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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"There were no cardiac surgeons at the hospital, so it fell to me to lead the operation."

Dr. Khaled Dawas

Testimonies

About the archive of testimonies

Behind the Testimonies

International Doctors

Gaza Healthcare Workers

"There were no cardiac surgeons at the hospital, so it fell to me to lead the operation."

Dr. Khaled Dawas

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

Dr. Samer Attar

"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

"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

"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

"Every day I saw babies die."

99 American Medical Professionals

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

Dr Andrew Ferguson

" They have never seen with their own eyes what is going on, heard the screams, smelt the rotting flesh, shuddered from the constant bombardment. "

Dr. Tom Potokar

"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

"Incredibly powerful explosives ripped apart rock, floors, and walls and threw them through human bodies, penetrating skin with waves of dirt and debris. "

Dr. Mark Perlmutter

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

"You can’t confuse a two-year-old for a combatant."

Dr. Adam Hamawy

"Just imagine the healthcare workers doing these procedures without anesthetic"

Dr. Mhoira Leng

"As soon as her husband got home to be with the children while his wife was at work, on-call in the emergency department, the home was struck."

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan

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

Dr. Amer Shoaib

"I didn’t know what to do. Do I yell or cry or carry my daughter? "

Dr. Mimi Syed

Dr. Tammy Abughnaim

Dr. Mark Perlmutter

Dr. Ayaz Pathan

Dr. Nabeel Rana

Dr. Mohammed Adeel Khaleel

Dr. Yassar Arain

Miranda Cleland

Charles Blaha

"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

"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

"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 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

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

Dr. Mohammed Tahir

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

Dr. Ambereen Sleemi

"This kid was 6 years old."

Dr. Mark Perlmutter

"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

"All of Gaza Needs Him"

Albina Abu Safiya

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

Dr. Nick Maynard

"I have nightmares of what I witnessed when I sleep."

Munther Abed

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

Dr. Mark Perlmutter

"991 is one of 48 kids that have passed away in my arms during the past 200 days, still counting. I’ve become very familiar with what the last breath looks like."

Dr. Khalil khalidi

"What I see every day are people who are extremely thin. They have lost all their muscle mass. "

Dr. Milena Angelova-Chee

"I struggle every day to find a meal, that’s my objective. I need calories to be able to move, to work."

Dr. Mohammed Abu Mughaisib

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