Leonard S. Rubenstein

Leonard Rubenstein is Distinguished Professor of the Practice at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the author of Perilous Medicine: The Struggle to Protect Healthcare from the Violence of War (Columbia University Press, 2021).

Medical staff inspect the damage at an impact site, following a missile strike from Iran on Israel, at Soroka Medical Center, in Beersheba, Israel, on June 19, 2025.
Governance

Hospital Attacks in Gaza and Israel: What Counts as a War Crime?

by Leonard S. Rubenstein, Feroze Sidhwa

Global attacks on hospitals and health care have become more frequent, but perpetrators have enjoyed near total impunity

A woman rests next to a damaged building, as Palestinian arrive in Rafah after they were evacuated from Nasser hospital in Khan Younis.
Governance

Facts and Falsehoods: Israel's Attacks Against Gaza's Hospitals

by Leonard S. Rubenstein, J. Stephen Morrison

How Biden could intervene against Israel's assaults on Gaza's hospitals

Ukrainian paramedics take cover in the woods as air raid sirens go off again following an attack on the Yavoriv military base, outside a hospital in Yavoriv, Ukraine, during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, on March 13, 2022.
Governance

Ukraine: A Turning Point for Attacks on Health

by Leonard S. Rubenstein, Eric A. Friedman, Lawrence O. Gostin

Accountability is overdue for wartime atrocities in Syria, Yemen, Ethiopia, Gaza, Myanmar, and now Ukraine