Someone we all know was agitatedly complaining to me about the Black Caucus Group coming to Guyana to look into various aspects of allegations made by the PNC in Guyana and through its frontman in Brooklyn. He was telling me that Freddie Kissoon is correct that there are other places more relevant for them to go, such as in Israel.
I listened with empathy, but did not say anything, because my mind was far away, far away in Gaza, thinking about the people of Gaza. In the midst of chaos, brutality and the stench of death, the Palestinian Health Workers are authoring a new definition of sacrifice and heroism, and they deserve to be the recipients of the Noble Prize 2024.
The Noble Prize cannot fully reward these workers, but at least the world would be able, in some concrete way, to recognize the godly, humanitarian and selfless sacrifices these workers make for fellow sisters and brothers; for children; for women; for the elderly, as hell comes to earth. The very minimum we owe them is to recognize that no one deserves the Nobel Prize more than the Palestinian Health Workers.
The most urgent, immediate task is to secure a ceasefire. Litigating who is right or wrong is not the most urgent need. Too many innocent lives have been lost already, and far too much misery has been wrought out of this newest conflict between two populations of our sisters and brothers, who have suffered from too many historical injustices. But as the conflict plays itself out with the stench of death and suffering all around, the Palestinian Health Workers have borne a heavy burden, and no matter which side we may be on, we must recognize the humanitarian sacrifices they are making.
Every single day, every single moment, in the full view of the whole world, we see the agony, death and terror of Palestinian children, Palestinian women, and Palestinian people in general. The pain and the shame of every death, of every injury, belong to all of us. Every day, however, the Palestinian Health Workers must live in the midst of the chaos and the misery and hopelessness of dead, mangled bodies, of fatally injured people, of people fighting and screaming for their lives.
The Palestinian Health Workers do so while their own hospitals are under siege and under attack, teetering in a state of imminent collapse. They do so while their respective families may be among the dead and injured, among the hundreds of thousands displaced, among those without water and food. But they stick to what is in front of them – desperate people with blood flowing out of their bodies, with body parts literally hanging on their bodies, bawling in the midst of death; with children too weak to bawl themselves while clutched by bawling parents.
Doctors and nurses in Gaza’s hospitals, which are nearing collapse, are without electricity and basic supplies, say they must now decide which patients have a slight chance of living and which face inevitable death, because they have been put in a position to decide who gets a ventilator, who gets resuscitated, or who gets any medical treatment at all.
While physically and psychologically exhausted, they make decisions with dead bodies, bleeding bodies, dismembered bodies all around them; amid the screams of small children undergoing amputations or brain surgeries without anesthesia or clean water to wash their wounds; with maggots being their witnesses. The Palestinian Health Workers are trying to bring some relief in the midst of hell itself.
The Palestinian Health Workers are not the first to work in the midst of war. But each and every day, we hear the testimony of war veterans, who confess that they have never witnessed or heard of any wartime scenario of fiasco that might have ever been worse than the present circumstances of the Palestinian people.
Until a ceasefire is somehow achieved, the Palestinian Health Worker is the only god who is present to help these people. Many of the health workers have themselves died. Some died while taking care of those who needed them the most in their own hospitals, where bombs rained down from the heavens, bringing hell down on earth. Others died while they went home looking for their loved ones, or while their bare hands were digging people out of rubbles.
This is the time when the world’s first task is to ensure a ceasefire. We can cast blame later. We can seek a permanent solution after. Nothing exposes the wickedness and the heartlessness of the world more than the present conflict, where children have become acceptable collateral damage. When the most powerful world leaders, like the President of America and France, the Prime Minister of the UK and other powerful Heads of States, openly, by their actions, legitimize the murder and terror of children as acceptable collateral damage as one state inflicts vengeance and reprisal as reasonable and proportionate responses. The world has lost its humanity, and madness is supreme.
In the midst of evil being rolled out as the only answer to buy permanent peace in a part of our world that has seen too many conflicts; while too many countries justify evil; the Palestinian Health Workers have had no time to decide whether they should run away. They carry out their obligations of taking care of the dead, the almost dead, and all those who bawl out of their pain from injuries and the agony of losing their children, their sisters and brothers, their mothers and fathers, and their grandparents. It is not too early to recognize their bravery and courage, their sacrifices, and the most vivid example of humanitarian duty. When all of this calamity is over, we must recognize the heroism of the Palestinian Health Workers. They deserve the Nobel Prize for 2024. It must be a small part of the world’s atonement for its ugly sins.
