American doctor after Gaza visit: Israel is targeting children

American anaesthesiologist Dr. Abdullah Brown recently returned to Virginia after travelling with a team of 20 physicians to Gaza for the first time. As part of a humanitarian aid mission organised by relief group Rahma Worldwide, the team stayed in the war-beaten enclave for 12 days in February.

Compelled by his Islamic faith, Brown has been making medical relief trips for 30 years, mainly to help those in active war zones in the Caucuses. He also travelled extensively to Bosnia during the genocide between 1994 and 1996.

But it was while working and living in the European General Hospital in al-Fukhari near Khan Younis, the only functioning hospital left in Gaza, that Brown and his colleagues witnessed scenes unlike anything they have seen before.

Speaking to TRT World, Brown also said he believes Israel used Super Bowl Sunday as a cover to commit more war crimes in Gaza, while the US clandestinely passed another bill to approve weapons to Israel.

Here are excerpts from his interview:

TRT World: In your 30 years travelling to war zones, what was different about Gaza and can you describe what you saw?

Dr. Abdullah Brown: I have been to active wars, I also know what a genocide is. I've been there before, so this is not my first rodeo. I've seen horrible things, what's happening in Gaza is not a war, it's a genocide.

I have seen horrible things, things emblazoned in my memory from years ago, and I've never seen anything as bad as this. And that's the experience of every health worker that I know who has a pedigree similar to mine, having been in other conflict zones. We've never seen the likes of this.

TRT World: What particularly stood out in Gaza, that made this unlike anything you've seen before?

Dr. Abdullah Brown: I've seen atrocities, I've seen war crimes, but this experience for some reason seemed to have it all.

The targeting of health care workers, journalists, children. I don't think I've ever witnessed the targeting of children as I have here, and I've never witnessed the targeting of journalists. I’ve been in an area where health care workers were targeted, but this took it to a whole new level. Health care workers had been executed; others tortured.

But the very worst of it all, is the targeting of children. A huge percentage of the multi-trauma that we were seeing were children. They could be babies, they could be infants, they could be toddlers. And we were also witnessing injuries to them that we had not seen before.

We know what bullets do to people. You don't have to be in a war zone for that of course, you see that in the (United) States. As a doctor, you know what bullets do to people, you know what explosives do. But in Gaza, literally we'd be in the operating room and wondering, what bullet does this? We'd just never seen anything like it.

TRT World: These unusual wounds, can you describe what made them different, what may have caused them?

Dr. Abdullah Brown: In the case of the bullets, I have heard, and I'm no expert in this area, there's speculation that they are coated in some kind of substance – uranium, that burns, it intensifies the explosive power.

The burns we had seen, we've worked with burns before, but we all thought, what is this? Now this is an assumption on my part, because I don’t know, but I have an understanding of white phosphorus and one of the horrors of this stuff is that it just keeps burning, and that's what these burns looked like.

But what hit us between the eyes was the targeting of children, it was systematic in Gaza, as I and my colleagues hadn't witnessed before.

TRT World: Did you actually witness these people, children being targeted by Israeli forces, or do you mean you witnessed it through dealing with victims of the attacks?

Dr. Abdullah Brown: That's correct, dealing with the victims.

However we would see some situations that were so highly suggestive of targeted killings.

We would have a family come in, both parents shot, single bullet, and killed and every child alive, and another family come in, every one of five children shot through the head, single bullet, dead, (but) the parents spared.

I’ve heard another physician use the term 'performative violence,' to create a certain effect. Like a sick, evil, performance, that's what it had the appearance of.

TRT World: Who is the performance for? The Palestinains to send a clear message, or for the world stage that's sitting back and watching?

Dr. Abdullah Brown: God knows. I assume for the Palestinians; I assume that it's part of terror. To create terror, to demoralise. I assume, but obviously I don’t know, that's just speculation on my part. But that's certainly the way it would appear.

TRT World: Were you able to take in medical supplies during your trip?

Dr. Abdullah Brown: Yes and no, we were certainly not free to. I'm not sure exactly how the group managed this because so many things were denied entry, but we were able to get a few things in.

But what we saw seemed to be the deliberate frustration of delivery of virtually any form of humanitarian aid. We witnessed ourselves, thousands of trucks for miles and miles parked in the desert as we approached through the Sinai, the Rafah crossing, loaded to the gills with humanitarian aid, and they couldn't go anywhere.

Medical supplies are very difficult to obtain. It's an arduous process for the NGOs to make arrangements for the physicians to get in themselves, and then it's difficult to get appropriate medical equipment and supplies in too.

TRT World: How were you able to then perform your job?

Dr. Abdullah Brown: We were at one of the few hospitals that was still functional, thank God, and they had anaesthetic delivery machines - old, but they functioned. They also had inhalational anaesthesia, so that's what we were working with. We didn't have access to everything we needed, but we made the most of what we had.

TRT World: Is there anything that happened during this visit that has stayed with you, that you can't quite stop thinking about?

Dr. Abdullah Brown: Something that's emblazoned in my memory happened on Super Bowl Sunday, a big event in the US. Three things happened on that night. One was the Super Bowl, two was I'm there in Gaza, and three I will come to.

We had finished our work for the night, and went to bed. We slept through some of the bombs, but I woke up, as the bombing from the drones seemed more intense than usual.

Then I heard a plane. It was the first night I heard a plane, I thought ah that's different. Where we were sleeping (in the hospital) faced south towards Rafah, and there was a glass door. So I hear the plane and then the horizon in front of me just lights up. I mean, some enormous bomb. Then I hear another plane, and the horizon lights up again.

Now I hear an ambulance starting to scream towards us from the south, then I hear another ambulance scream towards us from the south getting louder and louder, and then a third. After the third one, we all headed towards the emergency room.

The ambulance drivers hate transporting at night, because they are even bigger targets then. They are deliberately attacked then, more than they are during the day, so they prefer to transport the multi-traumas in the morning. Knowing they are transporting at night means whatever has happened is more desperate than average.

The emergency room is wall-to-wall people, and we're trying to figure out who has a chance, who doesn't, who is injured. They can wait, and spend the rest of the night in the operating room.

The point is, this was the most intense attack that we experienced when we were there and it's on Super Bowl night.

When I get back home to Virginia, we're catching up as a family sharing what's been happening, and then my wife tells me, 'you know what else happened on Super Bowl night?' - now this is a Sunday night – 'Abdullah, Congress passed an appropriations bill, a weapons bill, that night!'

How often does Congress like to work at night, and how often do they want to work on a weekend, and Super Bowl Sunday night? Are you kidding me?

This can't be accidental. While America is distracted by the Super Bowl, I witnessed the intensification of the atrocities in Gaza and then my government's passing yet another bill (to support Israel).

TRT World: I understand you and your colleagues found it difficult to leave, tell me more?

Dr. Abdullah Brown: I've been in and out of a number of places and met amazing people. I've met heroic folk. But I have never found it so difficult to leave a people, aside from family, as I found it to leave the people of Gaza, and as far as I know, every single member of our group felt the same way.

It was painful, just wondering, first, if we’re doing the right thing to leave at all, and second, just having this high level of concern for what's going to happen to these people.

As a community, these people in Gaza were the most elevated, the most amazing people I've ever been with. It's their level of faith, and the purity of their emotions, that's all connected.

TRT World: From what you've seen in Gaza and what we're seeing in public street protests and now protests on campus, do you have hope for the Gazans?

Dr. Abdullah Brown: I'm in my late 60s, and have been around for a bit, but I have never witnessed the level of protest or outrage among so many segments of American society since the Vietnam War. It made a difference then.

I think we're still on the growth part of that curve in today's protest movement. It has not peaked, it has not plateaued, and God willing it will continue to grow, because it's the appropriate response. Non-violent resistance to what's going on. Non-violent efforts to change the role of our country and the West, other countries, in this whole process. So I absolutely do have hope.