NPR Interviews Member of Palestinian American Medical Association Without Identifying Him As Such

On June 23, NPR carried an interview with Dr. Adam Hamawy, a member of the Palestinian American Medical Association, but did not identify him as a member of that association. Such identification at the very beginning of the interview might have caused a little more wariness on the part of listeners. So if you did listen to him, and may have been taken in by his insistence on Israeli “atrocities,” I offer what might be called “a useful corrective.” You can find the transcript here: “Surgeon who saved Sen. Duckworth says he couldn’t save her with those wounds in Gaza,” by Megan Lim, Justine Kenin, and  Ari Shapiro, NPR, June 26, 2024:

HAMAWY: So I was at the European Hospital for 21 days. There’s been other doctors and nurses that have been to hospitals throughout Gaza since January on a consistent basis.

He implies, but does not dare to say, that those doctors never saw any Hamas presence in those other hospitals.

And I did not see one weapon. I did not see a pistol, did not see a rifle, either by anyone carrying it in the hospital or any of the patients that come in. And again, I’ve been in war. Usually, like, combatants usually have a weapon on them. They have something. They look like a combatant. And my entire time there, even outside the hospital in the area immediately on the compound, there was no military presence at all. So when I hear that and I have no proof and I’ve seen it with my own eyes, I have to doubt it….

Hamawy tells us that at the European Hospital he “did not see a rifle.” So what? Given that the whole point of Hamas using hospitals is to hide both its men and, its weapons inside them, why should Hamaway’s failure to a see a single rifle mean anything? Did he expect Hamas to wander through the halls carrying weapons? And did Hamaway spend valuable time away from the operating room inspecting every nook and cranny of the hospital, or descending into one of the tunnels underneath it, to find such weapons? Of course not.

Hamawy says that “combatants usually have a weapon on them” — but Hamas operatives make a point of dressing in civilian clothes so as to easily blend in with the population. Furthemore, the Hamas operatives whom the IDF discovered hiding out in the Al-Ahli Hospital, Nasser Hospital, and especially, Al-Shifa Hospital (where 200 Hamas members surrendered to the IDF) when walking through the hospital corridors did not carry arms. They were not eager to have themselves identified as combatants.

Hamawy also complains of a paucity of equipment and medicines in Gaza’s hospitals. Whose fault is that? It isn’t Israel that forced Hamas to spend a billion dollars on a vast tunnel network instead of buying hospital equipment. It wasn’t Israel that persuaded three Hamas leaders — Khaled Meshaal, Mousa ibn Marzouk, and Ismail Haniyeh — to steal $11 billion in aid meant the general population in Gaza. Israel has been trying to increase the delivery of humanitarian aid — food and medicine — into Gaza, but it is Egypt that has kept the Rafah crossing closed (both America and Israel have tried to persuade Egypt to open it). It is Hamas that has been pouncing on those aid trucks as soon as they enter Gaza, seizing for its own members and their families the lion’s share of that aid, some to use and some to sell, at hugely inflated prices, on the black market. Meanwhile, the IDF since October 7 has expedited the delivery of some 30,000 tons of medical supplies to Gaza. Israel has also supplied Gaza, from its own supplies, with such indispensable items as neonatal incubators. Not a word about any of this from Dr. Hamawy.

HAMAWY: I mean, they already come at a disadvantage because of their state of malnutrition. You go in there, you don’t have a clean environment. You don’t have antibiotics, you don’t have pain medicine. I mean, basically, after surgery, they’re getting Tylenol. I mean, it barely helps our headaches here and yet, you know, you’re fixing bones, you’re taking care of burns, you’re doing these massive operations, and they got Tylenol to take care of them….

There is no famine in Gaza. The food trucks are bringing in more food now than entered the Strip before October 7. What there is, however, is a colossal maldistribution of food, because Hamas operatives, their families, and even their clans take the lion’s share of the food aid, which is what causes some Gazan children to be malnourished.