Duty and advocacy for Palestine: Jewish doctors' response

Unfortunately, whatever efforts the IDF have made to protect innocent civilians will be to no avail if Hamas keeps putting Palestinians in harm's way as human shields (eg, through their documented, deliberate targeting of Gazans trying to access aid and the 18% of Hamas rockets fired toward Israel, which are falling short and killing and injuring Gazan citizens).5 Dehghan and colleagues fail to mention the multiple indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israeli health-care facilities and the injuries and deaths of Israeli health-care workers,6 which have necessitated the construction of underground facilities in most Israeli major hospitals. If they really wanted to show “a moral and political response to injustice and suffering”,1 they would be demanding that Hamas release all hostages and disarm immediately, rather than asking for an immediate end to the violence, which would leave Hamas in power to repeat the atrocities it carried out against Israel on Oct 7 and would keep innocent Palestinian citizens under constant threat from Hamas, a terrorist organisation. The Lancet Group takes a neutral position with respect to territorial claims in published text and institutional affiliations.