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

"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

"They ordered him to abandon the patient who he was closing the wound on. He refused to do so. So, he was shot in the knee."

Dr. Mark Perlmutter

"Bones are not reknitting back together, wounds are just not healing here because you need to have protein. you have to have stable nutrition."

Andee Clark Vaughan

"As it got closer to their release, they reported increasing levels of physical attacks and abuse."

Dr. Mihir Chaudhary

"Apache helicopter is outside Al-Quds hospital, and it is shooting...right now we're completely surrounded by the occupation forces and they are circling the hospital"

Andee Clark Vaughan

"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

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

Rachael Moses

"The kids I was watching had neck injuries."

Prof. Christos Georgalas

"I just want the killing to stop, and I want these kids to grow up with a chance in the future."

Dr. Mohammed Mostafa

"I thought, when will this end?"

Dr. Mohammed Tahir

"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

"She reminded me of my own daughter."

Dr. Yipeng Ge

Dr. Yara Abou-Hamde

Dr. Dorotea Gucciardo

Dr. Rizwan Minhas

Dr. Ben Thompson

Dr. Noor Ul Amin

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

Dr. Khaled Dawas

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

Dr. James Smith

"She was asking me to help her."

Dr. Mohammed Mostafa

"I'm not sure that we're going to be able to save her arm. "

Dr. Victoria Rose

""Almost every day, you find out that one of your surgical colleagues, a nurse or a pediatrician here has had a relative brought in after being hit.""

Dr. Tom Potokar

"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)

"Often there’s not enough pain medication. But the children are not screaming about the pain, they’re screaming: ‘I’m hungry! I’m hungry!” "

Dr. Aqsa Durrani

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

Dr. Ben Thompson

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

Dr. Abdullah Ghali

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

Dr. Mimi Syed

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

Dr. Nada Al Hadithy

"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

"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

"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

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

Walid Khalili

""They're hungry, they have no medication and they have no safe place""

Dr. Mimi Syed

"This is the war of hunger, the war of slow death."

Dr. Ezzideen shehab

"You can't get past these memories. "

Dr. Sanjay Adusumilli

Dr. Scarlett Wong

Dr. Modher Albeiruti

"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

"We have normalized a situation in which it's normal to kill doctors."

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

"ֵEveryone was praying to God that none of their relatives would be present among the dead and the injured."

Dr. Mohammed Qishta

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