Testimonies

About the archive of testimonies

A testimony is something entirely different from a report, a statistic, a headline. It carries within it the experience of a specific person, at a specific moment, and places on the listener an obligation that is hard to escape: to pay attention. This archive brings together testimonies of people who were there — doctors, medical staff, civilians — and presents their voices, unmediated and unfiltered, to anyone willing to hear.

Behind the Testimonies

Translators’ Introduction Introduction by Dr. Michal Feldon Letter from Dr. Ezzideen Shehab Compassion as a political act of resistance

International Doctors

When the war broke out, international journalists were banned from entering the Gaza Strip. The exceptions (those who could enter) were several dozen international doctors and healthcare workers, highly experienced in conflict zones, whose entry into the Strip was granted on a limited basis.

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Gaza Healthcare Workers

They are in the hospitals, struggling to treat the wounded — children, women, the elderly, civilians — to provide medical care without anesthesia, without equipment, without medication, in hospitals under siege and even directly bombed, as they themselves become targets.

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" They have never seen with their own eyes what is going on, heard the screams, smelt the rotting flesh, shuddered from the constant bombardment. "

Dr. Tom Potokar

Testimonies

About the archive of testimonies

Behind the Testimonies

International Doctors

Gaza Healthcare Workers

" They have never seen with their own eyes what is going on, heard the screams, smelt the rotting flesh, shuddered from the constant bombardment. "

Dr. Tom Potokar

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

Dr. Mimi Syed

"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

"There was virtually no formula feed to feed these newborn babies, all these infants."

Dr. Nick Maynard

"I remember their faces, their earrings, their two little first teeth. I remember how carefully they had been dressed for sleep in their cold tents, the delicateness with which their hair was braided. "

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan

"Operating on children who would say, I was lying on the ground after a bomb had dropped, and this quadcopter came down and hovered over me and shot me."

Prof. Nizam Mamode

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

Dr. Samer Attar

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

Heba Al-Nashef (midwife)

"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

"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. "

Dr. Mohammed Tahir

"Literally every day I was there, I saw a child shot in the head. "

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

Dr. Tammy Abughnaim

"Why did they target me? I'm a man. I have a job. I've never been involved in politics. I don't own a gun. Why was I chosen?"

Dr. Deirdre Noonan

Dr. Sarah Lalonde

Dr. Yipeng Ge

Dr. Rizwan Minhas

Dr. Dorotea Gucciardo

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

Dr. Nick Maynard

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

Dr. Mimi Syed

"I never thought I could see it get worse, but here I am. "

Dr. Mimi Syed

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

Dr. Abdullah Ghali

"Every single person I encountered was malnourished. "

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

"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

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

Dr. Thaer Ahmad

rajaa musleh

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

Dr. Tammy Abughnaim

"We're giving them Ibuprofen for an arm that's been blown off."

Monica Johnson

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

Dr. Mimi Syed

"There were children with 70% to 80% body burns."

Dr. Mohammed Mostafa

Dr. Razan al-Nahhas

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

Dr. Amer Shoaib

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

Dr. Tom Potokar

"Up until now we have recorded 11 infants who died due to hypothermia"

Dr. Ahmad Al-Farra

"A woman came in with asthma symptoms. She'd been cooking over a stove, breathing in toxic fumes because she was burning plastic."

Dr. Nahreen Ahmed

"I feel unbearably helpless before my dying patients. Countless times, I’ve failed to piece together the shattered bodies of children."

Dr. Ali Tahrawi

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

Dr. Irtaza Khan

"“I hope, I hope we will survive,”"

Dr. Mohammed Saqr

Dr. Khamis Elessi

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

Dr. Victoria Rose

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

Dr. Ahmad Al-Farra

"The scale of violence directed at Gaza’s civilians is unlike anything any of us has ever seen."

152 American Medical Professionals

"I never thought that this would actually be happening in a hospital."