Testimonies

About the archive of testimonies

A testimony is something entirely different from a report, a statistic, a headline. It carries within it the experience of a specific person, at a specific moment, and places on the listener an obligation that is hard to escape: to pay attention. This archive brings together testimonies of people who were there — doctors, medical staff, civilians — and presents their voices, unmediated and unfiltered, to anyone willing to hear.

Behind the Testimonies

Translators’ Introduction Introduction by Dr. Michal Feldon Letter from Dr. Ezzideen Shehab Compassion as a political act of resistance

International Doctors

When the war broke out, international journalists were banned from entering the Gaza Strip. The exceptions (those who could enter) were several dozen international doctors and healthcare workers, highly experienced in conflict zones, whose entry into the Strip was granted on a limited basis.

View testimonies About the project

Gaza Healthcare Workers

They are in the hospitals, struggling to treat the wounded — children, women, the elderly, civilians — to provide medical care without anesthesia, without equipment, without medication, in hospitals under siege and even directly bombed, as they themselves become targets.

Testimonies

About the archive of testimonies

Behind the Testimonies

International Doctors

Gaza Healthcare Workers

"I pronounced more people dead there than I usually do in a year at my work as a trauma surgeon in California."

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

"I said, okay, is there any way of retrieving the arm? And he was a bit shocked. I said, no, I mean, I'm serious. Is there a way of retrieving the arm? And he said, okay. "

Dr. Mohammed Tahir

"This is again an urgent plea to stop this and an urgent plea for help."

Dr. Mimi Syed

"I've done more amputations, and seen more traumatic amputations of children's, than I've seen during my entire career in the last two weeks."

Dr. Adam Hamawy

"Amid all this horror, there were moments of light. We took great joy seeing Juri’s personality resurface once her sepsis resolved."

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

Dr. Mark Perlmutter

" They have never seen with their own eyes what is going on, heard the screams, smelt the rotting flesh, shuddered from the constant bombardment. "

Dr. Tom Potokar

"This was a bullet which was in the left upper thigh of a six-year-old child for the last few months. "

Dr. Junaid Sultan

"The surgeon across from me just, a very stoic, unemotional, strong, resilient surgeon just broke down in tears."

Dr. Samer Attar

"You can't get past these memories. "

Dr. Sanjay Adusumilli

Dr. Scarlett Wong

Dr. Modher Albeiruti

"As it got closer to their release, they reported increasing levels of physical attacks and abuse."

Dr. Mihir Chaudhary

"These are not conditions for living."

Dr. Mimi Syed

"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."

Dr. Aziz Bhimani

"On one side you see the remains of Gaza and on the other side is farmland being watered, and it’s very dystopian. "

Dr. Victoria Rose

"Trying to explain to a little boy that you are using a saw to cut through his bone."

Dr. Abdullah Ghali

"He had been injured as a result of an Israeli air strike. "

Dr. James Smith

"Either the baby dies because there's no ventilator, or the baby dies because of the infection. Your options were tragically limited."

Dr. Mimi Syed

Dr. Aman Odeh

Dr. Thalia Pachiyannakis

"I thought, when will this end?"

Dr. Mohammed Tahir

"Do we really call this a ceasefire?"

Dr. Morten Rostrup

"His mother tells al-Farra that she tried to breastfeed him but didn't have enough milk. When formula became too expensive, she started to feed him starch dissolved in water."

Dr. Ahmad Al Farra

"A bomb landed, his daughter was in the bathroom, and he went back to find her remains,"

Dr. Samer Attar

"My patients were six-year-olds with shrapnels in their heart and bullets in their brains, and pregnant women."

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

"There’s a designated area for children to die, alongside other dying children, where their families can stay with them and pray."

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

"That day will be for me this child that was seemingly sleeping all alone on the floor, you know, blood everywhere, you know, people screaming and this kid just [...] lying there and doing [...] nothing in the middle of a ton of noise."

Karin Huster

"In the explosions the children would either get burnt, or shrapnel."

Dr. Victoria Rose

"This explosion felt close. You could feel it. It's not unusual. We carried on as usual. We carried on working."

Rachael Moses

"Adel treats hungry people, and he himself is hungry most of the time"

Dr. Ahmed Adel

"I was operating all day, I'm a surgeon, and there was an attack on the intensive care unit."

Dr. Nick Maynard

"Yesterday, I had to stop the resuscitation of a patient . . . because if she made it back to life, we had no ventilator to offer her."

Dr. Hammam Alloh

Dr. Yousef Al-Akkad

Dr. Reda Abu Assi

"Why did they target me? I'm a man. I have a job. I've never been involved in politics. I don't own a gun. Why was I chosen?"

Dr. Deirdre Noonan

Dr. Sarah Lalonde

Dr. Yipeng Ge

Dr. Rizwan Minhas

Dr. Dorotea Gucciardo

"The house collapsed on us."

Sara Yaqub Al-attar (patient)

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan

Dr. Thaer Ahmad

"We had dreams"

Dr. Mohammed Abu Mughaisib