[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 184 (Tuesday, November 7, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5387-S5388]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                 Israel

  Mr. President, one of my extraordinary friends in Chicago is Dr. 
Sahloul. Dr. Sahloul is a Syrian American. He is an exceptional man, 
and his wife Suzanne is also an extraordinary person. He has created an 
organization called MedGlobal. The best way to summarize what it does 
is to think of doctors without frontiers and how they travel across the 
world and go to some of the most dangerous places and volunteer medical 
assistance. Dr. Sahloul, through MedGlobal, has done the same thing.

  Many of the doctors who volunteer for MedGlobal are Muslim and from 
the Middle East themselves, but they can be found in any spot in the 
world. He calls me from places, and I have run into him in places and 
seen him. I just can't believe what this man does. He risks his life to 
go to war zones to treat people who have been injured. I think so 
highly of him.
  He has a friend in Gaza--a friend, a doctor--who was highlighted in 
the New York Times several days ago, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the 
director of the pediatric ward at Kamal Adwan Hospital. Many of the 
casualties from the Jabalia strikes were taken to that hospital. I read 
this article, and I have reread it many times. I try to understand what 
is happening on the ground in Gaza. Let me start at the beginning.
  What the terrorist group Hamas did to Israel was an atrocity. The 
attack on October 7 cannot be rationalized, explained, or, for that 
matter, forgiven for what they did to the innocent victims in Israel. 
The fact that Israel is defending itself is perfectly right in my eyes. 
They have a right to do that. Of course, Hamas continues to be a 
terrorist threat to them, and to try to stop Hamas and this activity is 
understood.
  At the same time, it is important that they accept the standards 
which civilized nations accept even in the conduct of warfare. That is 
the message that has been delivered by President Biden and again by 
Antony Blinken, our Secretary of State, over and over: Be careful that 
your ultimate reaction is consistent with the threat and used to the 
basic standards of civilization. That has been a request over and over 
again.
  The reason I come to the floor is because I got a call this morning 
from Dr. Sahloul, and he spoke this morning to Dr. Hussam again about 
the situation at this hospital. What the doctor had to say is basically 
what was in the article in The New York Times.
  I ask unanimous consent that this article be printed in the Record at 
this point.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

              Gaza Doctor Witnessing Nightmarish Situation

                   (By Hiba Yazbek and Karen Zraick)

       The Jabaliya neighborhood north of Gaza City was pummeted 
     with Israeli airstrikes for a third consecutive day on 
     Thursday, while doctors treating the victims described 
     nightmarish scenes of operating without basic supplies or 
     anesthesia.
       Dr. Hussam Abu Safyia, director of the pediatric ward at 
     Kamal Adwan Hospital, where many of the casualties from the 
     Jabaliya strikes were taken, said the majority of the people 
     arriving were children. Many were severely burned or were 
     missing limbs.
       On Tuesday, after the first strike in Jabaliya, the 
     hospital received about 40 people who did not survive, and 
     250 others who were wounded, he said. The numbers were nearly 
     the same on Wednesday, when another strike hit. On Thursday, 
     a strike damaged a United Nations school being used as a 
     shelter and sent in another wave of patients: 10 dead and 80 
     others wounded.
       ``I've never in my life seen injuries this bad,'' Dr. Abu 
     Safyia said on Thursday by phone, adding, ``We saw children 
     without heads.''
       The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, which runs 
     the school, said that the school had been among four of its 
     shelters--housing nearly 20,000 people total--that had been 
     damaged in the previous 24 hours. Twenty people were reported 
     to have been killed at the Jabaliya shelter, the agency said, 
     along with three people in other strikes at the Shati and 
     Bureij camps.
       The Israeli military said that in its strikes on Jabaliya, 
     it had been targeting Hamas commanders who played key roles 
     in the attacks on Oct. 7, which Israeli officials said killed 
     more than 1,400 people. The military also said that Hamas had 
     an extensive tunnel network in Jabaliya.
       On Wednesday, Dr. Abu Safyia said, he was working with a 
     colleague in the hospital's neonatal intensive-care unit--one 
     of two units that still had power amid a severe fuel 
     shortage--when casualties from Jabaliya started arriving.

[[Page S5388]]

       When they rushed down to the emergency room to help, he 
     said, his colleague was stunned to see that two of her own 
     children were among the dead. Her 9-year-old and 7-year-old 
     had been killed in their home, he said, along with several of 
     her siblings and relatives.
       ``We are working at a place where at any moment we expect 
     our children, spouses, siblings or friends to come in in 
     pieces,'' he said.
       Some children could not be identified because of the 
     severity of their injuries, he said. The hospital's morgue 
     was so full that people were stacking bodies on top of one 
     another.
       ``We wish for death,'' said Dr. Abu Safyia. ``It is easier 
     than seeing the horrific scenes we're witnessing.''
       He later added: ``Live images are being broadcast to the 
     whole world of people blown up into pieces, of women and 
     children who are being murdered, for what? What did they do 
     wrong?''
       The hospital, which is in the city of Beit Lahia, just 
     north of Jabaliya, was running extremely low on medical 
     supplies, like all others in the Gaza Strip, he said. With no 
     anesthesia, doctors were operating on people with severe 
     injuries using over-the-counter painkillers like paracetamol 
     to help ease the pain. They had a limited supply of 
     antibiotics and were using vinegar and chlorine to disinfect 
     wounds, the doctor added.
       ``The children's screams during surgeries can be heard from 
     outside,'' Dr. Abu Safyia said. ``We are operating on 
     people's skulls without anesthesia.''
       Doctors and nurses were using the flashlights on their 
     phones to operate in the dark because a severe shortage of 
     fuel had left the hospital's generators able to power only 
     two departments--the neonatal intensive-care unit and the 
     pediatric emergency room, where 12 children are on 
     ventilators, he said. If the fuel runs out, he added, ``the 
     hospital will turn into a mass grave.''
       Hours earlier, Dr. Ashraf Al-Qudra, a spokesman for the 
     Hamas-run Gazan Health Ministry, had held up the body of a 
     dead child wrapped in a shroud at a news conference at Al-
     Shifa Hospital as he described the growing death toll.
       The ministry said that more than 9,000 people had been 
     killed since the start of Israel's relentless bombardment of 
     Gaza, including more than 3,000 children. Many others remain 
     missing or buried under the rubble.
       Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a British-Palestinian plastic 
     surgeon volunteering at Shifa's burn treatment unit, said the 
     hospital--the largest in Gaza--had received about 70 patients 
     from the strikes on Jabaliya since Tuesday, and many had no 
     homes to return to.
       Medical workers were being stretched to the breaking point, 
     and normally preventable deaths had begun to soar, he said. 
     Each surgery was turning into a grueling exercise of trying 
     to use the fewest resources possible, he said.
       The Gazan Health Ministry said 16 of the 35 hospitals in 
     the Strip were already out of service from damage or lack of 
     power. The maternity ward at Shifa was being used to treat 
     the wounded, and expectant mothers had been moved to Al-Hilo 
     Hospital, which the ministry said was damaged by bombardment 
     on Wednesday night.
       Communications with Gaza City remained spotty to 
     nonexistent on Thursday, after a blackout for much of 
     Wednesday left ambulances and rescue workers unable to find 
     the injured, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of 
     Humanitarian Affairs said.
       Ahmad Sardah, a Jabaliya resident who said his home had 
     been damaged by the strike on Wednesday, was able to send a 
     quick message during a fleeting moment of internet connection 
     before contact was lost again.
       He said in a Facebook post he managed to write on Thursday: 
     ``If only friends and relatives who are outside could tell us 
     what is going on around us instead of asking us how we are 
     doing, because without internet and phone lines, all we hear 
     is airstrikes and bombs. Where, how, why, and who? None of us 
     know.''
       Dr. Ghassan Khatib, a political scientist at Birzeit 
     University in the occupied West Bank, said that Jabaliya--
     both the name of a town and a refugee camp next to it--had a 
     reputation as a stronghold of resistance to Israeli 
     occupation for years.
       The first intifada, an uprising that lasted from 1987 to 
     1993, started there after camp residents were run over by an 
     Israeli vehicle, he said. Their funerals became 
     demonstrations that spread to the Balata refugee camp in the 
     West Bank city of Nablus and elsewhere, he said.
       Tamara Alrifai, an official with UNRWA, said in an online 
     briefing Thursday that the agency believed that about 30,000 
     of the Jabaliya camp's 116,000 residents had remained after 
     Israel's order to evacuate under threat of bombardment last 
     month. It was unclear whether they had all gone to the south, 
     as directed, or to other areas of northern Gaza.
       People displaced throughout Gaza have flocked to hospitals, 
     hoping for a greater chance at safety. The Kamal Adwan 
     Hospital is also housing more than 3,000 displaced people. 
     Dr. Abu Safyia is among them, and barely sleeping. He said he 
     sometimes goes into an empty room, shuts the door and sobs.
       ``These are people who had dreams, they had lives, they had 
     a future,'' he said. ``It all ended.''
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, here is the situation reported from the 
hospital in Gaza: They will be out of fuel and electricity in 24 hours. 
Dr. Hussam told Dr. Sahloul that at this point, five children will die. 
The ventilators that are keeping them alive will be turned off. They 
cannot be transported to a better or a safer place. Turning off the 
electricity in some areas of the hospital will cause great hardship and 
pain. There is no fuel at the other hospitals either. In the north, 
they have basically been cut off from any assistance. It is impossible 
to transfer to the south because they don't have transportation, and 
they don't have the wherewithal--the ambulances and such--to do so. The 
desperate situation they have reached includes performing amputations 
with no anesthesia--performing amputations with no anesthesia.
  I asked Dr. Sahloul: What do they use?
  He said: Tylenol.
  Can you imagine? Tylenol? They use vinegar because they don't have 
any access to iodine to be able to clean the wounds before the 
operations. Vinegar.
  Every day, 200 people show up at their hospital, sick from the 
contaminated water which they are forced to drink. They are begging for 
help. They are asking for a pause so that basics can be provided: food, 
electricity, fuel, medicines--the basics. I don't think that is an 
unreasonable request, and I am sorry that they have been turned down in 
their efforts to get this kind of help. There are 150 patients in this 
hospital--twice the number as usual--with many of them sleeping on the 
floor. And surgeries are performed on the floor.
  I read this article last Friday and kept a copy of it. Now I will 
enter it into the Record for others to read as well.
  At one point, Dr. Abu Safiya said:

       We wish for death. It is easier than seeing the horrific 
     scenes we're witnessing.

  Twice now, this refugee camp, Jabalia, has been attacked by the 
Israelis as a site of Hamas terrorism. Unfortunately, on the first day 
of the attack, 40 people did not survive and 250 others were brought to 
the hospital. Then the attack took a second day but, basically, was the 
same as the last.
  The doctor said: I've never in my life seen injuries this bad. He 
added: We saw children decapitated as a result of these attacks.
  Asking for a pause in the war for the purpose of humanitarian relief 
is not unreasonable; it is humane and civilized. The United States is 
begging both sides to take that step. I will join that effort. I hope 
that this ends well and soon.
  In the meantime, these innocent, helpless victims need to have a 
helping hand from the rest of the world. We need to provide the basics 
so they can survive. I will do my best to follow this closely. I 
encourage the United States to continue its efforts to ask for this 
pause in the actions for relief of the victims. This sort of situation 
in any part of the world cannot be ignored.
  I yield the floor.
  (Mr. MARKEY assumed the Chair.)
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Welch). The Senator from Massachusetts.