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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"This is genocide. When 70% of the population that are killed are women and children, when the population is starved of food, of water, of medicine, when you have attacks, repeated attacks on all the hospitals, the clinics, the aid distribution sites, the humanitarian aid agencies that try to help."

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan

Testimonies

About the archive of testimonies

Behind the Testimonies

International Doctors

Gaza Healthcare Workers

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan

Dr. Thaer Ahmad

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

Dr. Irtaza Khan

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

Dr. Sanjay Adusumilli

"I thought, when will this end?"

Dr. Mohammed Tahir

"The kids I was watching had neck injuries."

Prof. Christos Georgalas

"Trying to explain to a little boy that you are using a saw to cut through his bone."

Dr. Abdullah Ghali

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

Dr. James Smith

"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

""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

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

"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

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

Anneliese Stephenson-Wenn

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

Dr. Ambereen Sleemi

"On Saturday evening, four young teenage boys came in, all shot in their testicles. It appeared like a game of target practice."

Dr. Nick Maynard

Dr. Ambereen Sleemi

"I'm there looking at these two children, wondering what did they do?"

Dr. Mohammed Tahir

"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

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

Dr. Adam Hamawy

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

Dr. James Smith

Dr. Ahmed Moghrabi

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

Dr. Victoria Rose

"You feel a huge responsibility to go back and do something. "

Dr. Victoria Rose

"Either the baby dies because there's no ventilator, or the baby dies because of the infection. Your options were tragically limited."

Dr. Mimi Syed

Dr. Aman Odeh

Dr. Thalia Pachiyannakis

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

Dr. Mohammed Mostafa

"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 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

"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 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

"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

"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

"This 13-year-old, wait for operation and see that I amputate the mid-foot of her brother"

Dr. Mohammed Obeid

"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

"We need electronic beds, we need assistive devices for patients; currently we are releasing patients who need devises because we are unable to provide these to them."

Dr. Faiza Barqan

" 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

"He told me confess and we will stop torturing you."

Walid Khalili

"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

"Gazan doctor struggles to save lives amid exhaustion, loss, and horrors of war"

Dr. Sohaib Al Hams

"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