Witnessing Crimes Against Humanity

Last week, the Technion was privileged to host Dr Qanta Ahmed, physician specializing in sleep disorders, journalist, and public commentator. Dr Ahmed first visited the Technion in 2013, after contacting then-Technion President Peretz Lavie. In 2015, she was awarded a Technion Honorary Fellowship “in tribute to her tireless and courageous battle for human rights in the Muslim world, and to her vigorous opposition to radical Islam and to antisemitism, and in gratitude for her friendship to the State of Israel and the Technion”.

“I came here not in a professional capacity, but as a human being, to show solidarity, and to bear witness to the atrocities committed by Hamas,” Dr Ahmed said. “We have a responsibility to bear witness, so no doubt can be cast that these crimes happened.”

Dr Qanta Ahmed

Wearing blue and white, Dr Ahmed spoke for a full hour of what she had witnessed: in Kibbutz Be’eri, one of the Kibbutzim where Hamas massacred citizens; in Shura Base, where bodies of the victims are still being identified; and in the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute, where experts are examining fragments of teeth and bone so as to be able to update families not knowing whether their loved ones were abducted or killed.

“This was not ‘yet another terrorist attack’,” she recounted. “I saw bodies restrained with zip ties and electric cords, I saw multiple modes of death on single bodies, I saw remains of people burnt at temperatures over 700°C – temperatures only achievable with chemical accelerants. These are crimes against humanity. Hamas came prepared, with plans carefully laid out, to commit genocide against the Jewish people. They went systematically, house by house, murdering men, women, and children, and they filmed it all to cause additional psychological pain.”

“If there is anything more barbaric than what I saw, it is the denial of the event,” she continued.  “I’ve read about Holocaust denial, but now I’m seeing it firsthand. The more evidence is shown, the more vehement the denial is. When we saw such crimes in Bosnia, we called it genocide. When we saw such crimes in Rwanda, we called it genocide. When we saw ISIS committing such crimes against the Yazidis, we called it genocide. Why is it then, that when Jews are the victims, people feel the need to ‘contextualise’, to justify Hamas? It staggers me that the same communities that were horrified by ISIS, are now providing legitimacy to Hamas. I can give it no other name, but antisemitism.”

Dr Qanta Ahmed

“There is a Hadith,” Dr Ahmed told, “it says, if you see injustice, you must fight it. If you cannot fight it with actions, speak out against it, fight it with words. If you cannot speak out, at least bear witness to it, carry it in your heart. But never turn back on injustice. I could not live with myself if I turned my back on this.”

“Hamas is an Islamist organisation, same as ISIS, more malignant and better funded, in fact. Islamism pursues cosmic, religionised lethal antisemitism as one of its central tenets. If there is genocide being committed in Gaza, it is committed by Hamas, who uses its own fellow Muslim population in service of its political aims. We know that Hamas uses medical infrastructure to shelter its centres of operations, uses Palestinians as human shields. Islamism isn’t Islam. I cannot describe how repugnant it is to me to hear the Shahada, the declaration of my faith, cried by terrorists murdering innocent people.”

“Your friendship is particularly dear to us in these trying times, some of the hardest moments in Jewish history,” Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan thanked Dr Ahmed.

When one suffers an unspeakable tragedy, it is incredibly meaningful to know that one isn’t alone, but has friends who will see their grief, share their pain, stand with them, and support them. We are grateful to have such a friend in Dr Ahmed. We hope that there are others who, like her, will dare to stand with us against the radical deranged hatred that we are facing.