Demand ASA monitor and Dr.Shafer issue public apology for racist remarks

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text of the petition

We the undersigned represent a large group of anesthesiologists that have been long term members of the American Society of Anesthesiology, and are appalled by the one-sidedness and bigotry evident in Dr. Shafer's editorial. Dr. Shafer's quoting of Golda Meir's racist statement that "peace will come when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us" is dehumanizing language at its most vile, suggesting that an entire race of humans are incapable of deeply loving their own children. It is shocking that an Anesthesiology journal representing the leading Anesthesia society in America chose to publish this racist vitriol.
Dr. Shafer's piece omits key facts from the ongoing siege on a civilian population. To date, over 249 healthcare workers including nurses, midwives, doctors, dentists, medical students and paramedics have been killed by the attacks on hospital infrastructure, which in itself is a war crime. As physicians we should be livid at the forced collapse of the Gaza healthcare system. The executive director of Doctor’s Without Borders, Joseph Belliveau has said “This brutal annihilation of an entire population’s health system stretches beyond what humanitarian aid can fix.” Neonates have died because of inadequate fuel to power incubators, amputations have been preformed without anesthetics and patients are forced to recover on stretchers in hospital courtyards without access to medicine in unsterile conditions. 

As physicians we should be outraged by the indiscriminate attacks by Israeli forces against multiple hospitals, ambulances, schools, and United Nations shelters, with a total civilian death toll of nearly 20000 persons as of this writing, including 8000 children. 
As physicians we should be demanding an immediate delivery of humanitarian aid to civilians and hospitals to combat the diseases and plagues that we all know will come because of the severity of the destruction that we have witnessed in the past 55 days.
We demand that the ASA Monitor and Dr. Shafer publish a public apology for the racism expressed in his editorial and ask that the journal take a principled stance against the mass suffering being imposed upon the Palestinian civilian population.