Dr. Feroze Sidhwa: My name is Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, I am an American trauma and critical care surgeon based in Stockton, California. I come before you today to speak about the Gaza Strip, where I volunteered twice since October 7th, first at European Hospital from March 25th to April 8th of last year, and most recently at Nasser Medical Complex from March 6th to April 1st of 2025. Both are in the city of Khan Yunis. I’m not here as a policymaker or a politician. I’m a physician bearing witness to the deliberate destruction of a health care system, the targeting of my own colleagues and the erasure of a people.
The constitution of the World Health Organization states that the health of all peoples is fundamental to the attainment of peace and security, and is dependent on the fullest cooperation of individuals and states. I’ve taken this to heart, and it is the reason I volunteer in conflict zones from Haiti to Ukraine to Gaza. In Gaza, I operated in hospitals without sterility, electricity, or anesthetics. Surgery took place on crowded and filthy floors. Children died not because their injuries were unsurvivable, but because we lacked blood, antibiotics, and the most basic supplies that are readily available in any large hospital anywhere else in the world. I did not see or treat a single combatant during my five weeks in Gaza. My patients were six-year-olds with shrapnels in their heart and bullets in their brains, and pregnant women, whose pelvises had been obliterated, and their fetuses cut into while still in the womb. Mother’s sheltering in the hospital cooked bread on hot plates in the emergency department during mass casualty events, as we dealt with the rain of fire and death falling around us everywhere.
Mr. President, the foundations of life in Gaza, family, health, and community have been shattered. The medical system has not failed. It has been systematically dismantled through a sustained military campaign that has willfully violated international humanitarian law. Civilians are now dying not just from the constant airstrikes, but from acute malnutrition, sepsis, exposure, and despair. Between my two visits to Gaza, I witnessed a sharp decline in patients’ health, driven not just by injury, but by worsening hunger and malnutrition that left their bodies weaker, their wounds slower to heal, and their survival far less certain. And let’s not forget this is a man-made catastrophe. It is entirely preventable, participating in it or not, allowing it to happen is a choice. This is a deliberate denial of conditions necessary for life, food, shelter, water, and medicine. Preventing genocide means refusing to normalize these atrocities. It means refusing to dehumanize the Palestinians, to refuse to see them as calories counted or numbers of trucks moved. We see now that this way of thinking has brought about a human dignity crisis with an entire people on the edge of survival.
On March 18th, the ceasefire was violated by Israel. That day, I witnessed the most extreme mass-casualty event of my career at Nasser Medical Complex. 221 trauma patients arrived in one morning. 90 were dead on arrival, nearly half were severely injured children. No health system on earth could cope with this, least of all one that is besieged and starved of supplies. Hospitals are meant to be sanctuaries. Healthcare workers and first responders are supposed to be protected. Children are supposed to be protected. In Gaza, these protections are simply gone. Every day, the distinction between combatant and civilian is erased. Most of my patients were pre-teen children, their bodies shattered by explosives, and torn by flying metal. Many died. Those who lived often awoke to find their entire family is gone.
Last year, I published in the New York Times a survey of 65 American healthcare workers who had served in Gaza. 83% of them reported seeing children shot in the head or the chest. I personally treated 13 such cases in my two weeks at European Hospital. According to the War Child Alliance, nearly half of Gaza’s children are suicidal. They ask, “why didn’t I die with my sister, my mother, my father?”, not out of extremism, but out of unbearable grief. I wonder if any member of this council has ever met a five-year-old child who no longer wants to live. Let alone imagine a society in which so many young children feel this way. And what astonishes me is not that some children in Gaza have lost the will to live, but that any still cling to hope. My Palestinian friends, mostly healthcare workers, no longer speak of resilience or even survival. Parents memorize their children’s clothing in case they must identify their remains later. They pray for one piece of bread to give them before they sleep so that their children might die less hungry if they are killed at night.
And meanwhile, my Israeli and American friends express horror at what is being done in their names. Many of us cannot understand how our governments continue to arm this senseless destruction, but you in this chamber have the power to stop it. Mr. President, I am here because I have witnessed what is happening in Gaza with my own eyes, especially to children, and I cannot pretend not to have seen it. You too cannot claim ignorance. I urge the council and especially my own government to act with urgency on these enforceable measures. One, demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire, including a halt to all arms transfers to all parties to the conflict, alongside targeted and lawful sanctions on Israel. Two, demand the reopening of all of Gaza’s crossings and guarantee unrestricted medical evacuations, including to hospitals in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where Palestinian patients can be treated by Palestinian doctors, with safer turn to Gaza assured. Three, guarantee sustained humanitarian access throughout Gaza, allowing all essential supplies, shelter, food, water, fuel, and medical supplies to reach all people in need. Four, strongly and explicitly reject the weaponization and politicization of aid, embodied by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, whose executive director, a veteran of the US Marine Corps, publicly resigned on Sunday, citing the foundation’s lack of adherence to humanitarian principles. We must affirm support for existing UN mechanisms, back UNRWA, and ensure NGOs with expertise in reaching and providing specialized care to those in need have unimpeded full access. Five, the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages. Six, the immediate and unconditional release of all health care workers, including Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, now held in Israeli detention for more than 150 days. And seven, without delay, uphold the UN Charter and act now to prevent genocide.
One day, Gaza survivors may have a record of the empty promises made by the members of this council, as their wounds deepened and their lives were lost. If this council remains silent and fails to act now, that record will stand as a testament, to a global failure to provide urgent care, and to the collapse of our collective conscience. I’m pleading with you to do what you were entrusted to do, to protect international peace and security, and to prevent irreversible harm. The steps I mentioned are the very least that is needed. I’m asking my own government’s representative to hear the voices of the majority of Americans who are calling for the same. If this continues, there will be no Palestinian doctors left, no one to care for the sick and wounded. There will be no Palestinians left to rebuild the health care system. We are losing a generation before our eyes, condemning people to die of hunger, disease, and despair, deaths that could be easily prevented. Thank you.