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 was a bullet which was in the left upper thigh of a six-year-old child for the last few months. "

Dr. Junaid Sultan

Testimonies

About the archive of testimonies

Behind the Testimonies

International Doctors

Gaza Healthcare Workers

"This was a bullet which was in the left upper thigh of a six-year-old child for the last few months. "

Dr. Junaid Sultan

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

Dr. Samer Attar

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

Dr. Adam Hamawy

"Beyond dystopian. This is the most horrific thing that most of us have ever witnessed or followed in our lifetimes. "

Dr. James Smith

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

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

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

Dr. Victoria Rose

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

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

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

Dr. James Smith

"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

"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

"The kids I was watching had neck injuries."

Prof. Christos Georgalas

"The driver who brought us out on the last day said to me, ‘Anyone left in Gaza now is either dead or will be dead very soon.’"

Dr. Morgan McMonagle

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

Dr Andrew Ferguson

"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

"Her cries didn't seem like the usual cries of pain during labour. It turned out that her husband and five children all had been murdered in front of her."

Heba Al-Nashef (midwife)

"You can't get past these memories. "

Dr. Sanjay Adusumilli

Dr. Scarlett Wong

Dr. Modher Albeiruti

"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

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

Dr. Ben Thompson

"This girl, Jenna, loved dancing before she had an amputation and this is a life-changing injury"

Dr. Nada Al Hadithy

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

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

"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

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

Dr. Sanjay Adusumilli

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

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan

"When they [...] try to make rescue or to do resuscitation [...] another bomb tank came, and it make a massacre there [...] nearly 18 person were killed, five from them journalists."

Dr. Ahmad Al-Farra

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

Dr. Mohammed Mostafa

"They were all crying that their boy was able to walk again."

Abed El Hameed Qaradaya

"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