Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, speaking to a Zoom audience arranged by Massachusetts Peace Action (MAPA) on Jan. 8, painted a picture of a genocide in Gaza having out paced that of the recent years of assault on Syria, and even the Warsaw Ghetto. Dr. Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon and Doctor of Public Health, volunteered to go to Gaza last year along with Dr. Mark Perlmutter. Both had also volunteered in Ukraine and Haiti. The above headline is but one of the biting realities, he told the MAPA audience. A stark statistic he recited was that more children age 2 and under have been killed in Gaza since October 2023 than in Israel in the past 40 years.
Dr. Sidhwa described how Gaza has been under siege for more than 17 years, resulting in the impoverishment of the people even before the current assault. As a result, patients who survived a bombing and made it to the hospital he worked in, the European Hospital in Khan Younis, arrived with not only their immediate wounds, but years of deprivation. He pointed out the case of one 9-year-old girl who came in with extensive and multiple injuries: She also suffered from malnutrition as evidenced by an indentation at her skull line. Gaza “is the hungriest place in the modern world” even as the bombing of food trucks coming in is a daily event, he remarked.
He presented a series of slides, using various worldwide sources, documenting the depopulating of Gaza. Such as the fact that in Gaza, 50% of the population is under 15 years old! And, due to lack of access to water for all vital uses, including drinking, Gaza is the “thirstiest place on Earth.” As he and a colleague wrote in a November 2024 Foreign Policy article to warn Biden, the winter rains would transform Gaza “into a death camp.” Because of the poor—if any—shelter, lack of safe drinking water, and “abysmal sanitation,” preventable deaths will occur by starvation and hypothermia. He said that in Gaza there is “one toilet for 4,000 people.” So, during winter rains (now occurring), the “fecal matter” outside is washed into the water that is available, making it a deadly poison.
When asked how healthcare can be supported in Gaza, Dr. Sidhwa repeatedly said that without sewage systems and water, “it is not really possible.” What about getting aid in, asked another. “Not possible” now, as all crossings are effectively closed. He was asked at the end, if there were a ceasefire tomorrow, what are the top ten things to be done for Gaza? He candidly replied, “If there is a ceasefire, it doesn’t mean the blockade is lifted.” He went on to say, the UN’s best estimate is that to remove the “45 tons of rubble,” which is now Gaza, will take 15 years. Pressed on what it will take to rebuild the healthcare system, he said a sewage treatment system, water systems, and “a massive influx of healthcare workers to train people because most Palestinian doctors are dead.”
While Sidhwa’s talk was “medical” not political, he powerfully portrayed the realities of the horrors endured by two patients he referred to during his talk just to “survive” thanks to surgical teams. He used the power of these case studies to get people in the U.S. to act. One of the two “survived” Israeli torture albeit as a broken man; the other is a 9-year-old girl who will never walk again and who lost her family. A gripping tale of woe to be reversed.
