A Response to JAMA
Have you ever met a Palestinian? I found myself wondering this as I read the letters published in JAMA this month, which, as one physician described, were “rife with anti-Palestinian tropes.”1 The source of the message and the language used are sickening. The intent, though not outwardly stated as such, screams at me from my computer screen. Accomplished doctors, in a prestigious medical journal, are pushing dehumanizing narratives to manufacture consent for a genocide. Accomplished doctors, in a prestigious medical journal, are pushing dehumanizing narratives to manufacture consent for a genocide. Surely you would immediately reject such narratives if you had ever had the opportunity to meet a Palestinian. But of course you have, you work with them daily. There are 7 million Palestinians in a diaspora that has one of the highest average educational attainments of any population.2,3 You may think perhaps you have never had a Palestinian colleague, but many protect themselves out of a well-founded fear of receiving discrimination or even hatred before someone actually takes the time to get to know them.3 That Lebanese, Jordanian, or Egyptian colleague, that “Arab-looking” colleague that you’ve never asked about? That colleague that you respect and consider one of the best in your field? That colleague knows well that if they said, “I’m Palestinian,” they would see the immediate and all too familiar change in your face. That colleague has heard you justifying the deaths of their family. That colleague has heard you joke and brag about trying to get people fired for defending Palestinian health and life. That colleague rightfully doesn’t trust you, and neither do I. As a doctor, as an educator, or as a parent. The medical students and residents ask me if their attendings will evaluate them fairly if they know their trainee is Palestinian. Parents ask me if they can trust that all physicians will treat their children as they would their own. I can’t lie.
I’ve written and re-written a letter to the medical community countless times, updating statistics. This many deaths, this many orphans, this many amputations without anesthesia. What number will it take? White phosphorous burns, suffocation under the rubble, man-made starvation. It’s the anniversary of Rachel Corrie’s murder.4 I share a video clip as if to say, “Look at her white skin, her blonde hair! Listen to her American accent! Will this convince you to care?” The truth is I don’t have the words or images to make you care that other people, other children, are suffering. Countless others have tried. I also don’t have the words to adequately convey the utter heartbreak and disappointment of learning how many of my colleagues, whether they recognize it or not, place human lives into tiers of quantified value. Another white woman asks if I’m afraid of losing my job for speaking out. Sure, I respond, but I didn’t go into medicine to keep my job but lose my morality. Paul Biggar said he wasn’t prepared to learn how many of his friends in tech were brownshirts, were camp guards, would actively cheer on a genocide.5 But in medicine? I thought we took an oath. Didn’t we all take an oath?
I suppose, then, this letter is not for them. It’s for the patients who are afraid to seek medical care because they can’t be sure that their doctor considers them a human worth caring for. It’s for my Palestinian colleagues who have to choose between hiding who they are or being discriminated against because of it. It’s also for all of my other racialized colleagues who are minoritized and marginalized in medicine, many of whom recognize that the Palestine exception has always been just a thin veil, barely covering the deep-rooted and all-encompassing racism underneath.6 In the words of Hala Alyan, the most beautiful role of the ally, of a human, is to bear witness.7 So, to my colleagues, my friends, my patients, to my collective human family, please know: I see what you see.
References
1. https://mondoweiss.net/2024/03/doctors-justify-genocide-in-a-prestigious-journal/.
2. https://www.pcbs.gov.ps/portals/_pcbs/PressRelease/Press_En_IntPopulationDy2023E.pdf.
3. Serhan, R. "Palestinian American National Research Project." Washington, DC: The General Delegation of the PLO to the United States (2015).
4. “Israeli bulldozer kills American protester.” CNN . March 25, 2003. h ttps://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/03/16/rafah.death/.
5. https://blog.paulbiggar.com/i-cant-sleep/.
6. Hill, M.L., & Plitnick, M. (2021). Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics . The New Press.
7. https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cz3r-W5OcQb/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==.