Israel Is Carrying Out a War on Hospitals
In both Gaza and Lebanon, Israel’s attacks on hospitals and health care are part of a deliberate effort to collectively punish and depopulate large geographic areas.

Search and rescue operations continue in Beirut, Lebanon, after an Israeli air strike hit the area around the Rifik Hariri hospital on October 22, 2024. (Murat Sengul / Anadolu via Getty Images)
In early October, Shoshan Hassan Mazraani, the head emergency department nurse at the Marjayoun hospital in southern Lebanon, was drinking coffee at work when she saw an Israeli strike hit without warning “directly on the ambulances” outside. The attack killed seven paramedics and wounded five others. The same day, Israeli strikes repeatedly hit Salah Ghandour Hospital in the nearby town of Bint Jbeil. In that assault, nine hospital workers were injured, several critically.
“The hospital was struck three times,” the facility’s director, a physician named Moanes Kalakish said later. “One shell struck the on-call room and two shells struck the paramedics’ waiting room, [both] inside the hospital.”
In the weeks since, Israeli attacks have struck medical systems across Lebanon, hitting hospitals, ambulances, and clinics as part of an aerial assault and invasion that has now killed more than 3,000 people, including over 150 health care and rescue workers, in the past twelve months.