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Backer of BMJ anti-Israel letter previously called for Gaza defence force
EXCLUSIVE: A 2008 piece co-written by Dr Swee Ang also raised the possibility of Israel testing 'new particle weapons'
June 7, 2021 17:01
EXCLUSIVE: A 2008 piece co-written by Dr Swee Ang also raised the possibility of Israel testing 'new particle weapons'
June 7, 2021 17:01One of the backers of an anti-Israel letter published by the British Medical Journal last month also called for the creation of an international defense force in Gaza in 2008, the JC can reveal.
Dr Swee Ang is an orthopaedic surgeon at the Barts Health NHS trust, but she is also a campaigner and a founding trustee at the UK charity Medical Aid for Palestinians.
She previously drew media coverage in 2014 after it emerged she had sent an email endorsing an antisemitic video made by former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke.
She later said that she was unaware of David Duke’s identity or his KKK connections.
Last month, she joined more than 200 doctors in speaking out against a “return to the ‘normality’ of occupation and blockade” in a BMJ letter about the 11-day war.
It has since emerged that in 2008, she backed setting up a defence force for Gaza in a blogpost for the since-closed Lancet Global Health Network website.
The piece, titled “The wounds of Gaza” and co-written with Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah, was taken down in 2009 because it contained factual inaccuracies, the publisher said in a removal notice at the time.
“The people of Gaza are extremely vulnerable and defenseless in the event of another attack.
“If the international community is serious about preventing such a large scale of deaths and injuries in the future, it will have to develop some sort of defense force for Gaza. Otherwise, many more vulnerable civilians will continue to die,” the article said.
It also raised the possibility of Israel testing “new particle weapons” in Gaza.
Dr Ang did not return a request for comment asking whether she still held both views.
Her book, From Beirut to Jerusalem, about the 1982 massacre at Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon, was published in 2017.