Interviewer: Joining us this morning is Dr. Adam Hamawy and Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman, the Democrat from New Jersey. Dr. Hamawy was representative Watson Coleman’s guest at last night’s State of the Union. He also returned from, I believe your second trip to Gaza, your second recent trip to Gaza on a medical mission about three weeks ago. But I wanted to start by asking you, Dr. Hamawy just kind of what it was, what it was like to go from three weeks ago being — and I believe you were having a difficult time as is common for medical professionals who go on missions to Gaza getting back out — what was going, what it was like going from there and being kind of on the receiving end of US power and the unpleasant end of US power, to being in the hall of that power. What was the experience like for you last night?

Dr. Hamawy: Well, last night was interesting. I mean, it was disappointing to kind of see our democracy being like in a situation where we are the pinnacle basically of, we’re supposed to be the leaders of this world. And I felt I was in a room filled with school children. And, you know, just a bunch of sycophants just clapping at everything that’s being said, whether it makes sense or not. I mean, you know, there was a lot of things that are good and there’s a lot of things that are bad. And if we can’t discern between either one of them, then everything begins to fall apart. And it was a very disappointing to see them.

Interviewer: And Congresswoman, can I get your kind of inside take a little bit on how Democrats decided that they were going to approach his speech? Was there, did Al Green say in a meeting, you know what, I’m going to stand up and shake my cane and let them know, or like, did leadership talk about protests? Like, how did that sort out? And what was your thinking about it?

Congresswoman Watson-Coleman: Yeah, so not in my presence that Al Green say that he was going to do what he did. Leadership just wanted us to be respectful. That is our house. And to listen. Leadership knew that there would be some level of protest in some way, shape, or form, asked that we not be terribly disruptive. And I think that, with the exception of the Al Green situation, which kind of got out of hand, but I certainly understand his emotion behind it. I think that things were pretty orderly. We decided we were just going to sit quietly, listen, some of us had signs that spoke to either fixing something like Medicaid, or saying “false” because the statement that the president was making, rather frequently actually, his statements were not accurate. But all in all, I think that given this moment, given the severity of the things that this administration has done and has proposed to do, I think Democrats did just fine.

Interviewer: And Dr. when you get written about occasionally in the press, sometimes for being unable to leave Gaza, you’ll often be referred to as having kind of been the doctor that saved or worked on Senator Tammy Duckworth when she had her helicopter crash in Iraq. And I’m curious if, A) you were able to speak with her at all last night? Do you stay in pretty close touch with her? And has that given you the ability to speak more directly to members of Congress about what you’ve seen on the ground? Or does that just not matter now that Democrats are out of power and Trump is the one calling the shots?

Dr. Hamawy: I mean, I wasn’t able to see her yesterday. I think the, I mean, I’m proud of what I did and it’s great that we have that relationship. But my ability really to speak with anyone in Congress is their willingness to listen. So, I’ve been back and forth here now many times in the last year. And I’ll talk to anyone who’ll sit down and have a conversation. So, if they open their doors and you want to listen, whether they agree or not, I’ll sit down and talk. And unfortunately, what I’ve been finding is that more and more doors are just closed. They don’t want to hear. And that’s unfortunate because that’s not how we’re going to learn or change or move forward, if we’re not able to listen to each other.
Interviewer: Can you, what do you mean by the doors are closed? Like people are just, they want to move past this entire situation?

Dr. Hamawy: Like what’s the, they don’t want to listen to what I have to say. They don’t want to listen to my experience. They don’t want to hear another opinion or thought about what’s happening in Gaza or Israel.

Interviewer: What is, what is the difference under this, this quote-unquote cease fire, under which we’ve seen hundreds of people killed? But what is, how would you describe the difference in your visit, your most recent mission compared to the one while the hot war so to speak was on?

Dr. Hamawy: It was night and day. I mean, it was night and day. I went in about a week after the cease fire started. And it was, you know, it was, it was such a low bar to clear. It’s just to stop dropping bombs on, on everyone. You know, still there’s a lot of destruction there. There’s a lot of shortages. There’s a lack of resources. There’s no electricity. There’s no clean water. So, conditions are relatively horrible, but compared to last year, it was, you know, like the sun just finally like shown on the place. And it’s unfortunate that now as we speak is that, you know, already Israel’s breaking the cease fire. And for the last two or three days, there’s been no humanitarian aid allowed to go in. And even since before these last two days, it’s been even more difficult for doctors and nurses and healthcare workers to get into Israel and into Gaza to be able to provide that aid. They’re making it more and more difficult. They’re turning more people away. And they’re giving you more restrictions. So this is, you know, you know, this has been ongoing now for the last six weeks, even, you know, to a higher degree than before.

Interviewer: And Israel had let in some additional supplies, you know, medical and food and others at the beginning of the quote unquote “ceasefire”. Did that have a noticeable impact on your working conditions in the hospital?

Dr. Hamawy: Yes. I mean, there was food that came in. Prices dropped tremendously, like 10 times. Like, you know, for example, like some, you know, one of the nurses was showing me like a bag of tomatoes and said that this bag of tomatoes last week cost 50 US dollars. And now it’s five. And five is still a lot, but now it’s at least affordable. And that’s just food to be able to put on the table. So, the, the, you know, that aid that comes in is critical. And, and it affects our care. I mean, for people to be able to heal, they need to be able to eat and have nutrition. And, and it’s important. I mean, like, people were literally starving. You can see people that have lost like 40 pounds, 50 pounds. You see their pictures and you can’t recognize what they used to look like. And the children, they’re just like, you know, you know, you could see the, the malnutrition everywhere you look. And now with Ramadan, it’s even especially important because, you know, people are having just one meal a day. And I’m sure with these new restrictions, those prices just jump right back up. And people again, can’t, even if there’s food available, they can’t buy what’s on the market because the prices are so high.

Interviewer: Did you treat any Palestinian captives who were released as part of the, the exchange and what kind of patients were you seeing this time versus last time?

Dr. Hamawy: So I was, I was not in a hospital that received the, the captives, but I did take care of a lot of patients that had, you know, back up, you know, we’re backed up from the last year and a half. A lot of children that were born with congenital deformities, cleft limbs and cleft palates, over the last two years that hadn’t received any care. A lot of the war injuries that, you know, people received from shrapnel, contractures, scarring that needed revision surgeries to take care of. So, it was more of a normal experience than what I had last year, when it was just one trauma after the other. But still a tremendous amount of work that needed to be done.

Interviewer: And representative Watson Coleman when you see this, you know, you see Israel now breaking the ceasefire, threatening, you know, cutting off electricity, you know, using starvation as a as a weapon to try to extract additional concessions beyond what was originally agreed to. And you see Trump talking about building a Trump Riviera in Gaza. Are you sensing any regret among your colleagues in Congress that they didn’t do anything to stop this while they had the opportunity and do they think it cost them politically? Like in other words, do they care or they just moving past this?

Congresswoman Watson-Coleman: You know, one of the reasons that I wanted the doctor to come and be my guest is because with so many distractions with all the sort of evil eels and things like that that Trump was putting out, and the DOGE mess and the lies and all, and even the Ukraine stuff, all of a sudden we weren’t hearing anything of, after he talked about making Palestine the Riviera of the Middle East, we weren’t hearing anything, kind of doubled down on that, which is ridiculous. I thought it was really important to bring the doctor here again so that he could really talk about what’s happening in real time there. I don’t know what you mean when you say, we could have made a difference. Obviously, it wasn’t, we weren’t being assertive enough from my perspective to get Israel to back down at some point. Israel had a right to protect itself when this first went down, but we saw the kind of harshness that didn’t seem to be necessary and didn’t seem to move towards a two-state solution or a peaceful solution. So that was very disappointing to me. Do I wish we had done more in that regard? Yes. But it’s a very complicated issue. We have very stubborn leadership there in Netanyahu. He didn’t think he had to answer to anyone and at the same time, I don’t think that the United States was tough enough on him to make him sort of change course a bit and be more willing to meet and to create some pathway to safety and security. However, I don’t believe that Hamas was legitimately willing to do that either. So, I think that there was a distraction and dishonesty on both parts.

Interviewer: Well, we’ve got to leave it there. We were going to talk a little bit longer. We need to let the viewers in on it and Democracy Now wanted to speak with you and Dr. Hamawy as well. In independent media, we’d like to be a little more collaborative than competitive. So, I want to let you go so you can get over and we’re happy to have you on again. We can talk more at length about all of this. So thank you, Dr. Hamawy and thank you, Congresswoman Watson Colman.