Dr. Thaer Ahmad: You know, 700 kids in Gaza, 700 infants, never saw their first birthday. In Gaza over the last year. 200 of them born and killed in conflict, 200 of them born and killed in this assault. I mean, the situation is so dire. We need a ceasefire. We need it right now.
Interviewer: And Dr. Haj-Hassan, speaking of the evacuation orders, evacuation orders in the north and now in the south that we’ve seen today, one resident of Northern Gaza who was just this weekend had to flee once again, told the Associated Press this. And I think it was pretty, it was jarring, telling, and striking, said this: Since October 7 to the present day, this is the 12th time that I and my children, eight individuals have been homeless and thrown into the streets and do not know where to go. Where do you think it does, what do you think is going to happen with this humanitarian crisis? With the additional factor of Gaza is about to enter the winter, which often brings heavy rain to the region.
Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan: Kate, in all honesty, humanitarian crisis is what you deal with when you have a hurricane, what you deal with when you have an earthquake, you have an insult and a humanitarian response. This is my career. This is what I do for a living. Every single person who does this for a living will tell you the same thing. This is different. This is not a humanitarian crisis. Kate, and I’m going to say it very clearly for your viewers to hear. This is genocide. When 70% of the population that are killed are women and children, when the population is starved of food, of water, of medicine, when you have attacks, repeated attacks on all the hospitals, the clinics, the aid distribution sites, the humanitarian aid agencies that try to help. More UN workers have been killed in Gaza than in UN’s history. When you have over 900 families that have been exterminated, that have been taken off of the civil registry, killed, when you have over 17,000 children that have lost one or both parents. When you have bakeries, aid distribution sites, churches, mosques, schools, and in the last three days, in the last 24 hours, in fact, a hospital today that was bombed as you just reported, the hospital where I personally was working, and I can tell you, they are working every second of every day to try and sustain life. When Israel’s strategy and evidence on the ground suggests that they’re doing the exact opposite, they were targeted today. There was a rehabilitation hospital, a rehabilitation center that was targeted in the last 24 hours, and there was an orphanage that was targeted earlier this week. These are the types of places that are being targeted, and so it’s really hard to hear it over and over and over again, framed in the way that it’s being framed in the media, which frankly, Kate is very misleading. It is very misleading. 365 days of this, death tolls that are so far outdated, we have no idea how many people are killed, but I am genuinely afraid about what we’re going to find out. When the dust settles, history books will be written on this, and countries will have to recon, media agencies will have to recon with their major role in the genocide of an entire population, and in the destruction of humanitarian law.