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.

View testimonies About the project

"The kids I was watching had neck injuries."

Prof. Christos Georgalas

Greece

Testimonies

About the archive of testimonies

Behind the Testimonies

International Doctors

Gaza Healthcare Workers

"The kids I was watching had neck injuries."

Prof. Christos Georgalas

"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

"About 70% of the patients that we are seeing are women and children."

Dr. Mimi Syed

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

Dr. Razan al-Nahhas

"The bottom line is this is a human rights issue and children are being murdered. It's got to stop. And we've got to stop supporting it."

Dr. Victoria Rose

"If there's any chaos, then, you know, they just start opening fire. And then we see it in our facility, you know, 20, 30 minutes later."

Dr. Mark Brauner

"I didn't do much, I just held his hand and I wiped his head."

Dr. Mohammed Tahir

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

Dr. James Smith

"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

"A part of me just wanted him to die peacefully."

Dr. Sanjay Adusumilli

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

Dr. Mark Perlmutter

"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

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

Dr. Mimi Syed

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

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan

Arwa Damon

"Despite everything that had happened to him, he was so keen to tell his story"

Dr Andrew Ferguson

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

Anneliese Stephenson-Wenn

"The situation is catastrophic. Really, I'm very tired. I'm very tired. "

Dr. James Smith

Dr. Ahmed Moghrabi

"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

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

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan

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

Dr. Nick Maynard

"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

"I don't understand how shooting children deliberately is justified."

Dr. Mimi Syed

"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

"There are children who I met also, who had lost all their families."

Dr. Khaled Dawas

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

Dr. Victoria Rose

"He walks through a wounded city searching for bandages so that doctors can treat his son."

Dr. Ezzideen shehab

"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

"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."

Anwar Younis Rabah Al-Masri

"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

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

Dr. Ahmed Adel

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

Dr. Amer Shoaib

"He arrived home to find every place he had returned to in his memories had been obliterated."

Dr. Ahmad muhanna

""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