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.

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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.

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"Operating on children who would say, I was lying on the ground after a bomb had dropped, and this quadcopter came down and hovered over me and shot me."

Prof. Nizam Mamode

Testimonies

About the archive of testimonies

Behind the Testimonies

International Doctors

Gaza Healthcare Workers

"Operating on children who would say, I was lying on the ground after a bomb had dropped, and this quadcopter came down and hovered over me and shot me."

Prof. Nizam Mamode

"I saw that love for life came under attack, specifically trying to break the will of the people in Gaza. "

Dr. Thaer Ahmad

rajaa musleh

"As a human being, you can't, just can’t discount the unimaginable suffering that's happening here to children, to women, everybody."

Monica Johnson

"Her father was there, crying and asking me, ‘Can you save her? She’s my only child.’"

Dr. Fozia Alvi

Dr. Irfan Galaria

Dr. Thaer Ahmad

Dr. Vanita Gupta

Dr. Osaid Alser

Prof. Ghassan Abu-Sittah

Dr. Ahmed Moghrabi

"Every day I saw babies die."

99 American Medical Professionals

"I find myself wanting to cry constantly, but I just don't have the time moving from one person to another."

Dr. Mark Brauner

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

Dr. Mihir Chaudhary

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

Dr. Abdullah Ghali

"Every single person I encountered was malnourished. "

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

"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

"Beyond dystopian. This is the most horrific thing that most of us have ever witnessed or followed in our lifetimes. "

Dr. James Smith

""They both just had terrible brain injuries. ... So I had to just tell their families, I just had to pick them up and say, 'You know, they're going to die, there's nothing I can do about that.'""

Dr. Mark Perlmutter

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

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

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

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

Dr. Victoria Rose

"Now I understand why all of these children come into the emergency department shivering."

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan

Arwa Damon

"I recall his vacant stare and his soft voice whispering into my ear. I wish I had died with them. "

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan

"Leaving to seek treatment for your child [...] versus leaving your family behind and knowing that you may never see them again."

Dr. Mohammed Tahir

"She was no fighter. She was a pregnant woman who was sitting in her home when a bomb dropped on her head. "

Dr. Ahmad Yousaf

"There's no triage, people are grabbing your shoulder left and right, please see my daughter, please see my mum."

Dr. Mohammed Mostafa

"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

"Any kind of disability in Gaza is a death sentence."

Dr. Yasser Khan

"Bones are not reknitting back together, wounds are just not healing here because you need to have protein. you have to have stable nutrition."

Andee Clark Vaughan

"The kids I was watching had neck injuries."

Prof. Christos Georgalas

"Just imagine the healthcare workers doing these procedures without anesthetic"

Dr. Mhoira Leng

"People are dying from things that they should not be dying from, and a lot of it has to do with a lack of sanitation that they have, their inability to provide water."

Dr. Khaled Al-Hreish

"Two days of horror. We are in a besieged Nasser hospital"

Dr. Ahmed Moghrabi

""Almost every day, you find out that one of your surgical colleagues, a nurse or a pediatrician here has had a relative brought in after being hit.""

Dr. Tom Potokar

"To have one session of renal dialysis is considered as a privilege"

Dr. Khamis Elessi

Prof. Ghassan Abu-Sittah

Dr. Samah Jabr

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

Dr. Samer Attar

"Every day felt like an endless nightmare. Yet, I clung to life, working amidst the injured, trying to treat them, and praying that this hell would someday end."