Every night, a 10-year-old girl visits Rajaa Musleh in her dreams.
At a hospital in Gaza, Musleh held her hand as she lost her vision and ultimately died after an Israeli airstrike. With Israel’s recent airstrikes in Beirut killing more than 1,400 people, Musleh, the Gaza country director for Rolling Meadows-based nonprofit MedGlobal, fears stories like the girl’s will continue with no end in sight.
“She asked me to sleep beside her in the bed, but because she was completely burned, I cannot do that,” Musleh said. “Every night in my dreams, she asks me why you didn’t lie beside me.”
Chicago-area doctors who have worked in Gaza over the last year begged the U.S. government to stop funding Israel’s military, which has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians in raids and bombings since the start of the war last October.
Grasping the level of destruction is nearly impossible, and Israel will continue to decimate the region if the U.S. doesn’t stop backing its attacks, they said Wednesday at a press conference hosted by the Chicago branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
“The people in Gaza, they are not numbers,” Musleh said. “They are human beings and have the right to have health care, to dream, to rebuild Gaza, to rebuild universities, to rebuild the schools. … The children inside Gaza really deserve to live.”
Conditions at the hospitals are bleak — a shortage of clean water, lack of basic necessities like soap and more than 15,000 people on the list for medical evacuation leave doctors desperate for an end to the violence.
Dr. Tammy Abughnaim, a physician with Advocate Medical Group, said she’s seen children whose injuries appear to be targeted, including a 9-year-old gunshot victim. For those lucky enough to survive and make it to a hospital, infection is a constant risk.
“Every single day, we were pulling maggots out of the mouths of patients in the ICU who were intubated,” Abughnaim said. “Infection control was impossible because Israel has not allowed trucks full of disinfectants and soap into the Gaza Strip.”
The health impacts and deaths from disease will almost certainly last much longer than the violence will, according to Dr. John Kahler, a co-founder of MedGlobal and doctor who worked in Gaza in January.
Conditions like diabetes and hypertension that are going untreated during the war are sure to be catastrophic for years to come, he said. He estimates the death toll will reach 185,000 to 200,000 as time goes on.
“None of those will be considered war deaths, and all of them will be directly related,” Kahler said.
Rajaa Abushurafa, an engineer who attended the event, said more than 200 members of her family have been killed since Oct. 7. She detailed how Israeli airstrikes have wiped out three generations of her family in Gaza and fears the ones who are still alive aren’t safe, especially with the escalation and attacks in Lebanon, where some of her family members live.
Her 2-year-old son Noah babbled behind her while she spoke about her fear that he’ll never meet many of his cousins.
“What did these babies have to do with Oct. 7?” she asked.
The attacks on Lebanon have intensified the calls for an end to U.S. aid to Israel. But the Biden administration said Wednesday there is a significant difference between Israeli actions that have expanded its war against Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran’s retaliatory missile attack against Israel, which it condemned.
In carefully calibrated remarks, officials across the administration are defending the surge in attacks by Israel against Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon, while still pressing for peace and vowing retribution after Iran fired about 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday.
“If the United States is interested in peace in the region, it needs to stand its ground and stand up to Israel and stop arming Israel,” Abughnaim said.
Rajaa Musleh (left), the Gaza Country director for Rolling Meadows-based nonprofit MedGlobal, holds hands with Deborah Adelman, who is Jewish, during a news conference at the Council on American-Islamic Relations in the Loop, where doctors, a Jewish leader and those whose relatives were killed in Gaza called for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Contributing: AP