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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"The woman on the operating table is badly injured. Her husband and children were all killed. She doesn't know yet."

Dr. Tom Potokar

May - Jun 2025

Testimonies

About the archive of testimonies

Behind the Testimonies

International Doctors

Gaza Healthcare Workers

"The woman on the operating table is badly injured. Her husband and children were all killed. She doesn't know yet."

Dr. Tom Potokar

Dr. Victoria Rose

Dr. Graeme Groom

"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

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

Dr. Mohammed Tahir

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

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

"We have normalized a situation in which it's normal to kill doctors."

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

"They all came in dressed in their Id (holiday) clothing."

Dr. Razan al-Nahhas

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

Dr. Irtaza Khan

"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

"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

"The scale of violence directed at Gaza’s civilians is unlike anything any of us has ever seen."

152 American Medical Professionals

"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

"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

"A doctor is obligated to speak for their patients – it's not enough just to perform the surgery. My job is also to tell people what I saw."

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

"A seven-month-old baby lies in our paediatric intensive care unit, so tiny and malnourished that I initially mistook her for a newborn."

Dr. Nick Maynard

"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

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

Dr. James Smith

"There is very little that you can do as a medical or humanitarian worker under such conditions."

Dr. James Smith

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

Dr. Amer Shoaib

"I went in about a week after the cease fire started. And it was, you know, it was, it was such a low bar to clear. It’s just to stop dropping bombs on, on everyone."

Dr. Adam Hamawy

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

Dr. Mimi Syed

"There were children with 70% to 80% body burns."

Dr. Mohammed Mostafa

Dr. Razan al-Nahhas

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

Dr. Mark Perlmutter

"The locals, when I talk to them, they're always very hopeful and strong and resilient."

Dr. Mimi Syed

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

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan

Arwa Damon

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

Dr. Victoria Rose

"In the ER there, ventilators were so scarce that if there was a 70-year-old and a 20-year-old both requiring one, we had to decide who gets it. "

Dr. Aziz Rahman

"Interrogators were instructed to work hard to make sure that I lost the use of my hands and became unable to perform surgery. They said they wanted to make sure I could never return to work."

Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya

Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya

Dr. Nick Maynard

Dr. Issam Abu Ajwa

Prof. Ghassan Abu-Sittah

Dr. Bassam Miqdad

Dr. Khaled Alser

Dr. Mahmoud Abu Shehada

Dr. Ahmad muhanna

"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

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

Dr. Ahmed Adel

"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

"This is the only catheterization machine currently working in Gaza."

Dr. Wael Hijazi