Remarks delivered at a press conference in Geneva on June 25, 2025, with UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, Dr. Tlaleng Mofokeng (@drtlaleng) regarding “genocide as a disease”.
My name is Dr. Yipeng Ge, and I am a family doctor also trained in public health, and I am based on the traditional unceded unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg. Also known as Ottawa, Canada. Or the nation’s capital. I have studied the impacts of settler colonialism as a structure and process that affects Indigenous peoples’ health in the settler colonial state of Canada, as well as Zionist settler colonialism and the ongoing Nakba as a structure and process that affects Palestinian health in occupied Palestine.
I was in Gaza last year as a medical volunteer in primary care clinics in central Rafah, and I witnessed with my own eyes the impacts of forced starvation on the children I cared for. I remember caring for young paediatric patients who were no longer walking due to severe malnutrition, and children that should have been walking based on their developmental milestones like at age 12 or 14 months of age, but were not walking due to severe malnutrition. I remember the World Health Organization recommended us to use measuring tape to track the upper arm circumference of children to determine malnutrition – but not only was this tape not available at the clinics I worked at (along with many other essential medications and supplies), but I did not need a measuring tape to tell me how some children were just skin and bones because I was able to wrap my index finger and thumb around the upper arm and even lower leg of a child that was 9-10 years old being held by his mother because he could no longer walk.
This is an entirely preventable famine imposed on the Palestinian people in Gaza by Israel and its allies who allow lifesaving food, water, and medical aid to be withheld to an entire population under illegal occupation and blockade since 2007, which also included the Israeli policy of limiting food to only meet the minimum amount of calories to avoid malnutrition effectively putting the entire population on a diet. I remember meeting children who weren’t my patients because they would visit the clinic to say hi to me or ask me what my name was, and I thought they were much younger than they actually were – and I realized they were children physically stunted by the impacts of a long standing blockade on food aid.
This colonial practice of starvation is unfortunately not new. Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister used this tactic to ethnically cleanse and displace the Indigenous population for the settlement of Canada as a settler colonial state, and in his own words he said that the Indigenous population were kept on the “verge of actual starvation”.
Last week, I was in Cairo, Egypt with thousands of other ordinary people and citizens of this world who simply want to see an end to the famine and genocide in Gaza. In the past few weeks, the freedom flotilla, the Tunisian sumoudconvoy, and the global march to Gaza has attempted to bring aid into Gaza by sea, land, and air. These efforts were all stopped by Israel and its partners in this genocide. I remember seeing the kilometres upon kilometres of aid trucks carrying food, water, medicines, and more all held up at the Rafah border crossing over a year ago. Nothing has changed. Israel continues to systemically withhold aid from entering Gaza to meet the needs of the population.
My friend Muhammad, an ambulance driver, who I met in Gaza last year, has been texting me updates during the last few days. He tells me:
“We are here in Gaza. Our dreams and our children’s dreams end here.”
“Horror. Fear. Hunger. Thirst. Death. We are not okay. I’m sorry to tell you these things. Excuse me.”
“I work hard to provide food and drink for my children and my martyred brother’s children. My only brother was martyred and left behind five children.”
“My extended family and I am the sole breadwinner. There is no one but me to support them and provide for them. My children and the children of my martyred brother.”
I see in the Palestinian men in Gaza, a reflection of my own father and other men in my life, who care deeply to provide for their families despite all odds. I am heartbroken for them.
Hundreds of people are being massacred everyday by Israel for attempting to get small amounts of food aid set up by American mercenaries under the name of the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation”. Many are Palestinian men and boys who have survived 20 months of genocide, only to be killed trying to get food for their starving families. Over 500 people have been killed in the past month alone in this manner – attempting to get food aid for themselves and their families and loved ones.
The international community must use all necessary measures and mechanisms to end the famine and to stop the genocide being perpetrated by Israel and supported by complicit states and parties. Genocide, occupation, and apartheid do not happen within a vacuum. There is an ecosystem that sustains and maintains the status quo – that of Zionist settler colonialism and the ongoing Nakba. We must see an end to these systems and structures that have facilitated and continues to maintain a genocide being live-streamed before our eyes for almost 2 years now.
As for the healthcare system in Palestine, what Gaza and Palestine needs is not endless humanitarian aid or charity, but solidarity. A sovereign self-determined Palestinian-led healthcare system. By the people, for the people.
Thank you. Free Palestine.
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