Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah was among the last group of people to enter Gaza through Egypt on the morning of Monday, October 9, immediately before the Rafah crossing was shut down and the territory was sealed off from the world.
He started operating at al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s medical epicenter, as soon as he’d arranged safe passage to the medical complex. Within the first few days, as a result of a relentless, ruthless bombing campaign against Gaza’s civilian infrastructure and people, the wounded had exceeded the entire Strip’s total bed capacity of 2,500.
He told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on October 12, 2023, that basic medical equipment was unavailable mere days into the assault. He warned of the far-ranging, catastrophic consequences of this war against the people of Gaza, “a man-made catastrophe,” he said, “almost like a perfect storm,” as Gaza’s healthcare system was “already on its knees” thanks to fifteen years of Israeli siege.
Abu-Sittah was working at Al-Ahli Hospital during the massacre on October 17, 2023, and was among the physicians who testified, surrounded by a sea of blanket-shrouded bodies, in the hospital courtyard in the attack’s immediate aftermath.
Since leaving Gaza in November, Abu-Sittah has committed his days to fighting what he called the “killing machine masquerading as a state” set on extinguishing life in Gaza. Recently, he launched the Ghassan Abu-Sittah Children’s Fund to bring injured children from Gaza to Lebanon to receive holistic medical and psychosocial care.
Mary Turfah, a writer and medical student, spoke to Dr. Abu Sittah on February 20. They talked about the liberatory potential of medicine and the complicity of Western media in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
They discussed Zionism and what to make of a settler colonial ideology that has flung itself over the precipice of genocide, necropolitics, and the obligation, when confronted with the cold, monstrous logic of elimination, to remain unwavering in our commitment to life.
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