More than 150 American doctors, nurses and other medical workers who volunteered in Gaza over the past nearly two years on Wednesday called on the Trump administration to end its support for Israel’s war in the besieged enclave.
In a letter addressed to President Donald Trump and shared exclusively with NBC News, the 152 American health workers who volunteered in Gaza described their experiences and called on the administration to end the U.S.’ “military, economic and diplomatic support” for Israel’s offensive.
“This is the right thing to do, and we believe it is required under both American and international law,” states the letter from doctors who have volunteered in Gaza with organizations including Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, MedGlobal, the International Medical Corps and others.
“Everybody that goes over there is horrified by what they see,” Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon based in Stockton, California, who organized the letter, told NBC News in a phone interview. “And you know, most of us know that it’s mostly American weapons that are being used.”
According to health officials in the enclave, Israeli forces have killed more than 65,000 Palestinians since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led terrorist attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and resulted in about 250 kidnapped.
The U.S. approved at least $17.9 billion in security assistance for Israeli military operations in Gaza and elsewhere from Oct. 7, 2023 through September 2024, according to estimates from Brown University’s Costs of War Project.
“It’s very strange to know that your government is sending the weapons that you’re pulling out of kids’ faces,” Sidhwa added, noting the U.S.’ role as Israel’s closest ally and biggest arms supplier.
The letter, which was sent to Trump’s office Wednesday by email and physically mailed the same day, comes two days after the president unveiled a peace plan alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he said could bring an end to the war in Gaza and see hostages held there released.
Hamas has signaled it will respond to the peace plan soon. If the group which has run Gaza since 2007 rejects it, Trump warned, Israel would have U.S. backing to “finish the job of destroying the threat of Hamas.”
Dr. Kathleen Gallagher, a general and acute care surgeon in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and a signatory of the letter, left Gaza a few days ago after spending more than three weeks there. The U.S. Army veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq who has also worked in Ukraine, said that what she witnessed in Gaza was “far and above the worst, just the worst thing I’ve ever seen.”
Nothing prepared her for “just the absolute scale of destruction” and the “scope of the displacement,” she said. Malnutrition appeared widespread, while every day Nasser Hospital where she spent most of time was flooded with the wounded and the dead.
The hunger crisis in Gaza spiraled this past year under Israel’s offensive and aid blockade, with the world’s leading authority on hunger declaring famine in areas of the enclave’s north in August.
Gallagher said nearly half of the patients she treated were gunshot victims. She added almost all of them had been struck while seeking aid.
Those shot were “disproportionately young males” with injuries often including single shots to the head and “lots of very accurate neck shots.”
In one case, she said, a 6-month-old girl was brought to the facility after being shot as her mother tried to get aid. The baby did not survive.
Gallagher said around 45% of the patients she saw had suffered “explosive injuries.”
Dr. Thaer Ahmad, an emergency physician, another signatory, said doctors and other medical workers spent the past nearly two years treating patients with a health care system under relentless attack — and with scarce supplies with limited aid coming in.
“They’ve tried to serve their people in just this absolutely heroic way, but they’ve been targeted this entire time,” he said in a phone interview.
Of Gaza’s 36 hospitals, none are fully functioning, with 14 providing partial services, according to World Health Organization data. Meanwhile, the wider health system, including ambulances and field hospitals, have been attacked more than 780 times, with more than 1,500 health workers killed, according to the United Nations.
Israel says Hamas uses hospitals and medical centers for military activities, including as “command and control” hubs, opening them to attack. Hamas has denied doing so, while humanitarian groups and the U.N., have said that Israel has not provided sufficient evidence to substantiate its claims.
The letter’s signatories also said they had never seen “any type of Palestinian militant activity” in Gaza’s hospitals or other health care facilities during their combined more than 460 weeks working within the health system. Sidhwa said he was aware of just one U.S. doctor having treated someone who appeared to be a combatant at one point, but said that did not suggest activity within the hospital.
Sidhwa, who also organized multiple letters to the Biden administration, said he was hopeful the voices of more than 150 American medical workers who have experienced Israel’s offensive on the ground would have some impact on the Trump administration, despite Washington’s stalwart support for Israel and its offensive.
“Most of the doctors that come back think it’s traumatic,” Sidhwa said. “But for me, it’s not the death and the guts.”
“It’s really just knowing that we’re responsible for it.”