Date/Time
Date(s) - 04/21/2024
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Categories
We are cosponsoring this film screening; here is the description from Voices from the Holy Land:
Thirty-six hospitals served 2.2 million residents in Gaza on October 6, 2023. The United Nations says that only twelve are “partially functioning” today. Israeli bombs, missiles, and artillery have destroyed the rest. Ambulances and vehicles transporting medical supplies have also been destroyed. Electricity and fuel are severely restricted, with doctors operating in the dark. Medicine (including painkillers, adrenaline, and anesthesia) is depleted. Surgery (including amputations on children) is done while patients are wide-awake and screaming in pain. Wounded women and children are dying because of the lack of medical care. Doctors and medical personnel have been killed, evicted, or forced to flee. . . . Try to imagine Hell.
VFHL will focus on Gaza health care and hospitals through three videos. Panelists will discuss the destruction of hospitals, collapse of the healthcare system, shortages of medical supplies, unimaginable working conditions, international laws regarding hospitals in war zones, and the needs for rebuilding medical capacity.
Panelists:
- Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, has worked in the hospital operating rooms in many conflict zones, including Gaza, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and South Lebanon. He reported from Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital, surviving the October 17 attack by the IDF. Ghassan was born in Kuwait to a Palestinian family that fled in 1948 and sought refuge in Gaza. He founded the American University of Beirut’s Conflict Medicine Program and is the author of Reconstructing the War Injured Patient and The War Injured Child. He is clinical lead for the Operational Trauma Initiative at the World Health Organization’s EMRO Office.
- Clyde A. Farris is an orthopedic surgeon in West Linn, Oregon. Upon retirement, 2012, he joined Doctors without Borders (MSF) and served as a trauma surgeon during a 6-week mission at a hospital in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. On two occasions, through Physicians for Social Responsibility, he served as a trauma surgeon at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, most recently in October 2019, during the Great March of Return. “When I was there, 2,000 young Palestinian men were on a waiting list to have their lower extremities reconstructed after they had been shattered by Israeli bullets.”
- Hardin Lang is vice president for programs and policy at Refugees International (RI). A veteran of six United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian field missions, Hardin has worked in Afghanistan, the Balkans, Central America, Gaza and the West Bank, Iraq, Haiti, Jordan, Lebanon, Myanmar, Tunisia, Turkey, and West Africa. Prior to joining RI, Hardin was a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, specializing in Middle East conflicts and national security policy. He has also been a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report.
- Christos Giannou (moderator), author of War Surgery, holds senior academic positions at the American University of Beirut and Queen Mary University of London. Born in Toronto to Greek immigrants, Christos became a surgeon for the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) during the civil war in Lebanon and was director and sole surgeon of the hospital in Shatila refugee camp. His work for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) as a field surgeon, head surgeon in Geneva, and medical coordinator of the campaign to ban anti-personnel landmines took him to war zones and hospitals all over Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
You must register to join the discussion & receive access to the film: Tinyurl.com/VFHL-April2024
Watch the Trailer: Tinyurl.com/VFHL-April2024Trailers
3 p.m. EDT • 12 noon PT • 10 p.m. Jerusalem
The April 2024 Online Film Salon is Co-Sponsored by
SUPPORTER Organizations: Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) ♦ Palestinian Christian Alliance for Peace ♦ Quaker Palestine Israel Network ♦ Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East ♦ Indiana Center for Middle East Peace ♦ Disciples of Christ Palestine-Israel Network ♦ Virginia Coalition for Human Rights ♦ Mennonite Palestine Israel Network ♦Friends of Sabeel North America♦Center for Jewish Nonviolence♦ Episcopal Peace Fellowship Palestine Israel Network♦ Northern New Jersey Jewish Voice for Peace ♦ United Church of Christ Palestine Israel Network ♦ Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service ♦ Churches for Middle East Peace ♦ Kairos Puget Sound Coalition ♦ Pax Christi USA ♦ Jewish Voice for Peace – San Diego ♦