Opening of story:
Interviewer:
As Gaza’s medical system collapses under relentless Israeli bombardment, hospitals become targets while medics and doctors come under attack.
Dr. Rose:
It’s barbaric what’s happened to the health system. They are literally on their knees. They have had enough of this. All of them have been displaced at least 15 times. All of them lost significant members of their family. None of them have enough food. There’s no clear drinking water. It is unconscionable.
Dr. Potokar:
The whole of the rest of society is watching this horrific decimation of the Palestinian population. I am sure with time history will judge those people who sat there and done nothing.
Interviewer: We speak with two British surgeons who spent several weeks in Gaza trying to save lives and bear witness to war crimes.
Story:
Interviewer:
Hello and welcome to the program, I’m Ghida Fakhry. After more than 20 months of relentless bombardment, Gaza’s hospitals lie in ruins. No power, no medicine, no shelter. The World Health Organization says 94% of Gaza’s hospitals have been damaged or destroyed. The WHO says only a handful in the north are still partially functioning and just one major hospital in the south, Nasser, is still open. New documentaries have exposed shocking evidence of medics being detained, tortured, and some of them killed by Israeli forces. British surgeons Victoria Rose and Tom Potokar spent three weeks in Gaza in May trying to save lives and bear witness to the crimes being committed against Palestinians. I’m now joined by Dr. Victoria Rose, a plastic surgeon who works with the UK’s National Health Service and Dr. Tom Ptokar, a burns and reconstructive surgery specialist and former chief surgeon of the International Red Cross. Dr. Rose, Dr. Potokar, thanks so much for being here. You both spent several weeks in Gaza in May. When you came back, Dr. Rose, you talked about the killing and how everyone, you said, was a target. Everyone is fair game. It is indiscriminate. You said about the bombing that it was clear to you that the bombing of hospitals specifically was calculated, was deliberate.
Dr. Rose:
I suppose it’s difficult to say that I knew that it was deliberate, but it was widespread and it was almost like a domino effect. You couldn’t really have one hospital open without another couple being bombed. I don’t think we ever went to Gaza since October 2023 and had more than one major hospital functioning. When you look at Gaza, the big four hospitals were Shifa, Al-Aqsa, Nasser, and the European Gaza. So, they’re the ones that are capable of dealing with the sort of mass trauma that was going on. The others are smaller facilities ,and I have never been in Gaza since the war started where more than two of those hospitals have been open or more than one of them has been fully functional.
Interviewer:
In fact, days after you arrived, one of the hospitals in which you were supposed to treat patients was bombed.
Dr. Rose:
Yeah, that was pretty difficult for us because Tom was there at the time. So, we entered Gaza a week after Tom and were due to go to the European Gaza. And on the day we arrived, he sent us footage of the bombs going off. So, we were diverted and then waiting to see what happened.
Interviewer:
Dr. Potokar, you had been to Gaza what, 15, 16 times.
Dr. Potokar:
Yes.
Interviewer:
Did anything prepare you to what you saw this time? Was it different from your previous visits?
Dr. Potokar:
Yes. I mean different in the sense that the amount of destruction is just absolutely phenomenal. Phenomenal compared to before. The constancy – the bombardments are all the time, basically. I mean across the whole area. There’s nowhere safe within the area at all. Not just the destruction of the health facilities but the healthcare staff, you know, with the numbers of colleagues, but also other health workers, ambulance workers, primary healthcare workers, Killed; the complete absence of any international journalists; the number of journalists killed; and of course, since March this year with the blockade on top of everything else, the starvation. And the type of injuries. So, you know, in 2018, we had the Great March of Return, and there was an epidemic of high velocity gunshot injuries causing disabling injuries to the limbs. Mostly the lower limbs. This time, huge amounts of burn injuries but also huge amounts of blast related injuries, which just literally rip people to shreds. So I think now Gaza has by far the highest population of children with amputations, and I have never seen in all the conflict zones I’ve worked in so many amputations and so many just horrendous injuries with tissue and flesh missing. We were operating on parts of humans, not whole bodies, parts of bodies.
Interviewer:
You said Dr. Rose that at times you felt this was so barbaric in terms of the numbers of children coming through the doors with bits of their bodies blown off. When you came back, were you surprised by the way the media was, or wasn’t ,reporting what you were seeing on the ground?
Dr. Rose:
I think I was surprised, but then none of the media were actually in the operating rooms with us to see the extent of the injuries and the numbers of children that had been injured. So, I suppose it’s understandable –not even the Palestinian journalists were getting into the theaters. But it was striking how many children were injured. We were starting our lists of 10 patients and the first six would be children. And that was every day, and we hadn’t seen that before.
Interviewer:
What kind of wounds were you seeing?
Dr. Rose:
We saw gunshot wounds to children in March; we saw a lot of children that had been hit by quadcopters. But by the time May came round, most of the injuries were blast injuries. So, they would either be severe burns from the heat of the explosion or actual bits of the child blown off. So we had a young girl, a seven-year-old on the table that literally had her knee blown off. There was no bone between her thigh and her shin and no skin covering it. And that’s quite different from injuries when we work in London – when somebody’s involved in a traumatic amputation, you always get the bit brought in with them and to be served up these children with bits missing was really quiet a contrast for us.
Interviewer:
How many of the people Dr. Potokar that you were treating and operating on were children? And were you operating on any fighters? Because we quite often hear that this is a war. But were there any fighters that you saw that were brought in? Were these mostly children?
Dr. Potokar:
In the last visit, I worked at the European Gaza, Al-Amal Hospital, and Nasser, So, three facilities. And in all three of them, 80% of the patients that I operated on were women and children. So there were a few men as well. The question as to whether they’re fighters, I think that’s always, you know, it’s a question we get asked from time to time. I think it’s important for people to understand – as doctors and humanitarians, we are not interested in what the person’s in. I’m interested in them as a human beings and their condition and their injury. It’s not my job to decide or judge what they’ve done.
Interviewer:
As far as Israel’s claims go, that these hospitals were often used to hide behind civilians, behind patients, that there were tunnels underground and so on. Did you see any shred of evidence?
Dr. Rose:
I didn’t see anything at the European Gaza. And I did, in that March trip, we did, you know, walk quite a lot through the hospital. We were doing ward rounds on a daily basis. I didn’t see the tunnels that they exposed. Again at Nasser, I’ve been there twice since the war. I haven’t seen any evidence of Hamas in the hospital.
Dr. Potokar:
Same as Rosie, in all the years I’ve been there, in all the times, in all the different hospitals, I’ve never seen any evidence whatsoever of any activity other than an entirely normal hospital. I was on site at the European Gaza when the bunker buster bombs hit. I went past where the bunkers were at the entrance 30 seconds after the strike. All I could see was a load of sand in a big bunker. I’ve seen none of the evidence produced subsequent to that, shown by anybody to suggest anything. So, you know, I don’t know. I can’t say one way or another. As I say, I’m can’t but you know, just because somebody says something doesn’t mean it’s true.
Interviewer: It’s no coincidence, though, is it? That every single one of Gaza’s 36 main hospitals has been attacked. Why do you think there is such complete silence and inaction?
Dr. Rose:
Because the narrative is controlled by Israel. And if you say that it’s Hamas’s Ministry of Health, you give the impression that every doctor working in every hospital is in military uniform with an AK-47 strapped to their back. And it becomes very difficult to see the real picture if you
have blocked every journalist from entering. So I think a lot of this is propaganda, and then there is the uncertainty of what is the truth and the difficulty for the western world to get involved.
Dr. Potokar:
It’s not just western governments you know, Europe and America. In fact, it’s pretty much the whole of the rest of society are watching this horrific decimation of the Palestinian population and of their country, and doing absolutely nothing about it. And you know, I am sure with time history will judge those people for having sat there and done nothing.
Interviewer:
You’re a war zone veteran. You’ve been around a few conflict areas. You’ve seen devastation. But have you seen anything that even comes remotely close to this?
Dr. Potokar:
No. No. And you take, you know, let’s take a country like Ukraine. All wars are horrible. Ukraine is, you know, is a horrible war. But, you know, Ukraine is a huge country, massive country, and most of the direct conflict is in small areas of it. And it’s mostly more traditional in the sense that it’s kind of soldiers fighting soldiers.
Interviewer:
Yeah.
Dr. Potokar:
You know, it’s mostly an army fighting another army. And yes, of course, there’s civilian deaths that are occurring in relatively small numbers. That is not the case in Gaza. You don’t have to be a mathematician. Just look at the statistics. Gaza is very small. 35 miles by 12 miles or something.
Dr. Rose:
It’s 25 by 8 and they’ve got nowhere to go.
Dr. Potokar:
They can’t get out.
Dr. Rose:
They can’t get out. You know, you’re not allowed to enter the sea more than 3 kilometers at the moment because you’ll get shot. You can’t get through the Rafah border, and you certainly can’t get into Israel. So, these people are enclosed. They can’t escape this bombing. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
Dr. Potokar:
Yeah, exactly.
Interviewer:
What was their morale like? Not just your colleagues who were also trying to operate desperately and save lives, but who were also seeing other doctors and medics being killed.
Dr. Rose:
I think in this last trip, it was the first time that I’d heard my colleagues say they would rather die than continue, which is quite difficult to hear. I think most people that we spoke to had felt that way and that the Palestinian resilience that we’ve always relied on and their ability to resist this has definitely waned, if not disappeared now. They are literally on their knees. They have had enough of this. All of them have been displaced at least 15 times. All of them have lost
significant members of their family. None of them have enough money to buy food. None of them have enough food. There’s no clean drinking water. The vaccination programs have stopped. It is unconscionable the situation that these people are being forced to live in at the moment.
Dr. Potokar:
We tend to focus, and perhaps rightly so, on the injured or the dead even. Behind this are the hundreds of thousands injured, many of them with extremely disabling life-changing injuries. That’s the trauma side. Alongside that, you’ve got the whole of what a normal health service would deliver. So the last facility providing dialysis in the north was completely destroyed. So no patients with renal failure can get dialysis now. You know patients born with congenital deformities, cleft lip, cleft pallet, congenital hand, can’t get treatment. Patients with high blood pressure, with diabetes, can’t get treatment. Patients with cancer can’t get treatment.
Dr. Rose:
There’s no MRI scanner now left in Gaza. Nasser is the only center that has an oxygen station. It’s producing oxygen for all the field hospitals around it. There’s no blood. The only blood bank is in Nasser, but because of the cold chain supply problems, that can’t function effectively anymore. I mean, it’s barbaric what’s happened to the health system.
Interviewer:
But we don’t often hear that word associated with what’s going on. Why not?
Dr. Potokar:
I think that part of it is fear. I think people are just scared. They’re scared that if they say something they might be accused of either being antisemitic or of being anti-Israeli or of supporting terrorism. How can you look at a family who well, one example you know the pediatrician, that we were working in the hospital with her, that lost nine of her children and her husband.
Interviewer:
Nine of her 10 children.
Dr. Potokar:
And the 10th child was severely injured as well. That is barbaric. There’s no other word for it.
Interviewer:
You both have been quite vocal and outspoken, and I guess an important part of the reason why you went, Dr. Rose, was not just to save lives as you both did but was also to come back and tell the world that what is happening is real. But what kind of reactions have you faced?
Dr. Rose:
I don’t think that was my intention when I went, to come back and tell the world what was real. But it became very evident when I was there that everything I said was immediately rebuffed or downplayed. And that became very difficult to deal with. And so I think that’s what made us talk more this time than we’ve ever spoken out before.
Interviewer:
How have people reacted?
Dr. Rose:
The majority of people have been very supportive of what we’ve done. We’re doctors. We’re humanitarians. It’s quite difficult, I think, to take angst against us. I’ve had some hate mail through the hospitals that I work at, but luckily most people that I speak to believe that what we’re doing is worthwhile and that we should continue.
Interviewer:
And all this at a huge personal risk and you’ve both been back several times over the last few years. What makes you go back every single time knowing that the dangers only increase?
Dr. Potokar:
I think there is something special about Gaza and many people who go there are drawn to go back. And I think it’s partly because of the injustice. They just see it as there is so much injustice there. But also that the people are so, you know, that they’re extremely, they’re
Intelligent, they’re good natured. I have never in all the trips I’ve been there, ever heard anyone say a bad word about another country, including Israel. I’ve never heard anybody talking about
revenge, talking about wanting to..nothing. All I’ve heard is, we just want to live in peace. We just want to see our kids grow up, knowing that they’re going to come home in the evening. We just want to celebrate family birthdays, have food at the table at the end of the day. That’s all you hear.
Interviewer:
Dr. Rose, it must not be easy for you to even get into Gaza.
Dr. Rose:
It’s not easy to get in and the restrictions have made it harder and harder since Rafah closed. You can only take one 23 kg bag into Gaza with you. In it, you have to take all your food for that period and water for 3 days. You’re not allowed to take any equipment. You’re limited on the number of mobile phones, electrical equipment, computers, things like that. So, it’s become increasingly difficult to enter Gaza. And at the moment, they’re denying 50% of all doctors that apply. And we were denied on mass as a charity – four surgeons in February of this year, for no
reason whatsoever.
Interviewer:
But you did manage to go in three times since the war on Gaza began.
Dr. Rose:
Yes.
Interviewer:
Why was it so important for you to keep going back?
Dr. Rose:
We’re in a very privileged position that we are plastic surgeons and there is no plastic surgery training program in Gaza. So we are offering something that they don’t have, and a war
zone generates injuries that need soft tissue reconstruction, which is our specialty. So every time we go we make such a huge impact on the population, on the injured population, it becomes very hard to see the difference that you make and not promise that you will come back.
Interviewer:
Those who are left behind and who see some of their colleagues being detained, being disappeared, being killed, how overwhelmed are they?
Dr. Potokar:
Well, completely overwhelmed. You know, they’ve been working and putting up with
bombardments, with drones, with lack of food, with having to move, being displaced umpteen times. You know, I think people find it difficult to imagine. One of my colleagues, a senior orthopedic colleague and one of the top surgeons in Gaza, when I was there last time, you know, he had to evacuate his whole family to go and live in a tent or not even a tent, in a sort of lean-to shelter made out of a bit of plastic in a bombed out building. He’s a senior consultant specialist, and on top of that, more recently, I think that the, you know, the starvation that is ongoing there, is debilitating, not just physically wearing you out, but also psychologically as well. So, when you add all those things up, it’s, you know, it’s just astonishing that they’re still able to function and they still come into work. They come into work despite the fact that they may have lost, you know. I I’ve been working with people when they get a phone call saying that their house has been attacked and they can’t find their parents there.
Interviewer:
And it seems that a lot of the more experienced doctors and surgeons are dying, are being killed. We now hear new evidence that has surfaced in a documentary that was broadcasted recently that there are black sites where hundreds, possibly thousands of people are taken, humiliated, disappeared, some of them medics. How difficult is it to replace these doctors?
Dr. Potokar:
Well, it’s extremely difficult. As Rosie said, you know, for certain specialties, there’s no formal training program. You have a fixed number of medical health workers. Some have left, have managed to get out, but a significant number have been killed. And people in these senior positions, you know, it’s five, six, seven years in medical school and training, then at least 10 years postgraduate to get to a level where they’re able to deliver the kind of the service that is required. So once these people are gone, you’re looking at, you know, yeah, 15 to 20 years to replace that cohort of medics. And that’s if you have functional medical schools, functional hospitals, equipment, people to train them.
Interviewer:
In some of the interviews that you gave, Dr. Potokar, from Gaza, your frustration was quite palpable. It soon turned to anger. You said it’s the utter inhumanity and cruelty of it. Does any of it make more sense to you today than it did when you were there?
Dr. Potokar:
No. If anything, worse. So many of the political leadership around the globe are complicit in what is going on there. And it’s that frustration and that increasingly governments, I know more about Europe, let’s say, but increasingly across Europe governments are making it harder and harder for the populations in these, what are supposed to be democratic countries, to even stand up and say what they think and have their say because of the draconian laws that are being put in place to prevent them doing that.
Interviewer:
And it’s almost two years now of daily bombings that Palestinians in Gaza are going through. If this had been happening anywhere else in the world, would it have gone on for even a fraction of the time?
Dr. Rose:
I don’t believe it would. But there’s lots of things that have happened in Gaza that I don’t think would have been tolerated anywhere else. I think the blockade on aid, the removal of the United Nations and all its partners, the fact that we have the Gazan Humanitarian Foundation running aid in Gaza – an organization that has no history of any other sort of work of this kind that has set up four distribution points. I cannot think of any situation in history where that would have been tolerated.
Interviewer: What is at the core of this intolerance? Racism.
Dr. Potokar:
I think it’s a combination of all sorts
of things. Racism, power, money, guilt…
Dr. Rose:
Misinformation.
Interviewer:
What is the end game? What does it look like to you? What is Israel trying to achieve?
Dr. Rose:
It’s trying to remove the population from Gaza and the West Bank.
Dr. Potokar:
And I think that’s, I don’t even think that’s questionable. You know, that has been stated by Israeli members of the of the Knesset. It’s been stated quite clearly.
Dr. Rose:
There was an article in the Guardian recently that cited over 20 accounts of key Israeli politicians saying that that was their aim. The destruction of that population, the removal of the population. So, it’s not hidden at all. It’s a directive that’s been given.
Interviewer:
How would you change the narrative? What kind of message do you have for those who still don’t grasp and understand what’s going on?
Dr. Rose:
I think that what we’re doing at the moment is not going to help the situation. And certainly, we’ve seen a huge number of children been orphaned, and they will have a resentment towards Israel. And I think that it’s unlikely that Israel will be able to kill the remaining two million Palestinians. So if they want to continue down this line, they will have to displace them. But it will mean that those children will be somewhere in the world and those children will come back, and they are just kicking this problem into the long grass for their own children to deal with and they need to understand that now.
Interviewer:
Dr. Victoria Rose, Dr. Tom Potokar, thank you both very much indeed for speaking with us.
Doctors:
Thank you. Thanks.