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

"They end up drinking this water that's actually just meant for like washing and such."

Dr. Mimi Syed

"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

"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

"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

"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

"A doctor is obligated to speak for their patients – it's not enough just to perform the surgery. My job is also to tell people what I saw."

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

"These children would be laid on the floor, limp and lifeless, and we would declare them dead immediately. "

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan

Anna Halford

Rohan Talbot

Shaina Low

"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

"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

"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

"Leaving to seek treatment for your child [...] versus leaving your family behind and knowing that you may never see them again."

Dr. Mohammed Tahir

"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

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

Dr. Irtaza Khan

"Amid all this horror, there were moments of light. We took great joy seeing Juri’s personality resurface once her sepsis resolved."

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

Dr. Mark Perlmutter

"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

"Their only crime was the fact that they were healing people."

Dr. Tammy Abughnaim

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

Dr. Saira Hussain

"A war zone generates injuries that need soft tissue reconstruction, which is our specialty. So every time we go we make such a huge impact on the population, on the injured population"

Dr. Tom Potokar

Dr. Victoria Rose

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

Dr Andrew Ferguson

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

Dr. Javid Abdelmoneim

"The locals, when I talk to them, they're always very hopeful and strong and resilient."

Dr. Mimi Syed

"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

"I went in about a week after the cease fire started. And it was, you know, it was, it was such a low bar to clear. It’s just to stop dropping bombs on, on everyone."

Dr. Adam Hamawy

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

Dr. Mimi Syed

"There’s a designated area for children to die, alongside other dying children, where their families can stay with them and pray."

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

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

Dr. James Smith

"The situation is very, very bad. We need help. No one hears us."

Dr. Mohammed Obeid

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

Dr. James Smith

"And Hunger Was Given Dominion over Us"

Dr. Ezzideen Shehab

"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

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

Dr. Ezzideen shehab

"Many children would not speak for days, even with their family at bedside. One child would not accept a gift I brought of a little plastic car, because she did not want to touch or talk to anyone but her father."

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

"Of course, this was an attempt to pressure me and play with my mind"

Dr. Mohammed Abu Mousa

"I saw that love for life came under attack, specifically trying to break the will of the people in Gaza. "