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Cafe Palestine 31
Saturday 11th December
3.45pm (UK time) / 5.45pm (Pal time)
Dr Ghassan S. Abu-Sittah
“Treating the war injured child in the Gaza Strip”
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82963047342?pwd=TG5CMkZYUGNCN0ltVXU0L1Fna3Fydz09
1. Café Palestine 31: “Treating the war Injured child in the Gaza Strip” with Dr Ghassan S. Abu-Sittah and Naji Naji
2. New UN Commission of Enquiry on crimes committed in Palestine
3. BDSCampaign Calls for wider UN investigation, plus new video
4. The Right to Protest and the Right to Boycott: articles and a forthcoming documentary
5. Defence of the Child International: new video ‘Caged Childhood’
6. Fanon, the struggle for justice, and mental health: webinar recording7. Home demolitions brought to London’s streets: JCB exposed in ICAHD-UK projection8. Lara Sheehi to present this year’s Tom Hurndall Memorial Lecture…
1: Café Palestine 31
“Treating the war Injured child in the Gaza Strip” with Dr Ghassan S. Abu-Sittah, and with the participation of Naji Naji, a Palestinian woundee with a motor disability. They will be in conversation with Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian.One of the biggest challenges in reconstructing the war injured child is that their growing body will always try to outgrow the war wound. This phenomenon is as true of physical scars as is it of mental health and social wounds. Israel’s wars on the Gaza Strip are unique in having the highest percentage of children amongst its dead and wounded of the any other conflict in the world. For example, 30% of those killed during the May 2021 assault were children and further 685 were wounded. During the Great Marches of Return 22% of those killed by Israeli army snipers were children (48) with a further 4974 wounded (25%), of whom 1500 were wounded by sniper fire leaving around 35 with amputations.Dr Abu-Sittar will share his thoughts on the challenges facing the war-injured child, physical and psychological, growing out of his experience working as a surgeon through four deadly assaults on Gaza. For further details of Dr Abu-Sittar’s achievements, see the biographical note at the end of this email.Naji Naji is a member of the Committee for Bicycles for People with Disabilities in Gaza.
The Cafe will open with live music at 3.45pm (UK time) / 5.45pm (Pal time)The discussion will start at 4.00pm (UK) / 6.00pm (Palestine)
The whole event is expected to finish at about 5.30pm (UK) / 7.30pm (Palestine)
نوفر خدمة الترجمة إلى اللغة العربية في مقهى فلسطين لمن يحتاجون إلىها، سيكون هناك ملخص حصري ومتداول باللغة العربية للعرض والأسئلة والإجابات
إذا كنت تحتاج إلى الترجمة إلى اللغة العربية، أرسل رسالة إلى الإيميل التالي
ukpalmhn@gmail.com
ستتوفر الترجمة من خلال الانضمام إلى مجموعة في تطبيق الواتساب
ARABIC TRANSLATION AT CAFE PALESTINE: Throughout Cafe Palestine there will be a rolling Arabic text summary of the presentation, questions and answers available via Whatsapp. Please contact ukpalmhn@gmail.com if you would like to be added to the Whatsapp Arabic translation group.
2: New UN Commission of Enquiry into state crime in PalestineAt the last Café Palestine, lawyer Rania Madi described the establishment of an ongoing commission of enquiry at the United Nations, mandated to investigate “all alleged violations of international humanitarian law and all alleged violations and abuses of international human rights law leading up to and since 13 April 2021” in all of Palestine except the territories occupied in 1948. This is a great advance on the situation up until now, when commissions were established to investigate individual atrocities, existed for only a short time, and whose findings were easily swept under the carpet. The new commission will:
Make recommendations, in particular on accountability measures, all with a view to avoiding and ending impunity and ensuring legal accountability, including individual criminal and command responsibility, for such violations, and justice for victims; and
Make recommendations on measures to be taken by third States to ensure respect for international humanitarian law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, in accordance with article 1 common to the Geneva Conventions, and in fulfilment of their obligations under articles 146, 147 and 148 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, including by ensuring that they do not aid or assist in the commission of internationally wrongful acts.We wish the new commission a vigorous and muscular future… Details here.
3: The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign makes its call for a more in-depth investigation by the United Nations here. They have issued a powerful Youtube video in support of BDS, here.
4: The right to protest and the right to boycottWe are deeply concerned at the growing evidence that the UK Establishment is prepared to curtail civil liberties at home in order to protect the settler colonial project underway in historic Palestine. When students at the LSE exercised their right to protest the presence of Israel’s extremist ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, on campus, the Home Secretary denounced this as anti-Semitism and called for an inquiry designed to prevent such a thing happening again. This is discussed in It’s time to talk about anti-Palestinianism as a form of bigotry, by Emad Moussa, and is the subject of Barnaby Raine’s It is an anti-fascist duty to protest against the Israeli ambassador. Meanwhile, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, British Committee for Universities of Palestine and Jews for Justice for Palestinians have begun a new initiative against the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, and its misuse of anti-Semitism as a cover for settler colonialism in Palestine.
In the USA there has been significant fightback against this repressive strategy, documented in I Live in Arkansas, Not Tel Aviv. Why Is My State Telling Me Not to Boycott Israel? by Alan Leverett;. A film about efforts in the USA to protect the right to boycott has been made, and hopefully we’ll be able to share a link to this soon. In the meantime, details are available here. Director Julia Bacha is interviewed in Jewish Currents, in The Right to Boycott Is Under Attack, and the film is discussed and this piece in The Intercept by Alice Speri.
5: The latest video from Defence of the Child International: Palestine: Caged Childhood, evidencing the conditions our own politicians don’t want to be discussed in public.
6: Fanon, the struggle for justice and mental healthThis recorded webinar features, among others, Drs Samah Jabr of the Palestine Global MH Network, and Liz Berger, from the USA Network. Their reflections on colonialism and mental health in Palestine were accompanied by presentations by other contributors to the recently published book of the same name, available here.
7: Home demolitions brought to London’s streets: JCB exposed in ICAHD-UK projectionYou may remember that the UKPMHN is supporting the campaign urging the NSPCC to stop accepting financial donations from JCB, the firm supplying demolition equipment being used in Israel’s illegal activities in the occupied Palestinian territory. JCB was recently rebuked for its failure to attend to its human rights obligations by an official UK Government body. We congratulate ICAHD-UK for its latest initiative, bringing the reality of the demolition of Palestinian homes to the streets of London. ICAHD’s work exposes the failure of the UK media to inform the public about this issue, as much as it reveals the ghastly ends being served by British exports to Israeli companies. Film of the projections and further information here.
8: 6th Tom Hurndall Memorial Lecture with Dr Lara Sheehi: Psychoanalysis Under Occupation Highly recommended: another opportunity to hear Lara discuss the findings of the book she and Stephen Sheehi recently published under the same name. Tuesday, 14th December 2021 6pm-7.30pm (UK), 8pm-9.30pm (Palestine) Tickets here.
Appendix: Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah
Mr Ghassan Abu-Sittah is a British-Palestinian Associate Professor of Surgery and Plastic & Reconstructive Surgeon. He completed his medical education at University of Glasgow in the U.K. He went on to do his postgraduate residency training in London. After completing his Specialist Registrar training in London he underwent 3 fellowships: Pediatric Craniofacial Surgery at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Kids (GOS); Cleft Surgery at GOS and a further fellowship in Trauma Reconstruction at the Royal London Hospital. In 2011 he was recruited by the American University of Beirut Medical Center. In 2012 he became Head of the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the AUBMC, Clinical Lead of its Pediatric War injuries program and War Injuries Multidisciplinary Clinic. In 2015 co-founded and became director of the Conflict Medicine Program at Global Health Institute at the American University of Beirut. He returned to the UK in 2020 and continues his in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery in the private sector. He is an Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer at the Center for Blast Injury Studies at Imperial College University of London and Visiting Senior Lecturer at the Conflict & Health Research Group. He is a consultant for the Operational Trauma Initiative at the World Health Organization’s EMRO Office and serves on the board of directors of INARA, a charity dedicated to providing reconstructive surgery to war injured children in the Middle East, and Board of Trustees of the UK based Medical Aid for Palestinians. He serves on the UK’s National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) International Funding Committee. He has published extensively on the health consequences of prolonged conflict and on war injuries including a medical text book, “Reconstructing the War Injured Patient” and has a forthcoming book, “Treating the War Injured Child.” He has worked as a war surgeon in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, South Lebanon and during the 4 wars in the Gaza Strip. His work was featured by numerous newspapers and media outlets notably La Monde, The Independent, Telegraph, BBC and CNN.
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/18/middleeast/gaza-protests-surgeon-intl/index.html
الشبكة البريطانية الفلسطينية للصحة النفسية 