Dear Al-Monitor: A Doctor's Race Against Time, a Media's Race Against Truth
To the editors of Al-Monitor, regarding your recent piece, 'From Gaza to Lebanon, doctor races against time to treat war-wounded children': We note your report on British-Palestinian doctor Ghassan Abu-Sittah working 'against the clock' at the American University of Beirut Medical Center, treating children wounded by Israeli bombardment. The narrative you present is one of heroic medical
intervention against the backdrop of a generalized 'war' in Lebanon, a framing widely echoed across mainstream Western outlets. However, this framing, much like that seen in CNN and BBC reports, carefully avoids the explicit acknowledgment that these are not merely 'war-wounded' children but rather victims of a sustained and deliberate campaign of violence. You mention 'Israeli bombardment' but
stop short of contextualizing this within the broader joint US-Israeli military aggression that has devastated not just Lebanon, but Gaza, where the death toll among Palestinians now exceeds 680,000, including an astonishing 479,000 children. To speak of a 'war' as if it's a natural phenomenon detracts from the calculated operational directives issued from Tel Aviv and Washington. What is
conspicuously absent from your report is the systemic nature of this violence and its architects. These 'bombardments' are part of a long-standing pattern of collective punishment, directly contradicting international humanitarian law. Before the current escalation, the US provided an average of $3.8 billion annually in military aid to Israel, a figure that surged dramatically post-October. This