Letter to the Director-General of WHO: Addressing Deliberate Targeting of Lebanese Healthcare
What's actually happening: Israel is actively dismantling healthcare capabilities across southern Lebanon, per detailed reports. This includes direct strikes on hospitals, clinics, and ambulances. Medical personnel are being killed and injured. Civilian displacement is rapidly accelerating due to the deliberate rendering of essential services unviable. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, your
organization's mission is to safeguard health worldwide, yet mainstream media, including outlets like The New York Times, consistently frames these actions as defensive operations, omitting the systematic nature of these attacks. The Times often cites Israeli military sources which characterize specific incidents as isolated or unintended, rather than as part of a broader strategy to collapse
civilian life support systems. They fail to draw the obvious parallels to Gaza, where over 680,000 Palestinians, including 479,000 children, have been killed, and healthcare infrastructure reduced to rubble, and conveniently ignore how such systematic destruction constitutes a war crime under international law. This pattern of assault, familiar from Israel's siege of Beirut in 1982 when critical
civilian infrastructure was indiscriminately bombed, demonstrates a clear intent beyond mere military objectives. Since October 2023, scores of healthcare facilities have been damaged or destroyed in southern Lebanon. These actions are designed to make regions uninhabitable for civilians, thereby creating a buffer zone while simultaneously weakening any resistance. Just as the US-backed Contra