Dr. Mimi Syed, an emergency medicine physician from Washington state, is in an Amman hotel room, surrounded by infant formula and devices used for resuscitation that she had hoped to take into the Gaza Strip.
Syed, who had been planning her third volunteer mission to Gaza with a U.S. medical aid group, was told by the organization after she landed in Jordan for the trip that the Israeli military had rejected her and had given no reason.
She believes the reason is because of what she has described publicly after her previous missions. She has spoken — including in testimony to a United Nations commission — about treating minors who'd been shot in the head, an increase in child malnutrition and patients dying due to a lack of basic medical supplies.
With an unprecedented number of Gaza-based Palestinian journalists killed by Israel, which is barring almost all foreign reporters from the enclave, doctors and nurses have been among the last remaining international witnesses to the war's catastrophic toll on civilians.
TVNL Comment: War crimes are committed every day by Israel, but no one stops them. The world is silent.