Myriam Francois: Welcome to the Tea, where we not only tell the stories behind the story, but bring you exclusive interviews with extraordinary individuals making a difference in our world. I’m your host, Myriam Francois. Today we have a very special guest joining us for his first appearance since returning from Gaza just days ago. Doctor Mohamed Tahir is a British Iraqi orthopedic and peripheral nerve surgeon who recently completed his third medical mission to Gaza, spanning an incredible seven months. His dedication to providing critical care in one of the world’s most challenging conflict zones and during a televised genocide has captured global attention. Doctor Tahir’s experiences on the frontlines offers a rare and invaluable perspective on the situation in Gaza. From performing hundreds of surgeries to witnessing the devastating impact of war on civilians, his story is one of bearing witness to horrors and of an unwavering commitment to saving lives. Today, we have the privilege of hearing directly from doctor Tahir about his experiences, the challenges he faced, and his thoughts on the ongoing crisis. Doctor Mohammed Tahir, welcome to the show.

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: Thank you very much.

Myriam Francois: If I may, how are you doing?

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: It’s a good question. I feel that I have been ripped away from my purpose by coming back. Being in Gaza, although it was very difficult and we saw tragedy after tragedy and the most horrific scenes, I was in and amongst people who I would consider the best of us. And I felt that in being in Gaza, I was really on the front line between what is good and what is evil. Except, contrary to what they said in the beginning, we were the ones representing goodness because we were fighting for life and justice and equality and all those things that they claim that they stand for. And yet now the facade has fallen and the truth has been unveiled. And so being ripped away from that land, although I walked from the Rafah, of course, after the ceasefire and after the march of the great return, I still feel that I should be there. And so I’m longing for that land, and I’m longing for those people. And I’m sad as well. I’m sad because of what I see in the international media, I see from our international leaders. I’m disappointed.

Myriam Francois: Well, speaking of international leaders, we’re speaking today on the same day that Trump has made the announcement that essentially America is now taking over Gaza, and proposed plans to expel or in other words, ethnically cleanse the population of Gaza into, you know, Jordan and Egypt. And I should say, of course, that both countries have refuted that proposal. But this was something that those of us who have been watching the conflict and the occupation for decades predicted very early on. It was very clear that this was part of the wider ethnic cleansing of Palestinian land by the occupying forces. I want to ask you whether that announcement came as a shock to you and whether you think it will come as a surprise to people in Gaza, given all the talk of, you know, Trump facilitating the ceasefire. There was a whole load of people who were sort of, you know, trying to convince me, just a few weeks ago, that Trump was our hope in the region.

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: When I was in Gaza, they definitely came where it felt like, and certainly speaking on behalf of the people of Gaza here, they were drowning and they were gasping for breath. They were trying to keep afloat because of the number of casualties that had kept coming through the door in our hospitals and the destruction in and around us. And they had had enough. They were just saying enough, just leave us alone. Just leave us alone. Just let us be. That’s a clear memory of mine. And so when the ceasefire came and people just wanted to believe that this was the end, and then when they saw that it was permitted for us to return to the north, and of course, I walked with the people of Gaza to the north, there was an element of hope. And although when they got to the north and they saw the sheer scale of destruction that was there, you know, you would almost find it difficult to think or believe how hope can be inspired. But despite that, there was still hope for the future. When you hear announcements like those made today, they’re trying to kill hope and extinguish hope in people. It’s really a devastating emotional blow. But as I said before, I’ve looked into the eyes of the people of Gaza. You will not conquer them no matter how you try, whichever way you try to cook this process of removing them from their land. And it’s taken many shapes and forms, of course. And the US had Joe Biden doing its bidding for the first half, and now you have Trump doing the second in a different way. But ultimately they use different strategies for the same purpose. And that is to remove the people of Palestine from their land, but they will not succeed.

Myriam Francois: And before we go into some of your personal experiences being in Gaza, can I ask you about what made you want to go to Gaza? It was obviously somewhere where a lot of people feel like they want to help. But, you know, what was it that made you leave your life behind here in London and go to Gaza repeatedly and let’s be honest, risk your life in so doing?

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: In fact, I was in Brazil at the time. I was trying to become the best nerve surgeon in the world. And it was on my plan. It was in the process. I was trying to follow in the footsteps of one of my mentors, Professor Jayme Bertelli in Brazil, who was considered the best nerve surgeon in the world. But despite the fact that I was in Brazil, and of course, you can imagine being in a beautiful land with very friendly people, I could just never enjoy life. Like many of us, the scenes we witnessed on our phones left us, you know, unable to sleep, unable to eat, in tears all day. I think it was the first time I’d ever seen children massacred. And it actually shown on social media at such a scale. It was the first of its kind. No one had ever seen that before. I don’t remember, and I’ve asked many people, nobody can tell me that they’ve ever seen so many children or even a few, any children for that matter, you know, publicly displayed on social media platforms where they’ve been massacred or disemboweled or dismembered or crushed. And I just could not take it anymore. And I said to myself, if not me, then who? I have skills, I’m very well trained now. I’m very versatile as a surgeon. It felt like almost everything in my life had pushed me to that moment. And I said, I have to go. And as for risking my life, well, that fear only started to set in a week or so before the actual departure date. And I started to question. I started to think, well, look, life is good. Why do you want to go and die? There are doctors there anyway. Are you really going to change anything? These doubts started to creep up. And what I did was I turned to my faith, I turned to Allah Subhanahu wa ta’ala. I did the Istikhara  prayer,  which is when you try to seek some kind of guidance from our Scripture. And I came across a verse in the Quran that was just so powerful to me. And it was, why do you, when you, and it goes, I’m paraphrasing, of course, oh believers why when you are called to, you know, following the right path, the way of Allah, that you cling firmly to this earth, do you not know that the hereafter is so much greater? And that was almost like, wow, Subhanallah   )Glory be to Allah(. I felt like wind in my sails. I felt like I had some kind of just conviction that I didn’t have before. And I felt fine. I will go and what will be, will be. And if that means that I die in the process, so be it. I’m prepared. I’m happy. I’m prepared for sacrifice. And this is a very important topic. And that sacrifice, I went to Gaza prepared to sacrifice everything. And I gave my all. And I really tried to help as many people as I could. But despite everything that we did, we, it really at the end, it was futile. We stopped nothing. We didn’t stop the war. We didn’t stop all the slaughter. But at least we tried. At least we tried and that is something that if every single one of us did, if we all genuinely tried and we were all prepared to make a sacrifice no matter what that is, then we would see the reversal of this unfortunate change that we witnessed in our world today. So that was the reason I felt that I had to stop looking to others for the changes, and I, we had to and I had to look into myself. And then I went, and then the rest is, as you know, to be the change that you wanted to see in the world.

Myriam Francois: Literally paint a picture for us and for our audience of what a day in the life in Gaza when you were there operating was like.

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: I worked across several hospitals, but the hospital that I worked the most, that was at the Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah, which is in the central zone south of the Netzarim crossing. It became the epicenter of mass casualty incidents.

Myriam Francois: Why was that? Just because…

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: Oh, there was a lot of refugee camps nearby. And by the way, when you say refugee camp, historically, these were refugee camps where people erected their tents, and slowly they developed into towns and cities.

Myriam Francois: Right, right.

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: So, Mukhayyam or refugee camp, it’s not like a place where there are tents. These are established cities or towns in their own right. But historically they were, yeah, such like, for example, in Al Mawasi, if that were to develop in 10 or 15 years time, it might even develop into its own city, because you could see that trajectory before your very eyes.

Myriam Francois: If Israel allows cement into Gaza, which means…

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, Al-Aqsa was the next one, Nuseirat, for example, in those central zones. And by this time, you know, Rafah had been destroyed. I mean, I attended the latter half of the war. Khan Younis was already destroyed. Deir al-Balah was still intact, and the area around it was still intact. And the majority of the population was now displaced into the central zone.

Myriam Francois: Yeah. And Rafah, which we should remind ourselves, was designated as a red line by the US government and others, fairly early on in the assault. So you’re saying, right, that Rafah was completely destroyed.

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: Well, when I first started my missions at the end of April last year, I entered via Rafah. We were one of the very last missions to enter via Rafah. Yeah. And at that point, Rafah was, you know, a red line, so to speak. Of course, when we entered, for each one of us was able to take as much aid as we wanted because it was an Egyptian-Palestinian border. So we were allowed to take in aid. Of course there was still Israeli intelligence. Yes. But you know, there were no restrictions on aid at that point. We all took ten suitcases in.

Myriam Francois: But you needed still Israeli approval to cross that border.

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: Of course, of course, you still needed Israeli approval. And there was still a huge limitation in aid convoys and trucks. I’m just talking about personal possessions. Yeah. Egypt didn’t put a restriction on the number of suitcases, so we all just filled our suitcases with aid. So Rafah the red line. So when we entered Rafah, Rafah was still standing. In fact, our team was split into, half of our team was based in a safe house in the city of Rafah, and half of us were based in the hospital, the European Gaza hospital, where we stayed night and day. Because that’s where we needed to be as surgeons to be able to respond immediately to mass casualty incidents and so on. And also because I just operated into the night virtually every single day.

Myriam Francois: Yeah. So day in the life for you is you start operating early in the morning.

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: So generally speaking, I’ll take the average day at Al-Aqsa, which is where I spent most of my time. Yeah. I would wake up, I would literally brush my teeth, I’d have coffee and I’d go to the O.R. And what we were trying to do was trying to deal with emergencies and all those patients injured from before at the same time. So I would start having like a semi-elective list of patients with injuries that need to be dealt with, but they’ve not just come through the door because otherwise this backlog, and there are hundreds of thousands of these, will just be completely neglected. And that is kind of what was happening and is still happening.

Myriam Francois: And what are the consequences of that?

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: So obviously permanent injury, permanent disability, amputations waiting to happen or deterioration in health such that it will eventually lead to death and so on. You need to address those injuries. So we had a list where we plan that list. So we’d go and just start, get going with our list. Let’s say now we’ve started our first case 9 a.m. or thereabouts. And then for example, we hear there’s a mass casualty incident. So we stop, we run to the E.R., and we help in the mass casualty incident. And here you arrive, it’s just, you know, indescribable. The chaos, the blood, the death, children on the floor, some of them gasping, taking their last breath, some of them with brain out, some of them with bowels out, some of them posturing in such a way because they’ve got such a severe brain injury.

Myriam Francois: None of us can imagine what you have seen over the last seven months. Hearing it is difficult, let alone what you must have seen. So feel free to take a second honestly.

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: Children with bullet injuries to the brain. At one point I had 4 or 5 on the floor, and I making the choice between who dies and who doesn’t because we have limited ventilators. Child coming in who’s about to arrest, and you cannot do CPR because you cannot afford to give 4 or 5 people to one patient in a mass casualty incident. And so the ER doctor says no CPR in a mass casualty incident. You just have to let that child die. It was horrific. And so we spent our time there, and we would go back, and then it would be emergency surgery. So, you know, you’d have a patient bleeding out, for example, those were the ones that you needed to do lifesaving surgery for. And so we jumped in those operations. And of course, we’re talking about like the Palestinian doctors as well, all nurses and anesthesiologists, you know, all of them, in full swing, full effect, everyone throwing every last bit of energy at them. All O.R. are occupied, trying to do our best for absolutely everybody. And then the mass casualty incident, you know, and also, when one hospital might receive all these incidents, what they will do is they try to disperse some of the injured to other neighboring hospitals as well, what was left of hospitals, just to share the load, because no single institution could cope. And so then we’d finish like the wave of the mass casualty incident which would die down. And those that have died, have died. And those that we’ve saved have been saved. And then you have problems of critical patients, for example, not having anywhere to go because there’s no ICU capacity. So they’re occupying O.R. and then, you know, oftentimes they would just slowly deteriorate and then die, despite all that effort to try to save them.

Myriam Francois: And tell us why that is, because these are patients who, in other circumstances, with fairly basic medication could be saved. Is that correct?

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: Not necessarily fairly basic medication, but just, you know, when you’re offering it, a health care system is based on the fundamentals of, you know, having equipment, having medication and having personnel, a clean environment, a safe environment. When you have a breakdown in any one of those, then the system starts to become defunct. If you have a breakdown in all of them, then I don’t know what was keeping the hospitals alive, except for the good faith and the will of the people.

Myriam Francois: And throughout this, the Israelis are saying that they’re allowing aid in, of course. So the limitations on the trucks, which the UN and virtually every single humanitarian organization said was not going in, the Israelis were saying was going in. Did you observe aid, medical aid coming in that you were able to then make use of?

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: So the WHO would be the ones pushing to try to get aid in. There was also the Jordanians pushing to get aid in, and those were the two only sort of routes for aid to come in. And it was extremely stifled. It was never enough. I mean, I remember when I used, when we had heavy bleeding in patients, using a big piece of gauze called an abdominal swab or abdominal gauze, we had to wring it from blood to be able to reuse it. And there were many times we didn’t have drapes or gowns. We’d have to try to think outside the box about how to create sterile fields. We didn’t have appropriate antibiotics. We didn’t have diagnostics. There’s not a single MRI scanner in the whole of Gaza left. It was destroyed in the major trauma center, such as Shuhada al-Aqsa hospital there was not a functioning CT scanner. So these mass casualty incidents, you can’t get the appropriate diagnostics. There was equipment missing. And no analgesics.

Myriam Francois: Meaning painkilling medications.

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: People came out of major surgery screaming. The hallways sometimes would be like, honestly, it’d be like, just screams. (Oh, my God.) I remember thinking and talking to my colleagues at the time and I said, wow, this is like a horror show. Just the corridors, people screaming, waiting to have wound changes done. 

Because think about this, right? You have mass casualty incident. People, some people survive. They have horrific injuries, horrific injuries. I tell you, chunks of their bodies missing, limbs missing and huge gashes in their body and scars from head to toe. And you need to change the dressings on these patients. They get infected very quickly. So you need to do it daily, like three times. 

So in Al Aqsa hospital we didn’t have the main OR facility. It was due for renovation and then the war started. So what they had was the obstetric area where they used to do, there was two O.R.s for gynecology surgery and three delivery suites. Those all became O.R.s. There were major surgery happening in the delivery room, which is like a cubicle with no lighting. When it was in the summer, it was extremely hot. And you can’t fit in any equipment. It was terrible. Just a terrible place, terrible situation. Everyone tried. So oftentimes outside the mass casualty incident, those three cubicles in particular,, were for changes of dressings, just constant cycle, like hundreds of patients coming in, because you need to give them some kind of strong sedation. You know, often we had ketamine or propofol, and so they would do a mixture of those and allow dressing changes to be performed. But you cannot afford to give each patient really the time that they need because it would clog up the whole entire day. And you have hundreds of patients waiting. So you just, you know, you just dabbing on wounds. And by the end of the day, that corridor used to smell so badly because of the air of infection. And I often used to say, man, someone that didn’t have an infection, if they came in, they would definitely take one on the way out. It was just horrific. A horrific situation really. And don’t forget, you know, when you have to do daily change of dressings for some of these patients and you have to give them ketamine, the tolerance increases, increases. And now you’re creating a different problem of a dependency, right? For so many patients. I mean, there are just so many layers to it, layers to this that many people haven’t even considered or can think of because they haven’t experienced it. You, when you go there and you see it and you live it. And I spent seven months there and my last mission was four months. By the end of the time that I was there, and, you know, this was the words of the residents, I was one of them. I was fully embedded in the health care system, and I lived like them. And it was an honor for me, by the way. Of course. But I really got to see and live and experience what the war meant to so many people.

Myriam Francois: How did your third trip compare to your first trip? Because I’m assuming that you’re seeing a massive deterioration of the health care system, but also, presumably of the wider population, and their ability to find, you know, medical support, food, shelter, clean water throughout that period. So give us a little comparative, if you could, between the two. I mean, how was the third mission when you got there? Were you surprised at anything compared to when you’d gone in the first time, when presumably it was already horrific enough?

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: So what I should say, just as a precursor to that, is that I missed the first half of the war. And talking to many of my colleagues, and this really should be the focus of a documentary and an investigation into עסע two sieges of Al-Shifa.

Myriam Francois: So Al-Shifa Hospital, we should say, was one of the hospitals targeted by the Israelis. And you’re talking about the two sieges of that particular hospital, which the Israelis claimed was because there was some sort of a network operating underneath the hospital. 

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: Which, yeah, of course, was never proven. There was never any tunnels. You remember the graphic where there was this tunnel system under Al-Shifa hospital and then their headquarters. It was all nonsense and never proved and never demonstrated. But I worked in Al-Shifa hospital. I saw it when I went on with my second mission, I visited when I went to the north, which was, of course, for me, something I had to do. I had to get to the north because the north was the most desolate, the most deprived, the most desperate, the most in danger.

Myriam Francois: And I’m guessing there was not a queue of people desperate to go to the hospitals, 

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: And it was much more difficult to get to the north as well. More dangerous. There was no safe zones and so on. But I had to get to the north. And when I got to the north on my second mission, and I’ll come to your question in a minute, but just to give you the precursor, I think it’s important. And I walked the halls of Al-Shifa. I was just gobsmacked. I was in shock. The hospital was destroyed. It had the original building, which had the ER, that had been completely laid to waste. And I went to the specialties hospital, which was a relatively new building, like 3 or 4 years old, the pride of the medical system of Gaza, by the way, if not of not all of Palestine and one of the largest hospitals in the whole of the Middle East, it accounted for 40% of all medical output in the whole of the Gaza Strip. It was destroyed, the stairwell was detonated, the buildings were burned. The grounds were laid to waste. There were ambulances turned on its side. There was a mass grave outside. And then when you got to speaking to the guys that worked in Al-Shifa, who are now a lot of them displaced in Al-Aqsa, you thought to yourself, wow. I mean, and the things that happened in Al-Shifa were just beyond what you could fathom. You’re talking about multiple people in the same O.R. having surgeries. You’re talking about people having dressing changes in the corridors without any analgesia. You’re talking about people dying, I mean, left to rot for 2 or 3 days before being allowed to be buried in the courtyard. I know the Israelis would get some of the staff to be like, right, you guys, you’re going to go pick up the corpses and you’re going to bury them outside just because, you know, for whatever kind of humanity that was left. The siege of Al-Shifa, what happened in Al-Shifa was just something that needs to be investigated, needs to be documented. That’s the first thing I’d say.

Myriam Francois: You yourself saw mass graves?

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: I saw mass graves myself, yeah, at the hospital.

Myriam Francois: Oh, describe what you saw.

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: I was in the building of the specialties hospital. We looked outside, of course, there were no windows, nothing left. I peered over a destroyed wall, and you could see just mainly hospital beds that were burned and thrown over the edge. And in the distance, you could just see a huge space that was turned to just sand and that was the place where many people had been buried. And the staff were telling us how they’re trying to now relocate many of these bodies and offer these individuals a dignified burial in the graveyard somewhere else. And that’s not the first time I saw a graveyard in a hospital, by the way. I saw a mass grave…

Myriam Francois: Mass grave?

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: I saw it at Nasser as well. During my first mission, 

Myriam Francois: You saw mass graves outside at least two hospitals. 

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: Yeah. When I visited the Nasser hospital, it was still recovering because it was still laid to waste. At that time. Khan Younis was still destroyed and uninhabited. Of course, it later became inhabited despite its destruction and life tried to restart there. And Nasser, it did restart again. And they tried to redevelop some of its services, but some of the buildings have been destroyed and you could see when you walk there it was defunct at this point. You could see the graffiti on the walls and the writings and the emblems that they had left behind, their legacy. The Israeli soldiers have done this.

Myriam Francois: What kind of stuff?

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: I don’t, I mean, it was like a little graffiti you’d see, Star of David, you see a little sort of etchings of, in Hebrew. So we didn’t, I didn’t understand. And then there were symbols. I don’t know what the symbols meant. I don’t know what they were like. They’re sort of logistical markings and so on. But you can tell that, you know, an Israeli force had been here. In Nasser as well, we saw a graveyard and we saw remains of humans in the field, and we saw the body bags in the fields of Nasser, and we saw upturned ambulances in the fields of Nasser hospital. I think I saw 2 or 3 ambulances upturned when I visited. Yeah. So I definitely saw that. So this all happened in the first half of the war that I was not witness to.

And it is important to say that because huge untold amounts of suffering happened then too.

In terms of the latter half, when I first entered the European hospital, I walked in – It was not a hospital. It was a refugee camp. There were just so many displaced people, presumably all the ones that used to live in Khan Younis because it was still uninhabited at this time. And even along the stairwells, the people would just put up a sheet, and they lived in that along the stairwell. And I remember very clearly every time I used to come up the long walk to my room, I’d see one man that used to sleep in a certain position, and his feet would stick out, and he’d be sleeping kneeling, because there’s no space. And there were children that would be on the floor. And I tried to, you know, I was, you know, it was so much suffering. I’d taken lollipops with me in great quantity, and I would see some of these children lying on the floor, and I would just put a lollipop next to the head. And I just hope maybe that will make them smile in the morning. Maybe that will ease some of their suffering because they don’t know, they’ve been dragged into this and they have no, there’s no fault and yet everything has been destroyed around them. So when I first got in, the European hospital was as such, but Rafah was still, you know, not quite attacked. It was starting to get attacked. And when I left, I had a very heavy heart because I was only there for two and a half weeks or so. And of course the Rafah border was closed and we had to exit through a delayed process via Kerem Shalom or Karem Salem. I just had a huge amount of regret that I ever left people in need. And when I just started to witness the mass casualty incidents and the huge need for medical support and teams and aid and so on. So that was my first experience. I was just starting to experience, you know, the heat, the incidents and the, you know, the mass casualties. By the time I’m in mission three, I’m no longer a peripheral nerve surgeon. I’m a war surgeon now, and I deal with vascular, plastics, orthopedics, nerve. I deal with lots of injuries, huge wounds.

Myriam Francois: that are beyond what your specialization is.  but which you are the most equipped to deal with of the specialists on the ground.

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: Yeah, particularly in the north. 

Myriam Francois: Yes. Sorry. And it should be said that there are some exceptional Palestinian doctors. Right. I don’t know if you want to give a shout out to your colleagues you’re working with, but sometimes there might be the impression that the Western doctors are going out there, you know, and helping these poor Palestinians. But of course, many of your colleagues are world renowned. And many of the people that were targeted and killed were world renowned surgeons. So I was wondering if you could maybe say a word about them.

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: So to make you understand the point I was making, in the north of Gaza, there were, for example, I think only two vascular surgeons. These guys were in demand and only so many places they could be at once. And so, if I’m in an O.R. and in the other O.R., there’s somebody bleeding out, I have already, you know, I have experience dealing with the vessels, so it’s not a completely new specialty to me. But I’m the one that’s going to come and help them. That’s not to say I’m better than the guys that are there. No, of course not. It’s just to say sometimes I was the only one there. And in fact, I worked with many vascular surgeons there, and, you know, they trained me, they trained me, and they recognized, okay, this guy, we need to get him to a standard because he might be the only person there. So they’re the ones who trained me in vascular surgery, and, you know, there are many heroes in Gaza – surgeons, nurses and anesthesiologists, anesthetic technicians, the porters, the security, the recovery nurses, the people on the wards. I am telling you, there are many unsung heroes. There was one vascular surgeon in the south who is just on call 24/7, going from hospital to hospital to hospital in an ambulance …So they move him around in an ambulance in the hope that he doesn’t get targeted, particularly at night.

Myriam Francois: So tell us about that. So was there a sense among medical professionals that they were being targeted in the way that I’ve heard from journalists firsthand that, you know, their family members, for example, didn’t want them sleeping at the family home. Friends ask them, please don’t come around because we believe that you’re going to get us all killed because you’re being targeted. Was that something you found amongst medical professionals as well?

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: Of course. And especially because oftentimes mass casualty incidents used to happen in the evenings or towards fajr time. (Dawn – sunrise)

Myriam Francois: Okay. So morning dawn prayer, dawn time.

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: And in order to move around at night, it is extremely dangerous. So in a blanket way, in a blanket way, rather, anyone moving around risks their lives. So for surgeons coming in the middle of the night to the hospital, they’re risking their life. Even in an ambulance. But that’s the safest way possible. So they would be doing this on a daily basis, and just saying this is what I must do for my people. Honestly, the surgeons, I take my hat off to them. They are really phenomenal surgeons, but they’ve had to deal with so much. And, you know, it’s, you know, you go in saying, okay, I’m coming to help and so on. Okay. That’s, let’s see how you hold on like that for six months. You know, missions, people came on missions oftentimes for two weeks or one month at most. That was the maximum. Very rarely did people stay beyond that. But there are some.  there are some that stayed and did long durations. But my point is, oftentimes people from outside used to come and criticize, but they don’t, you know, you haven’t been tested. Your endurance hasn’t been tested, you haven’t had to work in the difficult conditions. You haven’t had enough time to experience the losses that break your heart and leave an imprint on you and hurt you and continue to affect you. You haven’t had that. Also to add to that, as Gazan surgeons, they also have to look after their families. They have to worry about where they live and where they sleep and their displacement and being able to feed. These are all other variables you’re not considering. 

Myriam Francois: They’re living through a genocide in addition to treating the victims of the ongoing genocide.

I wanted to ask you. You mentioned criticism from the outside. Obviously, we saw that, you know, a huge amount of amputees coming out of Gaza. There was some criticism online about whether those amputations were necessary. I’m not a doctor. I’m not in a position. I think there’s a lot of emotion going around. Can you help people understand how those decisions were being made and why they were being made?

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: Firstly, I have not come across those online, so I’m disappointed that there are people making those statements. The sons and daughters of Gaza don’t wish to amputate the limbs of their children any more than anybody on the outside. So that’s a very strange criticism to be made. There are many variables, many factors involved in the amputation process. And I am aware that there was a statistic of approximately 4,500 child amputees now in Gaza. I’ve had to amputate limbs of children. And it’s one of the most difficult things. It really is. It’s just so hard. But you have to switch off your heart and become very tough and get on and do it. When you have a, you’re dealing with injuries that are related to shrapnel and sometimes huge pieces of shrapnel, and these pieces of shrapnel, which, of course, are indiscriminate. And of course, you’re going to cause child injuries when you bomb schools, which happened. You know, I remember when I was in my third mission in the north, where I spent nearly six weeks, we had a series of days where schools were being hit day after day after day, and we were just getting children victims, children injuries. So these pieces of shrapnel, which can come from a fighter jet, can come from a tank, can come from a quadcopter dropping an explosive device, let alone all the injuries that you can acquire from gunshots. Some bullets from sniper, from fire rounds of live ammunition from a quadcopter that has a gun, like an M16 attached to it onto a quadcopter and fires at people. It’s like they really excelled in the ways to kill. These destroy human flesh. 

I came across a video of a tank that fired at individuals in Khan Younis, I think, or Rafah. And the guy recording it just missed the tank firing by that millisecond. But the actual round that leaves and zooms literally past him is so ferocious that imagine what that would do to human flesh when it encounters it. It destroys it. So you’re talking about mangled limbs. Oftentimes you’re talking about mangled limbs. There are some incidents which are beyond repair. You cannot reconstruct if it’s completely destroyed. What is there to put together? And so you have to amputate. And so there are those patients. Then there are those which, for example, might have, you know, it’s like questionable. The first thing to say is that the gunpowder and the residue on these pieces of shrapnel are highly sources of infection. Like, they really create tissue necrosis and so death of tissues and can cause really severe infections that can potentially kill a patient. And even when you, for example, reconstruct and you give a chance, and I’ve done this. So you know there are times where I’ve tried to save a limb.

Myriam Francois: Yes. There’s a story online of you, a recorded story of your operation. Was it Mariam? The young girl Mariam.

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: So we can talk about Mariam in a second. Yeah, because she’s slightly different. But in this, so like, in general speaking, so, for example, say the vessel is severed, the main artery is severed, and the tissue is all destroyed. But you try to reconstruct, a vessel will not survive, it will break down, it will rupture, and it will bleed on the ward, and people can die from that. And also, if the surrounding tissue next to a blood vessel is not clean and infection free, it will also cause that. And so what the surgeons realized and the other thing is, sorry, I should say, is these patients need daily, you know, a lot of wound care and a lot of management, and it’s very labor intensive. Yeah. When you’re in the middle of war, you just don’t have time for that. Yeah. And so some of these surgeons picked up a lot of experience because they tried at the beginning, and they realized a lot of limbs were being amputated, and patients’ lives were being put at risk. That they were saying, okay, we have to save the life. This I know is going to head in this direction. We should amputate. So, and they did it because they put the patient’s best interests at heart. That’s of course, that’s all it was.

Myriam Francois: The story of Mariam is an example of you trying to save a child’s limb in this context of war and the complications that arose in that circumstance. So could you tell us the story of little Mariam and let us know if you have an update on her?

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: This was in the time just before there were talks of ceasefire, but there was heavy shelling and heavy airstrikes and we were getting lots of mass casualty incidents and it became, you know, we were looking at each other and the guys were saying, man, it’s like the beginning of the war again. It was a very difficult time. I heard about the girl that had a missing arm in the E.R., and I said, okay, let’s go and assess her. So I ran to the E.R., and I found this sweet, innocent child sat on a chair, sorry, on the trolley, in the resuscitation room, writhing around in pain because she had severe abdominal pain and a missing left arm. I said to the father, where is the arm? And he said, the arm is still at the home where the airstrike happened. I said, okay, is there any way of retrieving the arm? And he was a bit shocked. I said, no, I mean, I’m serious. Is there a way of retrieving the arm? And he said, okay. He looked at one of his relatives and he said, can you guys try and fetch the arm? And so they said, okay, we’ll go. And this is in the middle of the night, very dangerous time in an area that was already attacked. They risked their lives. They went to the house. In the meantime, I said, let’s get the child to the O.R., and let’s just be ready. At worst, we’ll just, you know, manage the wound.

Myriam Francois: How old is little Mariam?

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: Nine. Nine. They then raced along, and then they put the arm in a black dustbin bag. And I took the arm out and I put it on the table, one of the operating tables. And I quickly inspected it, and I looked for the vessels and for the nerves. I looked at the bone, and the arm was kept cool because it was nighttime in the cold. And I said, okay, now, actually, we can attempt to replant. Yeah. So, we said, let’s go ahead and do that. In the meantime, the general surgeons then figured out that actually this abdominal pain was a lot more severe than first anticipated. Having examined under anesthesia and the shrapnel entry site, which was in her buttock, had actually gone all the way across and destroyed all her pelvic organs.

Myriam Francois: Oh my God.

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: So they were compelled to do a laparotomy to open her abdomen and operate. And so whilst I was operating, they were operating at the same time. This type of surgery, a replant of an arm, was never done in Palestine before. It was the first of its kind. And at first we succeeded. And it was even by day 4 or 5, the arm was just a miracle. The color of the hand was the same color as the other hand, like there was no signs of any problems. But I was always worried because, as I’ve said before, now we’re coming into the infection phase where vessels start to break down, where we start to get necrosis, we start to have problems, and we started to experience those and we had to do revisions to some of the veins. And that’s when the local team, local vascular surgeons, I got them on board now to help me to, you know, really optimize her management. But you’re dealing in a system which is just broken. For any type of vascular surgery that needs a vessel repaired, you need to give blood thinners, you know, heparin in this case. She was one of the very unfortunate patients where heparin wipes out the platelets. 

Myriam Francois: This is a rare condition. 

Dr. Mohammed Tahir This is a rare reaction. So platelets, and the other thing to say is that we don’t have any way of monitoring the degree of anticoagulation or blood thinning medication. We don’t have those blood tests available. The laboratory does not do those. We don’t have the testing equipment. So we’re kind of anticoagulating patients blindly, rather. And she developed this reaction where she started bleeding from everywhere, from her abdominal wounds, from where the cannulas were in, and all of a sudden she became very unwell. And we were very concerned that she actually might die. So we had to stop all that, and we had to give her blood, blood pressure boosting medications, which narrow vessels. And so it’s kind of like the combination of the two is the worst you can imagine for the attached arm.

Myriam Francois: Tough.

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: And in that time, I’ve also had the help of one of, a British plastic surgeon who was there on a mission as well to cover the wounds. He’d come and helped me do a flap and so on. So we really had tried, but at this point, now she was bleeding from everywhere. We reversed it. We managed to save her. And I said, despite the hit, there was a bit of an insult to the hand, but the rest of the limb was okay. Yeah. And so, okay. And we were now, you know, two weeks plus into the injury and the arm was still there. We had slaved over this, I tell you, and this is what I mean. The amount of effort it takes to save a limb is huge, particularly when you’re dealing with those injuries, because it’s not like a cut. This is like a blunt force which just rips through tissue and pulls, doesn’t cut but pulls, and it causes injuries on the inside of the vessels and so on. We then, the abdominal problem was not solved. And I can’t go into detail to protect her privacy, but she had major issues going on here. Major issues that were still unresolved. We had to transfer to another hospital, because they had pediatric surgeons that could cope and deal with this. And unfortunately, she bled the night from her arm. She developed complications. And in the morning, they went to see her, and the arm had basically taken its last insult and it died, the arm. So they were compelled to then amputate the arm, which was so devastating for my team and I, based in the first hospital. 

Myriam Francois: And for her, no doubt, because she probably had hoped.

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: Of course, of course. I’m going to come to the pain. And her father and her mother. The father was always so grateful. And the mother was always so grateful. And Mariam also was so grateful that we really embarked on this journey to save her limb. But in the end, they really, despite everything that we did, they realized that we were just in the wrong place, and we were trying to evacuate, but there was just no way. There was just, it was impossible. And Mariam is still in Gaza, and we still cannot get her out right now until this day. 

Myriam Francois: And she needs emergency evacuation. 

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: She needs… because the arm now she’s been amputated, but she’s still got these major abdominal injuries and pelvic injuries. And her father, we speak to each other daily. He sends me updates, and, you know, she might need to have another operation today for her abdomen. Poor girl. She’s suffering. She’s really suffering. And she used to be just like a normal nine year old girl. She used to love doing social media recordings of herself dancing, singing. And she had, I think it was a cat that she used to play with all the time. And it’s very heartbreaking to see the, her lose her arm like that. We all, we were all so sad because we really tried to give her that future. And she was also, she became a focus of hope.

Myriam Francois: Yes. And, yeah. And I think externally, I mean, I’m sure when you’re in Gaza you don’t realize it, but obviously for us also on the outside watching you guys doing what you can, we also hold on to those moments of hope. Because we know that they’re important wins for morale. Yeah. That they’re important for the children to remember that there were people trying to help and that there are people that pull through. And I think that those blows are devastating on so many levels. You mentioned her, the need for her to evacuate. Can you tell us a little bit about evacuations? Because we know that there were so many people, not least, hundreds if not thousands of children that desperately need medical evacuations. What is the status of medical evacuations for, you know, seriously injured children at the moment?

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: So I understand that there are around 14,000 patients who need to be evacuated. These are the most critical, I would argue more because there’s a broken healthcare system. So unless you’re able to, you know, have a parallel system where you rebuild the health care and are able to treat, whilst evacuating the most needed, that number is actually much greater. Part of the ceasefire negotiations was the stipulation that patients, the most needy, would be evacuated from Rafah. I think the number is 50 per day. The Israelis are falling short on that agreement. Patients are still stuck in Gaza. 

One of my other patients, Hiba, and I will tell you about her injuries. This is beyond tragic. She will lose her  arm, probably these days because she could not be evacuated in time. It seems to be an ineffective process, 50 per day. My other concern is when they go into Egypt, where do they go and where do they stay? And  then there’s the process. There’s another stagnation in the process before they cam move to other countries. You know, it’s just such a complex scenario. But there are thousands of people in need and particularly children. Those are those with direct consequences of war. And then you’re talking about other children and adolescents and people, for that matter, with cancer. I know a medical student that has an aggressive cancer that we could not treat there, because we didn’t have chemotherapy, we didn’t have an MRI to make a proper diagnosis. So what happens to her? There are just, there’s so many people. 

Hiba, I’ll tell you about Hiba. She is 12 years old. She was the victim of an airstrike, which caused a huge injury to her arm, where it basically destroyed the nerves and also cut the major artery to the right arm, which left it paralyzed. They did major vascular surgery at the time to reattach the vessels, to keep that arm alive. She had a fracture to her left arm and a nerve injury on her left arm as well. So she’s got partial nerve injury to the hand, but some function, very little. She has shrapnel injury to the thoracic vertebra, where it caused complete paralysis of both her legs. She had a fracture to her left leg, which was open. And not that was not enough for anyone to go through, she’s now, as a result of being bedbound and malnutrition, severely underweight. And she has pressure sores everywhere, on her sacrum, her heels, elbows, everywhere. And when we attempted to try to get the right arm working again, she had problems in the healing. And so the wounds just broke down, and, you know, her vessels started to get exposed, and she developed complications, and she nearly died. I had to do CPR on her in the O.R. to save her. And then we didn’t have a choice between her arm and her. At that point, she became so unwell that we had to tie off the vessel in her arm. I took off the cover  to see her, and I saw this girl that I had started to know very well. Just, you know, like, slumped in a position. I thought, my God, she’s… We can’t let her die. Oh my God. Please.

So we did CPR, and she came back. But then we decided she was not in a fit state to pursue any surgery for her arm anymore. So we tied off a major vessel to her arm, and it’s probably been amputated. That all happened because we could not get her out, to evacuate her. And she’s also one of our patients that needs to be evacuated. Yeah, there are many. I mean, each one of them has a story.

Myriam Francois: Of course.

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: The eight month old whose leg I tried to salvage and I couldn’t, and I had to amputate, whose mother died. And I operated on her mother moments before I operated on her. Her mother died before us. And her father and her other brother had died at the scene of the airstrike. And she had shrapnel injuries all over, and she had injuries all over her face and neck, a laceration from this side to the other side, almost as if someone had slaughtered her. You know, it’s just the suffering is just so deep and so huge, and it takes all forms of life. You know, we’re just touching on some aspects. We’re touching on some stories. We’re talking. There are thousands of people like this, each with a story, each with a tale, each with pain, each with suffering. 

Myriam Francois: And those are the wounded. Because there’s also the wider issue of starvation that you were dealing with. Right? I mean, you and your team, everyone is operating, working these really long hours. But there’s also starvation set in, in Gaza, throughout this period as well. What was it like day to day, just even trying to provide for your daily nutritional needs to be able to function? Where was food coming from? How were people coping?

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: So it came in waves. It wasn’t one constant situation throughout the whole time I was there. There were times where things were relatively good. There was fruit and veg in the market. Very expensive beyond the means of the average person. 

Myriam Francois: But was that fruit and veg coming from…

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: From traders. Who were getting it from Israel, traders from Israel importing them to sell them not aid.

Myriam Francois: Right. So, so Israeli companies making money off selling food to starving people is what you’re saying.

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: Correct. And also to give the appearance that, oh look, there’s food in the markets.

Myriam Francois: But yes, I saw some video propaganda videos actually doing exactly that. Look, these markets are full of food, but of course, never stating that nobody could afford it.

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: Yeah, exactly. Like, a pound of tomatoes, I think it was $50. I remember one time I was buying some fruit as a gift ,and a woman with a child, her child was asking for a mango. And this poor woman asked the vendor, you know, how much it cost, and it just wasn’t something she could afford. So she just took the child and kept walking. And I ran after her, of course, and I gave her. But it was that, it was. I witnessed it firsthand how it was beyond the reach of the average person. I mean, we used to talk to our colleagues about how much weight they’d lost during the war. Many of the colleagues were, I don’t know how to… their ribs, very prominent ribs everywhere. And it became like they just made humor out of it. Like, you know, I lost this much and I lost this much. Yeah, I experienced that. Yes, particularly when I used to go to the north, what we would eat is just canned food items. Those were from… for the locals it would be food aid. But these are the things that were sold in the markets as well. So we would  just buy them from the market. And we lost a huge amount of weight because, you know, in the north in particular, there was no fruit, there was no veg, there was no meat, there was nothing. Things, of course, improved at the very end of the war when the ceasefire came through and aid started to come in, and then the markets started to flood, and the people had chicken all of a sudden. But also there was a flour crisis. There was a flour crisis in the south where there was no flour. FAJR managed to get in like thousands of sacks of flour which we distributed to the people. In the north, they had a flour crisis. They would tell me, man, we used to eat the grain for animals. We cooked that. And that’s what we had to eat at one point. You know, I’m telling you, you see, there were periods of this war which had immense suffering that I didn’t witness firsthand because it happened in the first half. So it was like a wave. There were times where it seemed okay and times where it was particularly difficult. I experienced some of those particularly difficult times and some of the good times.

Myriam Francois: I’m guessing one of the more positive memories you may have had was of an image that I think is etched into the public imagination now forever, which is the Palestinians walking back north to their homes, a scene which many people thought would never happen. And you made that perilous journey with them. And it’d be great if you could tell us a little bit about what that journey looked like, felt like, smelt like, was, you know, what are you seeing? What is all around you? And how are people feeling on this march of return, which of course culminates in them returning to an area that has been completely devastated?

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: The mood that day was… when I remember it, I think of terms like epic, biblical. Just really historic, such meaning in it. It was a day that we never thought would happen. But by the grace of God, we suddenly, you know, got the green light and people were marching, and I wanted to be one of the people. I wanted to live with them that experience. I felt that, you know, the Gazans accepted me as one of them. And so I had to walk with them, too. And particularly my friends Anas, Hamza, Hamada, who were my team members in Gaza  , they wanted to walk to their home in Beit Hanoun on the most northern part of Gaza, which is only meters away from the Israeli border. So we set out on a journey, and, of course, you know, there’s hope. There’s joy. People coming back to their homes. I think also there’s a lot of, you know, fear, worry, anxiety, what’s facing us, what’s awaiting us. We walked along and I could see injured people. I could see, obviously everyone in rags and their clothes are all muddied and dirty. And, you know, these are mainly people that were living in Al-Mawasi, were displaced in tents and camps, and they were pushing what little possessions they had, primarily like mattresses and duvets, sort of covers like the majority of what they own. Right? And whatever clothing they had. And there’s the person that’s pushing their father or their mother on a wheelchair. There’s the mother that’s dragging 4 or 5 children, toddlers with them. There’s a person who’s carrying his father on his shoulders. There’s persons pushing carts with all their possessions on them. And this is like on sandy floor. And all of a sudden then it gets turned into an obstacle course. There’s a big mound. So, you know, you’re in a place where you’re trying to help people overcome this mound. Imagine trying to push your father in a wheelchair or drag your children over that. It turns into, you know, there’s a lot of watered down areas which are wet, now there’s sludge. People pushing wheels through that became immensely difficult. There was a trench with like bridges. People were trying to cross. You know what? What the hell is this? I’ve driven on that road before when I was in the WHO UN convoy going from south, and it wasn’t like that before. This was created so that nobody drives along that route. But you didn’t need to do that. No one was taking a car there. And there was one tractor that tried to come to level the floor for the people, and it was hit with an airstrike. And the person that was riding it was killed. So, despite that, it took us about six hours to walk to get to the city of Gaza because at that point for us, one of our friends was waiting in a car, and then we went to the Baptist hospital where we met our friends, some of the doctors. And then the following morning, we met some of our colleagues at the Kamal Adwan hospital. And then we set on the journey to Beit Hanoun. And then I got to Beit Hanoun, and I was with my friends Anas and Hamza and Hamada, and we were in their family home area and it was turned to dust, completely leveled. We sat, we stood on the ruins of Anas’s former home. Anas is a very dignified man. And they managed to get some food for us. And he laid out the table and it was us and his father. And I’d never seen Anas be upset, of course, upset and never seen him cry. And I looked and I could just tell he was hurt because he was very quiet. And we were eating and I looked up and he was wearing a baseball cap, and I could just see tears coming down his face. And I leaned over and I just put my hand on his knee. And I said to him, we will rebuild it. And I knew how hurt he was. This was the thing that I was witnessing, was the pain. Now, having made all this journey, the pain and the realization of having your future and your home and all of that destroyed, your memories, where will you put your children? Where will you put your wife? Where will you know? Where will you get clean water from? Where will you source food from for the average person? So many questions. It was very difficult. And then we visited the Indonesian hospital very quickly, because I had a memory. And I saw it was also attacked and I met the local doctors there, and I gave them thanks. And I told them, you are the heroes. If it wasn’t for you, the north would have been lost forever. And then we went to Jabalia. And in all the time, all the shocks that I’d experienced in Gaza, Jabalia not only shocked me, it shocked the people of Gaza too. Anas and Hamza and Mohammed, we were all like, wow, it was destroyed. 

Myriam Francois: And this was because prior to that, Jabalia was, you know, thriving, you know, big tower, you know, tower blocks, I guess you could say, home to, you know, thousands of people. And so you come upon it and it’s completely flattened. 

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: It’s as if serial nuclear bombs were dropped on this area. When I worked in public aid hospital, I would go to the ceiling, to the rooftop. But bear in mind, the rooftop, the top 2 or 3 floors of the Kamal Adwan hospital were bombed out. Yeah, as well. So you’re walking in rubble, and I would look into the distance in the nighttime, and I would see Jabalia from afar, and I would just hear the thuds and loud explosions coming from Jabalia. And I always wondered if I would ever walk the streets of Jabalia and see Jabalia. Sometimes when we would be in the O.R., the entire hospital would shake and the guys would tell us because they became aware of what was what. They’d say, no, that’s not an airstrike. That’s a building been detonated to level it. Because they used to go around, put explosives, set it up and destroy. And we’d hear those huge, thunderous sounds sometimes, you know, the ground would shake. It’s like a mini earthquake. And walking in and amongst Jabalia, seeing that firsthand was shocking. Absolutely shocking.

Myriam Francois: Can I ask you now, now that you’re out, who do you blame? Where do you feel that, you know, more could have been done, more should have been said. Who do the people that you were with in Gaza, you know, hold responsible for the current situation, which is potentially now in addition to the genocide potentially being ethnically cleansed from their own land after all the horrors they’ve just endured. And of course, not to mention the rest of Palestine, because of course, the idea that there’s a ceasefire only holds if you’re only looking at Gaza. And even there, it’s questionable because there are still been some attacks, but the West Bank is now on fire, so actually the reality is that there is no ceasefire in Palestine. I think it’s worth stating out loud, right? There is no ceasefire in Palestine, that the conflict has simply moved from the attacks on Gaza now to the West Bank. But just your final words to the world, you know, what would you like to say to people who are watching? Who do you hold responsible? What could we, what could we have done? Should we have done differently?

Dr. Mohammed Tahir: I think, as a people, and I mean this with respect to the people from that land, for example, Arabs, we’ve always turned to the West, to the US to save us, hoping or praying or, you know, just thinking that they were ever going to come and turn against Israel in defense of Palestinians. And that is the greatest delusion. The greatest delusion is that. W e’ve seen the collapse of human rights and what war crimes were present and so on. And you’ve seen the double standards. We’ve lived it now for 15 months plus. We know it. They don’t hold any value anymore. So as to continually turn to that for the solution is just, it’s just wrong on so many levels. The solution must come from inside. We’ve all been on our journeys as individuals. We found ourselves in difficult times. But then a moment must come in your life where you say to yourself, will I continue on this journey? Or will I make positive changes? And I think that time has come for us as a people. Enough relying on someone who’s never coming to help. You must turn to ourselves. We must be unified as Muslims. We’re always bickering, looking at differences, not what unites us. Look, we all want to see a peaceful world where people live and are allowed to be successful and look after their families and when nobody kills one another, nobody transgresses against another, nobody steals from another. This is the vision we all have. And that’s what most humans have, in fact, of any denomination. But if I can address our Muslim brothers and sisters, it is to say, if there was ever a time to be united, it is now. Palestine has always united us as a cause. And this must be our flag that we all rally behind to help our brothers and sisters in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Lebanon, in all the areas, and also expanded to Africa, where there are huge, huge human rights violations in Sudan, in the Congo. We’re now seeing problems happening near Rwanda as well now. So, you know, this fight for righteousness is a universal one, and it begins with unity.

Myriam Francois: Doctor Mohammed Tahir, thank you so much for everything that you do. Thank you for your service. Thank you for sharing your reflections with us today. And of course, I want to thank everybody for watching. 

The suffering in Gaza is not just a headline, it’s the daily reality for millions of people. Doctor Tahir’s testimony reminds us that behind every statistic is a human life, a child, a mother, a family shattered by Israel’s illegal occupation and war. If you want to support Palestinians, consider donating to a charity like Palestinian Medical Relief Society or Fajr Scientific, which is where Doctor Tahir works, or of course, Al-Haq Europe, who promote Palestinian human rights through legal research, litigation and advocacy. At the Tea, we believe stories matter. If you value independent journalism that amplifies the voices from the frontlines, please do support us. Subscribe, share this conversation, and consider joining us on Patreon. Because the truth needs a platform and together we can make sure it reaches the world. Stay informed, stay awake and now and always. Power to the people. Thank you.