Readers respond to articles about health care in Gaza

As a long-standing CMAJ reader and sometime contributor I was appalled at the highly skewed report on Gaza by François Dumont. 1 Publication of such a piece seems to be way beyond the mandate of the Journal.

Israel is portrayed as an aggressor against the Gazan population for no reason, as the author fails to highlight the factors that precipitated the military action. Dumont quotes comparative death figures as if the fact that fewer Israelis died diminishes the terror felt by the Israeli population and the traumatic impact of daily exposure to potentially lethal rocket attacks. Good shelters, advanced warning systems and a state of constant tense alertness are the reasons why so few deaths have occurred in Israel.

The terrible, inhuman acts of the Gazan government against its own population are not noted in the article. No mention is made of the fact that aid materials were stolen by Hamas militiamen, that Gazan hospitals were used to hide gunmen or that medical aid offered by Israel was virtually prohibited by the Hamas regime even to the detriment of its own civilian population. Hamas gunman murdered patients in Gaza’s hospitals if they believed them to be collaborators, without anything resembling a trial. I am disappointed that CMAJ has chosen to use its pages to publish what in essence is a political piece that demonizes Israel’s need to defend its citizens and suggests that Hamas had nothing to do with the state of the population for which it is responsible.