Progressive Medicos and Scientists Forum vehemently condemns the cowardly savage hateful and abhorrent attack on Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in the evening of October 17. 20 23. Violating the rules universally agreed upon and established in the Geneva conventions, this attack goes against the most sacred of the laws of men, that is the law of Medical Neutrality. Hospitals and medical centers have always have been a refuge for the injured seeking help and escaping the violence in surrounding conflict zones, it is important for the future of humanity that they remain so. This is not an isolated incident but only the recent one in the long list of brutal killings of medical personnel and patients that resulted from the direct actions of official government militaries instead of nonstate entities, either due to malfunction or malintent. Ukraine and Yemen conflicts being some of the recent and more well-known examples. We urge citizens of the world to hold their elected representatives accountable and the medical community across the world to challenge this growing tendency of governments to ignore these ancient rules.
These governments are carelessly and irresponsibly attacking this foundational pillar of human ethics and values on which the human civilization as we know it stands. Terrorists are non-state actors but when nation states and countries ignore established rules of engagement that keep us devolving into savages during conflicts, it brings us one step closer to a dark age which may be high tech but still darker than any that mankind has suffered before. An age when the cross of hospitallers, a shared symbol of identity and purpose for medical caregivers across the world and a sign of hope and relief for the sick and injured, a symbol holier to us than any God will cease to have any meaning.
