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

"I've done more amputations, and seen more traumatic amputations of children's, than I've seen during my entire career in the last two weeks."

Dr. Adam Hamawy

"Do we really call this a ceasefire?"

Dr. Morten Rostrup

"I don't know which of my colleagues I'll see again"

Dr. Ambereen Sleemi

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

Dr. Mimi Syed

"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

"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

"She was asking me to help her."

Dr. Mohammed Mostafa

"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

"They don't let journalists enter, and they kill the Gazan journalists who are there, so the doctors who come there reveal the truth to the world."

Dr. Mimi Syed

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

Dr. Amer Shoaib

"This explosion felt close. You could feel it. It's not unusual. We carried on as usual. We carried on working."

Rachael Moses

"The staff are continuing to turn up to work. They are hungry. They are fainting on the job"

Dr. Saira Hussain

"That day will be for me this child that was seemingly sleeping all alone on the floor, you know, blood everywhere, you know, people screaming and this kid just [...] lying there and doing [...] nothing in the middle of a ton of noise."

Karin Huster

"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

"On one side you see the remains of Gaza and on the other side is farmland being watered, and it’s very dystopian. "

Dr. Victoria Rose

"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

"A bomb landed, his daughter was in the bathroom, and he went back to find her remains,"

Dr. Samer Attar

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

Dr. Ben Thompson

"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

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

Dr. Mohammed Mostafa

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

Dr. James Smith

"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

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

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan

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

Dr. Khaled Dawas

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

Dr. Javid Abdelmoneim

"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

"I thought, when will this end?"

Dr. Mohammed Tahir

"They arrested all the medical team who remained at Nasser Hospital. We don’t know the fate of my colleagues."

Dr. Ahmed Moghrabi

Dr. Khaled Alser

Dr. Osaid Alser

"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

"I was seeing my colleagues so exhausted and drained. Seeing that made me afraid. I did not want to be exposed to the same scenes."

Dr. Zena Alqudwa