Main Quote
I remember their faces, their earrings, their two little first teeth. I remember how carefully they had been dressed for sleep in their cold tents, the delicateness with which their hair was braided. I remember a baby, not yet one, brought in by her uncle. She had multiple perforations to her bowel, bleeding around her kidney, and swelling of her brain after Israeli bombs hit her home. Her mother was killed and her father injured in the same attack. A few days after her life-saving surgery, her first and only repeated word was “mama”.
Summary:
Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care physician volunteering at Gaza’s Nasser Hospital, describes treating children injured in Israeli airstrikes after the ceasefire broke on March 18th. At least 183 children were killed that day alone. She recounts operating on severely injured children—a baby whose mother was killed, a five-year-old marked “unknown” with shrapnel through her brain, a six-year-old whose siblings were killed. The hospital itself was struck by Israeli fire. With Gaza’s healthcare system systematically destroyed and over 17,100 children killed since October 2023, she demands the UK suspend arms sales to Israel, calling silence and inaction complicity in genocide.