What If It Were Israel Rather Than Gaza?
Gaza, Medicine, and the Collapse of Moral Authority.
By Paul Alexander Wolf, FRACGP
June 28, 2025

In Brief:
This article argues that the medical profession’s silence over Gaza is not neutrality, but moral abdication. Drawing comparisons to Ukraine and historical genocides, it calls on doctors and institutions to reclaim their ethical voice, confront hypocrisy, and act with conscience.

—->>>

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,
who put darkness for light and light for darkness…
who acquit the guilty for a bribe,
and deny justice to the innocent.”

• Isaiah 5:20–23

This is not about ideology.
It is about whether we still recognize the human face behind every statistic –
beyond race, religion, or geography.

⸻

A Call for Moral Clarity in Tumultuous Times

Imagine thousands of Israeli children –
starving behind siege lines, silent in suffering.
Would we remain silent?

If hospitals in Tel Aviv were bombed,
doctors executed beside their patients,
food convoys attacked –
would our medical institutions stay “neutral”?
Would regulators warn physicians that speaking out “undermines public trust”?

We already know the answer.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, the response was swift, clear, undeniable.
Governments, medical colleges, and leaders named atrocities, emphasized ethics, and took decisive action—
no hesitation, no ambiguity.

But when the victims are Palestinian –
starving children, hospitals under fire, journalists assassinated –
we are told to be careful.
To hold back.
To remain silent.

This is not neutrality.
This is moral abdication dressed as professionalism.
Silence enables violence.
Institutions hide behind it.

To stay silent is to enable harm.

Moral clarity is not a political statement.
It is a professional duty – imprinted in the oath we swore, as healers and as humans.

⸻

Memory and the Shield of History

Recently, Spain condemned the atrocities in Gaza as genocide.
Prime Minister Netanyahu responded by saying Spain was “on the wrong side of history.”

But which history do we choose to invoke?

The history that mourns gas chambers but tolerates starvation camps?
The history that honors courageous journalists exposed to danger –
yet today’s reporters are hunted and silenced, their families killed beside them?

We say “Never Again,”
but what we often mean is:
Never Again – except for them, unless they look like us?

True remembrance demands vigilance, not immunity.
It calls us to look accurately at history –
not to shield governments from accountability, but to hold them accountable.

When South Africa appeared before the International Court of Justice,
naming atrocities others refused to see,
it did not betray history.
It fulfilled it.

Today, the silence that failed to stop trains to Auschwitz
is once again enabling the bombs, the starvation and the relentless killings in Gaza.

⸻

The Hierarchy of Human Suffering

This is not a distant conflict.
It is a mirror reflecting a deeper moral failure.

When victims are white, Western, strategically aligned,
human rights are invoked without hesitation.

When victims are Palestinian – stateless, besieged, voiceless –
those same rights are questioned, debated, dismissed.

We teach our medical students about health equity.
We profess justice in lecture halls.

But our institutions – our actions – reveal a different truth.

Palestinians are made the exception.
Their hunger, their suffering, their hospitals –
reduced to political debates or left to rubble.

This isn’t just a failure of compassion.
It’s embedded moral discrimination –
an ongoing, institutionalized apartheid of conscience.

⸻

The Silence Within Our Profession

Where are our professional guardians?
The voices meant to champion the vulnerable?

The RACGP issues CPD updates,
regulators warn practitioners to avoid “political statements.”

But what is unprofessional about saying children should not starve?
About hospitals being bombed?

When did affirming the value of life become a threat?
When did speaking truth become an act of risk rather than fidelity to our oath?

This is not regulation.
Is this cowardice dressed as professionalism?
A sedation of conscience, cloaked in “neutrality.”?

Make no mistake:
To speak out is not reckless.
It is fidelity – to do no harm, and to uphold the essence of healing.

⸻

When Conscience Follows Commerce

We must also examine ourselves.

Medicine today is increasingly transactional –
gap fees rise, vocational purpose wanes, market forces dominate.

Conscience follows the dollar; justice becomes inconvenient.

The RACGP has marketed this drift,
emphasizing efficiency over ethics.

Care plans serve billing cycles more than patients.
Compliance is rewarded, courage is not.

This is more than an economic failure.
It is a spiritual one.

When profit measures care, the moral reserve weakens –
our profession’s soul erodes.

We must reclaim our core.
• Foster transparency and advocacy.
• Demonstrate that ethical practice and sustainability can coexist.
• Resist the commodification that disconnects us from our moral calling.

⸻

A Personal Reckoning

My father – leader of a Dutch resistance cell –
sheltered Jews and fought real evil during WWII.

He refused to hate but understood that evil must be named, confronted, opposed.

He believed in conscience, not hatred.
He believed that moral action – call it courage – is the hallmark of humanity.

If he were alive today,
watching Gaza burn, doctors punished, voices silenced –
he would mourn.
And he would ask:

How did a profession built on conscience become afraid of its own voice?

⸻

This Is Bigger Than Us

The crisis in Gaza reflects a broader cultural erosion –
the rise of tribalism, greed, moral numbness, and media manipulation.

We are building a world where truth is inconvenient –
where conscience is outsourced to institutions and the status quo.

We did not create this world,
but in our silence, we help author its cruelty.

⸻

A Call to Action

Let us speak plainly, with conviction:
• Hospitals must never be targeted.
• Ambulances must always be protected.
• Children must not be starved behind siege lines.
• Doctors must never be punished for saying these truths.

Are these political statements?
Only if morality itself has become political.

These are the foundations of human decency –
our professional oath.

If we cannot affirm them without fear,
then medicine in this country has lost its soul.

⸻

The Light That Endures

Yes, the world watches Gaza – often in silence.
But light persists.

In the testimonies of street medics under fire.
In the voices of courageous journalists – Amira Hass, Gideon Levy, Ilan Pappe –
who refuse to be silenced.
In Israel itself, within the moral minority that resists.

“Light does not vanish in darkness,” they remind us.
It resists, quietly but bravely.

We are not alone.

And we must decide:

Will we join them?
Will we rekindle that moral light?

Courage is not dead.
It only needs company.

⸻

Join the Movement

Over 1,100 RACGP members and supporters already stand for justice.

🔗 Sign the Petition:
https://www.change.org/p/history-will-judge-our-silence-over-gaza-won-t-it-racgp-members-please-sign

Let us be doctors again.
Let us be human again.
Let us speak.
Let us act.
And let us never again confuse fear with integrity.

⸻