25% of 95K Injuries inflicted by Israel in Gaza are “Life-Changing;” Require Medical Care that Israelis Destroyed
Juan Cole 09/17/2024
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On Monday, Israeli bombardments killed 38 peoplein Gaza. Based on past experience, we can expect a majority of those killed to have been women and children — at least 21 and maybe more. Photographs and video coming out of Gaza show dead children being carried in burial shrouds. For intance, Al Jazeera reports that an Israeli bombardment of the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City killed 3 people, and that a child and a woman are among the dead. Several others were injured. The Israelis dropped bombs on a residential neighborhood because they believed a member of the Hamas paramilitary, the al-Qassam Brigades, was present there. But International Humanitarian Law does not allow reckless disregard for the lives of civilians in military operations, which is what we see from the Israelis every day in Gaza.
Others among the victims of Monday’s bombardments were innocent male noncombatants, though note that the genocidal discourse in Israel alleges that there are no innocent Palestinians. The Israeli military is likely counting as Hamas militants all the able bodied males killed. As this carnage has become daily and routine, it has ceased being reported as significant news. As far as I can tell, US cable news simply ignores Gaza most of the time, with rare exceptions.
Although we concentrate on the estimate of at least 41,226 people killed in Gaza by Israeli bombs (and this is a gross underestimate) we often forget about the 95,413 wounded.
The World Health Organization estimates that 25% of of the wounded have undergone severe trauma (loss of limbs, severe burns, etc.) and require rehabilitative health care. That is, their injuries are life-changing.
TRT World Now: “WHO: 22,500 wounded Palestinians require long-term rehabilitation”
The estimate is based on records from Emergency Medical Teams on the ground in Gaza in the first half of this year
Injuries to major extremities — feet and hands — constitute a significant proportion of these injuries. WHO writes, “the majority are likely to be lower limb injuries, including complex fractures with peripheral nerve injuries.” There are on the order of 15,500 of these.
Then there are amputations (often done without anesthetic).
At one point in the war last winter, ten children a day had to have a limb amputated.
Who observes, “It is reasonable to expect that there are between 3105 and 4050 limb amputations.” At the upper range, that would be 22 amputations a day for the first half of this year.
Then, as the horror movie unfolds, WHO informs us that there have likely been 2000 or so spinal cord and severe traumatic brain injuries. That’s likely a lot of paralyzed or partially paralyzed people.
A similar number, about 2,000, have been badly burned.
One physician who worked in Gaza reported that 80% of the victims she saw were children.
Al-Jazeera Video: “80% of Gaza victims I treated were children – Surgeons in Gaza | Islamic Help ”
Under ordinary circumstances, providing rehabilitative care for a nearly 25,000 people would be a challenge. You’d need crutches and other prophylactics, wheel chairs, neck braces, spine braces, whirlpool baths for the burned to remove dead skin. Such things are now rare in Gaza or don’t even exist. The longer a patient with severe trauma goes without treatment, the greater the danger is that the injuries will never heal properly or will get worse. Israel keeps exiling Palestinians in Gaza from one place to the next. That would be hard on the ones with spine injuries or amputated legs. The ones with spine injuries could well be killed by such a move.
People ask me how they can help. Well, first chew out your Congressman and Senators for allowing this carnage to proceed. But here’s a link for UNICEF’s Gaza effort.