Mehdi Hasan: We’re very delighted and I heard him speak last year and it moved me a great deal and then so when the Toronto event was happening I said let’s have – Naomi and I are going to talk but let’s have a guest and there was an obvious person we wanted as a guest because some of us sit here and talk about what’s going on. I do that for a living. I run my mouth. Some people actually go risk their lives and go put their bodies in the middle of a conflict. And our next guest is a doctor who’s been out to Gaza not once but twice since the genocide began, has come back and told the story of what he’s seen out there. He’s an ophthalmologist, he’s a plastic surgeon, he’s really a hero. Give it up for Dr. Yasser Khan.
Thanks so much. People are standing for you and rightly so. That’s awesome.
Naomi Klein: Well, thank you so much for joining us. And we are going to get – I hope you heard that last question because we were talking about it backstage. We’ll get there, but first: there’s clearly a lot of people who’ve heard your stories, your harrowing stories coming back. But for those who haven’t, you talked about the first time you went to Gaza, making your peace with God because it was so dangerous to actually go. So can you describe just those first few hours and and some of what you saw and and what it was like when you first went?

Dr. Yasser Khan: Yeah, I went – my first mission. And I was on the first mission to Gaza from North America, I think, and I didn’t know what to expect before I was going in. We all had been watching this for 3, 4 months at that point in time. And so I went in and you described, you know, how I made my peace with God. It was that trip I took from the Gaza border which was still there at the Rafah border, now it’s been destroyed. It was a 20-minute ride at night when the Israeli army was bombing any vehicle that was moving with their drones. And so it was a 20-minute ride. There was – it was dark. There was nobody there. The lights were off. And at that point, we could have been hit at any point in time. So that’s when I made my peace with God and and my family and I was ready to go if need be. But we arrived at the hospital and there’s bombs going around us because at that point in time they’re about 500 meters to a kilometer around the perimeter of the European Gaza hospital where I was in Khan Yunis at the time and you could hear the bombs going and they would say that give it about half an hour and the mass casualties would come in and the mass casualties did come in and I’d never, you know, I’ve been to 40 different countries. I’ve done a lot of humanitarian work, but I’ve never been to an active war zone. And that’s when the casualties came in. And that’s when you saw mostly children ages 6 to 7 with their abdomen torn apart with shrapnel. There’s a 9-year-old girl that I remember with her leg, her leg was just dangling with her skin because the bone was gone and her eyeball was was shattered with shrapnel. You saw mostly children, you know, women. I didn’t see a single, quote unquote, combatant at all. It was mostly children, women, and it was elementary age children. That is what I saw mostly. Yeah.

Mehdi Hasan: Yeah. You have children yourself. The obvious question I have to ask you is when you’re out there and a friend of mine where I live in Washington DC also went out, Irfan Galaria went out there as a doctor as well. Same question I asked him. When you’re out there and you’re seeing kids in this level, I don’t know who you treat in Toronto, but I’m assuming – you said it’s your first war zone. What is that like? You’re not trained for this. You didn’t go to medical school to be trained to deal with kids being shot in the face or legs or whatever it is. How do you adapt to that? Did you adapt to it?

Dr. Yasser Khan: Yes. I mean, it was horrific. The most horrific things I’ve ever seen. And you know, as a surgeon you just go and just do it, right? And you worry about about the emotional impact of it after, because you can’t – at that point in time. Yes, you’re shocked. Yes, you see eyeballs and faces. I mean, I saw, you know, 8-year-old children with pieces of of their cheek missing. You could see the skull or the facial skeleton underneath. And how do you fix that? So, we had to operate sometimes without anesthetic. Sometimes on sewage filled, they would clean it up because because you know the hospital at that point in time had about 25,000 people seeking refuge. The sewage system had overexploded. You would clean the sewage off and then do something on the floor. There was no anesthetics. Often pain control afterwards was not there and you had to operate in that scenario, and many of these kids lost their entire families so that they would wake up to find out that their entire families are gone and so they’re alone and you had to deal with that. I must hand it to the Palestinian doctors and nurses who helped us. I mean they are the real heroes 100%. People of dignity, community, just beautiful people that really, you know, really consoled me and and inspired me to go ahead and do what I had to do.

Naomi Klein: You also take on the burden of storytelling. I mean the work itself is grueling, horrific beyond imagining. But then you would, at the end of the day, you would do video diaries. You were taking photographs the whole time. Did you feel because journalists are not allowed in, international journalists? Talk about the responsibility that you’ve taken on to bear witness to tell the world, in addition to doing all of the work – and many doctors have taken this on as well.

Dr. Yasser Khan: So I went in – when I first went in I did not know what to expect and I had never done any media work, had never had an interview or anything like that. I was a physician. I gave lectures and and whatnot. And so when I went the first time, when we came back there was nobody who could speak as an eyewitness. Physicians and nurses were the only ones who could speak and advocate because we’re the only eyewitnesses. Journalists were not being, are still not being allowed in. And so we had to speak. So when I came back, the first time when I came back in January of last year, only about four months after this genocide started, you know, I got a lot of media requests because nobody else was talking. So I had to train myself to speak and I did. And thankfully so, you know, the the ICJ at that point in time had come up in late January with their genocide, you know, accusation or trial. And so I started talking about about the genocide going on and, you know, it was just a matter of just learning on the fly trying to get the word out to as many people as possible as an eyewitness. And every time I spoke I just spoke simply of what I saw when I was there and what I witnessed.

Mehdi Hasan: Just on the genocide issue. Obviously that requires evidence, and that’s what the South African government submitted to the ICJ. Karim Khan, the ICC chief prosecutor and his team and the judges there put out arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity based on evidence. What I find so fascinating is, as Naomi says, there are no international journalists in Gaza. Sometimes people say there are no journalists in Gaza but of course we know Palestinian journalists, more than 200 have been killed, a record number who have tried to document what’s happening to their people. But given no international journalists have gone in, but international doctors have been able to go in, when you come back or, I mentioned my friend Irfan Galaria came back and he wrote a piece for the LA Times about how many kids he saw with sniper bullets to the head and Dr. Mark Perlmutter who you know, the Jewish doctor in the United States who’s talked about – I’ve never seen such perfection. You know the bullet was exactly where the heart is. This was not crossfire. This was not collateral damage. I wonder what you saw: A, what you saw that led you to believe this is a genocide and war crimes, and you’ve mentioned some of that, but B, everyone believes doctors on everything else. But when it came to Gaza, American, British, Canadian, Australian doctors went to Gaza and they came back and lots of people still didn’t believe them.

Dr. Yasser Khan: And you know, it’s a good point because when I came back the first time, my own colleagues, many of them, I would call them pro-genocide. You can label them as whatever you want, but many of my colleagues did not believe us, right? And they did not accept the fact that all these atrocities are going on in plain sight. Not only were the Palestinian journalists documenting this live, but we were corroborating all these accounts, not just myself, many other physicians went after me and also corroborated. And so that was a challenge. If your own colleagues, you know, as physicians, we’re sworn…
Mehdi Hasan: They say stuff to your face?

Dr. Yasser Khan: They… Yeah. I mean, so one one story, so when I first went to Gaza – and I do this on a lot of my international trips. I come back and I operate the next day. This is just what I do on my humanitarian trips. And I came back from Gaza the first time and still in shock and still, you know, processing what I had seen and what I had witnessed and what I had done and also the the the whole feelings of survivor’s guilt. You know, I’m the one that got to leave behind because I bonded so well with the nurses and the doctors there. Anyway, so I came to the operating room and the anesthesiologist. So nurses saw me. At that point in time, I’d been on TV because there’s some local journalists that filmed me and they sold the story to Reuters and then all of a sudden everybody knew that, you know, that I’ve been to Gaza when I told nobody beforehand. So when I arrived all the nurses said: “Oh Dr. Khan you’re a hero”, and my fellow – an anesthesiologist who was there who’s pro-genocide I guess you can call them that now said, “Well I don’t know if I’d call Yasser a hero. He’s done nothing to be a hero”. And then then, as the day went on, he went on to lecture me in front of the nurses and my own students of how I don’t understand why the Jordanians and the Egyptians and the Saudis and the Lebanese don’t take these Palestinians because they’re their people, right? And so he said this out loud and I had just come back from Gaza. So I heard this a lot and after that, that was the direct confrontation. After that, you know, I had to face a lot of issues. I, apparently I became public enemy number one from what people told me and so yes, at a hospital level, at a university level, they did, you know, collate ]sic – maybe collude] to come after me, accusing me of various things which they never proved, because I fought back. I did because I knew that I was in the right. There’s nothing that I had said that’s not out there already and established by people who know more than me, and organizations. And I I think that those early battles in February and and March set the precedent because I survived them. And I think they, it emboldened a lot of my colleagues to go ahead and speak because there’s a precedent set, right? Because they can’t attack me, come after me for something which I’m still simply stating the truth. That’s all I was doing.

Naomi Klein: So, we had a question just before you came out about just how active many doctors have been in Canada and in other countries, attacking the protesters, smearing them, you know, I know there have been campaigns to keep lists, you know, to prevent certain residents from getting jobs because they’ve signed letters, all that kind of doxxing. And I think it’s one thing when you hear lawyers are doing it because you’re like lawyers, you know, but there’s something, I mean maybe I’m naive but these these are people who have, are devoting their lives, who have taken oaths, to protect life and when hospitals, when their colleagues, when hospitals are being bombed, when you know that babies are being, you know, I mean those early images of kids, babies in a neonatal ICU, like from then on I’ve never understood why it isn’t a scandal for a doctor to make any kind of excuse for this, let alone go on the offensive against doctors who do the work, who are living up to that oath. Do do you have any way of making sense of it?

Dr. Yasser Khan: No. Because I mean, I openly talked about, for example, I openly talked about a 45-year-old woman that lost both her arms, her legs, her house, her husband, her three kids, and both her eyes. And then I went to operate on her and she died before I could, which was a mercy for her – before I could operate on her eyes that also were shattered with shrapnel. And so the stories all came out. I mean I don’t see – and that’s why I have been very disappointed in in many of my colleagues and how can you deny what’s obvious, and how – you know, before all of this we trusted each other, and we operate as physicians and surgeons in an atmosphere of trust, right? We trusted each other. We were, many of us were friends and and socialized even outside – and all that ends. And how does that even end? I mean, you know, and why does it even have to end? I mean, we’re simply – I think most of my colleagues that came back, actually all of us who came back from Gaza have all been transformed forever. And I, you know, I can allude to that later, but I mean, but basically all we simply have always said is just what we witnessed. That’s all we’ve said basically, right? Those of us who have come back and… Yeah. I don’t know how you can deny this. It’s like gross delusion is what I think.

Naomi Klein: Yeah. I want to ask you about the people who survive but with terrible injuries. And, you know, what you, you know, I know that you think about patients who you treated who – I heard you talk about I think a very small boy maybe two years old who you promised you would come back and give him a prosthetic eye. You know, one of the things we’ve talked about tonight is the duties we have as Canadians to open our borders to people in need. I mean, are there demands that this group of politicized, political, organized people should be making on the Carney government? What’s most pressing in your mind when you think of the people that you treated who have survived?

Dr. Yasser Khan: Well, you know, one thing I want to emphasize that any kind of disability in Gaza is a death sentence. I had a 14-year-old girl that had bilateral globe ruptures, shrapnel to her eyes, eyeballs, and they’re shattered and she’s blind with no family because many of them, most of them are orphans. And that’s a death sentence because with no infrastructure, with constant bombardment, with famine, no electricity, fuel, water, no family, how are you going to survive? So it’s a death sentence. Many of the patients that I treated when I was there – I took 23 eyes out in the almost 3 weeks that I was there combined between the two trips. I don’t even know if those patients are alive. I don’t know. So, I mean, the burden of, you know, basically, I mean, we have to advocate to let humanitarian aid in and a ceasefire so the bombing stops and you let humanitarian aid in. That’s a very simple, simple ask, you know, and I don’t and why is it so hard to do.

Mehdi Hasan: We’re running out of time. We’re going to go back to the audience for a little bit. So if you’ve got questions please do make your way to the microphone for Dr. Yasser or for Naomi if you didn’t get them before. Just while while they come up to the microphone, I’ll just ask you this. I know you center Palestinians a lot when you talk about what happened in Gaza. You mentioned the brave Palestinian doctors. What surprised you? Can I say, dare I say, in a positive way, what did you come back with filled with hope about some of the people you met there? Very resilient people.

Dr. Yasser Khan: Well, I think that, to quote one of my good friends Dorotea [TN: Gucciardo] who’s actually the director of of a foundation called Glia with whom I went my second time and she called this the Gaza phenomenon where – and what I mean by that is that you know, all of us healthcare workers that went we came back transformed and all of us described, religious, almost like a religious experience even though you may not be of faith or whatever, it’s just like an experience. And Gaza changes. And the reason it changes is that, is that the people of Gaza have influence. They’re not normal people. They are people of tremendous dignity that we’ve never seen before. All of us, all of us who went agree with this. They’re people of you know, in a society that, like in the west, that runs on capitalism, on productivity, on profits, on acquisition of things. That’s not how the Gazans work. They work much [more] on connection, right? They don’t care about accumulating wealth or this or that. It’s connection. And so what really affected me was was their dignity. They’re such dignified people where connection is everything to them. The relationships and connections, and that’s why all of us, if you ask every single health worker who’s gone to Gaza and come back, we all want to go back. We’re all desperately trying to go back because once you experience that, the illusion of the world is lifted, right? Everything, everything becomes clear and that’s what Gaza has done for all of you and has done for us especially.

Mehdi Hasan: Wow. So well said. It’s amazing that Yasser began with – “I never spoken to media before I went to Gaza”. One of the most eloquent people I’ve come across in a long time. And by the way, what you say about the dignity makes it even worse to see those images right now this week of Palestinians in Gaza being treated like animals, having food thrown at them by American and Israeli soldiers. Let’s go to this lady here. And a message to all of you and to the three of us to keep questions short, answers short. We get through as many as we can because we’re nearly at the end of our night. So, go.

Audience Member 2: Really quick, I know that to make a difference, I can make donations to organizations. I can show up at protests, but sometimes that doesn’t feel enough for me. And you guys are doing so much in your own ways. How do I as an individual show up more in solidarity or actually contribute to helping out in this situation? That’s something I struggle with a lot on a daily basis.

Mehdi Hasan: I’m going to put this to you, Yasser, as someone who’s not a journalist or an activist. What do you think people who are fellow civil society members?

Dr. Yasser Khan: I, you know, I think that whatever you’re doing now, donating, posting, talking about it, coming here, you know, going to protests, you know, just simply communicating about about the people of Gaza, keeping them in your mind, not forgetting what’s going on there. That’s all we can do. Advocating to our politicians, voting with politicians who are against genocide and for human rights and humanitarian law. I think if we do that, liberation is going to happen. It’s going to happen. It’s just a matter of what are we going to do till that happens? It’s inevitable. I have no doubt in my mind. It’s just that we have to keep on doing exactly what we’re doing because that’s all we can do. And prayer, of course. I never forget prayer.

Audience Member 6: Perfect. This may be a grim question but it goes to the board. What do you see as an end state for Gaza? In the context that in recent history tragedies have led to exaggerated responses from countries and that those countries have doubled down when the narrative is going against them. Is Gaza fated for the same or is Gaza’s situation headed for the same fate and will there be accountability?

Mehdi Hasan: Do one of you want to take that?

Dr. Yasser Khan: Well, I mean, just, if I may, just from being on the ground, the majority of them are not going to leave. They would rather starve and die, but they’re not going to leave. So then what are you going to do? Are you going to force them, lift them up, and put them, you know, but they’re not going to leave. Number one. Number two – the end, I know, is liberation. I have no doubt about that. As to when that’s going to happen is the only issue.

Audience Member 8: [Inaudible name]. I’m also a journalist and I happened to cover the war for one year since it started. But after a year, I gave up because the images coming out of Gaza, they were so horrifying. [I’m] a mother as well. And when I sleep at night, I can’t but help think about the children who are being shattered. And as the doctor described in a very bad and poor state. So my question here is, while we have these discussions and protests on streets and when we are divesting and urging to sanction Israel, like what are the steps forward because the more we want to move forward they’re closing on us, they are killing more and more people in Gaza, so in the practical sense, the more we speak more Gazans are being killed, more Palestinians are facing the wrath.

Mehdi Hasan: Um do you want to deal with the lady’s question? We’re almost out of time about uh she’s struggling to sleep at night. Practical steps.

Dr. Yasser Khan: Yeah, hope and know that the people in Gaza are still hopeful. Yes, they’ve gone through a lot. And, you know, many have have lost a lot, but they’re still hopeful. If you talk to them, I’ve been talking to them on a regular basis, the friends I have in Gaza still, and they ask me how I’m doing. I broke my leg and they’re asking me how I’m doing. They’re suffering in a genocide, but they’re hopeful. And that’s what gives me hope and that’s why I know that liberation will come because of the people. It’s not because of anything else. It’s because of who they are.