THE heartbreaking words spoken by imprisoned Palestinian paediatrician, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya to his lawyer on July 2, are now seared into the souls of free Palestine supporters in the same way as the image of him bravely walking towards an Israeli tank, surrounded by the rubble of his hospital.

“This is the last time you will see me,” Abu Safiya told his lawyer, Nasser Odeh, during the recent visit. “They brought me here to kill me. I don’t see myself surviving. This is the end.”

Dr Safiya is the director of Kamal Adwan hospital in Gaza from where he was abducted by Israeli forces during a December 27 2024 raid. He has been held hostage ever since, subject to barbaric beatings, torture and starvation. In June he was transferred to the notorious Rakefet prison, an underground facility so inhumane it was previously shut down, only to be reopened by the openly sadistic Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

On the recent visit, Odeh described Abu Safiya’s condition “as almost unrecognisable,” said Palestine Solidarity Campaign deputy director Peter Leary, whose group called an emergency rally across from Number 10 Downing Street on July 7. Leary said Odeh found Abu Safiya emaciated, weak and covered in fresh bruises and wounds.

At the rally, where speakers demanded Abu Safiya’s immediate release and transfer to hospital, as well as the release of 13 other doctors held hostage in Israeli prisons, Samer Jaber, representing the Red Ribbons Campaign, recalled the pediatrician’s bravery and commitment.

“When Gaza hospitals came under direct attack, he did not run. He stayed. He treated the injured, comforted families and cared for children under unimaginable conditions. He upheld the highest values of the medical profession. Today, he is the one who needs our help.”

The Red Ribbons Campaign is a global movement that demands the release of the 9,100 Palestinian hostages held unlawfully in Israeli captivity. The group is holding a global day of action on July 18 to ask the  Red Cross to visit Abu Safiya and other Palestinian hostages.

Several members of Parliament spoke at the Downing Street rally, including Labour MPs Kim Johnson and John McDonnell, Your Party’s Jeremy Corbyn, and the Green Party’s Hannah Spencer. “Despicable” was the most frequent choice of adjective to describe the barbarity inflicted by Israel on Abu Safiya and other Palestinian hostages, many held in solitary confinement and 350 of them children.

“He has been denied any justice and has never been charged with any wrongdoing,” Spencer said. “And perhaps Dr Abu Safiya hasn’t been charged with any crime because he hasn’t done anything wrong. He and the other doctors seem to have been detained, interrogated and tortured for being determined to save the lives of their patients.”

Spencer recalled the day Abu Safiya was seized, painting a vivid and emotional picture for the crowd of several hundred gathered at the rally.

“He is a paediatrician. He stitched up children’s wounds, he held and cared for newborn babies. He did this while Kamal Adwan hospital came under sustained bombardment and while grieving his own 15-year-old son, killed by the Israeli army in a drone strike. Still he kept working, still he tried to save people,” Spencer said.

“He had the courage not only to stay in the hospital with his patients while they were under attack, he also spoke out and told the world’s media what was happening,” she continued. “He showed everyone what was happening inside Gaza and bore witness to the genocide. He stood every day in solidarity with his community and with his patients until the IDF arrested him.”

Leary was realistic, however, about the prospect of a UK government complicit in the war crimes and genocide being committed by Israel in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, taking meaningful action.

“We were told a few days ago, Hamish Faulkner ‘raised the case’ with the Israeli government,” Leary said when we spoke at the rally. “It’s reminiscent of a few weeks ago when they ‘firmly advised’ businesses not to trade with illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian Territories. I suspect Israel will ignore them. It’s again a completely inadequate response from the government. Strong words but absolutely no action at a time when they should be absolutely introducing wide-ranging sanctions including an arms embargo to put real pressure on Israel.”

“Comrades, the barbaric actions of the IDF towards medical professionals and the attack on the hospitals has been despicable,” Johnson said. “What we need is a full arms embargo against Israel. And we need all the children detained in military prisons to be free.”

Equally exasperated, Jaber urged for an end to the normalisation of Israeli barbarity. “We cannot accept torture as normal. We cannot accept starvation as normal. We cannot accept the denial of medical care as normal. And we cannot accept the world that watches this happen and does nothing as normal,” he said.

“Every hostage deserves freedom, every hostage deserves dignity, every hostage deserves justice. Today we call on the British government to stop looking away. We call for the freedom of every Palestinian hostage held in Israeli prisons.”

But it was the actor, Billy Howle, who delivered perhaps the most poetic tribute to Abu Safiya, one which many in the audience hoped was not the doctor’s eulogy, while fearing the worst.

“The image of Dr Abu Saifiya approaching the Israeli tank through the rubble of the hospital has become a symbol of Palestinian resilience and, whatever the case, that will be his legacy,” said Howle, who appeared in the 2025 feature film Palestine 36. “But there’s time for his life to go on. Something must be done now before it is too late,” he urged.

“They took him from a hospital, a hospital in which he spent his life saving the lives of innocents and then they refuse him the right to receive care at any other, putting his precious, well-spent, admirable life in danger. This is despicable, inhumane cruelty.”

Howle referred to Abu Safiya’s heart-rending conversation with his lawyer as “the words of someone in despair. But they are a rallying call to our ears. To our government. They ought to be. Do something to save his life so he may continue his calling to save the lives of others. It’s the least the British government can do.”

“His life is in imminent danger and he cannot and must not be allowed to die,” urged Spencer. “So today we raise our voices and we call on the UK government to push for his release, for the release of all medics and all Palestinian political prisoners, for all children detained and tried.”

Without mentioning his name but implicitly calling on likely incoming prime minister Andy Burnham to break from the current British policy of support for Israel, Spencer concluded:

“We call for an end to UK complicity and an end of arms sales to Israel. And we call to finally have a prime minister with the courage to talk to Israel without fear or favour. Courage to call what is happening a genocide. And above all today and every single day we call for peace, we call for justice and we call for freedom for Dr Abu Safiya and for Palestine.”

Linda Pentz Gunter is a writer based in Takoma Park, Maryland, and the author of No to Nuclear. Why Nuclear Power Destroys Lives, Derails Climate Progress and Provokes War, published by Pluto Press.