Stanley Heller
New Politics / December 26, 2025
December 27 marks one year after the abduction of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya and other medical workers from Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza. He was taken to a number of Israeli prisons like the infamous Sde Teiman in the Negev Desert and Ofer Prison in the West Bank. He’s only had very sporadic meetings with an attorney. The last one was in August when he had a hearing of sorts and when the Israeli judge gave him six-months more in prison for supposedly being an “Unlawful Combatant.”
In Connecticut a “Campaign to Free Dr. Abu Safiya” was formed after he received the Middle East Crisis Committee’s Courage Award on Nov. 22. At the end of the ceremony a “Poster Shout Out” was held. At a subsequent meeting North Carolina doctor Mark Perlmutter and Gaza doctor Ali Tahrawi told in harrowing detail of disgusting Israeli military abuses. We were able to get an opinion piece about the doctor’s imprisonment in many Connecticut newspapers.
Just before Christmas the group started an open letter calling for Abu Safiya’s release. Some of the signers are quite well known like Dr. Zaher Sahloul, founder of MedGlobal, Bill McKibben writer best known for his climate writings, Craig Mokhiber, International Human Rights lawyer, Ira Helfand who is past president of the Nobel Prize winning organization, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, refugee from Nazi Germany Lillian Rosengarten, Rabbi Brant Rosen and a number of artists, professors and doctors. That effort is ongoing. See FreeDrAbuSafiya.org.
On the 27th the group is sponsoring a Zoom reading of the last posts he wrote at the end of 2024. Eight readers will tell of his increasing peril and what he wrote on December 27, 2024 hours before he was forced to walk a gauntlet and into an Israeli APC. This is the link to register.
A final note. After World War 2, some Nazi doctors were punished for atrocities. None were punished for their services for German civilians or even for German soldiers. In contrast, the Israelis punish Palestinian doctors like Dr. Abu Safiya for saving the lives of Palestinians.
Stanley Heller is Administrator of Promoting Enduring Peace and host of the TV news magazine The Struggle
