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Dozens of artists, including Cynthia Nixon, Mark Ruffalo and Ilana Glazer, have joined with doctors, human rights leaders and humanitarian organizations to call for the immediate restoration of medical care in Gaza in a letter addressed to the state of Israel and world leaders.
“Israel’s systematic attacks on hospitals and unlawful blockade have collapsed Gaza’s healthcare system,” says the letter, which was shared exclusively with the Guardian. “Through its policies and military activities, the government of Israel has deliberately inflicted conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of Palestinians in Gaza and then denied the very help that could save them.”
The first signatory on Monday’s letter is the mother of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old girl from Gaza City who was killed by Israeli fire in January 2024 while waiting for a team of Palestinian paramedics whose ambulance was shelled while trying to reach her. Her story has been memorialized in the Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania’s latest film, The Voice of Hind Rajab, which has been shortlisted for an Academy Award.
“Hind Rajab did not die because help was impossible, but because it was denied,” Ben Hania said in a statement to the Guardian. Ben Hania joined with Hind’s mother, Wesam Hamada, to sign on to the letter assembled by a group of non-profits.
Other signatories include Brian Eno, Rosie O’Donnell and Morgan Spector. The Israeli organization B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights are among the human rights groups that signed the letter, which will be presented to UK and EU leaders in parliamentary meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday this week.
The letter calls for the “immediate, unconditional, unhindered and sustained humanitarian access into Palestine”, including the entry of medical and humanitarian personnel.
Israel recently banned dozens of aid agencies from work in Gaza and the West Bank, including Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), on the grounds that they would not fulfill onerous registration requirements that the groups say would put their staff at risk. MSF says it supports one in five of Gaza’s hospital beds and one in three mothers during childbirth.
The UN Human Rights Office estimates that 94% of Gaza’s hospitals have been damaged or destroyed since Israel’s assault on Gaza began in 2023. At least 1,722 healthcare workers have been killed by the Israeli military over two years of war, the group said. Many medical items, including wheelchairs and walkers, have been barred entry.
A panel of UN experts determined that Israel’s attacks on the sector and its workers amounted to “medicide” – the systematic destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system and a component of Israel’s larger campaign against Palestinians that legal experts have called genocide.
Cogat, the Israeli military agency that controls access to Gaza, said in response to a question from the Guardian that “the registration process is intended to prevent the exploitation of aid by Hamas”, though a US analysis recently found no evidence of Hamas systematically looting aid convoys. The Israeli military did not provide comment by publication.
The letter asks world leaders to take “immediate action” to restore and enable medical access for patients in Gaza and the West Bank, where increasing restrictions on movement have affected access to medical care.
More than 18,500 Palestinians await medical evacuation from Gaza, (MSF) estimated in December. The humanitarian agency said that at least 1,000 people have died awaiting care.
Dr Thaer Gazawneh, a Chicago-based emergency physician who signed Monday’s letter, believes that Israel’s restrictions are designed to push Palestinians out of Gaza.
“[They] are making the living conditions in Gaza so unbearable that people will be forced to be displaced again.”
Gazawneh volunteers in the West Bank where he said it had become nearly impossible to dispatch emergency responders due to Israeli checkpoints and the threat of arbitrary arrests. At least 384 medical workers have been unlawfully detained by Israel’s military, according to the NGO Healthcare Workers Watch.
“This call for medical access is urgent because medicine and care is the bare minimum of humanity, and when even that’s blocked, it puts every person on the planet at risk of being treated the same way: subhuman,” Glazer told the Guardian. Glazer, a New York-based Jewish comedian and actor first famed for her television series Broad City, has been a sharp critic of Israel’s war in Gaza, and previously signed a letter alongside 150 Jewish creatives calling for a ceasefire and the safe return of hostages.
Hind’s mother told the Guardian that the issue of medical access felt particularly personal because her daughter had dreamed of becoming a doctor.
“Hind never bought any ordinary toys or dolls like other children. She always chose doctor’s toys: a stethoscope, a plastic syringe, a small first-aid kit. She would treat her dolls, pat them, and promise them that everything would be all right,” Hamada said.
“Hind’s dream is no longer to become a doctor, but for the children of Gaza to find a doctor, a hospital, medicine, and safety.”
