More Than 100 Medical Workers Urge Senate To Help Stop Attacks On Palestinians

More than 100 medical workers visited the Senate on Wednesday to demand lawmakers help stop Israel’s military offensives against Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank — campaigns that the Biden administration supported and the current Trump administration has continued to back.

The medical professionals are part of Doctors Against Genocide, a grassroots coalition of health care workers mobilizing against acts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The group has testified before the United Nations and the U.S. government in hopes that political leaders can prevent and intervene acts of violence.

“We’re here to talk to our Congress about our support for what seems to be the worst attack on a civilian population in this century,” Dr. John Brewer, a retired emergency physician, said at DAG’s press conference on Wednesday.

“The attack[s] on women, pregnant women, children, targeting health care workers, doctors being shot, hospitals being destroyed, sewer treatment and water treatment plants destroyed — it’s just unparalleled to anything else at the current moment.”

DAG formed in 2023 in response to Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, which began after Hamas fighters killed about 1,200 people in Israel and captured about 200. The majority of those hostages have since either been released or are presumed dead, and the militant group is currently exchanging the remaining captives under a shaky ceasefire deal.

Israel’s military offensive has meanwhile flattened most of Gaza, displacing what the United Nations says is more than 90% of Palestinians. As of Tuesday, the Gaza Health Ministry says Israeli forces have killed more than 48,000 Palestinians over the last 15 months in the territory, with human rights groups and health officials estimating the real number to be much higher.

Much of the international community — human rights organizations, aid workers, world leaders and the U.N. — have since described Israel’s U.S.-supported actions in Gaza as genocide, its rule in the occupied West Bank as apartheid and President Donald Trump’s proposal to forcibly expel Palestinians from Gaza as ethnic cleansing. Israeli officials have vehemently denied all of those accusations.

“I’ve been to Gaza as part of a humanitarian medical delegation. That was about five years ago, and I will say that at that time, Israel was doing the same thing it’s doing now. But it was a slow genocide,” Dr. David Sperber said at the press conference. “Now it’s full out, the gloves are off and the mask is off.

“What I want to talk about is Israel’s targeting of the health care system,” he continued. “It’s guilty of genocide — the International Court of Justice has deemed so, and has called on it to stop all actions that are consistent with genocide.”

Officers with the U.S. Capitol Police broke up DAG’s press conference in the Hart Senate Building, forcing the health care workers to carry on outside in smaller numbers. The coalition said that law enforcement attempted to arrest some of the doctors.

A USCP spokesperson told HuffPost that officers threatened arrests because members of the public are not permitted to hold press conferences or demonstrations inside congressional buildings. Because DAG moved outside, officers made no arrests.

“We want this message to go to the American people, that their elected officials’ buildings and halls do have space for people who vote to send more weapons, more arms, more tax dollars to mass murder children, to attack hospitals,” DAG co-founder Dr. Nidal Jboor said. “But they don’t have space for the health care workers who demand the protection of children, the protection of the sanctity of life and the protection of hospitals.”

The doctors are demanding senators support a proposed resolution affirming that Palestinians have the right to self-determination — a rebuttal to Trump’s plan to forcibly displace millions of Palestinians. The resolution, which would be largely symbolic, would also “express the sense of the Senate” that the U.S. should not send military assets or personnel in order to “take over” Gaza.

DAG also urged senators to support and co-sponsor a bill by Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) that would restore U.S. funding to UNRWA, the U.N. agency primarily responsible for providing and distributing life-saving humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees. Congress halted funding for UNRWA last year until March 2025, after Israeli officials accused the agency of associating with Hamas. Multiple investigations concluded that the accusation was unsubstantiated.

UNRWA faces collapse if the U.S. continues to withhold financial support for the agency. Without its help, more Palestinians will be left without enough food, health care, education or proper sanitation, making them vulnerable to other health issues.

DAG also called for senators to draft and support a resolution to protect the health care workers and medical institutions around the world — particularly in Gaza, where almost every hospital has faced Israeli raids and bombing campaigns, and where many medical professionals have faced humiliation, detention and sometimes death by Israeli forces.

Among the Palestinian doctors detained is Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of the now-destroyed Kamal Adwan Hospital, whose frequent video diaries on social media helped the West see the disturbing reality of Israel’s offensive in walled-off North Gaza. According to Israeli media, Abu Safiya may be released on Saturday after months of living in what he’s described as inhumane conditions.

“These are our colleagues — they are being targeted, they are being tortured, they’re being abducted for the crime of caring for their patients,” said Dr. Adlah Sukkar, adding that Israel has killed more than 200 members of her husband’s family, most of them children.

“And so I don’t think it’s controversial for us to ask this of our elected officials. This is not complicated, this is easy,” she continued. “This is not a political issue, this is a health care issue. This shouldn’t be difficult.”