The death toll in Gaza is now inching closer and closer to 30,000, with no end in sight to Israel’s bombing or US political, military, and financial support for the genocide unfolding. Amid the carnage and horror of the past 144 days, Gaza’s medical workers have worked around the clock under unimaginable conditions to save as many lives as possible. Israel has answered their bravery with brute savagery, laying waste to every single one of Gaza’s hospitals, routinely targeting emergency medical vehicles, and killing at least 627 healthcare workers. Dr. Thaer Ahmad, a Palestinian American ER physician, speaks with The Real News on what he witnessed at Al Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis during his recent medical mission to the Gaza Strip.
Studio / Post-Production: David Hebden
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mark Steiner:
Welcome to the Mark Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Mark Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us once again.
Today, I’ll be talking with Dr. [inaudible 00:00:17] Ahmad. Ahmad joins us to discuss his recent experience volunteering at the Al Nasr Hospital in Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip. He’s an emergency room physician and assistant program director for the Advocate Christ Emergency Medicine Residency Program in Chicago. He recently returned from the Gaza Strip.
So welcome, Dr. Ahmad, to The Mark Steiner show. It’s good to have you with us.
Dr. Ahmad:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Mark Steiner:
And as we begin our conversation, I want to tell you some few things, that as of this day, on February 20th, at least 28,775 Gazans have been killed. Among that number are at least 12,300 children, more than 7,000 missing, trapped under the rubble, 68,552 people injured, including at least 8,663 children. And in the West Bank, no less than 400 killed, more than 100 children among them, 4,500 wounded.
And Gaza is being destroyed. Its infrastructure laid to waste. Over 360,000 homes have been destroyed. 1.7 million out of 2.3 million people displaced. Only 11 of 35 hospitals are functional, and those, partially, barely, and all this was from the Al Jazeera live tracker on the Gaza War, which we’ll link to.
Before we start this conversation, there’s some really graphic details that Dr. Ahmed and I will talk about, so be prepared for that as you talk to a man who just returned.
So once again, Dr. Ahmed, welcome. I just wanted to set that up. But those stats, as horrendous as they sound, they can’t even begin to touch the reality of what Gazans, Palestinians are experiencing on the ground, what you experienced on the ground.
Dr. Ahmad:
I think that’s exactly right. I mean, these numbers are so astronomically high, it’s hard to conceptualize what they mean. I mean, you say 28,000 people, I mean, you can’t even really visualize what that means. I mean, you can probably think about these sports stadiums being sold out, and that many people have perished in this conflict.
And I think one thing that you point out is this is about people who’ve been killed and wounded, but what I experienced firsthand being there is that it seems that every aspect of life in Gaza has come under attack, has been disrupted. I mean, there is nothing that you can think of, in terms of everyday life, that has not been totally altered and disrupted. Everything from school, and being able to go to work, being able to take public transportation, moving from the north to the south, every single aspect of life is totally disrupted.
Mark Steiner:
Talk about when you first… This is not your first time in Gaza, correct?
Dr. Ahmad:
Yeah, it’s my fifth time.
Mark Steiner:
Fifth time. And going as a physician?
Dr. Ahmad:
Correct, yeah.
Mark Steiner:
So, talk a bit about how this particular journey is different than the others from what you’ve seen from your first time in Gaza to now. I mean, it must have been in some ways just so deeply shocking, even for you, an emergency physician, who sees pain and suffering and blood every day.
Dr. Ahmad:
Yeah, I mean, that’s the thing. Nothing in my training… I mean, I trained in Detroit, I work in Chicago, I worked and trained in trauma centers, I work in one of the busiest trauma centers in the entire country. Nothing had prepared me for what I was about to see, and also my previous trips. This is on something on a totally different scale. I think something that we probably knew it was going to be different is after October 7th, nobody was getting in, nothing was getting out, and it took until the end of December for the first medical delegation, an international NGO medical delegation to get into the Gaza Strip. At the end of December.
And so I was a part of the second delegation of healthcare providers that was able to get in the beginning of January. And the thing that hits you right away is, you land in Cairo, you’re working with the World Health Organization, they’re putting together these emergency medical teams, and as you embark on this journey to get to the Rafah border between Gaza and Egypt, you start seeing these lines and lines of humanitarian trucks, just parked on the side of the road. I mean, the queue is so long, and you start to realize, okay, this is where this backup is. It’s real, the lack of aid getting in.
You get to the border, nobody’s there. I mean, I had been to this Egyptian border before. It’s pretty busy. I mean, it’s people moving in and out of Gaza, stuff coming in, commercial items, families, and it was empty. I’d shown up at around 2:00 PM, and there was five Egyptian border patrol during the passport control side of this. I mean, no one is there. It was just me and a group of 30 or 40 NGO workers, with seven or eight physicians who are ready to get into work.
And so everything was different about this. Everything about this trip was nothing that I had seen before. The second you cross over into the Palestinian side of Rafah, there’s no electricity. I mean, even their passport control had… There was no lights there. There was no power that you can kind of grab your luggage off of the rack. I mean, right away you’re just struck by the difference once you cross the border.
And we grabbed our stuff, we showed up, it was sunset. We hop in a van, and it’s tent city in Rafah. I have been in Rafah before, and this town is a very rural town, 250,000 people. And when we were there, it had already started to surpass a million people. And you can immediately feel the crowded nature of everything, these makeshift tents being set up everywhere in this rural town, and no lights anywhere in the middle of the night, just people moving about, and the headlights of our van just exposing what we could see.
Mark Steiner:
When I hear your description, and when I’ve seen the photos and the film and talked to some other people, people really can’t grasp that this is a dystopian nightmare. I don’t know how to even say this sometimes. It’s not even like a regular war.
Dr. Ahmad:
Right. Right. Yeah. I had asked that question, and I had suspected this. I’m Palestinian, but I’m from the West Bank, and our community here in the States has been glued to the coverage. And we thought were… I thought I was informed about what was going on, but then when I cross over and I’m talking to every single person who has some story of how their life has been permanently altered forever, whether it’s their home has been destroyed, they’ve been displaced five times, they’ve lost family members, every single part of their life has been altered permanently. It really started to overwhelm me.
And I remember asking the World Health Organization representative, he had said this phrase to me, and I had thought this, but I also know my own personal bias. I know my own background. He said, “This is the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II.” And I had been to Syria. I’ve been to Turkey after the earthquake. I’ve been in Jordan with the Syrian refugees, in Europe with the refugee crisis. And the organization, Med Global, has been in Yemen and Sudan and the south of the border in Venezuela.
And so I asked him, I said, “Why do you say that? What makes you come to that conclusion?” And he said, he literally pulled out the map that was in front of him of the Gaza Strip. He said, “It’s 25 miles long. You’ve got 2.3 million people here. In every other conflict, there was at least a place that they could flee.” He said, “Here, we’re forcing them to stay in this very confined area, and it’s getting smaller and smaller and smaller.” And he said, “That’s one part of this. There’s a war going on, bombs being dropped, people being killed”.
He goes, “That’s part of the humanitarian nightmare. The second part of this is we’re not letting them out, of course, but we’re not letting anything in.” He goes, “Nothing, no food, no water, no fuel.” He goes, “You are literally not addressing the things that they need to stay alive.” He said, “You hear about 100 trucks a day entering.” He said, “This is a joke in terms of what is needed.” He said, “If pre-war, they needed 500 trucks of humanitarian aid of different water or food sources or fuel,” he goes, “and now you’ve reduced it to a hundred during the height of an intense bombing campaign?” He said, “You’re not addressing their needs.” And he said, “With all of that taking place, it took,” he said, “this war is happening in a place that already was very dependent on humanitarian aid, very dependent on international NGOs providing public services.” He goes, “So when you start looking at Gaza, it’s pretty easy to come to that conclusion.”
Mark Steiner:
It’s the deaths, it’s people being wounded, but it’s the children that are dying. Children who are suffering from malnutrition, who are dying every day because there’s no food to eat.
Dr. Ahmad:
Yeah. Children are so disproportionately affected by this. I mean, you’re exactly right. They are more likely to die from these bomb strikes that a house is collapsing. I mean, I witnessed that firsthand. You’ve got a 25-year-old versus a 5-year-old, the 25-year-old can sustain some of this blunt injury, some that force of a house collapsing. They can survive that. These kids are coming in here, and just that blow is what’s killing them.
And it’s so tragic. I remember I was at Nasr Hospital while it was still functional, and every single day, you hear some intense bombing, you feel the hospital shake, that blast wave that I’m talking about, even if I’m 50 or 100 meters away, everybody in the hospital feels that wave go through their body. I mean, your ears feel like they close a little bit and you can kind of feel it being pushed in your chest.
And I remember, you’d wait 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and then suddenly the people are coming in, their families are running to the hospital, carrying their loved ones, or wrapping them in a blanket from their house.
And I remember one particular night, it was a family of 20 that had come in, their house had been bombed, and out of the 26 are what we would call dead on arrival. So there was nothing for us to do, but three of those six were young girls under the age of 12, and their small bodies cannot survive the blast. And I mean, that’s something we would say to each other, it’s just something we are going to have to live with for the rest of our lives. Not just those images, but these kids that are lost.
Everything that’s happening in Gaza, when it comes to kids, is intensified. And so I talked about how they’re not going to school. I talk about how they are so easily killed with these bombs. Their bodies can’t survive it. But you talked about the malnourishment and the hunger and the starvation. I mean, we’re talking about an entire generation. It’s not just about being hungry. It’s how it’s going to affect their lives forever. Their immune systems are weakened, their growth will be stunted, their coping mechanisms in terms of hunger is going to be different for the rest of their lives. I mean, it is just so jarring to think about the future for these kids.
And I’ll say one last thing. Before October 7th, there was an organization that was looking at the mental health of children in the Gaza Strip, and they felt that 70% of kids who were under the age of 18 needed psychosocial support. Counseling, maybe, or just some programs that would help them adapt and adjust. That number now, there’s been no formal assessment, but I think everybody knows that that number is going to be all of the children in Gaza. In fact, all of the population in Gaza, their psychosocial needs are going to be intense. They’re going to be high, and there’s no way that we’re going to be able to address it if the status quo returns, I’ll say
Mark Steiner:
[inaudible 00:12:10] some other issues here. I mean, you, personally, you’ve been to Al Nasr Hospital before this?
Dr. Ahmad:
Yeah.
Mark Steiner:
Right?
Dr. Ahmad:
Yeah, yep. Visited once. Yeah.
Mark Steiner:
So I mean, just what happens to you, to people like you, who go there to do the work you do, especially those of you who are Palestinian- Americans, or Palestinians who are coming in to try to help do what they can, to see the conditions walking in there, as opposed to what the hospital might’ve been like before. That also has its own level of post-traumatic stress for men and women like you.
Dr. Ahmad:
It’s devastating, Mark. I mean, our programs, not just Med Global, the organization I work with, but there’s the Palestinian American Medical Association, the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund, all these organizations, our focus for the last five, 10 years is about building local capacity.
I, specifically, was involved in training local healthcare workers and getting them the resources that they would need. We were bringing in these portable ultrasound machines that they can use on patients and they can carry it around and you can connect it to an iPad or an iPhone. PAMA, the Palestinian American Medical Association, had built this million dollar interventional radiology suite at Shifa Hospital so that they can provide more services for people, so you don’t need to transfer all of the Gazans out of Gaza for healthcare needs and medical needs.
And it’s all about trying to build that capacity. To see it immediately reduced in four months, to be all of that work, not only to go back to zero, but to even go further back than that, to set the whole healthcare system back, to watch all of the work that’s been done, just erased, and I mean, it was devastating. And just talking to my colleagues there on the ground, people who had been a part of some of those programs, I mean, it was really depressing to have those conversations, because one of the things that everybody knows about the Gaza Strip is there is a brain drain. I mean, there are so many bright people who don’t have the opportunities in the Gaza Strip that want to professionally develop themselves somewhere else. Doctors, engineers, architects, they want to continue their training. They want to further specialize. They want to become better. And so they already were leaving the Gaza Strip because those opportunities weren’t there.
I think about the people that stayed, what’s left for them now? I mean, what sort of programs can they participate in? I was there when they had totally charged… They set charges, and they demolished one of the universities. There are no university buildings left. So this is, when I say 360 degrees, this attack on life, I’m serious. I mean, no universities left. Kids have not been going to school for four months. There are no public health services. None of these… No progress that was made in the last 10 years exists anymore.
Mark Steiner:
Bring it back home for a moment. Home to the United States for a minute.
Dr. Ahmad:
Yeah.
Mark Steiner:
The question is, United States of America is literally the only country on the planet that can stop this madness.
Dr. Ahmad:
Right. Yes, I agree.
Mark Steiner:
And nothing’s happening. I mean, even as you wrote, and other physicians have read and have written, even the AMA [inaudible 00:15:26] come out with a statement saying this is ethnic cleansing, it’s genocide, whatever term you want to use. I mean, it’s almost unfathomable, and how to push this country, how to push this administration to do something when nothing’s being done at all.
Dr. Ahmad:
Yeah, I mean, that’s the part of this, I think, that’s a struggle for people who are a part of the diaspora. The expectation was, okay, there are politics in the region. We understand the geopolitical forces that exist in the Middle East are very complicated. And honestly, you talk to anybody in the Middle East, they’re very aware of this. I mean, they can tell you in detail the things that are taking place, but I don’t think anybody expected that there would be this lack of… And I think, I want to use the word empathy, but it’s even less than that. There isn’t even sort of an acknowledgement of the suffering. There is no sort of recognition that is taking place. In fact, what we’re finding is the opposite. When I talk to some of these medical professional societies, there’s these justifications for why you would raid and shut down the biggest hospital in the Gaza Strip, knowing that not only are people being treated there and that you have the most resources and the most specialists, but people are sheltering there, too. Tens of thousands of people are thinking that, “Okay, the hospital compound will be safe.” You are getting these sort of justifications.
Here, I live in Chicago, Illinois in a suburb that if you look on Google Maps, they call it Little Palestine from how many Palestinians live here. I mean, you can go down, the street is called Harlem, if you go down Harlem, you’re seeing all of these different Palestinian owned businesses. There’s Arabic, there’s Palestinian flags. Every single week they’re protesting. But what they’ve been met with has been this consistent sort of dehumanization rhetoric that we hear from elected officials. Even our local congressmen here, when they bring up, hey, at the time it was 20,000 had been killed, and they say, “Hey, there’s 20,000 dead. 70% of them are women and children.” And the response you get is, “Well, those numbers, I’m not sure. I think there’s thousands and thousands of fighters in those numbers.” And you’re like, “well, I mean, so okay that these kids are dead? Is that okay, then, that these kids have been killed or that they’re wounded?”
I mean, it’s been frustrating, because whether it’s a professional society, an elected official, or even a company or a corporation that can talk about, “We want the war to stop,” can’t even get people to call for a ceasefire. I mean, we can’t even get people to use those words. And that’s something that’s been really frustrating for myself. It’s been super disheartening, because they don’t even know what their faces look like.
I’ll tell you one thing, Mark, I’d love to hear what you have to say about this, because there’s this famous influencer online, and he had said, because they talked about how many kids have been killed, he started questioning that number. He said, “Well, when you’re in a region like that over there, 15 years old is different than 15 years old here in the States. Those people are trained and they can be military people and they can be fighting.” You’re like, “What? A 15-year-old? I mean, come on.” We kind of know how dumb 15 year olds are, right? They’re silly. They are running around. They don’t know. You can’t expect them to be making decisions for the rest of their lives. I mean, just to kind of dismiss it that way, I mean, was really, really frustrating to hear, but it’s just… I don’t know. Dehumanization is real.
Mark Steiner:
It reminds me of how white people in America spoke about Black kids in the inner city, as if 15 year olds were not 15 year olds. They were 35 year olds. I mean, it’s the same mentality that dehumanizes young Black children or dehumanizing young Palestinian children, dehumanizing Palestinians, in general. It’s the same dynamic.
Dr. Ahmad:
Right. I mean, I think that’s one thing I remember is being at [foreign language 00:19:17] Hospital in [foreign language 00:19:18], which is the middle area, and it was right after, basically the Israeli military had sort of withdrawn their tanks and their ground troops. They were done with their campaign there, and they were moving to [foreign language 00:19:30] further south. And I remember being outside of the hospital compound, and there were all these kids rushing to me and the general surgeon that was with me, who’s from Chicago, and they knew that we were not from there, so they were just asking a bunch of questions. And I remember them asking about seeing pictures of Chicago. And so we were showing them downtown Chicago, the skyline, and we were showing them some of the protests, and their mind was blown seeing people protesting in the streets of Chicago with Palestinian flags. It was surreal to them. They said, “Wow, there are people outside of here raising the flag of Palestine, talking about us? They know about us? They know about what’s happening here?”
And that’s why I get so angry when somebody tries to not put a face to these kids. You can hear their voices. They were so excited. They’re laughing with each other, looking at the pictures. They’re elbowing each other to get close to the iPhone so they can scroll through the images. So that’s really the thing that bothered me the most. These kids, I just want them to have the same sort of future that anybody else does in the world. Same sort of opportunity to even visit here one day. I would hope that they can do that, and it’s tough. Everything is working against them.
Mark Steiner:
Just for a moment, I want to come back to your experience at Al Nasr Hospital on this visit, and for people to have an understanding to listen to our podcast here across the country and globe, just how horrendous it was in that hospital, what it was like being in the midst of war, watching people. I mean, the cases you couldn’t… The lives you could not save.
I mean, when you’re in an emergency room, something happens. A guy comes in from an accident, you can’t save him, one person dies. You feel terrible. It’s a horrendous feeling, but this is multiplied by dozens and dozens and dozens.
Dr. Ahmad:
Yeah, I mean, that’s exactly right. I mean, it’s just nonstop. The volume is so high of people coming in. I remember walking in, and right away, you can tell the difference from any visit before to Nasr Hospital. I mean, there’s people sheltering in the hallways of the hospital in the emergency department, on the first, second, third, fourth floor. And I’m going into, we call this the resuscitation area, where you bring in the sickest people. And you go through those double doors, it’s not a very big room. It’s actually probably the size of one private suite in the States, in terms of a hospital room that’s the size of our resuscitation bay. You walk in there and there’s 13 people there, seven are on the floor because we don’t have enough hospital carts.
And I remember being very overwhelmed at first, having to take some deep breaths because I’m like, “Who do I go to first? Who do I check on first from these people that just showed up from this bombing?” And it’s the family that’s bringing these people in, most of the time, because as I’m sure you’re aware, it’s not safe to be in an ambulance driving to some of these sites that have just been bombed, trying to bring people back. They are very much a target, as well. So many ambulances and paramedics have been killed in this conflict.
So it’s the dad bringing in his son or his daughter. It’s four brothers bringing in their fifth brother in a family blanket, and they’re dropping them off. And you’ve got to quickly assess what’s happening. And in a trauma situation, a mass casualty event, the horrible reality that you have to deal with is, you have to decide, “Okay, who is dead already?” Many of them will be dead already. “Who is still alive? And the walking wounded? Can I ignore them for a couple of minutes? Will they be okay if I ignore them? Who has a really severe injury that I should do something about? And then, who has a really severe injury that’s not survivable?”
And I’ll share one situation that still really, really struggles. I still have a decent amount of issues kind of processing this, but I remember, there was a kid who came in probably five or six years old, and they had been hit, and shrapnel had just totally destroyed their body, but they were still alive. Eyes were open, breathing very, very fast, but their skull had been damaged, and some of their brain was exposed. I’m sorry for being so graphic, but the neurosurgeon who was there, told me, he’s like, “This is not a good sign, and probably we should consider not being aggressive with our management here.” And I struggled with that because I’m looking at this kid and his eyes are still open. He’s not there. He’s clearly, totally, his level of consciousness is not there. He’s not aware of his surroundings, but his eyes are open, and he’s breathing fast, and I’m just staring at him. It’s like… I didn’t know how to go about that. And so, we did. I mean, we basically tried to do everything we could, and we basically put him on a ventilator. We took him to the operating room. He came out, but the neurosurgeon was exactly right. I mean, the next day this kid succumbed to his injuries and he had died.
But you’re looking at somebody, their last moments like that and you’re just like, there was plenty of moments where we had to make that decision where we’re not going to be able to do anything, because it’s not going to work, and you’ve got to move on to the next person. That’s not a normal situation to be in. We sometimes… That might happen once in a blue moon for a mass casualty event in the States, but to do that every day or every other day, and to see that multiple times, that’s something that I worry about my colleagues over there who’ve had to do that for four months.
Mark Steiner:
Yeah. How long were you there when you were there this last time?
Dr. Ahmad:
Three weeks.
Mark Steiner:
Three weeks.
Dr. Ahmad:
And I was at Nasr Hospital, sleeping at Nasr Hospital. We were there around the clock, and actually right before I left, the last week that I was there is when the military started to surround the complex. And so, everybody there, including the staff, told me exactly what was going to unfold. They said, “This is what happened at Shifa. This is how it starts. They’re at the perimeter of the hospital. There’s bombings nearby, there’s tank shelling, and they want the internally displaced people who are sheltering around the hospital. They want to clear that whole area. They want them out of there.”
And week by week, day by day, everything they said was true. And it all culminated in this last four or five days where the hospital was shut down, the electricity was turned off, and it was stormed. Dozens and dozens of people were arrested, some were killed, and then everybody else had to evacuate the hospital.
Mark Steiner:
Do you know what the situation is now? [inaudible 00:26:07]
Dr. Ahmad:
Yeah, I just actually… Sorry. I just got a message from Dr. [inaudible 00:27:50]. He’s one of the last remaining trauma surgeons at Nasr Hospital. He shared a message with us about two hours ago. He said, “The electricity is still out. The WHO has visited the hospital. They were able to transport 13 people out. There’s another 10 that need transfer immediately.” And he’s among 10 medical staff, and there’s probably 200 people still there. And he’s saying it’s not a hospital anymore. It’s just a building with people who have a tough time leaving, stuck in it. I mean, there’s so many bedbound patients there, people with amputations, and people who are not going to be able to make a five mile, six mile walk to Rafah. And he said there are still some doctors who have been arrested or abducted, and are in Israeli custody somewhere that they’re not sure, but that he expects that the hospital will be empty in the next two days or so.
And he’s appealing, of course, I mean, this is the type of people that we’re talking about there, but he is begging for the hospital not to be shut down so that they can continue to treat patients. I mean, this guy just underwent a seven-day siege, watched an operating room nurse get shot in the chest and had to perform surgery. And he’s saying, “I don’t want to leave the hospital. I don’t want the hospital to shut down. Please talk to whoever you can talk to get the lights back on and to get us some supplies so we can keep doing our work.”
Mark Steiner:
And as horrible as it sounds, these are the stories that America needs to hear.
Dr. Ahmad:
Yeah, yeah, I agree. That guy’s amazing. This guy, Dr. [inaudible 00:27:49], he’s among all these different people that I worked with. Mark, these guys are amazing. I mean, they work these 24 hour shifts, which in a busy ER setting, trauma setting, is crazy to do. They work these 24 hour shifts, they’ll be off for 24 hours. They’re sleeping in the hospital. Their families are intense. And these guys are amazing at their job. I’ve not seen clinicians like that ever in my life. I mean, they know how to do a lot with a little, and they are working with no salary for four and a half months. Dr. [inaudible 00:28:19], all these people, are totally dependent on the aid that’s being distributed by NGOs. And I remember hearing them talk to their family, asking, “Did they disperse today? Was there any sort of flour that got sent out?” And these are people who have to work 24 hours. You’re expecting them to be able to function at a high level. They’re amazing people. But I mean, the situation that they’re in, it’s just, it’s brutal. It’s miserable.
Mark Steiner:
So let me take it back home with you for a moment in the time we have left together. But what can be done here? I mean, look, sometimes people won’t listen to you because you’re a Palestinian-American. Sometimes people won’t listen to me because a Jewish-American and they think I’m a traitor. Right?
So all that aside, I mean, I’m curious about what is around you, what people are talking about, what you’re doing in terms of organizing and working with people to change the nature of the dialogue in this country, and to push this country to do what has to be done?
Dr. Ahmad:
I mean, my biggest focus has been on combating the dehumanization narrative, putting a face behind what’s happening to the people over there, the numbers of people that are being killed, trying to at least communicate who these people are. Now, whether that’s me writing an op-ed, or me coming on your program, or members of the largest union in Illinois calling for a ceasefire, the AFL CIO came out, called for a ceasefire. I’m trying to get the American Medical Association to at least comment on the humanitarian catastrophe. We’ve met with our senators here dozens of times, just as a community of conscience, made up of Muslims, Arabs, Palestinians, Jews, Christians, just people of conscience, people who care about other human beings and want to alleviate suffering.
I’ve also talked about this, and I think this is super important. I actually learned this from a colleague of mine whose grandfather survived the Holocaust. And I thought this was such an important point, is that anytime something happens to a people, it’s important to document it for the historical record in any way that you can. Whether if you’re an architect and you want to describe what architecture looks like under occupation in the West Bank, or you’re a healthcare provider like myself, and you want to describe how a healthcare system collapsed so easily within a couple of weeks of a war breaking out, what are the circumstances. Or it’s art, I mean, or it’s just somebody trying to paint a mural of that 6-year-old that was left to die. [foreign language 00:30:54] Rajab, who was in a car with her family, and everybody in the car dies, and she survives and she has the phone and she calls a dispatcher. And so we have that recording, for three hours between her and a dispatcher, as she’s waiting for someone to rescue her, and ultimately, they find her dead. Somebody painting a mural of her, just honoring her story, making sure nobody forgets about that.
I think that stuff is so important because at the end of the day, I recognize that there will always be differences and ideas about how policy should be centered, or written. I understand that, but I know for sure that every single human being can feel the pain of a child crying. That pain of hearing a child in distress, I know every human being can relate to that. I know every single human being can understand the loss of a loved one, whether it’s a father or a grandfather. Everybody understands what it’s like to maybe have a job, but what if you lost that job? You can imagine that. So imagine that for the Palestinians that are there, imagine the disaster that they’re encountering. We can put ourselves in their shoes. I think that’s the strongest thing we can do right now.
Mark Steiner:
That’s very powerfully said. So are you planning on going back?
Dr. Ahmad:
Yeah, I mean, I had some difficulty getting out. I think as a Palestinian-American, it’s clear that there is some issues, being from the West Bank and trying to get into the Gaza Strip. My plan was to go back in April. I hope that I can go back and it’s going to be a ceasefire so we can get to work for the long-term struggles that we’re going to encounter. But we’re working on that. I’m not going to… I was told this time that there may be issues getting out, and it was really hard getting out, but that’s not going to deter me.
Mark Steiner:
What do you mean it was hard getting out? What happened?
Dr. Ahmad:
Yeah, so I’ll give you this. So every single day in the Gaza Strip, at 9:00 AM, the Israelis produce a list of people who will be permitted to leave from the Gaza Strip into Egypt. That list is shared with the Egyptians, and then the Egyptians share that list with the Palestinians. What I was told as we were entering is that my name is not going to show up on that list when I show up to the border. I’m not going to be allowed to leave. And so I had worked with State Department officials, my Congressmen, Senators, just to be able to make sure that I can securely get out.
When we showed up that morning trying to leave, it was true that my name was not on that list. If I was any other person, if I didn’t have an American citizenship, if I was just your regular Palestinian who’s not a dual citizen, I would not be permitted to leave unless I had $13,000 US dollars on me to pay off the people on the border to let me go. So that was kind of, I think, essentially, my difficulty was… That small difficulty that I endured is what is just what Palestinians have to face, right? It’s like, being Palestinian, there is a siege in place here. We really want to restrict people leaving. And so that’s what that I experienced on a minor level.
Mark Steiner:
Let me just say that, want to thank you for showing your own bravery going into that war and doing the work that you did, and the other physicians and other people in there doing what they can to help defend and heal the people who are hurt, wounded. It’s amazing. Not everybody can do that. And we will keep the doors open here for you and all others to tell the stories so we can hear it.
And you’ve actually inspired me today to think about some creative ways to do this through some of the ideas you have. So I appreciate that. And thank you so much for your work, and we will all keep pushing this, because I want to just say this is not who we are as Jews. This is not who we are as Americans. This is not who we are as people. We cannot allow this to happen.
Dr. Ahmad:
Thank you so much. Appreciate that.
Mark Steiner:
Thank you, Dr. [inaudible 00:34:37] Ahmed. Thank you so much for joining us today. Look forward to staying in touch, and take care of yourself.
Dr. Ahmad:
Take care. Likewise.
Mark Steiner:
Once again, I want to thank Dr. [inaudible 00:34:46] Ahmad for joining us today, and for the work he did in Gaza, and the work he’ll do again in Gaza, and all the men and women who were there doing the work that he was doing there. And we’ll link to their work here on our site, and we’ll continue our reporting on the Gazan War of Annihilation here at The Real News.
And once again, thank you all for joining us today. Please [inaudible 00:35:05] you thought. And thanks to David Hebdon for running the show and editing this program, and the tireless Kelly Robara, making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible.
So I said we’ll link to the works of Dr. Ahmad and others in his group on our site here at The Real News. And let me know what you thought of what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I will write to you immediately.
And stay tuned for more conversations and stories about Palestine and Israel, here on The Real News from all of us and on The Steiner Show. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Mark Steiner, stand by, keep listening and take care.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.