Originally from Alexandria, Egypt, Dr. Abeer Omar is an assistant professor at Trent University’s Trent/Fleming School of Nursing, in Peterborough, Ontario. Her work focuses on women’s health and rehabilitation. In a video statement posted below in support of the International May Day Online Rally to be held Friday, May 1, starting at 3 p.m. North American Eastern Time, Dr. Omar denounces the systematic slaughter of healthcare workers by Israel in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, and the US and Israel’s targeting of civilians in their war of extermination against Iran.

The genocide the Israeli state has perpetrated against the Gaza Palestinians, with staunch American and Canadian imperialist support, has officially claimed 75,000 lives. But the real death toll, including from a deliberate policy of mass starvation, is undoubtedly far higher.

The ongoing assault on Lebanon, where the Zionist regime is seeking to seize a “buffer zone” up to the Litani River, is being carried out with no less brutality. On Tuesday, Israeli air strikes in the town of Majdal Zoun killed three paramedics in what the Lebanese government denounced as a war crime. The medical workers died in a so-called “double tap” strike, i.e., when Israeli warplanes strike the site of an earlier attack with the intent of killing rescue workers sent to help the wounded.

An April 16 article in The Guardian reported on a horrific “quadruple tap” attack the previous day, in which the Zionist regime struck ambulances three times following the initial Israeli attack on Mayfadoun, in south Lebanon. The bombardment killed four medics and wounded six more. As of April 16, Israel had killed 91 medical workers and injured 214 since its latest onslaught on Lebanon began in early March.

The fascist Netanyahu and his fellow thugs in the Israeli military high command draw inspiration from the unrestrained support they enjoy from American imperialism, which has killed hundreds, likely thousands, of civilians in its—now only paused—six-week carpet bombing of Iran. The most infamous incident occurred on the first day of the war, when US missiles struck a girls’ school in Minab, murdering over 150 children aged between 7 and 12.

Dr. Omar, who has over 25 years of experience as a nursing educator and researcher, has faced down persecution of her principled defence of the human rights of Palestinians, Lebanese and Iranians under imperialist attack. That she should have had to do so comes as no surprise: Canada’s Liberal government has backed the genocide in Gaza and the US/Israel war on Iran to the hilt. In June 2025, she joined hundreds of academics and civil society groups in signing an open letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney that denounced Canada for its complicity in the Gaza genocide and demanded Carney take action to stop any “aid and assistance” to Israeli war crimes. Predictably, this letter fell on deaf ears.

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