Doctors Reflect on 1 Year of Genocide in Gaza: ‘We Thought We’d Witnessed Everything’

Twelve months into Israel’s genocide in Gaza, humanitarian workers say it’s not as “complex” as it’s made out to be. "We want an immediate, sustained ceasefire,” Doctors Without Borders’ Natalie Roberts said. 

By Kylie Cheung  |  October 7, 2024 | 11:50am
In DepthIn DepthPolitics Gaza
Doctors Reflect on 1 Year of Genocide in Gaza: ‘We Thought We’d Witnessed Everything’
People remove items from their homes following Israeli airstrikes on April 07, 2024, in Khan Yunis, Gaza.
Photo: Getty Images

Dr. Javid Abdelmoneim, a Doctors Without Borders physician who served as medical team leader at Nasser Hospital in Gaza this summer, has been working in conflict zones for 15 years. At a Wednesday press conference addressing reporters one year into Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Abdelmoneim said he’s never witnessed the scale of atrocities currently unfolding there. Through long months of treating fractures, severe burns, and overseeing near-endless amputations, one memory, in particular, has stayed with him. 

“I saw fishermen on the beach, they had very few clothes on, they were cast net fishing and they were quite thin,” he recalled. “Then suddenly, they started running.” Abdelmoneim described seeing “clouds of smoke from Israeli tanks and Humvees,” and hearing gunfire as bullets chased the fishermen down the beach. Two were shot; the other fishermen begged the Doctors Without Borders medics to intervene, all as the Israeli tanks lingered. “We wanted to go, because we could see they were still moving. We called the Israeli authorities and asked, ‘Can we go and treat them?’ It took 45 minutes for them to reply, ‘No,’ and in that time, both men died in front of our eyes.”

“They were not posing a threat, they were fishing, they were starving, and they were murdered,” Abdelmoneim said. “And there will be no accountability.”

On October 7, 2023, an attack by Hamas fighters killed 1,200 Israelis. In response, the Gaza Health Ministry counts well over 42,500 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza in the last year. In July, a study published in The Lancet estimated that Gaza’s death toll could be as high as 186,000, “given the intensity of this conflict; destroyed health-care infrastructure; severe shortages of food, water, and shelter; the population’s inability to flee to safe places; and the loss of funding to UNRWA, one of the very few humanitarian organizations still active in Gaza.” 

Also on Wednesday, Doctors Without Borders’ U.K. executive director Natalie Roberts told reporters that we’re “witnessing slaughter on an unprecedented scale.” She said, “We thought we’d witnessed everything, but to witness what is happening today in Gaza is unimaginable.”

For a year now, health care workers across all disciplines have been sounding the alarm on how Israel’s campaign of terror has decimated Gaza’s health system. One OBGYN, T, who has worked closely with the Institute for Middle East Understanding and returned from Gaza last week, spoke to Jezebel about the state of Gaza’s health system, particularly for pregnant patients and children. While in Gaza over the last month, he worked at “one of few remaining hospitals with comprehensive obstetric care,” and where c-sections and other painful, invasive procedures could still be done with anesthetic. “But in other places, that’s no longer possible.” In August, health care workers at the Palestinian Family Planning and Protection Association (PFPPA) told Jezebel that c-sections without anesthetic have only “multiplied” thanks to the increasing scarcity of basic medical supplies.

Meanwhile, hospitals are completely overrun, and consequently, there’s “not much time for each patient because there are so few facilities,” T explained. This is in line with what Jezebel’s heard from other health workers and OBGYNs over the past year. In August, Tarneem Hammad, a spokesperson for Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), said that the maternal mortality rate in Gaza has increased “over 20% since October [2023],” along with a 15% increase in infant mortality in the last six months. In January, Care International told Jezebel that their own field doctors reported a 300% increase in miscarriages since last October. And in May, the United Nations estimated 63 women, including 37 mothers, have been killed by Israeli forces every day.

At the Democratic National Convention in August, U.S. doctors who recently returned from Gaza addressed reporters directly about what they witnessed. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa said he “saw children’s heads smashed to pieces by the bullets that we [the U.S.] paid for, not once, not twice, but quite literally, every single day.” He recounted, “I saw mothers mix what little formula they could find with poison water to feed their newborns, because they were so malnourished themselves they could not breastfeed.” Sidhwa “saw children who cried out, not because of pain, but because they wished they had died along with their families instead of being burdened with the memory of their siblings and parents, charred and mutilated beyond recognition—all, of course, with American weapons.”

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan said she’s “personally held the hands of children taking their last final gasps with no family alive, all their family killed in the same attack, unable to comfort them during their final agonizing breaths,” adding, “The children who are fortunate enough to survive their injuries are discharged into a Russian roulette of 100 different ways that they could be killed by the conditions manufactured by the Israeli military campaign—another bombing, starvation, dehydration, disease.” Another doctor recounted trying to treat a woman who was 20 weeks pregnant when she was brought to the hospital with “burns that covered over 70% of her surface area,” after a bomb dropped on her while she was in her own home. The burns were “a death sentence in an environment where we have no gauze, no clean water, no antibiotics.”

This, the doctors said, is what U.S. taxpayers are funding, and have been funding for a whole year now.

“There’s been a lot of talk over the last year about how this situation is so complex, but in many ways, it really is quite simple,” Roberts told reporters. “We want some call for an immediate, sustained ceasefire, an immediate stop to the mass killing of civilians by the Israeli military. We call for a halt to the destruction of the healthcare system and the civilian infrastructure of Gaza, and we call for an end to the blockade.”

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who’s also the Democratic presidential nominee, marked the anniversary of October 7 with statements calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. However, the Israeli government has repeatedly rejected or stalled U.S.-backed ceasefire terms for months. At the end of September, the Wall Street Journal reported that internally, U.S. officials recognize that Israel is unlikely to agree to any ceasefire terms before the end of Biden’s term. Now, we’re watching Israel continue to reject U.S.-backed ceasefire terms in Lebanon, which became the latest subject of Israeli aggression and attacks in September. Israel claims to be attacking Hezbollah, an Iran-backed political party with military bases in Lebanon, but has largely been targeting civilian areas in Lebanon, killing at least 1,400 people within the last two weeks, PBS reported over the weekend.

“We’re watching the region burning now,” Roberts said. “In Gaza, it shouldn’t be acceptable that this has gone on for a year—that’s not an excuse to let it continue.”

 
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