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

"The trauma doesn't just happen in the three or four year olds now, it happens in their children and their children after them."

Dr. Ahmad Yousaf

"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

"The elderly was where my heart really sank."

Dr. Ana Jeelani

"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

"I'm not sure that we're going to be able to save her arm. "

Dr. Victoria Rose

"I say this as somebody who walked over the body of a dead child, while the mother was grieving, to treat another patient in Nasser hospital."

Dr. Thaer Ahmad

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan

Dr. Thaer Ahmad

"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

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

Dr. Mimi Syed

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

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

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

Dr. Mark Perlmutter

"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

"It can't be viewed as anything else because 50% of the population are children. So it is a war on children. Whether or not it is intended to be a war on children is irrelevant. It is a war on children."

Dr. Victoria Rose

"We operated in unsterile settings that would’ve been unthinkable in the United States. We had limited access to critical medical equipment."

Dr. Irfan Galaria

"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

"It's not believable that the best-trained marksmen in the world accidentally shot a three-year-old boy in the head."

Dr. Mark Perlmutter

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

"They end up drinking this water that's actually just meant for like washing and such."

Dr. Mimi Syed

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

Dr. Ben Thompson

"These kids are tiny, they are underweight and malnourished."

Dr. Victoria Rose

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

Dr. Samer Attar

"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

"Every corridor in the hospital had half the width occupied by mattresses on the floor with IDPs sitting and lying – children, men and women of all ages."

Dr. Amer Shoaib

"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

"People feel that their humanity is not recognized. People feel that they're abandoned and left to the slaughter."

Dr. Javid Abdelmoneim

""They're hungry, they have no medication and they have no safe place""

Dr. Mimi Syed

"Why is daddy bleeding? He’s the one who saves others."

Dr. Sohaib Safi

"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 war of hunger, the war of slow death."

Dr. Ezzideen shehab

"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

"I’m so sorry the world failed you, Zainab."

Dr. Ali Tahrawi

"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

"As doctors, the people need all of us, and my love for them was what always motivated me to continue."

Dr. Khalid Abu-Habel

Dr. Tarneem Mahmoud

Dr. Mahitab Ahmed

Dr. Islam Al-Jourani

"The hemoglobin levels that are needed in order to donate blood safely are just not there. "