The infuriating case of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya
His predicament is a mirror into the moral rot we are sliding ever deeper with each passing day of unchecked Israeli impunity.
On Thursday, an Israeli kangaroo court extended Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya’s detention in Israel’s rape-and-torture dungeons for another six months. Kidnapped from his hospital on December 27, 2024, for not giving into Israeli demands to shut it down and go home, Dr. Abu Safiya has been languishing in the occupation’s notorious hellholes ever since.
At the time of Dr. Abu Safiya’s abduction from Kamal Adwan Hospital — the last one functioning in northern Gaza at the time after a months-long Israeli attempt to ethnically cleanse the top half of the enclave as part of the ghastly General’s Plan — along with several members of the hospital staff, including doctors, nurses, medical technicians, and patients, terrorists of the Israeli occupation forces stripped them naked and sexually abused them.
It took several days before the Israelis even acknowledged they had indeed kidnapped Dr. Abu Safiya, even though he was last seen walking into an Israeli tank and speaking to a Zionist.
It wasn’t until February that Dr. Abu Safiya — the then acting director of Kamal Adwan Hospital after the previous incumbent was also abducted in early 2024 — was allowed legal counsel — a full 47 days after his abduction. The legal counsel revealed that the doctor was “subjected to various forms of torture and inhuman and degrading treatment.”
The next significant update on Dr. Abu Safiya came only in July, when his lawyer revealed that he had lost 40 percent of his bodyweight and was not in a good condition due to relentless physical abuse. “Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya is not okay,” lawyer Ghaid Qassem revealed on July 14, following her visit to the doctor’s cell in Ofer Prison on July 9. “He has lost over 40 kilograms — more than one-third of his body weight. At the time of his arrest, he weighed 100 kg — today, he weighs no more than 60 kg.”
Qassem recounted harrowing testimony of abuse:
On June 24, 2025, he was severely beaten. His room (Room 1, Section 24 – Ofer Prison) was specifically raided. He was brutally assaulted in the chest area and sustained severe bruises to the face, head, back, and neck. The beating lasted approximately 30 minutes. Dr. Hussam requested medical care, proper testing, and to be examined by a cardiologist — but his request was denied. He suffers from irregular heartbeat. His eyeglasses, which had recently been sent to him through his lawyer, were broken.
He is still wearing winter clothes while enduring starvation, torture, solitary confinement, and total deprivation — buried underground with no exposure to sunlight. Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, like all Palestinian detainees, is not okay.
In a petition, Amnesty International has called the doctor’s detention part of Israel’s systematic targeting of Palestinian health workers:
Dr. Abu Safiya’s arrest and ongoing arbitrary detention without charges or trial — based on the abusive Unlawful Combatants’ Law — is a reflection of Israel’s systematic targeting of Palestinian health workers and the decimation of the healthcare system in Gaza in order to inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians.
On the latest extension of his detention by the occupation’s kangaroo courts, Issam Younis, the director of Al Mezan, a Gaza-based human-rights organisation, said that Dr. Abu Safiya is being “held as a hostage.”
“Today’s decision to extend Dr. Abu Safiya’s detention is completely baseless and further confirms that he is being held as a hostage,” Al Mezan’s Younis said.
Still not charged with any crime, the doctor keeps asking the Israelis why he is being incarcerated. “He has never been charged, was initially denied access to legal counsel, and has endured inhumane treatment ever since his abduction, including torture and starvation, which has taken a serious toll on his physical well-being,” Younis revealed. “Dr. Abu Safiya was not allowed to attend in person, but our lawyer said that he was clearly desperate to be released. When he was given the chance to speak, he repeated that he has done nothing wrong and asked the court why he has been detained in the first place.”
Even before his incarceration, Dr. Abu Safiya endured herculean burdens — both professional and personal — as the steward of northern Gaza’s last functioning hospital.
In a bid to shut it down, the Israelis besieged Kamal Adwan Hospital for nearly three months, dropping bombs on it from drones and wheeled robots, and positioned snipers to shoot anyone entering or leaving the hospital. The indiscriminate bombings in the vicinity of the hospital led to the martyrdom of his son Ibrahim. The 20-year-old wished to follow his father’s footsteps and study medicine. His life cut short, Ibrahim was buried hastily near the hospital. A tearful Dr. Abu Safiya led the funeral prayers for his young son.
Dr. Abu Safiya himself was injured in one of dozens of attacks on the hospital, sending messages from a hospital bed while grimacing in pain. But the determined doctor never gave in to the demands of the genocidaires, fulfilling his humanitarian duties while recovering from his own injuries.
Issuing daily updates on the state of the besieged hospital via his Instagram account, Dr. Abu Safiya filmed Israeli drones dropping bombs directly on the hospital and in its vicinity. He captured footage of automated vehicles dropping bombs inside the hospital, and made fervent pleas for help when the Israelis bombed the hospital’s generators, which powered the oxygen tanks, one night.
Ten months after his abduction, the Israelis have provided no legal basis for Dr. Abu Safiya’s continued incarceration. It’s because they do not have one. It’s also because they do not need to. Israeli impunity has no parallel in history. The occupation forces accused him of being a “terrorist” and of “holding a rank” in Hamas. They labelled his hospital a “Hamas terrorist stronghold.” But to this day, they have not been able to produce a single piece of evidence for their egregious accusations.
An honourable civilian, Dr. Abu Safiya has no business being in prison. He should have long been released. However, the Israelis refused to release him in the prisoner exchanges earlier this year and have insisted upon keeping him behind bars even during the ongoing exchange.
He has no ties to the resistance. Dr. Abu Safiya’s record is public. International humanitarian organisations and numerous doctors have called for his immediate release, but the Israelis remain adamant.
This is an utter moral outrage. This is yet another message from the Israelis: resistance — even in the form of medical care for the victims of their barbarism — is a punishable crime. The only acceptable Palestinians are those who either leave or die. Everyone else is a “terrorist.”
Dr. Abu Safiya’s continued imprisonment is a deliberate act of terror by the Jewish supremacists in Tel Aviv who want nothing but complete submission and utter annihilation of the Palestinians. Dr. Abu Safiya’s “crime” is refusing to abandon the sick and dying, to uphold his oath as a doctor under fire, to remain human in a sea of barbarism. In abusing him, Israelis seek vengeance against a man who bore witness, who refused to look away, and who refused to leave or die.
The world must not look away either. We must bear witness to the gut-wrenching barbarism inflicted on Dr. Abu Safiya — and do everything within our power to help free him. His predicament is a mirror reflecting the moral rot we are sliding deeper into with each passing day of unchecked Israeli impunity.
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Israeli Impunity: two words that scar our souls every bloody day. Isn't it mind boggling how so many of us are affected psychologically by that idea of these sexual-pervert psychopaths, these-Epsteins in-the-flesh getting away with this. On the heads of these innocent noble people. Continually. With Impunity. Damn it hurts.
I am now just about lost for words to express my outrage, fury and despair over the appallingly sadistic treatment of the dedicated Dr Abu Safiya whose case I have tried to follow since his arrest and incarceration in Ofer prison. And the death by the IDF of his son and then, with a broken heart, his mother.
I’ve heard medical groups have tried in vain to get him released. How is this Zio evil ever going to be stopped…..?