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

"There's nothing that you can do to replace the love of parents. You can bring their aunts, you can bring their uncles. There's absolutely nothing that we can do for them."

Dr. Aqsa Durrani

"This man was so traumatized, I honestly can't imagine him ever practicing medicine again."

Dr. Ben Thompson

"We're giving them Ibuprofen for an arm that's been blown off."

Monica Johnson

"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

"I just want the killing to stop, and I want these kids to grow up with a chance in the future."

Dr. Mohammed Mostafa

"The kids I was watching had neck injuries."

Prof. Christos Georgalas

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan

Dr. Thaer Ahmad

"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

"I remember the anesthesia doctor on the phone begging the blood bank for blood."

Dr. Samer Attar

"A woman came in with asthma symptoms. She'd been cooking over a stove, breathing in toxic fumes because she was burning plastic."

Dr. Nahreen Ahmed

"This is worse than anything I’ve ever seen. The scale of destruction is something that I couldn’t even comprehend before I got here. "

Dr. Kathleen Gallagher

"There was virtually no formula feed to feed these newborn babies, all these infants."

Dr. Nick Maynard

"I see him in the emergency department trying to resuscitate a man whose arms and legs, sorry, whose both legs and one arm had been blown off."

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan

"The last thing I wanted to do was take his hope away. So I said, 'No, Inshallah, we're trying everything.'"

Dr. Irtaza Khan

"I've seen more incinerated children than I've ever seen in my entire life combined. "

Dr. Mark Perlmutter

"Do we really call this a ceasefire?"

Dr. Morten Rostrup

"She was asking me to help her."

Dr. Mohammed Mostafa

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

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan

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

Dr. James Smith

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

Dr. Mark Brauner

"In an explosion when a blast goes off, everything around you gets weaponized."

Dr. Victoria Rose

"The children of Gaza with their eyes wide open and full of innocence have been subjected to horrors that no child should ever face."

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

"The Israelis shot a GPS-guided bomb on the house where a British charity medical team was staying. "

Dr. Amer Shoaib

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

Dr. Abdullah Ghali

"I prayed to our Lord to help me and save both the mother and the child."

Dr. Sara Al-Saqqa

"I remember their faces, their earrings, their two little first teeth. I remember how carefully they had been dressed for sleep in their cold tents, the delicateness with which their hair was braided. "

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan

"The situation is very, very bad. We need help. No one hears us."

Dr. Mohammed Obeid

"Apache helicopter is outside Al-Quds hospital, and it is shooting...right now we're completely surrounded by the occupation forces and they are circling the hospital"

Andee Clark Vaughan

"We had dreams"

Dr. Mohammed Abu Mughaisib

"Literally every day I was there, I saw a child shot in the head. "

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

Dr. Tammy Abughnaim

"Eight paramedics and one doctor were killed in the previous three days."

Dr. Khamis Elessi

"I could still feel her arms around my neck."

Dr. Ahmad Yousaf

"It’s not a coincidence, they mean to attack the houses of the people who can treat the wounded people."

Dr. Khaled Alser

Dr. Khalid Hamoudeh

Dr. Osaid Alser

Dr. Ahmed Moghrabi

Ahmed Abu Aqel