Gaza

"I cannot forget a minute of that day. When I tell you this, it is like I’m seeing it in front of my face on a movie screen. At 3 AM drones appeared outside the windows of the hospital. Most of my colleagues had already fled. I forgive all of them; few beliefs can override the desire to save one’s own soul. But I could not leave. There were hundreds of patients, and few medical staff remaining. If the last of us left, these patients would have died. The hospital staff assembled in the lobby where we were stripped, handcuffed, blindfolded, and marched into the freezing night. Beneath my blindfold I could see hundreds of fighters with machine guns. I could hear the screams of my colleagues being beaten. My fear was so high I was close to cardiac arrest. Someone speaking weak Arabic put a gun to my head and told me I’d never see my children again. He asked: ‘Where is Hamas? Where are the Hostages?’ I told him: ‘I’m just a nurse; I disagree entirely with October 7th.’ But these guys did not care. They beat us all. The lorries came to transport us to the detention center. At the door of the lorry stood the strongest of their fighters, body-builders. And before entering each detainee received the three hardest punches we will ever receive in our lives. When we arrived we were made to lie on the ground, and they put dogs on us. The dogs had muzzles, but we could not see through our blindfolds. All around me was barking and screaming; I thought my colleagues were being eaten. I was detained for several weeks. The conditions were so bad I prayed to die. One of the prison guards, exactly one, I can accept as my neighbor. The rest had hatred in their eyes. Some spoke English; so I tried to reason with them. I pointed out that half of the detainees had debilitating medical conditions. Some were eighty years old. One man was mentally incapacitated. I asked the guards: ‘How could these people possibly be Hamas?’ But for every claim—they’d have a response. Some reason all of us were guilty. Even when I said: ‘I’m a nurse,’ they replied: ‘Oh, so you treated terrorists.’ To them, every Palestinian deserves to suffer. And nothing you say—nothing-- will convince them otherwise."

This man shared his story to bring attention to all of his colleagues who remain in arbitrary detention. It was an excruciatingly difficult decision for this man to share his story, as his identity can only be hidden so much, and the Israeli military is currently preparing to enter Gaza City in the next stage of its much-bragged-about genocidal campaign to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people. "This time," says security cabinet minister Eli Cohen, 'We should turn Gaza City into a city of ruins.'

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