The medical referral could not have been clearer: “Top Urgent” it read, yet nothing about Baby Bara’a Ghaben’s health was given any kind of priority at all.
“They told us he needed urgent heart surgery outside of Gaza in the West Bank or Israel,” the baby’s 25-year-old father, Mohammad, explained.
The surgery and care the newborn needed were available within a one-hour drive from his home, but just one week after being born, Bara’a died on June 27, 2017, waiting for permission to leave Gaza that never came.
“My baby did not vote for Hamas,” Mohammad tells the ABC.
“He wasn’t alive when Hamas took over. None of us are Hamas supporters. Not the baby, not his mother or father. It’s not Bara’a’s fault.”
Read the full article by Sophie McNeill at ABC News.