Midwife who worked in Gaza punished in California for watermelon pin

For 18 months, and especially since Israel closed the Gaza crossings in early March – banning the entry of necessary medications, medical equipment, food and fuel – the level of catastrophic malnutrition for pregnant and postpartum women and their newborns has risen sharply.

This is compounded by the systematic destruction of reproductive, prenatal and maternity care by Israeli forces – which a recent United Nations Commission of Inquiry press release said amounts to “two categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention, including deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians and imposing measures intended to prevent births.”

In December 2023, Israeli forces targeted and destroyed the largest fertility clinic in Gaza.

More than 4,000 frozen embryos and 1,000 sperm samples and unfertilized eggs were destroyed in the attack.

The UN commission stated that the attack was intentional.

In January, Al Mezan, a human rights group in Gaza, released a report examining the “near-total disruption of maternal healthcare directly caused by Israel’s destruction of hospitals, clinics and pharmacies, compounded by the lack of medical supplies, equipment and electricity.”

Women, the group states, “especially pregnant and nursing mothers, are deprived of critical antenatal, postnatal and obstetric care, as well as essential nutritional support and hygiene products, putting their lives at grave risk.”

“The functionality of all of the hospitals within the system are compromised,” Bridget Rochios tells The Electronic Intifada Podcast.

Rochios is a certified nurse midwife and a reproductive health nurse practitioner based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She worked in Gaza in May 2024 at the Emirati Maternity Hospital in Rafah as a volunteer with the medical solidarity organization Glia.

“There are such a scant amount of hospitals in particular that are able to provide maternity care or any other primary healthcare,” she adds.

“Hospitals have been decimated and destroyed – there have been forced closures because of evacuation, shelling and violence – or there have been such horrible circumstances [such as] roads being completely bombed so cars can’t go through [to] where people are having to walk unnecessary amounts of time, especially while pregnant and in labor, to even get to hospitals.”

Of the few hospitals that are still functioning, Rochios says, “all of the resources have been shunted to emergency care, which has led to over a year now of women not receiving any prenatal care at all – so many people with chronic diseases and illnesses and cancers not receiving the treatment that they need. Catastrophic is the best way to put it. It’s hellish.”

Meanwhile, as the health system in Gaza plunges deeper into catastrophe, there are growing political attacks against doctors and professional health providers in the US who speak out against the genocide.

Rochios worked at the University of California at San Francisco medical center and was targeted for suspension after she returned from Gaza last year.

After nine months of administrative leave, UCSF recently issued a notice of intent to fire her for refusing to remove a watermelon pin on her badge. The watermelon symbol has become a popular way to show solidarity with Palestinians.

A petition has gathered more than 6,700 signatures demanding Rochios’ reinstatement at the hospital and an end to the repressive actions against her and other healthcare professionals who stand against Israel’s genocide.

Rochios says that she’s worn pins in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and LGBTQ pride, like many of her colleagues. But for expressing solidarity with Palestinians who are being subjected to the US-supported genocide in Gaza by wearing a watermelon pin, she was charged with creating an unsafe working environment.

“It boggles my mind, because I work in a fertility clinic – and for somebody to say that they feel unsafe because I’m wearing a piece of seasonal fruit, essentially, on my badge, while the largest fertility clinic in Gaza is specifically targeted, and all of those embryos are gone, it’s absurd,” she says.

Rochios explains that the mobilization has been fierce in her defense within the community of healthcare professionals who took an oath to defend human rights and advocate for oppressed and marginalized communities.

“I think it’s really important to realize that we are not alone, and that in speaking out, your community will come,” she says.

“We need to continue this fight. I think that being a bystander, saying no, backing down now, is only going to lead to bigger and scarier things ahead. And they can fire me, but they can’t fire everybody. And they can silence me, but they can’t silence the larger voice of this movement and the really clear intention that we have around securing the dignity, health and humanity of every human being on this earth.”

Produced by Tamara Nassar

Photo: Omar Ashtawy / APA Images