'No one can condone the killing in Gaza': Derry medics speak out in solidarity with fellow health professionals in Palestine

Health care professional from across the north west joined with others at the Freedom for Palestine protest organised by Derry IPSC (Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign) in the city on Saturday afternoon, mere hours before another Israeli bomb attack destroyed the ICU and surgical departments of the last working hospital in Gaza City.

Addressing those gathered in Guildhall Square, Derry GP Dr Nicola Heron spoke of how she had been rendered speechless, “not surprised but still shocked” on learning of how Palestinian paramedics were killed in the darkness of night and their bodies then buried by Israeli soldiers.

To applause from the sizeable crowd gathered at Guildhall Square, Dr Heron said: "I think it’s easy to become numb when we hear just atrocity after atrocity after atrocity, and it is easy to start to feel hopeless as well. But we know with the experience we have with the Troubles that the majority of people in every single country, both involved in this conflict and outside of it, those facilitating it, the majority of people are good people and the risk is that we demonise populations, that we demonise religions, and we demonise and dehumanise anybody other than the people who deserve to be demonised. And we know who they are.”

Dr Heron added: “The question I’ve been asking myself again and again and again – what can we do? We are so far away from there, what can we do? And each one of us has a responsibility to appeal to the ordinary people in the populations of the countries with the governments that are facilitating this conflict, that we reach out to those ordinary people. So for us it is the healthcare workers. We reach out to the healthcare workers in Israel. They cannot be condoning what is happening in Gaza, they can’t. Their oath as medics is to do no harm. Maybe if you start to reach out to them, to the people they work with, the people they care for, they can start the shift in the hearts of the people in that country. Same in America.

"There are so many people that are facilitating this or think that is OK or justifying the unjustifiable, we need to reach out to their hearts and say: ‘this is unjustifiable, take a step back, look what is happening’. Reach out to anybody you know in those countries. We need to feel that we can do something.”

She urged those gathered to speak with those they know, even those they are friends with on Facebook or met once on holiday, and try to change their hearts gently if they are among those justifying the genocide in Palestine. “We even need to change hearts locally for those people that are justifying this unjustifiable action, because how can anybody justify the killing of medics, of paramedics?”

Occupational therapist Karen Murphy praised the compassion of the people in the north west and the work of the North West Healthcare Workers for Palestine.

"We have a Medical School here in Derry and it has just got its GMC (General Medical Council) accreditation for tis first cohort that is graduating this year. We should be so proud of that but that is only the beginning of their healthcare journey, their specialism. They spend years getting better and better and better.

"I did that. I’m now a member of the Global Partnership Committee for my professional body and we work for low and middle income countries in giving people free surgery and therapy for devastating injuries or neglected injuries. We go into relatively poor countries and we help, and we work so hard.”

Karen Murphy also related how she previously worked in America bringing home soldiers wounded in bomb blasts during the Iraq War, and how even with the best of care, such injuries have “devastating consequences".

"Now tell me, how do I go out there and help those children who have their limbs blown off and the only option would be amputation without anaesthetic? How do I do that? I do that because that’s in me. Every healthcare worker has that within them and that’s why we trained and that’s why we became specialists.

"I work here in Derry. I go out to these war-torn countries, but I go there under the Geneva Convention because I should be protected. Now if I come back to Derry in a box what happens? The wonderful people of the north west mourn me and mourn the skills that have been lost in my community. I don’t care if you don’t care about the people out there. But us, as healthcare workers, we do. You would mourn the loss of our skills that we are more than happy to provide because it fills our souls and our hearts in ways that we never knew were possible.

"We are preaching to the choir here, however like Nicola said: what do we do? I will never reach the minds and hearts of the oppressors. In that incident of those 15 ambulance drivers there were a number of IDF soldiers that took a decision. They shot them, they chose to bury 15 people. How far down the hole of dehumanisation do you have to be to think that that won’t matter?”

"That side are gone, but the rest of the world, the rest of us, our families, our healthcare workers people with soul and heart and minds who have a vote, who have the privilege of having healthcare, we have that and we should do that. We should be able to support every single healthcare worker who chooses to go that far, who chooses to give their skills. They are us. And even if they are not, they deserve protection.”

Karen Murphy added later: "In Gaza there is a healthcare system that has been run down. There is no electricity, there’s salination plants where the water doesn’t work and yet the healthcare workers continue. They deserve protection and we deserve to give them that protection. We have to make sure that the attacks on healthcare workers are not done with impunity; hat we scream at the top of our voices, that we are heard.”