Dr. Aziz Bhimani:
The one playground that I saw on the second day or third day that I was there
got bombed, 15 kids came in that day Dead on arrival.
This isn’t arbitrary, this is planned, this is taking away hope wherever they possibly can.
You had people say look we’ve smelled the musk of martyrs.
I saw people wake up from their anesthetic as in mid operation and recite Quran.
This is for lack of a better word a holocaust moment. we say finally your shouts are louder than the bombs.

Interviewer:
Dr. Aziz Biman is an Australian orthopedic surgeon who has just returned from Gaza. I’ve got the honor of sitting with him today to get a little bit of an understanding of what he really saw and what’s going on. Dr., thank you for your time.
Dr. Aziz Bhimani:
Thank you for having me.
Interviewer:
You’ve just returned from Gaza. I mean, this is what people may describe as Hell on Earth at the moment. Tell us about your experience.
Dr. Aziz Bhimani:
So, everything you see about Gaza on social media or what you read is all true. In fact, the situation on the ground is actually a lot worse. I would describe it as a Hunger Games on steroids. It’s frightening because it’s just not what we see but it’s how people feel, what they’re feeling on the ground, what they’re actually, how they’re being affected. And I think that really hit home for me in terms of there’s not one person that’s not affected. You come into Gaza through large prison gates and prison cells and the whole place is surrounded by prison walls. So, there’s no place for anyone to run to or go to. There are soldiers that help make sure you’re a captive member of the games. When you drive in, the first thing you see, like when we first got in there, it’s dark, it’s eerie because it’s kind of quiet because, remember there’s no electricity, there’s no petrol and energy and they’ve got to be innovative on how they’ve kind of done things. So it is, it’s just dark and eerie. You’re not really allowed to travel at night. So, when we first entered, driving from the border to what is called a UN safe house, it was strange because when we had to get clearance from the IDF to be able to travel, there’s not much happening on the road. And yeah, it’s just, it’s scary when you go in. I told you prison walls but there’s a constant sound of drones, drones, drones. And the drones are deafening, especially at night. I think they do it on purpose so you can’t sleep. There are three types of drones. There’s a drone that is a surveillance drone, there’s a drone that has a machine gun attached to it, there’s a drone that drops bombs. Everyone is hungry, everyone’s displaced. This city is in absolute ruins. It looks like a dystopian field, right? So, it looks like out of the Hunger Games.
Interviewer:
Can you show me what it looks like?
Dr. Aziz Bhimani:
So, this is my first drive in. It’s just destruction and it’s destruction for kilometers and kilometers. And here’s the thing, if this was targeted, how can every single one of these buildings, it looks like every single building is destroyed. There is no building that’s still inhabitable. And the hardest and the saddest part is that when people try to return, because remember, okay, they’ve been dispossessed, they’re now in their tents, they have very little with them, they try to go back to collect even the, everything’s destroyed, everything is destroyed. There’s nothing that’s standing. So, they go back and they get bombed again.
Interviewer:
Did you fear for your life going into Gaza having seen, you know, people from the World Central Kitchen being attacked and killed by the IDF? Did you fear for your life?
Dr. Aziz Bhimani:
Yeah, absolutely. Not so much when I was there. So, when I was there, I think I had already made peace with myself, so it was okay. And I don’t think there was any moment where I was really that scared for myself. But definitely before going, that was a super challenge. That first 48 hours after I sort of got the phone call and then said yes was probably the toughest 48 hours of my life. I had my family, I had everyone tell me don’t go, you’re doing more here, you can be of more assistance, you don’t need to go, stay. And it really came back to me, as part of to answer your question, it was that I was genuinely concerned of whether I would necessarily come back. I had already read about a couple of orthopedic surgeons that were there that had been killed. And even recently on my return, and actually just after I returned, the head orthopedic surgeon from Al-Shifa hospital died in an Israeli jail. So yeah, no, I was concerned. The World Central Kitchen thing again further emphasized that.
Interviewer:
So, what made you actually go in there and do it?
Dr. Aziz Bhimani:
This is, for lack of a better word, a holocaust moment, right? This is a time in history that we’re all going to come back and reflect and look back at and say, what was I doing during the genocide, right? If you’re a person of faith, we’re going to have to answer to our Lord and say, what did I actually do when I knew a genocide was happening? If you’re a humanitarian, you’re going to have to answer to that Palestinian orphan who’s now 10 years older or 15 years older, you know, she’s got her bilateral amputations, when she looks you in the eye and goes, but yeah, what did you do when you knew a genocide was occurring? And unlike other times in history, we’ve got nowhere to hide behind. So, in other times of history, the genocide doesn’t necessarily become evident until after the fact. Here, we’ve got people who are committing the atrocities telling us what they’re going to do. So, they’ve not made any, they haven’t quibbled about what they’re planning on doing. They’re going, this is going to be a generational Nakba. We’re going to treat them like the Amalekites, meaning, hey, we’re planning on killing every last one of them. They told us that. They were, we’re going to starve them. There’s not going to be any food, water, electricity. We know they’re in a prison, right? The largest open-air prison. I don’t know how you can’t say how I can’t do anything because we’re all going to be answerable. The real hard part for me, and this is what I said earlier, is that I had my family saying, but you can do more good here than doing there. So, to me the real question wasn’t that we can’t, we have to help. So, there was no questions on that. But what was the best way to help? And for me I couldn’t answer that unless I went. So, I had to do it.
Interviewer:
So, you’ve done well over 15,000 operations in your career. How many operations did you do in your time in Gaza?
Dr. Aziz Bhimani:
I would say we did about six to eight surgeries every day, just depending on the day. So over that two weeks.
Interviewer: And how would you compare, I mean, the theater, the hospital setups that you normally have in Australia as opposed to what you experienced in Gaza?
Dr. Aziz Bhimani:
So first of all, the hospital that I worked at, which is Al-Aqsa, is one of only two hospitals that’s left standing. It was never designed to be a major hospital. It’s become one of those big hospitals by default. To put in context, Al-Shifa Hospital, which we’ve all heard of, that had 100 ICU beds. As far as I’m aware, there’s no hospital in New South Wales or Australia that has that many ICU beds. That was their tertiary referral center. That’s gone. And so, it’s just down to Al-Aqsa, which is now a small community hospital having to deal with trauma like you’ve never seen. No Australian hospital, even in the best of times, could cope with what they have to cope with. But then you add in a siege, you add in ongoing bombing and killing, you add in a displaced civilian population.
Interviewer:
And there are reports breaking, there’s nothing they can do. There are reports that people are actually sleeping in the hospital. Is that correct?
Dr. Aziz Bhimani:
The truth is there’s almost no room inside the hospital to walk because everyone is literally everywhere. Everyone is camped out there. These are all patients. When you first walk into the hospital, the thing that overcomes you is two things. One, how overcrowded it is with everyone, all displaced people everywhere, with people who essentially are amputees or have what we call external fixators on, which are these rods on the outside of their body holding their limbs in place. But there’s also this stench. It smells of death. It smells of death because everything is rotting. Their wounds are infected. There are open wounds. There’s not enough sanitation or there’s nothing enough to kind of keep it clean.
Interviewer:
How many of the patients that you saw were children, women?
Dr. Aziz Bhimani:
At least 50%, if not 70%, were kids under the age of 18, even under 12.
Interviewer: Under 12?
Dr. Aziz Bhimani: Under 12, I would have said under 12. Because I probably wouldn’t be able to tell the ones that were above 12, but the under 12s I did tell. And the majority were women and children.
Interviewer:
How did you stay mentally fit to be able to operate in these circumstances?
Dr. Aziz Bhimani:
The only thing that kept me going, that kept me sane, and actually what allows me to be sane now, were the Palestinian people, the people themselves. This is an incredible community. This is not a community that’s normal. These guys are resilient, they’re courageous. If you met their eyes, right, if you met their gaze, they smile at you, right? I would hear them tell me stories and I would honestly cry. And I’d go, how can you tell me that with a smile? And they’d go, what else is there to do, right? And you know, I didn’t even hear resentment in their voices. I never once heard resentment from anyone. All I heard with them was just give us peace, just let us carry on living. We don’t want help. We just want, they would tell me, just tell our story. We just want peace and we’ll do the rest. We’ll deal with everything else. I also wanted you to see their smiling faces because you can see, you can see it in their eyes, right? And this is a guy who doesn’t have anything. And in fact, here’s the other thing, every single one of them can name between five and ten people that have been in their social network that have been murdered. And they can name another 10 to 20 who are severely maimed or don’t have a limb. And to put that in context again, just me and you, if we thought about our own social network that we know by name, just think about how you would feel if you’re dispossessed, you don’t have food, water, you don’t have hope. Because hope’s the one thing, the one thing that you can see that’s being done is this, this is systematic. This is not collateral. This isn’t arbitrary. This is planned. This is taking away hope wherever they possibly can. And they’re targeting institutions, culture, anyone that has a voice. And despite that, for these people to smile like he’s smiling, and that’s what I met. And even the kids, you’ll see me with the kids in the hospital. And even the family, you’ve lost your limb or you’re the dad of a daughter who’s lost both legs, they still say Alhamdulillah. But they say it with genuineness. They’re not saying it as a passing comment. I saw people wake up from their anesthetic, as in mid-operation, and recite Quran. Subhanallah. It’s next level, it’s next level, right? It’s that courage, it’s that hope.
Interviewer:
I mean, during your time, did you see the people’s resilience? You’ve mentioned that already. Did it come from a place of faith? Is that how they sort of are staying strong?
Dr. Aziz Bhimani:
I think almost everyone I met said that is how they’ve maintained their faith. And here’s the crazy thing, right? So, people who said they weren’t practicing said they became practicing. People said, and this is strange again, they said the war was a good thing. And they said it brought them closer and that they got to witness things that they hadn’t witnessed before, both in themselves and outside. You had people say, look, we’ve smelled the musk of martyrs, Subhanallah. I had people say, because I actually asked about the war because I actually was interested. I was like, are you guys resentful that this happened? And two things came across. They said this was going to happen anyway. It’s just one of those things. This has been happening to us on and off again. And at some point, this was going to happen. But the second was that they felt that they’d all been brought closer to their faith. And they all genuinely sounded like, I said, the Alhamdulillah was a genuine Alhamdulillah. Like it was genuine. And this was also genuine, this is from God. So, whatever is happening, it’s from Allah. We’re okay with it. I’ll tell you, I had a near kick in the gut experience when I got home at Maghrib time on Monday night last week before they invaded Rafah. I got messages on my WhatsApp from at least nine different people from there celebrating the ceasefire. They were showing me how they were all getting really happy and excited. And I was like, wow, Alhamdulillah, this is great. Only a few hours later to find out they’d invaded Rafah. And their joy went from that to something else. I almost couldn’t work or do anything. I messaged these people and they all came back with this: it’s from God, it’s okay, we’ve got this conviction in Allah, we’re going to manage. And that’s what I saw. I saw them just manage. They were like, well, not just manage, but they managed via their faith. Their faith, I think, has helped them stay grounded and it’s helped them maintain their humanity, their culture. It’s helped them look after each other. It’s helped them remain generous. It’s helped them stay together.
Interviewer:
Subhanallah. They are people of inspiration and they keep their inspiration, will inspire millions for years to come, Inshallah. I mean, even us sitting so far away are inspired by the amazing inner character that we’ve seen from the Palestinian people.
Dr. Aziz Bhimani:
While I was there, I did visit three of the refugee camps, okay? And what you’ll see is life in the camp. From what they tell me, remember again, no food, no water, no electricity. And there are two types of camps. There are UNRWA camps and the non-UNRWA camps. Everyone wants to be in an UNRWA camp. That’s the go-to camp if they can, if that’s their choice. Tents are hard to come by and they would say to me a tent, an average tent, is $800 US. And a good tent was about $1,500. Now keep in mind there’s no work, right? And even if you do work, you’re not getting paid. Also keep in mind that the place that you worked no longer exists. If you’re a university student, your university no longer stands. Your academic record doesn’t exist. So, your life is on hold. As a parent, there’s no schools, there’s no playgrounds. In fact, the one playground that I saw, which is about 700 meters from the hospital, on the second day or third day that I was there, got bombed. 15 kids came in that day, dead on arrival, right? Going back to the refugee camps, their life basically starts with finding water. So, the first thing in the morning someone goes out, and that’s what that photo is. It’s mainly kids and adults going and collecting water. And then they bring that water back. Then their job is finding where a food parcel is being delivered and put their name out for a food parcel to collect that food parcel. Then the next part of their day is to see if there is any free soup kitchen food that they can collect, okay?
Interviewer:
You mentioned before that 15 kids were brought into the hospital dead. I mean, when you’re in a situation like this, how does that make you feel?
Dr. Aziz Bhimani:
It’s gut-wrenching, right? There’s no words. It’s just sadness, right? It doesn’t make sense. It’s just, look, there was a time there when a child came in with an arm blown off and the arm’s just completely blown off, is just mangled. There’s nothing that prepares you for it. There’s nothing that, there’s no words that kind of describe it. But then there were other times when the parent would come back later and say, I have their arm or I have their leg, can you reattach it? Just can’t. Look, there was a day when I think I had already done four amputations on kids already. And by the fifth kid, we have bilateral above leg trauma. And I might show it to you. But that kid probably needed above knee amputations. But I couldn’t do it. I was like, I can’t do it. I kind of pretended that I was trying to save the limb and go, well, today we’ll try to reattach it and see how we go, kind of knowing full well it’s not going to work. But I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it. So no, there’s no words. There’s no words. So, this is that child that I was talking about. He’s an 11-year-old, right? His father blew up, his father passed away in this accident.
Interviewer:
If you could carry a message from the people of Gaza to our audiences, what would that message be?
Dr. Aziz Bhimani:
So consistently they all said, tell our story. They wanted us to tell their story. I think with the hope that our humanity would mean that we shut this down. But when I reflected more on it, to tell you the truth, I actually recognized the single biggest existential threat to Israel, to the occupation, to the status quo isn’t another army. It isn’t an armed resistance. It’s not a state. It’s the truth. And we all carry the truth. All we have to do is get the truth out there and this ends. And that’s amazing. I didn’t, like, all this time I hear people telling me, blaming so and so, blaming our nations, blaming our leaders. But here’s a reality: me and you can make a difference. We just need to share the truth, which is why they keep telling us, just go back, tell our story. I don’t know, you know the poem? This poem, kids going to make me cry. This is a poem that Dr. Refaat, who is an English professor in Gaza, wrote. And he probably, that was one of the last poems he wrote before getting murdered in this war. And I hope I don’t spoil it, but he wrote: If I die, you must live to tell my story, to sell my things, to buy a piece of cloth with some strings, make it white so that a child went looking in the heavens who sees his father who left in a blaze, who didn’t have time to bid him farewell, not even to his flesh, not even to himself, sees that kite you made and he sees it bringing back love. If I must die, you must let it be for hope, let it be a tale. And I think what he’s saying and what they’re telling us is that if we get out the truth, we spread the message, the truth does bring this down. There’s too much misinformation out there and we all have a role to make sure this doesn’t happen in vain. We can all help change what’s happening. And in fact, I would contend that we actually have a bigger role to play being here and influencing our societies. And that doesn’t mean whether it’s Australia, whether it’s US, whether it’s Europe. But I would even say whether it’s Egypt, Saudi Arabia. If we all get up, we all tell the story, we all tell the truth, we all stand up for what’s happening and say this genocide doesn’t happen in our name. Because you know what? I can’t talk to Hind if Hind comes to me and says, where were you? I have to answer and say, hey, I was trying to do something. I went to the protest. I wrote to my politician. I spread the message on social media. When I was there, one of the things I think I made more of a difference is that I reinforced the Palestinian feeling of people are still with us. And they were aware of the protests. They were happy. I saw it in their faces. But you even hear people like Bisan, you know, the social media personality. We say, finally your shouts are louder than the bombs. So, we’re helping them. We’re strengthening them. We’re their lifeline. We’re giving them that courage, that motivation to keep going. You know, when you’re at a marathon, it’s that person saying, keep going, you’re nearly there, you’re going to make it. But the second is we’re changing public opinion. And as we change public opinion, we can bring down these walls. We can change what’s happening. And that’s what we all need to do.
Interviewer:
These are some really good, inspiring words. I mean, it’s quite courageous of you to have been and visited and operated there. Would you consider doing this again?
Dr. Aziz Bhimani:
In a heartbeat, although my wife will divorce me. And I think there’ll be a lot of people that would be probably ready to kill me even before I arrived. My heart’s still in Gaza. I would definitely go back. And also, you know why? Sadly, here’s the thing. My silly blue Australian passport seems to matter. If I get caught there, if I’m stuck there, or if I die there, somehow that matters more. And as dumb as that seems, that’s the reality. We can’t give up on them.
Interviewer:
Dr. Aziz, may Allah reward you for your courage and may Allah give the Palestinian brothers and sisters in Gaza and in Palestine justice and freedom, Inshallah. Thank you for being with us today.
Dr. Aziz Bhimani: Thank you.