, Sahloul said, on every visit they were greeted by “people who want to live, children who want to go to school, doctors who want to be more up to date with medical knowledge, nurses who want to practice similarly to how we do here in Chicago.
“The small amount of support that we provide is embraced and seems to make a huge difference in their lives because they feel they are supported and not forgotten by the international community,” Sahloul said. “We have felt that the warmth of the Palestinian people and their generosity in welcoming us despite the siege that’s been going on there the past 18 years.”
But the world has a tendency to lump the people under terrorist rule with the despots in control, he said. “We dehumanize the people we don’t want to humanize especially during conflict.
“We lump the Palestinians with Hamas. The media is doing a disservice to the whole situation by focusing only on one people and ignoring the other people,” he said.
Americans, he said, “don’t have a good sense of history or geography. We refer to this as simply ‘another Middle East conflict.’ But this is occupation. This is people who have been under pressure for a long time. This is a pressure cooker that has now exploded. People need to understand why it exploded.
“We can never justify what Hamas has done. But we cannot blame 2.3 million people for what a terrorist organization does either,” he said.
“We hope for the best. We pray for the people of Gaza and Israel but what’s going on right now, unfortunately, is going to get worse. Many innocent lives will be lost. Beating the drums of war nonstop is not the best solution for this conflict, or for stability in the region,” he said.
“We overreacted post 9/11, invaded two countries and spent trillions of dollars and we lost many of our young people in the process. And because of our policies, we created instability that created ISIS and what’s happening right now is exactly the same,” Sahloul said.
“We are making the same mistake now by overreacting,” he said.
As of Wednesday, more than 800 people have been killed by Israeli bombings, and more than 6,000 injured. The hospitals are working overtime, physicians and nurses are working 24 hours with limited resources.
“And,” he said, “it will only get worse.”
Donna Vickroy is an award-winning reporter, editor and columnist who worked for the Daily Southtown for 38 years.