SOS: Hospital Ships Needed to Save Gaza’s Children
By Franklin Lamb
28 August, 2014
The statistics are just beginning to be analyzed—by UN agencies and a myriad of NGO’s whose mandates include salvaging
young lives from the nearly incalculable ravages of the five-week (and counting) Zionist aggression upon Gaza. It is of
course the third aggression in six years against the 1.8 million Palestinians, sardine-canned into what is increasingly
referred to as history’s largest open air prison, but the outcome this time is looking particularly cruel and grim.
As the Netanyahu regime announced (on 8/10/14) that its attacks on Gaza would continue, increasing numbers of obscene
calls—for Israel to “finish the job” and “go all the way” etc.—are floating in the Zionist state’s malodorous public
echo-chamber, emanating from such figures as the Knesset’s deputy speaker, who advocates driving Palestinians into the
Sinai desert and resettling Gaza with Jews.
In Khuza’a “the Israeli military had trapped at least 32 people in a home and then prevented the Red Cross from
evacuating them before shelling the area,” reported Lebanese-American journalist Roqayah Chamseddine. Hoping for safe
haven, the people in the house sought refuge in the basement of a neighbor’s home, where they found additional families
already inside.
“By that point we were 120 people, 10 men and the rest women and children,” Kamel al-Najjar recalled for Human Rights
Watch.
After dawn and without warning (no polite leaflets or knocks on the roof apparently), Israel struck the house, killing
three people and wounding 15 others.
The toll of the war on Gaza’s children has been “catastrophic,” according to UN agencies. At least 450 have been killed,
and those not having their physical bodies buried have found their innocence entombed. It is another casualty in the
war—a war against all things daring to live and resist in Gaza. According to Chamseddine:
“Israel has forced the children of Gaza to lay flowers atop headstones, and watch helplessly as coffins that are filled
with not only their most beloved family members, teachers, neighbors, and friends but also their most treasured
memories, lullabies, lessons learned and those that will never come, descend into the belly of the earth. Their lips
will memorize and form prayers for the dead and the stars that defied the siege that flickered freely high above them
will be snatched from their skies,”
Increasingly it is being heard from Gazans that “Israel has stolen everything beautiful in our lives,” and Israel’s
barbarity confirms this sentiment.
Middle East analysts point out that it is difficult to recall a time in modern history when there has been so much
sustained slaughter of this region’s civilian population, with more than two-thirds of the victims being women and
children. For the past year, UN agencies and other humanitarian organizations have lamented a simple reality—that there
is not a sufficient level of international aid to save lives and treat those in need of emergency and longer term
medical care.
But now something is changing.
The horrors we have just witnessed, especially with respect to traumas inflicted on children, is producing, as should be
the case, a major and rapidly growing international focus on salvaging young lives. Descriptions and evaluations of the
consequences of Gaza wars are being published and urgently discussed. Some analysts and government officials, including
Pentagon planners, are calling for a ‘Medical Marshall Plan,’ to save Gaza’s children. One proposed first step is the
dispatching of a humanitarian support group of hospital ships that would sail to Gaza without further delay.
What can and must be done, by the United States and other countries with the naval and medical capacity to do so, is to
organize a Hospital Ship flotilla to break the siege of Gaza, to anchor offshore, and to begin caring for the medical
needs of all, with a special focus on children and their psychological well-being. Call it a Mercy Mission. Initially it
could include the following countries—all well known for their hospital ships with up-and-running medical staffs: the
USA, UK, France, China, Russia, Spain, Argentina, and Australia. Within this group of nations are ships with hundreds of
patient beds and fully stocked pharmacies. Moreover, it is a group not likely to be interfered with by those who have
imposed the inhumane blockade of Gaza (and of course it even includes some of their collaborators in the region), but
perhaps most importantly, every country on the list possesses one or more hospital ships that are fully staffed and
available to act.
France is reportedly ready to join such an effort and is also working on a related crisis—in Iraq, where it plans
delivery of first aid equipment "in the coming hours," according to the office of Francois Hollande. The French
president has "reaffirmed the will of France to stand by the side of civilian victims of continued attacks" in Iraq, and
his spokesmen said that “France will do the same thing for Gaza.”
“The European Union is called upon to also take necessary measures with great urgency to respond to immediate
humanitarian needs," the spokesman added.
Hundreds of EU citizens, with their specialized skills in fields of pediatric medicine and child psychology, are
reportedly ready to help the children of Gaza. Two fully stocked and staffed American medical ships, the USNS Mercy and
the USNS Comfort, could contribute greatly to the effort. Each ship's hospital is a full floating medical treatment
facility, containing 12 fully equipped operating rooms, a 1,000-bed patient capacity, digital radiological services,
medical laboratory, pharmacy, optometry lab, and intensive care ward; each also has a dental clinic with full services,
CT scanner, and two oxygen-producing plants.
Helicopter landing decks are available as well, for patient transports, and the ships also have side ports that could
take on patients from Gaza fishing boats and other crafts at sea. In addition to these two mammoth-sized medical
vessels, dozens of other US Navy ships also have hospitals on board. For example, in one year, the medical department of
the USS George Washington handled over 15,000 out-patient visits, drew almost 27,000 lab samples, filled almost 10,000
prescriptions, took about 2,300 x-rays, and performed 65 surgical operations—and nearly 100 other US ships are capable
of doing the same.
Just one example with respect to capacity is illustrative. In April of this year, the USNS Comfort—a converted
70,000-ton tanker—sailed from Norfolk, Virginia carrying 900 doctors, nurses, and engineers, including staff from the
U.S. military, civilian agencies, non-government charities, and even foreign navies. The ship is designed to be deployed
quickly for four month intensive full service medical assistance; yet similar capacities obtain in certain other US
ships and in foreign navies as well. All of these resources must be put to immediate use to save Gaza’s children.
Looking at the longer term, the Pentagon should seriously consider ordering a sufficient number of catamaran transports
and shallow-draft littoral ships to fill out the flotilla, vessels capable of delivering aid by sea via the relatively
shallow Gaza coastline. The success of breaking the siege of Gaza will likely give impetus to a UN Security Council
decision to construct a seaport for Gaza, perhaps with a shipping channel to Cyprus.
Similarly, the UK hospital ship, RFA Argus, designated as a 'Primary Casualty Receiving Ship,' is moored in Falmouth,
England, and is also uniquely designed for this type of humanitarian crisis; and it, too, is reportedly ready to sail
once given the green light by Downing Street.
Five Hospital ships are urgently needed along Gaza’s shoreline at the following locations: opposite Jabaliya and North
Gaza, Gaza City, Deir al-Balah, Khan Younis, and Rafah, as shown in the map below
Although attacking a hospital ship is clearly a war crime, the Israeli pattern of targeting medical facilities in Gaza
is well known, and threats from the settler movement and the right wing Likud Party to “sink any ship that enters Gaza
waters if judged to be aiding the terrorists” must be taken seriously. Yet one imagines the occupation regime would have
to think carefully about sinking another US Navy vessel as it did in 1967 with the repeated bombing of the USS Liberty.
Instead of recycling raw combat power, the White House can best meet the demands of a war-weary American public through
an emphasis on missions such as those the USNS Mercy and USNS Comfort are designed for. Poll after US public opinion
poll reveal that Americans believe their humanitarian values are best reflected when our navy is tailored for delivering
humanitarian aid to places like Gaza, and not by delivering munitions to occupying colonial regimes.