Sir, – I write as the head of a medical school charged with not only training future healthcare workers but also imbuing the universal ethos to provide succour to all of humanity. In times of armed conflict, international humanitarian law provides rules to protect healthcare workers. Personnel engaging in medical tasks must always be protected, unless they commit, outside of their humanitarian function, acts that are harmful to the enemy.
The alleged use of hospitals as cover by Hamas apparently provides the barely credible justification for the complete destruction of the healthcare infrastructure in Gaza by the IDF, as well as the killing of at least 350 healthcare workers and the detention of hundreds more. Setting aside the direct killing of civilians by indiscriminate bombing, thousands of civilian deaths are guaranteed simply due to the absence of basic healthcare.
Importantly, while there is no evidence for any participation in armed response by medical personnel in Gaza, they do not lose the protection to which they are entitled even if they were accused of using weapons to defend themselves or to protect the wounded and sick in their care.
Furthermore, the wounded and sick under their care remain protected even if the medical personnel themselves lose their protection.
New Irish citizens: ‘I hear the racist and xenophobic slurs on the streets. Everything is blamed on immigrants’
Jack Reynor: ‘We were in two minds between eloping or going the whole hog but we got married in Wicklow with about 220 people’
‘I could have gone to California. At this rate, I probably would have raised about half a billion dollars’
Matt Williams: Take a deep breath and see how Sam Prendergast copes with big Fiji test
Thus, by simple deduction the IDF has broken international human rights law and is committing a war crime. – Yours, etc,
Prof COLIN P DOHERTY,
Head of School of Medicine,
Trinity College Dublin,
Dublin 2.
Sir, – As a way of atonement for his appalling gaffe in presenting a bowl of shamrock to US president Joe Biden, and being rebuffed by the continuation of the supply of weapons to Israel, perhaps Leo Varadkar and his Government colleagues will now recognise the State of Palestine and desist from hiding behind European Union evasion on the issue. – Yours, etc,
TOM HYLAND,
Dili,
Timor-Leste.