The arrest of Dr Hussam Abu Safiya in northern Gaza shows that destruction is not the only aim of the occupation; humiliation is also a key component of Israel's war of annihilation
On 4 December 2024, a 26-year-old American computer engineer named Luigi Mangione was arrested and accused of murdering Brian Thompson, the chief executive of a major US health insurer. Thompson, who was no doctor, was accused by many of those his company insured of presiding over a system that aims to avoid paying for treatment wherever possible. To some, Mangione is a hero. To the corporate world, he is a terrorist.
Thousands of miles away, in Gaza, a Palestinian doctor named Hussam Abu Safiya briefly captured the headlines, only for his story to fade amid the flood of other events. The killing of Abu Safiya’s son in October failed to elicit any outrage from American political, medical, or human rights institutions. Likewise, the siege of Kamal Adwan Hospital, which he managed (named after a Palestinian journalist killed by Israel in Beirut in 1973) provoked no notable reaction.
Before Kamal Adwan
Abu Safiya, the man in the white coat, had walked in his son’s funeral procession, prayed over him, and then returned to treating victims of Israel’s war of annihilation in the only hospital still operational in northern Gaza. And when he was injured later, he still continued attending to patients.
Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, is treated by colleagues for his injuries following an Israeli strike that hit the medical compound in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza on November 23, 2024.
Inevitably, the hospital eventually succumbed to flames—its staff was either killed or arrested following numerous sieges and assaults. It was on this day that Abu Safiya himself was taken into custody.
The burning of the hospital and the arrest of its director were not the first such incidents, though they are likely to be the last because there are now no more hospitals in Gaza that the occupation has not destroyed. His arrest was not accidental, nor did anyone demand an explanation from the Israelis, who feel no compulsion from the international community to justify their arbitrary detention of a hospital director in the Gaza Strip.
Israel’s Western backers have jumped to its defence before, never more noticeably than after the killing of more than 500 Palestinians sheltering in the courtyard of Al-Ahli Arab Hospital on 17 October 2023.
The Arab world will long remember Biden’s infamous remark about the Al-Ahli atrocity, made to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his Tel Aviv visit when he said: “It looks like the other team did it, not you.” This provided the cover for Israel’s future atrocities in Gaza.
The disappearance of Abu Safiya is a deliberate message to anyone who may think of standing against Israel's savagery
The phrase then evolved into the guiding political doctrine of Israel's war of extermination—whether it was the burning of refugee tents (with their occupants inside), the killing of doctors like Saeed Judeh, or the torturing-to-death of detained medics like Adnan Al-Bursh.
Palestinians are perpetually cast as aggressors, rendering any Israeli action justified. An elderly Israeli woman encapsulated this rationale in a video shared recently, justifying the killing of Palestinian children. "They will grow up to become Arabs…The Jewish mother protects her children; the Palestinian mother uses hers as human shields."
After every Israeli atrocity, thousands of social media accounts suddenly activate, pushing the Israeli discourse with heavy references to the victims of the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023. For example, when Israeli soldier Yuval Vagdani fled to Argentina amid calls for an investigation into him for war crimes based on videos he shared during the Gaza war, he received public support on the basis that he was "a survivor of the Supernova massacre on 7 October".
A common oversimplification when analysing Israeli atrocities is to frame them as 'revenge' for the victims of the 7 October attack. Another line used repeatedly by Israelis is that the target of the bombing is 'Hamas'. These narratives are deployed in tandem and reinforce one another.
Gaza—in its entirety—is now regarded as hostile territory. As one Israeli official remarked early in the war: "Hamas is an idea." In other words, it is everywhere and cannot be eradicated militarily. By this logic, Israel seeks to kill anyone who sympathises with—or might sympathise with in the future—the Hamas doctrine.
Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, shows the damage to a bed following an Israeli strike in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip on December 18, 2024.
This helps explain why the Israeli aim from the outset was not to 'punish' the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip but to erase them from existence, having already eliminated—both legally and practically—any prospect of a Palestinian state. This eschews the need for a Palestinian negotiator—someone to speak on their behalf—because Israel would rather the Palestinians did not exist to be represented, hence the extent of the destruction, the death toll, the injured, the missing, the detained, and the attacks on every operational hospital.
Under Biden's 'the other team' rationale, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) —which works specifically to provide support to Palestinian refugees—has been designated by Israel as a terrorist organisation. Under this rationale, hundreds of journalists for Arab-based news organisations have been killed or detained.
Under this rationale, the words 'doctor,' 'paramedic,' or 'relief worker' in Gaza have lost their meaning and validity. The mere accusation that they have a "suspected affiliation with Hamas" suffices to justify their killing or arrest, as with Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, the man in the white coat. Whether that is true or not is irrelevant. Every Palestinian is now 'the other team', the outsider to be eradicated, the interloper that not even Arab nations will fight for.
Seeing is believing
Despite initial Israeli military denials of knowing Dr Hussam Abu Safiya's whereabouts, a drone-recorded video later surfaced showing his arrest and his entry into an Israeli tank during the storming of the Kamal Adwan hospital area.
Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya walks through the shattered remains of his hospital, its walls reduced to rubble by the genocidal army. Amidst the chaos, he strides toward a tank, a solitary figure confronting the machinery of war. His crime? Upholding his oath as a doctor, saving lives… pic.twitter.com/zdHV2YvMw4
The video of him being marched through the devastation surrounding his hospital towards a tank has become iconic, alongside those of grandfather Khaled Nabhan, journalist Wael Dahdouh, and a young girl called Hind Rajab—Palestinians who have been immortalised as symbols, represented in artwork, slogans, and songs.
In Abu Safiya's case, the objective was not simply to knock the Kamal Adwan Hospital offline—this could have been achieved without arresting or harming him. Instead, the objective was to humiliate him and—by extension—anyone who supported him or expressed solidarity with him.
This deliberate strategy of humiliation has become central to Israel's 'war'. Israel no longer sees any need to deny or justify its actions, given its goal of total erasure. As such, Israelis are happy to let the Palestinians have their icons.
The physical extermination of Gaza coincides with a media war aimed at minimising the coverage of protests against Israeli actions and of solidarity with Gaza (Israel now sees its exit from Gaza under any conditions as a victory for the anti-Israel protesters because for Israel, retreat and cessation signal loss).
A woman holds a sign featuring a photo of Palestinian Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya during a protest in front of the Shin Bet offices, calling for his release, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, January 1, 2025.
If the world cannot be convinced of the legitimacy of Israel's war—which it cannot—then silencing dissent becomes the second-best thing from an Israeli perspective. Without audible criticism, the 'war' can continue unabated.
The disappearance of Abu Safiya is, therefore, not merely an attack on Palestinians but a deliberate message to anyone who may think of standing against Israel's savagery—a brutality that aims to beat the world into submission and silence.
In the silence, there is freedom of manoeuvre for Israel's far-right populist government, whose ministers are almost all rabidly anti-Palestinian. For them, this is a historic opportunity—one that cannot be missed simply because it is unjust or illegal.
A doctor in his white coat disappearing into the belly of a tank? Nothing to see here.
