PSM joins calls from international human rights organisations and progressive movements for the immediate release of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiyah, who is being held at the Sde Teiman military base following a deadly raid on the Kamal Adwan Hospital by the Zionist occupation in December 2024. A well-respected paediatrician, Dr. Hussam has dedicated his life to protecting the health and lives of children in Gaza despite the ongoing genocide. He remains under Zionist detention, where his life is at grave risk due to torture and denial of basic necessities.
The detention of Dr. Abu Safiya is the latest in a series of Palestinian doctors in Gaza who have been detained and tortured by Zionist forces, including Dr. Iyad Al-Rantisi and Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh, who was reportedly sexually abused to death by Zionist forces last year.
The imprisonment, torture, and killing of Palestinian doctors, nurses, and healthcare workers by the US-backed Zionist occupation is part of the systematic and calculated campaign to obliterate the healthcare system in Gaza. Since October 2023, the US-backed Zionist occupation has conducted over 654 attacks on healthcare facilities and killed more than 1,057 health workers in Gaza.
These attacks are designed not only to inflict collective punishment and psychological warfare but aims to destroy the very social fabric and foundation of life in Gaza itself. Over 200,000 Palestinians or 7% to 9% of the population in Gaza have been martyred due to the relentless targeting of hospitals, clinics, and ambulances, the severe blockades on food, water, shelter, and medication, lack of adequate sanitation and hygiene facilities, and spread of reproductive, non-communicable, and infectious diseases.
According to the Palestinian Feminist Collective, the assault on Gaza’s healthcare systems must be understood as a form of “reproductive genocide”, which aims to dismantle the life-sustaining capacities of Palestinians through military violence, settler-colonialism, imperial warfare, mass incarceration, and gendered and sexual violence. It aims to erase the existence of Indigenous Palestinians and annihilate their history, present, and future by targeting the very cycle of human life itself.
These atrocities cannot be separated from the historical and ongoing role of Western imperialism, particularly the United States, in arming and funding the Zionist regime to secure their capitalistic and expansionist interests in the Middle East.
The global community must therefore hold the Zionist occupation and their global imperialist backers, including the United States and Germany, accountable for their ongoing crimes in Gaza. We urgently demand:
- Immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza
- Immediate release of Palestinians arbitrarily detained by the Zionist occupation, including Dr. Hussam Abu Safiyah;
- End the systematic targeting and destruction of life-giving institutions and provide uninhibited entry of humanitarian aid including food, water, and medication
The Malaysian government must play its role in pressuring the United States, Germany, and other Western imperialist nations to stop its funding of the Zionist occupation and demand the release of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya and other wrongly detained Palestinian civilians and healthcare workers immediately.
PSM stands in solidarity with the people of Palestine and calls on all progressive forces to continue the fight for justice and liberation.
Kamal Aarif Bin Kamaruddin
Parti Sosialis Malaysia