Main Quote
Little Habiba, a beautiful eleven-year-old girl who came in. She wasn't malnourished when she came in, but she had a severe explosive injury. Her lower esophagus was shattered... I spent the whole night operating, reconstructing her esophagus, successfully. But because her esophagus was so damaged, she couldn't eat or drink. She was on a ventilator. We had to tube-feed her. We had no nutrition to give her. She died after four weeks. The surgical repair was successful. She died because she had no nutrition.
Tucker Carlson:
So without delay, here is Dr. Nick Maynard of Oxford with an account of what he has seen and the people he knows personally who’ve been murdered by the Israeli government during the longest genocide in this world since 1945.
Watch.
Dr. Thank you for doing this. So you’re a medical professor at Oxford. I think you have one of the world’s most respectable jobs. Most respected jobs, certainly. And now you are speaking about what you have seen in the most contentious, controversial conflict in the world. How did you decide to speak about what you saw in Gaza? In fact, how did you end up going to Gaza in the first place?
Dr. Nick Maynard:
So it was real pure serendipity that I ended up going to Gaza in many ways. I was invited more than 20 years ago, maybe in 2006, to go to the West Bank to teach medical students at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, in Ramla, and Hebron, and did that on a very ad hoc basis for a few years. And then, I was asked to do the same in Gaza. And I leapt at the opportunity because I’d already sort of fallen in love with the Palestinian people. I’d loved visiting the West Bank. So, I went to Gaza for the first time.
Tucker Carlson:
What did you like? It’s weird maybe for Americans to hear that, because the Palestinians have been so thoroughly maligned by our media for so long that people think of them as violent and primitive. What did you like about the Palestinians?
Dr. Nick Maynard:
Oh, they’re the kindest people I’ve met. They’re profoundly resilient, particularly in Gaza, but they’re generous. They’re kind. Very welcoming. I’ve always been treated wonderfully by them. And when you go to Gaza, I mean, you see that even on a different level yet again. They are incredibly resilient, incredibly resourceful, but they are the kindest, most generous-hearted, most beautiful people I’ve ever met in the world.
Tucker Carlson:
Really?
Dr. Nick Maynard:
Absolutely correct.
Tucker Carlson:
I can’t overstate the degree to which Americans have been told for decades that the people in Gaza are barely human. When did you first go?
Dr. Nick Maynard: I went to Gaza for the first time in 2010, and it was just an initial sort of trip to teach, and then ever since then I’ve been taking a team of doctors from Oxford to teach medical students there.
Tucker Carlson: What was Gaza like? Can you describe it in 2010?
Dr. Nick Maynard: Yeah, it was under occupation. So it’s been variously described as a large prison or concentration camp. And you know, people might take issue with that terminology, but what lies behind that is the fact that 99% plus of the population have never ever been able to leave their country. So they are in prison there. So we went in through the most remarkable security from Israel. We went through the Erez crossing in northern Gaza. That first trip took us most of the day to get through the security, and we had 10 days I think in Gaza.
Tucker Carlson: As a western physician, it took you most of the day to get from Israel into Gaza because of the Israeli security.
Dr. Nick Maynard: Because of the Israeli security. It took hours getting through the most remarkably intense security. Being grilled repeatedly about why we were going there, what we were doing, why we were going there, why didn’t we go to Africa instead, why were we going to Gaza? If we wanted to help people, why didn’t we go to African countries? Literally, those are the questions we were being asked.
Tucker Carlson:
Is this the same border that Hamas came over on October 7th?
Dr. Nick Maynard:
No. So Erez crossing is the very top of Gaza, the northern border with Israel. Hamas came out through the southern, sort of near the bottom of Gaza. Erez crossing was destroyed very early on in this conflict. So it’s not being used at all. Certainly none of the humanitarian teams that have gone in have gone in through that at all. It’s a sort of no pass area. But you get into Gaza, and I remember vividly my first visit there in 2010, meeting these people who were just so welcoming. They were so delighted that we’d gone to visit them, and the hospitality was just remarkable.
And that’s been the way ever since. And indeed, every year I’ve been going there, I’ve been taking new people most times. And everyone falls in love with the Palestinian people — they all want to go back. So in those early years I was just teaching every year, and I’ve been doing that until 2022. In fact, we had a teaching trip planned for November 2023 and that was clearly cancelled. But I’ve also been involved, separate to that, in carrying out and teaching cancer surgery — that’s what I do in Oxford — so helping them develop their cancer services and teaching my specialty of cancer as well.
Tucker Carlson:
What did it look like in 2010? It was occupied as you said, but what was the infrastructure like? Gaza City? — how would you describe it?
Dr. Nick Maynard:
There was a vast amount of wreckage of destroyed buildings. And it’s worth pointing out that every single trip I’ve ever been into Gaza — and I’ve been many times in those 16, 18 years — I’ve seen aerial bombardments. So it’s a way of life there. Every trip, by Israel — aerial bombardment on Gaza by the Israeli air force. And this was in 2010, not long after the 2008 massive military assault on Gaza. So the destruction you see is remarkable. Loads of buildings have been destroyed, and each time you go you see more of that. I remember going in in 2015, just after the 2014 Operation Protective Edge, which was about a 58-day military assault. The destruction of buildings was just like something I’d never seen before.
So you have this sort of mixture of mass destruction, but you see Gazans rebuilding the whole time — rebuilding their destroyed houses yet again. But it’s a busy, thriving place. You go down to Gaza City where the harbor is, it’s busy. There are markets there, there are fishing boats there. They are desperate all the time to get back to normal living. But the resources are very limited. I mean, particularly in the health care system there, which is where I’ve been working — they never have enough resources. Their economy has almost been completely disabled by Israel all that time. So they have very limited resources for everything, for all aspects of living there, but particularly in the healthcare structure.
Tucker Carlson:
So in 2010 — or let’s just say before October 7th 2023 — what was the state of the health care system in Gaza?
Dr. Nick Maynard:
They practice high quality medicine. The doctors, the nurses, the dieticians, the physiotherapists, the occupational therapists — remarkably talented. And I was teaching the students for years. I know how bright these kids are. They’re just remarkably bright. They know so much. A lot of it was sort of didactic teaching, online teaching, which we tried to improve on in our sort of face-to-face teaching. So their knowledge is remarkable. They practice medicine at a very high level. But they have very limited resources. So in my specialty in cancer surgery, they didn’t have the resources to do absolutely everything. Many patients had to — the doctors had to apply to get them transferred, for example, to the West Bank or to Jordan or sometimes into Israel to have specialist treatment that couldn’t be carried out in Gaza. So they had to work with very limited resources.
Tucker Carlson:
How hard was it for cancer patients to leave Gaza for treatment?
Dr. Nick Maynard:
Very difficult. So there was a very laborious application process. The Ministry of Health had to apply to the Israeli authorities. That took on average about three months for each application to go through. These are all people with life-threatening, time-critical illnesses. So that three months — that cancer will change a lot. Of those applicants, about two-thirds would get through and a third would be rejected.
So these are people again with life-threatening illnesses which cannot be treated in Gaza, and one in three were being rejected.
So they would inevitably die. And even if they were granted permission, they were often sent out alone. So kids sent out for treatment for their brain tumor, for example, might be sent by themselves without any parent accompanying them.
Tucker Carlson:
Were these kids with a documented history of terrorism?
Dr. Nick Maynard:
Not at all. Not at all.
Tucker Carlson:
Why would the Israelis prevent a child with a brain tumor from getting treatment? Not at their expense. What’s the thinking there?
Dr. Nick Maynard:
I don’t know what the thinking is. I mean, there were some patients who were accepted into Israeli hospitals, and there are many examples of that. But why some were turned down and some were accepted, I have no idea. But it is a fact that many people were rejected despite needing life-saving treatment.
Tucker Carlson:
How many hospitals were in Gaza?
Dr. Nick Maynard:
The United Nations tells us there are 36 hospitals in Gaza, but some of them are very very small clinics. So there are, or were, probably four major hospitals in Gaza. The Indonesian Hospital in the north, Shifa Hospital which is the most famous iconic hospital in Gaza in Gaza City, and then the European Gaza Hospital and Nasser Hospital in the south. Of those, Nasser Hospital — the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Yunis, where I was based most recently — is the only remaining large hospital in Gaza, and even that is very significantly disabled and they’ve been destroyed.
Tucker Carlson: Why?
Dr. Nick Maynard:
I think this is part of — I mean, the whole health care infrastructure has been targeted in Gaza repeatedly over many years. I’ve been in hospitals being bombed as long ago as 2014.
Tucker Carlson:
You were in the hospital while it was bombed?
Dr. Nick Maynard:
No, I was visiting a hospital before and then I’ve visited hospitals that had been bombed. I’ve been in hospitals that have been bombed in this current conflict, but not prior to then. Every single hospital has been attacked. I mean, nearly 2,000 health care workers have been killed during this conflict — a far greater proportion than any other conflict in living memory. 75 Gazan healthcare workers have been killed per 100,000 capita of population. 75. The equivalent number in Ukraine is 0.8. In all other conflicts, it’s single figures of healthcare workers per 100,000 population. In Gaza it’s 75. So there’s been a grossly disproportionate killing of healthcare workers. All the hospitals have been attacked. And I think — I’m going to be talking to you about what I’ve seen with my own eyes — the disproportionate attack on the health care system I think has been a deliberate part of the Israeli policy to dismantle the whole infrastructure of living in Gaza.
Tucker Carlson: So you don’t think those hospitals were collateral damage? These were accidental attacks?
Dr. Nick Maynard: I
think they were deliberate attacks. And I mean, I was in Al-Aqsa Hospital when it was attacked. On my first couple of trips out there before the Rafah crossing was destroyed in May 2024, the early trips I took since October the 7th — we went in through Rafah, we crossed from Egypt across the Sinai, and on that very first trip we were the very first emergency team that got into Gaza. We stayed on that occasion in a safe house rather than in the hospital, and each day our Gazan staff colleagues communicated with COGAT, which is the liaison branch of the Israeli army, to check that the route going to the hospital and the hospital itself was deconflicted.
So there was a sort of what we thought was a very robust deconfliction process, where the Israeli military would know that we were driving along such and such a road, we were going to work in such and such a hospital, and we would be safe. That was naive of us clearly. You’ll remember about the World Central Kitchen convoy that got bombed — that was the first very publicized example of the deconfliction process breaking down.
Al-Aqsa Hospital — I was operating in the operating theater one day. It was January the 5th, 2024, I remember the day well, operating on a victim of a bomb explosion, and an Israeli missile attack hit the intensive care unit right next to where I was working.
Tucker Carlson:
While you were operating?
Dr. Nick Maynard:
While I was operating. So we finished the operation, and we had to evacuate the hospital. MSF had a team there. All the foreign aid workers had to evacuate to go back to our safe house, and that hospital rapidly becomes disabled. So there are multiple examples of hospitals being attacked. These are not collateral damage. The propaganda we hear from the Israeli spokespeople is always, well, these are either collateral damage, or they are being used as Hamas command centers and we’re just targeting Hamas. And they’ve never provided any remotely credible or verifiable evidence to support those contentions.
Tucker Carlson:
Well, as a doctor who’s operated in these hospitals, did you notice Hamas command meetings going on while you were there?
Dr. Nick Maynard:
Not at all. And since October the 7th I’ve been in two hospitals, but prior to then I’ve worked in all the major hospitals. I’ve had unlimited access throughout all these hospitals. And I’ve been to every square inch of these hospitals. I walked around every single part of the Nasser Medical Complex — it was bombed soon after I left most recently — I’ve walked every single part of the hospital, and I’ve never seen anything. I’ve seen no evidence of Hamas military activity.
Now, I clearly cannot talk about what’s going on in any tunnels because I didn’t go into any tunnels. I clearly can’t talk about what’s going on in a hospital outbuilding 100 meters away or 75 meters away, and there may be that there were Hamas there — I have no idea. I can bear witness to what I have seen.
of course the Israeli military are not bombing those outbuildings. They’ve been bombing the clinical areas of these hospitals, where there have been patients, where there have been doctors, where there have been medical students I had been teaching a few weeks previously, who were killed in the latest attack on Nasser Hospital. So they are targeting the clinical areas, and I can say with absolute clarity — and indeed all my colleagues who have been out there — none of us have seen any evidence of Hamas military.
Tucker Carlson:
For comparison. Again, you gave the numbers — the number of medical personnel who have been killed in the Russia-Ukraine war — and it’s a tiny fraction proportionally of the number who have been killed by the Israelis. How many hospitals have been totally blown up in that war — Russia-Ukraine — do you think?
Dr. Nick Maynard:
I don’t know. I mean, there has been significant targeting of Ukrainian hospitals as well, and the proportion of healthcare workers killed and hospitals destroyed in Ukraine is not as bad as Gaza, but it’s much more than many previous conflicts. So both those two current conflicts stand out in that respect, but the statistics would say that Gaza is the worst.
Tucker Carlson: Targeting hospitals is a war crime.
Dr. Nick Maynard: Correct. Yeah.
Tucker Carlson: How many people do you know who’ve been killed?
Dr. Nick Maynard:
Many. Close friends — I’d say probably a dozen close friends have been killed. One young plastic surgeon who I knew, who I’d worked with in May 2023 when I was at Shifa Hospital — he was executed. And I use that word very carefully. He was discovered about a mile from Shifa Hospital with his mother. They both had their hands handcuffed behind their backs, and they both had bullet wounds in the brain. So I’ve had friends who’ve been bombed, and I’ve had friends… and he was a plastic surgeon.
Tucker Carlson: And he was a plastic surgeon? Why was he executed?
Dr. Nick Maynard:
I don’t know. I don’t know what goes on behind this. What I can tell you is that when Shifa Hospital was — Shifa
Add Headings (Format > Paragraph styles) and they will appear in your table of contents.
‘s been destroyed effectively twice during this war — but when it was invaded initially, maybe two years ago, all the staff were displaced, including very close friends of mine. And when they were allowed back in, when the Israeli military left after a few weeks, they discovered the dead bodies of 300 civilians in the hospital — some patients, some staff — many of them handcuffed with their hands behind their back, many of them with bullet wounds to the head, including this friend of mine. So there are multiple examples of healthcare staff who’ve been killed, healthcare staff who’ve been abducted.
The latest figure is nearly 500 healthcare workers have been abducted, illegally detained without charge,
Tucker Carlson: By the Israeli military?
Dr. Nick Maynard:
Many of them by the Israeli military into the Israeli prison system. Multiple examples of them being tortured. This has all been documented by a group called Healthcare Workers Watch. You can Google it. They produced a document called “The Killing and Detention of Gazan Healthcare Workers,” and there are multiple examples of people being tortured to death.
Tucker Carlson: Tortured to death.
Dr. Nick Maynard:
Absolutely. An iconic orthopedic surgeon who I didn’t know well but had met — in fact I had coffee with him in May 2023 — he was tortured to death. A Sky Television investigative journalist interviewed fellow detainees and did some remarkable investigative journalism, all in the public domain, and described how this surgeon’s mode of torture was being raped to death. He had been serially raped on a daily basis for two weeks prior to his dying. His body has never been returned.
I’ve taken detailed testimonies from healthcare workers who’ve been in Israeli prisons and have been tortured. They survived. I’ve taken video and audio testimonies, and they’ve described to me their modes of torture — how their genitals were repeatedly attacked specifically. They were electrocuted through their genitals. They underwent severe psychological torture. They were blindfolded for 60 days in a row. They were handcuffed. They were not allowed to lie down. They were on their knees or sitting for 60 days non-stop, beaten regularly, electrocuted. Awful things. And this document — the Healthcare Workers Watch — your listeners can Google that. All the different modes of torture are documented,
Tucker Carlson All carried out by the Israeli government?
Dr. Nick Maynard
By the Israeli prison , guards and military. And this has all been submitted. The evidence is there. Detailed testimonies from fellow detainees, from families, indeed, some testimonies from the Israeli prison services staff, as well. And again, all of this has been submitted to the international courts.
Tucker Carlson:
So the New York Times recently ran a piece saying that Palestinian prisoners had been raped with dogs in Israeli prisons. And the response in the American media, to the extent there was a response, was to accuse the writer of blood libel against all Jews — this is like accusing rabbis of poisoning wells, it was basically Nazi propaganda. That was the response. Does that sound plausible to you?
Dr. Nick Maynard:
It does sound plausible. I did not hear any examples of that. But what I have heard about and taken detailed testimony of are some of the most appalling examples of torture. One of my friends who was tortured for 60 days in a prison — I’ve heard no examples of dogs raping the prisoners, but I have heard multiple examples of dogs being used as weapons. You’ll be familiar with the drone warfare, the quadcopters with cameras and guns. Well, they have dogs who are trained to go into the hospitals with cameras and guns on their back and attacking people. And my colleague, of whom I took a detailed testimony, has described that in great detail.
Tucker carlson Dogs with cameras and guns on their backs?
Dr. Nick Maynard:
Dogs with cameras and guns on their backs, trained to go into hospitals and shoot people. I’ve heard multiple examples of that.
Tucker Carlson Living dogs?
Dr. Nick Maynard:
Living dogs, who are trained, they go in, and then there’ someone remotely controlling the camera and the guns.
Tucker Carlson: If you told me that happened in a North Korean prison camp, I would have trouble believing you. You’re saying the Israeli government did this?
Dr. Nick Maynard:
Well, I’m telling you what I have taken testimony of — a friend of mine who witnessed this on multiple occasions.
Tucker Carlson: You live in Britain. What do people in the UK say when you tell them this?
Dr. Nick Maynard:
So I do talk a lot about this. I felt this obligation, having witnessed all these atrocities, that I feel have to share this with everyone. I’ve done a lot of media interviews. I’ve done a lot of lectures at medical conferences, at lay people’s conferences, and I’ve met a lot of our senior politicians. And I’m not alone — a lot of people have done this, a lot of my colleagues have done this, a lot of US doctors have done this. US doctors, British doctors, we’ve all publicly written to our governments. A few of us wrote a very detailed dossier with photographic and written evidence of what we’ve seen. We presented it to our prime minister. We submitted it to all the cabinet ministers, so they know what’s going on.
I visited Washington DC in the early part of this and met members of the Biden administration with friends of mine from Med Global, a wonderful US NGO. We went and gave this evidence. We took in large laminated color photographs of babies who’d been shot in the head, of children who’d lost their limbs, of children who’d been starved to death. We described this to the Biden administration. I’ve been to several meetings in our government, including one with the prime minister, where we’ve described what’s been going on, and it’s had no impact at all.
Tucker Carlson: What was your meeting with Biden officials like? What did they say?
Dr. Nick Maynard:
Some of them were — by and large — very receptive. We met various senators as well, but then we met members of the administration. They were very receptive. We clearly met people lower down the chain. We did meet Samantha Power — she was the most senior — who I was very impressed with. We got a very good reception and a very sympathetic reception. Of course, none of this goes anywhere. We don’t see any actions at the end of that. But by and large the US politicians we met were very sympathetic, but of course it had no impact whatsoever.
Tucker Carlson: Samantha Power became famous for writing a book on genocide — how we can never allow it again — and then she allowed it again.
Dr. Nick Maynard: Yes.
Tucker Carlson:
So your friend who was raped to death, your friends who were tortured — why were they detained and tortured?
Dr. Nick Maynard:
I think there’s a clear disproportion of senior healthcare workers who’ve been taken compared to junior healthcare workers. My presumption is — and I can tell you a lot of facts about what’s happened there, and my interpretation is my opinion — it would seem to me and many others who’ve witnessed all of, this that this has been a deliberate policy to destroy the health care system.
Tucker Carlson:
Can you give us a specific example of someone you know who was detained and tortured, and what were the circumstances? How does that happen?
Dr. Nick Maynard:
They’re arrested within the hospitals. So my two colleagues — one of them was arrested in the Indonesian Hospital, one of them was arrested in Nasser Hospital. The Israeli military invade the hospitals, and they — what would appear to be fairly arbitrarily — arrest some and let others go. Predominantly males. They are then taken off, and I’ll describe what happened to my — the last testimony I took: he was with about 20 or 30 other healthcare workers put in a big pit, an underground pit with no covering. They were stripped naked down to their underwear. They were blindfolded. They were handcuffed. They were left in a pit in the ground for two to three days. Then they were taken off to an Israeli prison. They were left blindfolded, they were left handcuffed, they were beaten those first few days non-stop for 12 hours at a time.
One of my close friends — one of the senior deans in the medical school there — was abducted and taken away. He was only taken for I think 10 days and then released.
Tucker Carlson: How old is he?
Dr. Nick Maynard: I guess late 50s.
Tucker Carlson: Not of militant age.
Dr. Nick Maynard:
Absolutely.
Tucker Carlson: And what was the justification?
Dr. Nick Maynard:
They were continually being grilled about being Hamas members and what they had done and all that sort of stuff. Now, Hussam Abu Safiya, who’s the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, was abducted over a year ago — he’s still under detention in an Israeli prison. His lawyers can’t get news about him. There are many people who are still there. We can only speculate as to why they are being taken and why they’re being tortured, But it seems that the deliberate disproportionate detention of healthcare workers and killing of healthcare workers compared to other civilians speaks to me that there is a deliberate policy of undermining and destroying the whole healthcare system.
Tucker Carlson: Are they charged with crimes? Put on trial?
Dr. Nick Maynard:
Oh no, no, no, no. None of them are charged. These are all people detained without charge.
Tucker Carlson: Just completely lawless.
Dr. Nick Maynard:
But that’s been happening for decades in the Palestinian territories. There are thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank who’ve been in prison without charge. So this has been happening for a long time. But certainly the ones that I have interviewed, and the ones I’ve known who’ve been told, no, there were no charges at all. And a lot of these are just adult men with families. The age range of the people I know were from probably early 20s to late 50s.
Tucker Carlson: That’s shocking.
Dr. Nick Maynard: It is shocking to me. And having seen this, having witnessed this, this is why I think it is important that we tell everyone what’s going on, because this is not what we’re hearing from our western media, from our governments — despite many attempts by foreign doctors who have been there to speak out and tell them.
Tucker Carlson: Well, some of the accounts are so shocking, that the military just rolls into a hospital, abducts senior physicians, and then rapes them in prison with no charges, it’s kind of hard to believe that could be true, given that Israel is regarded by, I think, most people in the United States as a civilized country. Maybe you disagree with their influence over our politics, but — it’s Israel, it’s not that different from us. You’re describing totally uncivilized, evil, organized behavior.
Dr. Nick Maynard: I’m describing what I have either seen or what close friends have told me. And the volume of accounts that I have read and heard is overwhelming. And to me, the amount of reports coming out tells me very clearly this is happening.
Tucker Carlson: So after October 7th — October 7th happens — are you in the UK when that happened?
Dr. Nick Maynard: I was in the UK. Yeah.
Tucker Carlson: Given how familiar you are with Gaza and the crossings from Gaza into Israel, were you surprised that Hamas or militants could cross the border in those numbers without pushback from the Israeli military?
Dr. Nick Maynard: I think we’re all surprised, and I think there’s a huge amount we don’t know about the events of that day. My concentration at the time was that within 12 hours of that, I was being contacted by my friends and colleagues out there, who in the very very early days were predicting there was going to be the most almighty backlash, and that they were already on the day afterwards begging those of us who could to go out there and help them.
Tucker Carlson: So they knew what was coming.
Dr. Nick Maynard: So I think that by the next day, by October the 8th, they knew what was coming. And people were trying to get in there right from the word go to go and help.
Tucker Carlson: When did you get back into Gaza after that?
Dr. Nick Maynard: My first trip — we went in on Boxing Day, so December the 26th. We were meant to go on Christmas Day and we got delayed by the Egyptian military in the Sinai. So we went into Gaza on December the 26th. It was the first significant emergency medical team that went in there.
Tucker Carlson: What did you find when you got there?
Dr. Nick Maynard: I remember approaching it — we’d had a very long crossing through the northern Sinai, going through all the Egyptian military checkpoints. It was a beautiful day, beautifully sunny, no clouds in the sky. And then you could see, as we approached Rafah from Egypt, this low-lying cloud over the whole of southern Gaza, which of course was smoke from the bombs. And you could smell it from about two or three miles away. You could smell the burning, and it was awful. Itwas awful
So we got into Rafah, we got through the Egyptian checkpoints, and we had to drive through Rafah to get to the safe house we were living in. This was two and a half months into it, by which time a lot of people had been displaced from northern Gaza and Gaza City. The migration of displaced refugees from the north was like something I’ve never seen before. As we were driving through Rafah and then up the coast road towards the middle of Gaza to Deir al-Balah, where the hospital we were going to be working in was. It’s impossible to put words to it — the thousands of people walking, most of them walking, some of them in horse and carts, some of them in vehicles, who’d been displaced and were moving down south to get away from all the trauma. And that, for me, was a sight I will never forget.
And of course at that time, it was early on, Al-Mawasi, which will be an area you’re familiar with, is what the Israelis paradoxically were calling a safe area that everyone was being evacuated to. Well, of course, it’s not remotely safe. At that time there were no tents up there at all. It was people walking there. The next time I went back a few months later, that had been covered in tents. I say tents, but they’re not really tents, they’re sort of makeshift shelters. So hundreds of thousands had been moved down south. It was awful to see
Tucker Carlson : Because their homes had been destroyed.
Dr. Nick Maynard And friends of mine had been displaced six, seven, eight, nine times. That very first trip, I had been in Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah for about four or five days. I have many friends out there. One particularly close family — their daughter left Gaza about eight years previously. She got a scholarship to get out. She stayed in the UK. She’s a doctor there. She became a member of our family. So I used to see her family every time I go to Gaza. They came to visit me at the hospital in Al-Aqsa just a week after I’d arrived. And they were distraught. They had been displaced six times at that point. They were living with no running water, no electricity. They had all written on their legs in ink their names and their dates of birth. This is what they all did, because they all expected to be killed and they wanted their bodies to be recognized. They wanted to be identified. These are close friends of mine.
It was — I mean, that first trip, I thought I’d be prepared because I had been on the phone to my Gazan friends and colleagues almost daily since October the 7th. We have a strong network in Oxford in particular of people who’ve been out there. So we were all interacting with all our different contacts, meeting regularly on a weekly basis to see what we could do. And I thought I’d be prepared, but nothing could have prepared me for what I saw there.
Tucker Carlson: And you’re a surgeon, so it’s not like you’re fainting at the sight of blood.
Dr. Nick Maynard: No, I mean — I’ve described to you the sort of non-medical things so far, but of course you get into the hospital, and Al-Aqsa Hospital, where I was first based, is a small hospital. It’s not a trauma hospital. It has a bed capacity of 200 normally. There were something like 800 patients there. The grounds of the hospital, the corridors, the waiting areas were covered in patients and their relatives. You could not — you could hardly move. Literally every time you walked into the hospital, you were treading over people who were lying there or sitting there.
And the trauma we saw at that time in December 2023 — the numbers of aerial bombardments was just non-stop. So we had mass casualty after mass casualty. It was really quite remarkable, the awful trauma we were seeing. And this hospital — the quality of the surgical care, the medical care is remarkable — but there’s only so much you can do with limited resources. The capacity of the hospital was being repeatedly overwhelmed.
Tucker Carlson: Were you performing surgeries?
Dr. Nick Maynard: Yeah, I was. I spent the whole time operating on major explosive injuries — bomb injuries. I do abdominal and thoracic surgery back home in Oxford, so I was operating on the abdomen and the chest all the time. These were injuries, at that time, from explosive injuries and from what are called the fragmentation missiles, bombs which contain many thousands of very very small metal pieces, which then act as thousands of pieces of shrapnel which tear through human bodies. These are bombs which are designed to cause the maximum amount of tissue destruction, and they did indeed do that. So we saw multiple civilians, children — 70% of the people I treated in that first trip were women and children — being destroyed by these bombs.
I can talk about the little brother and sister, Allah and Aya, a six and an eight-year-old brother and sister who were the sole remaining members of their family. Their parents were killed by the bomb.
Tucker Carlson: Oh, come on.
Dr. Nick Maynard: I can see them in front of me as I’m talking to you about them. We were treating them. These were days when we had completely run out of all pain relief. So we had no painkillers to give them.
Tucker Carlson: Before surgery?
Dr. Nick Maynard: Before surgery. In the ER, for example, you resuscitated them. The eight-year-old girl had such a badly broken leg that it had cut off the blood supply to her foot. So that leg had to be straightened in order to stop the foot dying, and that had to be done without any pain relief. I can hear her screams as that was done.
So we saw awful things. And a group of us who’ve been out there did a survey of about a hundred foreign healthcare workers who’ve worked in the acute situations there. We had this published in the British Medical Journal at the end of last year, where we described the pattern of injuries. And this has been widely disseminated in the medical world now because of the conclusions we drew.
We described huge and terrible shrapnel injuries, gunshot wounds, burn injuries. But what we described as multiple examples of high-energy weapons being used in civilian populations, and the pattern of injuries we described is a pattern that’s only previously been described in true combat situations, i.e. when soldiers fight soldiers. The pattern of injuries we described using these high-energy weapons and missiles has never been described in civilian populations before in such high numbers. Which again supports the contention that many of us have spoken about, saying that this is evidence of indiscriminate, deliberate, mass targeting of civilian populations.
Tucker Carlson: And when civilians are killed, by definition it’s murder, because they’re not part of it. What are injuries like from high-explosive missiles and bombs?
Dr. Nick Maynard: Absolutely. They committed no crime.
We don’t see those who are within a few hundred meters, because they’re killed outright. If they’re very close, they get killed by the shock wave. If they’re within a few hundred meters, they get destroyed by the shrapnel. So we see people who are several hundred meters away,
Tucker Carlson: Several hundreds meters away?
Dr. Nick Maynard Yes, and they come in with the most appalling injuries. You don’t see the pieces of shrapnel — often they’re one or two millimeters. You don’t find the majority of them, but you see these multiple entry points throughout the chest, throughout the abdomen, causing the most appalling damage.
I learned a lot from the Gazan surgeons. I work in Oxford. We don’t see trauma like that. We don’t see trauma like that anywhere in the world really, certainly not in the United Kingdom. So they had been dealing with this day in, day out. It was a very steep learning curve for me and for most of us coming from the UK, dealing with this sort of shrapnel damage which we don’t normally see. Just shredding their way through the lungs, through the diaphragm, through the liver — awful liver injuries, pancreas, bowel injuries. And of course sometimes you see multiple injuries throughout the abdomen. So you have to laboriously search out all the different holes and things.
Terrible injuries. And of course they’re life-threatening in their own right. But the very strong narrative from my most recent trip, although we called this out on earlier trips, was the malnutrition we saw. The starvation. Patients coming in with these terrible injuries but also profoundly malnourished, and their inability to heal from injuries from the surgery. The mortality rate from these injuries was far, far higher than they should have been.
Tucker Carlson: I’m confused, because we had a guy — an American called Johnny Moore, who’s some sort of self-described Christian minister who ran the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation — and we were assured directly by him that there’s no starvation in Gaza, because they were bringing in more than enough food aid. That’s not true?
Dr. Nick Maynard: Most certainly not true. Whether that’s a deliberate lie or misinformation, I can categorically say there is no truth in that statement whatsoever. I spoke out about this publicly back in January 2024, that was three months into it, when we were beginning to see the signs of malnutrition. I was there again six months later, it was much, much worse. I was there again the following year, and the malnutrition, I can reel off names of children who I operated on who died because they were malnourished. They’re imprinted on my mind.
Little Habiba — a beautiful eleven-year-old girl who came in. She wasn’t malnourished when she came in, but she had a severe explosive injury. Her lower esophagus was shattered. That’s what I do in Oxford — I operate on the esophagus day in, day out. I spent the whole of one night operating, reconstructing her esophagus, successfully. But because her esophagus was so damaged, she couldn’t eat or drink. She was on a ventilator. We had to tube-feed her. We had no nutrition to give her. She died after four weeks. Her repair was intact. She died because she had no nutrition.
Tucker Carlson: Because the hospital had nothing to give her.
Dr. Nick Maynard: We had no nutrition to give her. We had no nutrition to give any patients at all, Tucker. No nutrition. Where was the rest of the world?
Dr. Nick Maynard: Well, I mean, this is something we’ve called out repeatedly very publicly. Something I’ve told my government about — that there is a total blockade. A total blockade, which lasted about five or six months of any aid going into Gaza, from March the 18th, 2025, when the Israelis broke that ceasefire. I was there in June and July. There was a complete blockade, no food going in. I saw members, friends of mine, surgeons I’d known for years. One guy I didn’t recognize because he’d lost 40 kilos in weight. I lost 8 kilos in a month there because we had very little food to eat. So the malnutrition, the starvation was appalling. And those commentators who claim there was enough food going in are being profoundly dishonest in saying that.
Tucker Carlson: But what was the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation doing then? They were going on television, bragging — Johnny Moore was telling everybody that they were saving the people of Gaza.
Dr. Nick Maynard: Well, they weren’t at all. Prior to that, UNRWA was distributing food — they were, of course, stopped by the Israelis. They were distributing food through over 400 food distribution points. Within the limitations of what food was getting into Gaza, they were distributing it as well as they could. They were stopped completely. They were replaced by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which had four food distribution points.
I didn’t go to them because I wasn’t able to — I was in the hospitals. It was too dangerous to leave the hospitals. I was in Nasser Hospital where at one point the Israeli military were 200 meters away. We couldn’t go out at all. The only safe place — or least dangerous place — was to stay in the hospital. But what I did see were the victims who had been shot at those Gaza Humanitarian Foundation food distribution sites.
Tucker Carlson: You personally saw them?
Dr. Nick Maynard: I operated on many of them. And I also had Gazan colleagues, Gazan healthcare workers, who used to go out to the food distribution points, the GHF sites, to get food. And they were all describing these food distribution sites as death traps.
The first inkling I had that something horrible was going on there was I think on something like my fourth day there on my last trip. I was called to the operating theater by one of my Gazan surgical colleagues. He had a twelve-year-old boy on the operating table who had been shot. It had gone through his aorta. He was dying. He was bleeding. They couldn’t stop the bleeding. So they asked for my help. I went in there. I couldn’t stop it either. By which time his clotting had all gone wrong, this happens in severe injury. He was bleeding out, and he died on the operating table under our hands.
Awful. 12-year-old. His family, who had come with him, told us he had been sent, these are all starving, they’re all very weak, so the young teenage boys are the ones who are sent out because they’re the strongest to get the food, and he’d been shot by an Israeli soldier there. They witnessed this.
Tucker Carlson: Why?
Dr. Nick Maynard: Well, I can’t speculate any better than anyone else as to why this is happening. What I can do is document what I saw and document what I heard. It was a similar story from all the victims’ families, from those that survived, from the victims themselves, from Gazan healthcare workers who went to these food sites in order to get food for their families. They all described the same things, how these young teenage boys were being shot by Israeli soldiers.
So that twelve-year-old was shot, and then I started hearing from many others. A friend of mine who worked in the emergency room at Nasser Hospital, one of the people I told you about earlier, who the previous year had been incarcerated in an Israeli prison for 60 days and been tortured daily, he’d recovered and was now working. And he told me how they had noticed in the ER that there were different body parts being targeted on different days at the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation food distribution points.
One day he said, and other emergency room doctors and nurses I knew corroborated this, 19 young teenage boys had all come in one day, all of whom had been shot in the head and neck. Nowhere else. Just the head and neck. Another day they came in predominantly with chest injuries. Another day they came in predominantly with abdominal gunshot wounds. And we noticed this. I started speaking to my fellow surgeons in the operating theaters and we all noticed this pattern as well.
On one day, the Saturday before I left Nasser Hospital to come home to England, four young teenage boys were brought in, all of whom had been shot in the testicles. Just the testicles. Nowhere else. And the pattern of injuries that we all witnessed was so striking that it was clearly beyond coincidental. And it seemed to us like there was a game of target practice.
Tucker Carlson: And these were all children who’d been shot, Palestinians who’d been shot at Gaza Humanitarian Foundation food distribution sites?
Dr. Nick Maynard: Absolutely. And I operated on a lot of them — a lot of them with abdominal wounds.
Tucker Carlson: How can you? So if you’re in the business, not the business, you have the ministry to distribute food to the starving, not to Hamas militants but just to families, children, women, the elderly, and people start getting shot at your distribution sites, don’t you do something about that? How could the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation day after day allow starving people to be shot at their distribution sites?
Dr. Nick Maynard: Your guess is as good as mine.
Tucker Carlson But just try and put yourself in their position — wouldn’t you say, “Whoa, wait a second, we can’t have this”? Wouldn’t you say that?
Dr. Nick Maynard Yes, I would The description I got from many of my colleagues who went to them was that the food would all be laid out in a compound. Again, I heard this description form many of my colleagues. They’ve been working intense shifts in the hospital for 24 hours, then before they went home, they went there to get food for their starving families. There’d be enough food in the compound for, say, 200 people in this compound. There’d be a narrow gate, locked, with everyone crowding outside. They’d wait until there were four, five, 600 people queueing up outside, i.e. far more people than there was food allocated for. And then they’d open this narrow gate, and there’d be utter chaos and fighting to try and get that food. And that was when they were being picked out and shot — trying to get in, and shot in the compound by surrounding soldiers.
Tucker Carlson: Unarmed people.
Dr. Nick Maynard: Unarmed. Unarmed people. And again, I stress this is what’s been described to me.
Tucker Carlson: Well, not just by you. We interviewed Tony Aguilar, who was one of the American contractors hired to provide security for these sites, who described the same thing. And he watched his life overturned as he was slandered by Netanyahu’s many defenders in our media, paid liars, by Johnny Moore, who ran it, who’s now affiliated with Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. And I do hope that the people who run Liberty will sit Mr. Moore down and ask him to respond to what you’ve just said, because you’re describing a war crime, one of the most immoral, disgusting scenes I can imagine, which he oversaw. You hate to think that someone like that could be rewarded by Liberty University in Lynburg Viginia after participating in that. So I just want this on the record. Not that it, I guess, probably matters. No one is going to pay attention because no one has so far, but that’s really upsetting.
So the children, the boys shot in the genitals, I hesitate even to ask, but is that something that can be fixed?
Dr. Nick Maynard: Yeah, I mean, they weren’t my patients because I’m not a urologist, but I remember when they came in. I was in the operating theater complex at Nasser, operating on people with gunshot wounds to the abdomen, and my close friends who are urologists had this succession of boys being brought in who they were operating on. I wasn’t involved in their care. I didn’t follow them up afterwards, but I can verify they were shot exclusively in the testicles.
Tucker Carlson: Oh, come on.
Dr. Nick Maynard: And on many of the days we got young boys being brought in from the GHF sites. There was one of the GHF sites in Al-Mawasi, and there were a lot of tents down there as well. And we saw a lot of injuries from quadcopter drones, remotely controlled drones. These are remotely controlled, fixed-wing drones which hover. They have guns on them. They have cameras on them. They’re flown all over the place in Gaza. We saw many people shot by them. They were flown into hospitals. One of my friends was shot in the chest in the operating theaters at Nasser, not when I was there, it was before I was there. A quadcopter was remotely controlled, presumably by someone in Tel Aviv or somewhere, flown into the hospital, shot him in the chest when he was in the operating theater.
Tucker Carlson: He’s in the operating room.
Dr. Nick Maynard: He’s in the operating room early in the morning, preparing the operating theater for an imminent operation, when this quadcopter shoots him in the chest. He survived. I was with him a few weeks after that.
Tucker Carlson: Indoors.
Dr. Nick Maynard: Indoors. I also saw victims, young women, who had been shot whilst in their tents in Al-Mawasi. Quadcopters hovering over the tents, spraying bullets indiscriminately onto the tents. I had one woman who was three months pregnant, who came in with a gunshot wound. I operated. We saved her life. The baby survived as well, but the bullet had missed her pregnant uterus by about two or three centimeters.
So we saw examples like that of these quadcopters spraying bullets onto all the inhabitants of these tents.
Tucker Carlson: But the quadcopters are controlled remotely, by someone who can see what they’re shooting at.
Dr. Nick Maynard: Yes. I mean, there’s a lot of speculation that a lot of them are being driven remotely using artificial intelligence.
Tucker Carlson That’s not speculation.
Dr. Nick Maynard: Yes, to help the targeting. But absolutely they were being controlled somehow. And going into hospitals, spraying the tents in Al-Mawasi. We saw many examples of that. I saw them on my first trip in December 2023 in Al-Aqsa. We had victims coming in from quadcopters in Al-Aqsa.
Tucker Carlson: What did you think of all of this?
Dr. Nick Maynard: I was really skeptical when I was told on that first trip that these were quadcopters. I didn’t see any quadcopter. We heard the drones the whole time. I could not believe what I was hearing. I didn’t believe a lot of it early on to be honest with you, Tucker. I was naive. I assumed this was just, I wondered if there was propaganda. But I saw so much on all these trips. I saw so much clear evidence of children and women being targeted that I believe all of it.
Tucker Carlson: I mean, much more than the average person, you spent your life around death and suffering and human drama. You’re a cancer surgeon, so presumably you’ve got a higher tolerance for this than most people. Obviously you do. But what effect did it have on you, seeing this?
Dr. Nick Maynard: You’re absolutely right. Working with cancer, I’ve had patients die of their disease for decades. And I’ve always been a doctor who.. I valued intensely the relationship I had with me patients. And you always have an emotional involvement. You learn to control that, but of course you get emotionally involved with your patients because you care about them deeply. So yes, I am conditioned to deal with that. And I think doctors, nurses, healthcare workers are conditioned to deal with these things.
And when we’re operating on these appalling situations, these children, when you have children dying under your hands on the operating table, you deal with it there and then, you get on with it. But the aftermath later that night, and when you get back to England, is awful. And I learned, we all learned a lot about how to deal with the emotional turmoil we all experienced. We shared a lot, we talked a lot late at night, on the fourth floor of Nasser Hospital.
Incidentally, where the most recent big massive bombing of Nasser Hospital by the Israeli military was on the fourth floor. Which they claimed, coming back to your earlier questions, they claimed that was where Hamas militants were masquerading as journalists. In fact, this was a clinical area. On the fourth floor is where we were living. And it’s where the intensive care unit was. It’s where the operating theater complex was. It was yet another clinical area being targeted by the Israeli military.
But coming back to what you asked me, would at the end of the day, whether it was at 10 o’clock, midnight, or two in the morning, we would talk and share the awful things we’d seen. And that was very therapeutic. It was really cathartic talking to each other and sharing.
Tucker Carlson: Were these mostly Western doctors?
Dr. Nick Maynard: No. No. I mean, yeah, there were a few Western doctors, but a lot of Gazan doctors as well. We’d all congregate, and I was meeting up with people, some people I’d known for years. It was a mixture of Gazan and Western doctors, all just sharing these appalling things. And that was to an extent cathartic. It was very therapeutic, but it lingers with you. And I can very openly say that all of us who’ve been out there have been affected deeply emotionally. But I want everyone to realize — we’re there for two, three, four weeks at a time. Our Gazan colleagues are there. They’ve been seeing this day in, day out for two and a half years. So whatever we have witnessed and seen, they’ve seen far worse. And the psychological trauma, the mental health damage is incalculable amongst all the Gazan people.
Tucker Carlson: You get back to the UK and almost, not entirely, but almost, your entire media is conspiring to hide the truth of what’s happening in Gaza and attacking anyone who calls attention to it. How do you feel about that?
Dr. Nick Maynard: Profound anger. You have a very complex set of emotions when you leave Gaza having had a trip like this. You feel guilty that you’re getting out and they can’t get out. You feel immense sadness that you’re leaving friends who you know may be killed. All my friends out there tell me, and they’ve said this repeatedly, that they expect to be killed out there. You’re leaving patients who probably won’t survive. And you feel this incredible anger towards your government, towards our government, our media.
The media is not particularly interested in listening to what we say now, but they were to a degree then, particularly once we’d just come out. So I did a lot of media stuff, and there were individual journalists, some wonderful journalists I’ve met and shared my experience with, who’ve been desperately trying to get their media outlets to show this. The BBC, as a corporation, has behaved appallingly over the last…
Tucker Carlson I think that’s fair to say.
Dr. Nick Maynard: But that doesn’t change the fact that there have been some wonderful BBC journalists who I know, who’ve been desperately trying to get this out and have been thwarted. Some of them have ended up resigning because they’ve been so appalled. There are many really worthy, passionate journalists who want to get the information out there, but they’re being controlled and not being allowed to by their senior editorial boards. It’s been hugely frustrating.
Tucker Carlson: There are also people who’ve defended it flat out. Certainly, here in the United States, there are many people in our media who basically just attack anyone who points out what’s happening and slander them as haters and Nazis. What do you think of that?
Dr. Nick Maynard: I think it’s profoundly dishonest. I think a lot about why people are denying this and why they’re not allowing it to get out. I think certainly in my country there’s a lot of cowardice, a huge amount of cowardice in the media. I talk a lot about how our institutions in the UK have failed Gaza. Our academic institutions, our medical institutions, our associations, our Royal Colleges, they’ve all been silent. Our media clearly as well. So I think at one level there’s a lot of cowardice.
They’re petrified they’re going to be accused of being antisemitic. And that appalling crime of antisemitism has been terribly weaponized as a result of what’s going on. People are petrified that if they do come out and say these things, they will be accused publicly of being antisemitic. And of course that label lasts, doesn’t it?
Tucker Carlson: Oh yeah. So you can’t have a job.
Dr. Nick Maynard: Exactly. So it’s very difficult for them. But I think there are many more examples, and it’s much more malign than that. I think there are clear agendas to try and shut this all up so that the truth doesn’t get out. And it’s public knowledge, many of our senior politicians are funded, a lot of their campaigns have been funded by various lobbies with money from Israel.
Tucker Carlson I think all of your politicians
I Dr. Nick Maynard I mean, it’s out there in public knowledge. I think you can look at the individuals, every single one of them has been across all three major parties. Yes, including Reform as a major party now
Absolutely, you’re absolutely right. They have been. And that’s all public knowledge. I mean, there’s a wonderful book called Complicit by Peter Oborne. He’s a well-known British journalist who’s written a book I’d really urge everyone to read. It’s about the way that the UK media and the government have been complicit in this genocide in Gaza. It lays bare all these things about how compromised our politicians are, how compromised our institutions are, how compromised our media is.
Tucker Carlson: I’ll never forget, maybe 10 years ago, you had this head of the Labor Party who was, you know, an old leftist, all kind of pro Soviet leftist. I didn’t have much in common with him, I never really thought about him. But the one issue on which he was kind of different from the people who paid for the party was on Israel. He was skeptical of British support for the state of Israel. And I’ve never seen a man slandered like he was slandered. That man was basically driven out of public life. And after that happened, the Labor Party just kind of swung into alignment with the Conservatives, and with the Reform, and basically the entire British political establishment is on the same page: don’t talk about Gaza, Israel is our closest ally, shut up, Nazi. Am I imagining this?
Dr. Nick Maynard: No. You’re portraying it exactly as it was. I’m not a politician, I’ve got no political agenda. My role, I believe, is to bear witness to what I’ve seen out there. But it seems very very clear to me that the weaponization of antisemitism is rife through our society, and it’s being used to shut people up. I got to know Jeremy Corbyn quite well in the last two or three years. I’ve shared platforms with him. And having spoken, I don’t believe there’s an antisemitic cell in his body. I think he is passionately supportive of the Palestinians and that is what his motivation has been. He tried to pass a bill through parliament to get a tribunal to investigate what’s been going on. It was clearly turned down. He ran his own independent tribunal, to which I contributed my evidence as well, and there was evidence from a whole host of people. It’s a publication worth looking at. And it speaks volumes about the people who have witnessed what’s going on in Gaza and are desperate to get the truth out there, what’s really going on. And describing how the attempts to shut them down have been unacceptable.
Tucker Carlson: Well, I think at some point when it becomes clear what happened, that there was the largest ethnic cleansing attempt since the Second World War, since the Nazis, right on the edge of Europe, right across the Mediterranean from Europe, with money and support from the United States and from Britain, the question is going to arise: how did this happen? Where were the people who were supposed to say something about it? How were they able to do this in sight of the world while the world did nothing? And I think these are part of the answer.
Dr. Nick Maynard: It is unfathomable how the world has allowed this to happen. But the evidence is — I mean, I’ve been to the International Criminal Court on several occasions to give my evidence, and the evidence they have is vast, the amount of evidence they have now. Huge amount of evidence. They’ve interviewed many many people like me who’ve been out there. I can speak from my own experience of what I’ve shown to senior politicians, what I’ve shown to the BBC. I spoke with BBC journalists about my experience with those young teenage boys. I gave BBC journalists all the evidence I’ve just shared with you. And the individual journalists were desperate to get it out there. Desperate. But were not allowed to. But they were clearly being held back by their seniors. I’ve spoken about it on camera, and they never aired it. I spoke about it on camera. That evidence I gave was all independent, separate non public evidence. They were wanting to develop it into a detailed story which they never did. So I’ve only ever shared that on brief interviews in media in the UK.
Tucker Carlson: That is remarkable.
Dr. Nick Maynard: But they wouldn’t show it. But there are many examples like that. You just have to hear every single BBC reference to Gaza, to the figures of death, they’ll always talk about the “Hamas-led Ministry of Health.” That is clearly a senior editorial policy. Whenever you mention the Gazan Ministry of Health, you have to say the “Hamas-led Gazan Ministry of Health” in order to discredit their figures.
Tucker Carlson: in order to discredit their figures? I can see why you’re a threat to that propaganda operation, because you’re not working for Hamas — you’re working for Oxford. So you have more credibility. I can see why they wouldn’t want to air it.
Dr. Nick Maynard: Precisely. So the response is either not to show what we’ve said, or we get accused, not by the BBC, but other agencies, of lying.
Tucker Carlson: Have you been accused of lying?
Dr. Nick Maynard: Multiple times. Yeah.
Tucker Carlson: What would your motive be for lying?
Dr. Nick Maynard: No motive at all. I’m at pains to point out repeatedly that I’m a humanitarian. I’m not a politician. I am a humanitarian and I am reporting what I’ve seen with my own eyes. I’ve borne witness to what I believe to be war crimes almost on a daily basis. The clearest evidence I can imagine, in the absence of being an international lawyer, of genocide being carried out, ethnic cleansing being carried out. It seems to me, I’m astonished that anyone can look at the evidence and not see what is going on there. And the evidence is so clear that I think those that refuse to acknowledge it have malign intentions in suppressing that.
Tucker Carlson: It’s hard not to see design in all of this. I mean, the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which now has the force of law in a lot of the world, it is a crime to say certain things thanks to this definition. And in that definition one of the examples given is any comparison between the actions of the Israeli government and the German Nazi regime of the 1930s and ’40s. It kind of seems like — because that’s the obvious comparison, it kind of seems like that was a preemptive attempt to keep people from noticing the obvious.
Dr. Nick Maynard: I see the great value of my testimony in describing what I’ve seen, rather than trying to make comparisons with other events. And I think that, and I’ve seen many other healthcare workers when they do this with all the best of intentions, but it dilutes the strong message I can give. I don’t want to distract from that. The evidence I can describe in my own eyewitness testimony is so powerful by itself that I’ll stick to that.
Tucker Carlson: I think that’s very wise, and more powerful. I agree with you. Do you think what’s happening in Gaza is well known within Israel?
Dr. Nick Maynard: I have no idea. It seems very difficult to believe they don’t know what’s going on, but I guess we’ve witnessed repeatedly the propaganda coming from Israeli spokesmen who speak to our media. I can only imagine it’s much more extensive than that internally.
I remember — about a year ago, just as an example of the appalling propaganda — the BBC talks repeatedly about how they have to have a balanced approach, and it’s a false balance, we all know it’s a false balance. They will give X amount of minutes to someone speaking up for what’s going on in Gaza, and they’ll give the same amount of time to an Israeli spokesman. About a year ago, they interviewed my closest friend in Gaza, who I’ve known for many, many years — an inspirational doctor. And by the way, we talk about all the horrors, the atrocities, the sheer evil that I have seen with my own eyes. I’ve also seen the very very best of humanity, some of the most inspirational heroes, wonderful people. One of them is this very old friend of mine. He was interviewed by the BBC Radio 4 Today program, which is our flagship news program in the morning. They gave him six, seven minutes and he interviewed brilliantly.
And then immediately after that, they interviewed one of the Israeli spokesmen called David Mensah, who I think headed up UK Labor Friends of Israel or something. And he starts off by saying “Well, it’s important your listeners understand that we know that the man you just interviewed is not a proper doctor. We know he is a senior commander in the Hamas military, and you cannot accept anything of what he said as truth.”
Now, I’m not talking about my opinion here. I am talking about what I know clear facts. I know this man. I’ve known him for 16 years. He’s an inspirational doctor. What David Mensah was saying were clear, deliberate lies. So I contacted the BBC through some of my contacts, got through to the editorial boards, and said, “Listen, you’ve knowingly allowed this man to speak lies. You need to give me the right to reply. Speak up for this man who’s been maligned on this.” And they debated it, but they didn’t let me have any right to reply. And their argument was: “We feel they’ve had a balance, they both had seven minutes, and that was a balance.” Of course that’s their stock answer, which is a false balance, it’s not giving equal exposure.
Tucker Carlson: It’s got to be so frustrating to live in a country like that.
Dr. Nick Maynard: Appalling.
Tucker Carlson: Are there any politicians in the UK that you think are open to doing something about this?
Dr. Nick Maynard: Most certainly. I’ve met many. And again — just like the journalists — I’ve met many backbench MPs who are appalled by this. The Green Party, Zack Polanski, I haven’t met him but he’s spoken out at length. I’ve spoken at length to Jeremy Corbyn, Zarah Sultana, many backbench MPs in the Labor Party. The SNP party in Scotland has been brilliant in speaking up. The Lib Dems have had people. There’ve even been one or two Tory backbenchers who’ve been very outspoken and very supportive. So there are many people there, and they have all woken up.
We’ve had some incredible marches in the UK, getting on for a million people sometimes marching in London in support of Gaza. They’re not hate marches, as we’re being told by Reform and the Conservatives and our right-wing media. These are people, I’ve been on many of them with my wife and my daughter, who are avid marchers, they’re peace marches, supporting the Gazan people who are being ethnically cleansed, who are undergoing a genocide. But that has had an impact. There is a huge pressure being exerted by the people who’ve woken up to what’s going on via going to their MPs, and they are having an impact. I mean, it’s nothing like enough, and of course, it’s far too late, but there are a lot of backbench MPs who I think are appalled.
Tucker Carlson: It’s interesting though, you say it’s the right-wing media in the UK that’s supportive of Netanyahu’s ethnic cleansing in Gaza. In the United States it’s kind of the opposite, it’s a lot of former Trump voters who are maddest about what’s happening in Gaza. There’s no reason any nationalist should support what’s happening in Gaza. How is that good for the UK? How is that good for the United States? Why do you think conservative media and politicians in the UK have been roped into supporting something that’s terrible for the UK?
Dr. Nick Maynard: I don’t know the answer to that. I guess our mainstream parties are all like that now, and the media is supporting the mainstream parties. There are very few media outlets in the UK which are supportive of criticism of what’s going on in Gaza. So it’s perhaps not just the right wing, but I think they are the most vocal. The book I mentioned, Complicit by Peter Oborne, goes into this in a lot of detail, and it has some fascinating insights. It does seem to be that there’s a very vocal group of commentators on the right who speak out a lot in support of Israel, and are very successful in calling out those who are speaking against it.
Tucker Carlson: Ah, that’s so depressing. How are you treated by the Israeli government when you transit through Israel? Can you go there now?
Dr. Nick Maynard: I’ve not been able to get in in the last few months. I’m trying to go. I’m hoping to go in August, but you never know. In the last few months, they’ve stopped all people. The majority of people like me who have spoken out have been stopped from going in. They’ve now banned more than 36 NGOs from taking medics into Gaza. MSF has been banned from going in. Other very well-known humanitarian organizations have been banned completely.
About a year ago, the Israelis announced they were introducing a new registration process for agencies that wanted to take in doctors to work there. Which of course is against international law, because we don’t have to register — we go into work in the occupied Palestinian territories and our authority is given to us by the Palestinian Authority. But nevertheless, you have to go through the Israeli borders. And their registration process details exclusion criteria as to what would prevent us being registered. One of them is that if the organization itself, or any member of the organization, or any volunteer with the organization, has at any time in the last seven years criticized the state of Israel, that organization will be banned from working in Gaza or the West Bank. Now, that will exclude a significant majority of the most prominent humanitarian organizations.
Tucker Carlson: You probably wouldn’t be there in the first place if you supported what Israel was doing, if you were for ethnic cleansing. So it’s made it very very difficult for humanitarian teams to get in there. So how do hospitals, the one remaining hospital in Gaza — by the way, what do you think the population of Gaza is right now?
Dr. Nick Maynard: So, it’s a good question. The official figures from the Ministry of Health, recognized by the United Nations and indeed recognized by the Israeli military, is about 76,000 killed by trauma alone. The Lancet Medical Journal, which has published brilliantly on this, estimates, that because there are many thousands of people buried under the rubble, including friends of mine, they estimate with very great authority, I think, that this figure has been underestimated by about 50%. So there are probably around 100,000 killed directly by trauma.
But that excludes the excess deaths — we remember that term from the COVID pandemic. Those people dying of non-conflict related causes like cancer or kidney disease. In Gaza there has been no cancer treatment really for two and a half years. Many of the dialysis machines in Shifa Hospital were destroyed by the Israeli army when they went in there. There are 350,000 people in Gaza who have chronic illnesses that require regular medical treatment which aren’t being treated. There are many infectious diseases, malnutrition as we’ve talked about. So there are many people dying excess deaths. The Lancet estimated 18 months ago that that figure was probably about 180,000 on top of the trauma deaths.
There are other estimates, and of course these are difficult to be overly accurate on, but some estimates say it’s at least several hundred thousand — I heard one estimate saying it was over half a million excess deaths. Now, even if you just take the first perhaps conservative Lancet figure of 186,000, when you include the trauma deaths that’s over a quarter of a million. That is well over 10% of the population of Gaza. And the more extreme examples are more than 20% of the population.
The population of Gaza on October the 6th, 2023 was about 2.2 million. It’s certainly under 2 million now. It’s shocking.
Tucker Carlson: And for that, whatever that number is, ּּover a million people, there is one major hospital.
Dr. Nick Maynard Yes. Nasser Hospital is the only really major hospital still functioning, but it is not functioning fully. When I was there, we ran out of stuff the whole time. I talked about often having no painkillers to give patients. I had one two-week period when we had no sterile drapes to use in the operating theater — we use sterile drapes to create a sterile operating field so you can operate, reducing the risk of infections. We had to make our own out of gowns, and we couldn’t create proper sterile fields.
We had another period of time when we had no running water in the operating theaters, so we couldn’t scrub up properly. We had to use alcohol gel on our hands.
Tucker Carlson: Oh, come on.
Dr. Nick Maynard: There are occasions — and I’ve talked about the lack of nutrition given to patients. There’s been no electricity in Gaza since October the 7th. So the hospitals are totally reliant upon their own fuel sources to keep running, which they get some of from the United Nations as well. But they’re always under threat of running out of fuel, and there have been multiple examples when fuel has run out in the hospitals. When the fuel runs out, there is no power. When there’s no power, the ventilators don’t work. So patients on ventilators die. When there’s no fuel, the power for the incubators for the newborn babies can’t work. So those babies die.
There was an episode about 18 months ago, at Al-Nasr Pediatric Hospital in Gaza City, when the Israeli military invaded the hospital, kicked out all the local staff, and there were six neonates left in the incubators when they were kicked out. They were assured the babies would be fine. The Israeli military left after two or three weeks, and the doctors, some of whom I knew, went back in there, and those six babies were there in the incubators, dead, their bodies rotting.
Tucker Carlson: Oh, come on now.
Dr. Nick Maynard: And there are many other similar stories like that. These things are happening.
Tucker Carlson: You feel that your tax dollars go to the Israeli government?
Dr. Nick Maynard: I’m appalled and I’m disgusted. I’ve said this to our politicians. We’ve gone and spoken to them; we’ve spoken to our prime minister, a few of us spoke to him, Keir Starmer. We’ve talked about the fact that our government is still, they claim there’s an arms embargo. There isn’t. We’re still supplying parts for the F-35 jets. The Royal Air Force is flying reconnaissance flights from Cyprus over Gaza on a daily basis, giving military intelligence to the Israeli military. Because of our support for Israel.
Tucker Carlson: Since Israel murdered so many British diplomats and military officers at the founding of the country, why would the British government owe anything to Israel, which was founded by murdering representatives of the British government?
Dr. Nick Maynard: You’re absolutely right. And I don’t know the answer to that. I mean, we can all speculate, but it is bizarre. I don’t understand it. There is the clearest evidence, in my view, that our governments are complicit in what’s going on there and they need to be held to account.
Tucker Carlson: Last question. Do you plan to go back?
Dr. Nick Maynard: Yes, I’m trying to get in in August. I’ve applied to go in. Many of the NGOs that I know well have been banned. So I’m trying to go in with another one at the moment. I know that because I’ve spoken out so much, the chance of Israel refusing me entry is very high. But I will keep going. I will keep trying.
Tucker Carlson: We’re killing you once you get there.
Dr. Nick Maynard: There’s no question that being in Gaza is unbelievably dangerous. I’ve been injured out there from a bomb injury. There’s no question that it’s very dangerous. But statistically, there has not yet been a single foreign doctor killed there. And I’m not in any way understating the dangers. Of course, it is a very dangerous place, and of course at times you feel fear when you’re out there. But trying to explain what motivates us, whatever we feel at any one time, it’s a complex mix of a whole different set of emotions. Fear is one of them. Desire to be there helping your friends is a very powerful incentive. And to me, when I’m out there, that is by far and away the dominant emotion. So that outweighs any fear we may have.
It’s not just me. A lot of us are like this.
We are so disturbed by what’s going on there. We are so disturbed by how much our governments are complicit in this. What is being done to the Gazans is so fundamentally wrong, not just in the last two years but for decades. And those of us who’ve had the great privilege of knowing and loving the Gazan people for so many years and working with them, have this absolute obligation, and I couldn’t imagine doing it any other way, of having to go out there and help them.
Tucker Carlson: What does your family think?
Dr. Nick Maynard: Very supportive. My wife Fenella is as passionate as I am about the Gazans and the Palestinians. We have a Gazan daughter, informally, called Enas, who we love dearly. She’s never been able to go back to Gaza. She’s become a member of our family. Over the years our house has been a bit of a refuge for Gazan medical students and Gazan doctors who’ve managed to escape. They often come and stay with us, or we fix them up with other friends for accommodation. We’ve managed to take two wonderful Gazan medical students into Oxford, we’ve managed to get them part of our medical school in Oxford.
So my wife, I don’t think I could do all of this without Fenella’s support. She’s as genuinely heroic as any of us in supporting me in this respect. And my kids likewise. My daughter, I’ve got a daughter and two sons. They’re all very passionate. My daughter is a full-time activist most of the time. They’re all very supportive. And of course, before I go, I go and talk to them all individually and explain. They know why I’m going, and they go with their complete blessing.
Tucker Carlson: Godspeed, Dr. Maynard. Thank you very much.
Dr. Nick Maynard: Thank you very much for meeting me. I’ve really enjoyed it. It’s got me going.
Tucker Carlson: If you made it through to the end of that, thank you for watching.