“I have a cold. And in one hour, I’ll have finished a twenty-four-hour shift, heartbroken again. I lost a cardiac patient because we had no medication. Another patient shot in the head, was left to die slowly because we had no ventilator. A child with a shattered skull and exposed brain matter just died in front of me. I also just found a kidney patient collapsed on the bedroom floor. He had a seizure due to brain damage because he has not had dialysis in three months. A diabetic man hadn’t eaten in four days. He cried when I asked why. I gave him fluids and some money to buy flour. I’m so sorry for the starving, for the children we couldn’t save, for the mothers, for the elderly, for the vulnerable. Not a single shift has passed without having me shattered.”
This is the reality in Gaza right now for the medical profession struggling to save an overwhelming amount of patients, not only from the bombings and gunshot wounds but now also from starvation. And the starvation has reached everyone, including the doctors themselves, some of whom have passed out on the floors of what remains of Gaza’s hospitals, then picked themselves up and gone back to work.
Those opening words belonged to Dr Ali Tahrawi, an emergency room doctor at Alqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Gaza. They were read aloud at a recent Washington, DC press conference by Dr Ashraf Abou El-Ezz, a physician from Indiana who knows he has all the resources he needs.
But somehow, the words are never loud enough and even though they were spoken in the shadow of the US Capitol building, those inside had already left for the summer recess. And in any case, most of them are not listening. Only US Representative Rashida Tlaib, the Michigan Democrat and the sole Palestinian American in Congress, remained behind to host the press conference.
“I dread the moment Hanan and Misk will ask me about their legs,” continued medical student Sharad Wertheimer, a member, like the others, of the US-based global network, Doctors Against Genocide (DAG), reading the words of Hala Sha’sha’aj, a 40-year old mother of five from Gaza city.
“What will I tell them? When I go to buy shoes for my children, what will I do when Hanan and Misk ask why I don’t buy them any? If they say, ‘I want to play’, ‘I want to dance’, ‘I want to ride a bike,’ what will I say to them? They lost their father, the love, compassion and security he gave them, and they also lost their legs, the ability to move and play. Everything beautiful in their lives is gone. Their childhood was stolen. What did they do to deserve such devastation?”
One after another, the doctors in their white coats and scrubs stepped forward to read the words of their colleagues, friends, relatives and people they don’t know at all, just human beings who matter and who are trapped in the concentration camps and free fire zones that Gaza has now become under the Israeli bombardment and forced starvation.
The doctors have heard these stories over and over for 22 months, during which time the situation has continued to get worse and the inaction by the US and other governments more criminal. But now, in the heat of late July, having lobbied members of Congress, protested, disrupted meetings and been arrested, they are running out of patience.
“We will not be polite”, warned John Reuwer, a retired ER doctor and member of DAG, who said he had been to five war zones but had never seen anything as bad as the current situation in Gaza. “We are here to say ‘no more’”, he said. “We will not stop. And we will not forget.”
And so the doctors continued to bear witness on behalf of the besieged and desperate Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
“On the 28th of March, the soldiers called me and two other civilian prisoners, aged around 16 and 17, by name,” came the words of Dr Khalid Alseer, read by Dr Qurat-ul-ain Syedain. “It was night. They tied us very tightly at our wrists and ankles and put us in a military car. No one told us anything. We drove for around two hours into the hills. All the while they beat us, kicking us and humiliating us. They were laughing. I was trying to explain in English that the ties on my wrist were too tight, but they just said I was a doctor so I would be okay.
Excerpted: ‘“Everything beautiful in their lives is gone”: US Physicians Read Aloud the Searing Testimony of Desperate Doctors and Patients in Gaza’.
Courtesy: Counterpunch.org