Sunday, September 27, 2026: JVP HAC Webinar
Please join JVP HAC for our next webinar.
De-Healthification: Israel’s engineered collapse of Palestinian life
Guest: Layth Malhis, Institute for Palestine Studies
Moderator: Phil Brewer, MD
Sunday, September 27, 8 am Pacific, 11 am Eastern
Register here or scan QR code in image below.
This webinar is cosponsored by Boston Workers' Circle, JVP Academic Council, Friends of Sabeel North America/FOSNA.
De-healthification is introduced as a framework for understanding Israel’s systematic destruction of Palestinian healthcare infrastructure, particularly in Gaza. Rather than viewing the collapse of Gaza’s health system as a secondary outcome of the genocide, the brief argues that it is one of the pillars of the Israeli strategy intended to destroy Palestinian society by making Palestinian life unhealable and perishable through the constant accelerated weaponization and destruction of healthcare.
From the post-1967 military occupation to the Oslo-era permit regime and the blockade imposed in 2007, the Israeli occupation progressively eroded Palestinian health sovereignty. This strategy reached its apex during the ongoing genocide, as the Israeli occupation forces destroyed hospitals and systematically targeted healthcare workers. Gaza’s healthcare system has, in effect, transitioned from underdeveloped to unviable to non-existent.
By tracing the historical evolution of de-healthification, this presentation argues that naming the process is essential for accountability. Because intent is revealed through patterns of destruction mirroring explicit declarations, the framework of de-healthification equips policymakers, legal bodies, and advocates to identify healthcare destruction and denial as a core mechanism of settler-colonial control.
About the Guest Speaker: Layth Malhis is a PhD student in the Department of History at the University of Toronto, where his research examines settler colonialism and the history of Palestinian health. His work advances the concept of De-healthification to describe the systematic dismantling, obstruction, and weaponization of Palestinian healthcare as part of a broader colonial strategy.
He holds an MA from Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and spent the past year as project manager at the Institute for Palestine Studies, where he oversees institutional development initiatives in the Washington, D.C., office and contributes to the Healthcare Destruction Database.
His previous professional experience includes serving as a partner in House of Jerusalem, Bayt al-Maqdis, where he helped establish the organization's North American operations. His writing has appeared in Al-Shabaka, Science for the People, The New Arab, The Arab Student , Palestine Square Blog, and other publications. He is currently working with Doctors Against Genocide on a medical anthology and textbook examining clinical practice, healthcare destruction, and medicine under conditions of genocide.