Gaza’s Al Shifa hospital revisited _ Featured Documentary
#AlJazeeraEnglish #israel #Gaza
#AlJazeeraEnglish #israel #Gaza
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00:00When I was there, Shifa had turned into a center for the internally displaced with between
00:2930,000 and 50,000 people living and they were everywhere.
00:35We had difficulty moving patients between the buildings at Shifa because there are so
00:38many people.
00:55There were two sieges of Shifa.
00:57The first siege of Shifa ended when the WHO arranged for the patients to be taken out
01:03to the south.
01:04And then we have the second attack on Shifa which ended with a massacre with the total
01:09destruction and the torching of the buildings.
01:21Turning Shifa into a mass grave where over 400 bodies were found.
01:28Shifa had been evacuated and had been left empty.
01:58In the event of a power outage, there will be a disaster in five minutes and all cases
02:10suspected of industrial abuse will definitely die because of the power outage.
02:18It was a very difficult year.
02:21At the beginning of the war, we were in the medical hospital with the cases of cholera.
02:29And the most painful thing was that the children, we missed them.
02:36The oxygen station was bombed at 3 a.m. without warning.
02:42All the children were evacuated from the green areas because of the call from the Israeli
02:52army.
02:53We felt death.
02:54We lost three children who were connected to the industrial ventilation.
03:00Six children were saved.
03:02And because of the lack of medical staff, we lost three children.
03:09We were shocked.
03:11How can we move 45 children when we only have six or seven medical staff?
03:19To take with me no less than five children.
03:23And on the road, there were snipers in red on our bodies, and we saw that on our bodies.
03:39I remember myself, the operating theater of cardiac surgery, all of a sudden became like
03:45the NICU.
03:46So they had to put the temperature of the heating system to the maximum.
03:51There was no oxygen.
03:52And it was kind of us counting the dead babies day by day.
04:08We used to see death on their faces day by day.
04:17I try to forget these memories so that I can continue my life and my work.
04:24But they remain in my memory.
04:30Shifa Hospital is the biggest hospital in Palestine.
04:34Its bed capacity is about 700 beds.
04:37But after this mass casualty and the aggression of the Israeli army in Gaza, most of the cases
04:44are bombed in their home over their head.
04:48And now we have about 2,500 and more patients.
04:55They tortured to death Dr. Adnan al-Burj, the head of orthopedic surgery, at Shifa Hospital
05:00after they had arrested him.
05:04The only information we got was from someone who got released.
05:08And they said that Dr. Adnan was badly, badly tortured.
05:14He was hanged from both hands, and he was found dead.
05:19It's not only Dr. Adnan.
05:20It's many of the health care workers who were arrested.
05:24We know nothing about them.
05:28The Israelis have refused to release his body to his family to be buried.
05:32They refused to allow his lawyers to go in and get an autopsy.
05:37They refused to allow his lawyers to go in and get an autopsy.
06:07They refused to allow his lawyers to go in and get an autopsy.
06:10They refused to allow his lawyers to go in and get an autopsy.
06:12They refused to allow his lawyers to go in and get an autopsy.
06:17They refused to allow his lawyers to go in and get an autopsy.
06:28I want to be honest with my children.
06:30I'm the father and I'm the mother at the same time.
06:32And this is obviously difficult for every wife in Gaza.
06:37If my husband was here, he would have brought me food and drink.
06:40He would have provided me a safe place.
06:44I'm still in a disaster.
06:46Or in a scary dream.
06:49I haven't woken up from it yet.
06:51And I want to wake up from this scary dream.
06:52That he is the one who will be martyred.
06:55This is the least I can say.
07:08God is great.
07:13God forbid, if we don't supply fuel,
07:16this generator will cause a real disaster for the patients.
07:20Since October 7th,
07:22when the news began to circulate
07:24that there was an attack on our people in the Gaza Strip,
07:28I went to the Medical Association.
07:31We didn't go to the Medical Association.
07:35When we were told that we had to go to the Medical Association,
07:39we insisted that we didn't leave our patients.
07:54When the people left,
07:55and went to the Medical Association,
07:57they knew that this was a civilian association
08:00protected by international law.
08:02And that this association was a safe haven for them.
08:05It was taken care of by about 60,000 refugees.
08:08There were more than 1,000 wounded and sick people in the hospital.
08:12There were more than 700 medical teams.
08:18They started by bombing the birth center.
08:22Then the patients and the wounded died in front of us,
08:25and we couldn't provide them with services.
08:27We saw the wounded in front of the hospital's gate.
08:31And we couldn't provide them with services,
08:33because any movement would cause a fire.
08:38The dogs would bite the bodies in front of the hospital,
08:41and in front of the emergency department.
08:43There were more than 220 bodies that we couldn't move.
08:56We stayed with them for a moment
08:58until we were arrested on November 22.
09:02When we were arrested,
09:04I was stripped of my clothes,
09:07and they tied my hands to my back,
09:09and they tied my eyes.
09:11And they started to torture me in this place.
09:13Of course, they beat me,
09:15and put sand on my head,
09:17and hit me with sticks and sticks.
09:20Honestly, it was a very painful thing to be tortured.
09:23Of course, there was a kind of joy
09:27among the soldiers and the officers.
09:29They would say in a loud voice,
09:31we brought in the director of the Medical Association,
09:34and we arrested the director of the Medical Association,
09:36and they arrested, I don't know who, in this matter.
09:54So they expect them to have more information.
10:16The Israelis released Dr. Mohamed Abu Salmiyah,
10:19the medical director of Shifa.
10:21The fact that he was released without standing trial,
10:24the fact that he was released
10:26without him ever being charged,
10:30is proof that there was no truth
10:33to all of these claims.
10:35Because at the end of the day,
10:36if the Israelis had a shred of evidence
10:39about Dr. Abu Salmiyah, or about Shifa,
10:42with regards to these fictitious tunnels,
10:44with regards to leadership being in Shifa,
10:48we would have seen him in court, on TV.
10:51It would have been a kangaroo court.
10:52He was kidnapped in order to engineer
10:56a kangaroo court that's televised
10:58of him being put in front of a judge.
11:04None of these tunnels, real tunnels,
11:06not some moron next to an MRI machine
11:10trying to convince the world
11:11that people put metal AK-47 magazines
11:16next to an MRI machine
11:17when the rest of the world knows
11:18you're not allowed to get into the MRI
11:21if you have even a small necklace.
11:24The world sits and watches these things unfold,
11:28and nothing is being done.
11:30There are people who are dying as a result
11:33of the destruction of the health system.
11:35People who had chronic illnesses
11:37now have them as medical emergencies.
11:41You know, if you've got high blood pressure
11:43and you've not had any medication,
11:45or if you've got heart disease
11:47or you've got kidney failure
11:49and you need dialysis,
11:50all of these people are dying
11:51because the health system has been destroyed.
12:15The situation is bad.
12:17The situation is bad.
12:18He was in the hospital.
12:20The Jews attacked us.
12:22When they started to kidnap him,
12:25there were a lot of martyrs.
12:29And we started to run.
12:31Even on the road,
12:32when we were on the road and we were running,
12:35they started to kidnap people.
12:37There were a lot of martyrs on the road.
12:46You know, I found myself in a hole.
12:50I swear to God.
12:51I was suffocated.
12:53I knew that the day would never come
12:56that I wouldn't be able to walk again.
12:58I was suffocated.
13:04I found myself in a hole.
13:06I washed myself three or four times a day.
13:08And then in the winter,
13:09I was able to run to the hospital.
13:16At that moment, I was in the hospital.
13:18The Jews surrounded the area.
13:22They put tanks on every building.
13:25And the tanks,
13:26the 20 of them,
13:28were surrounding the building.
13:31And the police and the captain were there.
13:35The situation was out of control.
13:37We were forced to leave the building.
13:40We were forced to leave the building.
13:42They put us in a new building.
13:46We were forced to go back and forth.
13:49We were trapped in that building.
13:59God willing, you will return.
14:01God willing.
14:13The military strategy this time around
14:16was that the whole of the health system
14:18had to become a target and had to be dismantled.
14:21The destruction of the health system
14:23has become in itself
14:25one of the genocidal killing machines.
14:27And literally, not metaphorically a genocide.
14:30Even with the kind of blind aerial bombardment
14:34that the Israelis made,
14:36the Israelis realized that the bombs
14:38can only kill that many people.
14:41And that disease,
14:43which results from the destruction of the health system,
14:46and starvation,
14:48which is what they've also engineered in the form of a famine,
14:51will be much more effective
14:53in a kind of silent genocide
14:56in addition to the bombs and the blasts.
15:12The Israeli occupation
15:14destroyed the health system.
15:20The Israeli occupation
15:22destroyed the health system.
15:29The Medical Association for Medical Treatment
15:32is the heartbeat
15:34of the health system in Gaza.
15:37The Israeli occupation destroyed the health system
15:39and the Medical Association for Medical Treatment
15:41in Gaza.
15:42The occupation didn't account for anything.
15:44It destroyed the health system
15:46and the Medical Association for Medical Treatment.
15:52Targeting the hospitals was, you know,
15:54just was something done deliberately
15:57to reach a level where Gaza has no hospitals,
16:00no places for the people to get treatment.
16:03So they killed them either directly
16:05by killing them, by letting them,
16:08or just banning them from receiving the treatment.
16:36I remember myself sitting beside one of the tents
16:40and literally crying, saying,
16:42to this level in 2024,
16:44we reach that there is no place
16:46to treat patients with head trauma.
16:48We know the treatment.
16:50We know the places.
16:52We know what to do.
16:54We know what to do.
16:56We know what to do.
16:58We know what to do.
17:00We know what to do.
17:02We know what to do.
17:04We know what to do,
17:06but we're unable to provide any of the care
17:08needed for these patients.
17:15If you want to think about mass graves
17:18following massacres,
17:20the majority of governments
17:22or even militias that commit massacres
17:25try to bury the evidence,
17:27try to put the bodies in trucks
17:30and then take them somewhere else to be buried.
17:32If you think back about how long it took
17:34to find the victims of Srebrenica,
17:37because they had been taken away in trucks
17:39once they were killed
17:41and then thrown all over the mountains.
17:43Israel left over 400 Palestinians,
17:47patients, doctors, nurses, civilians,
17:50who it shot in very shallow graves
17:53to be found in the courtyard of Shifa Hospital.
17:57They weren't concerned about public image,
17:59but intentionally left them there
18:01because it was intentional that Shifa becomes a mass grave.
18:05Shifa Hospital
18:29I have no doubt that Shifa Hospital will be rebuilt
18:32and it will be rebuilt by the Palestinians.
19:02Shifa Hospital
19:33Shifa Hospital
19:36There are 800,000 Palestinians
19:38still in the northern part of Gaza.
19:41There's no sign of the Palestinian people giving up.
19:44We haven't defeated Israel,
19:46but Israel has not defeated us.
19:48It's tried to wipe us out.
19:50The Israeli military campaign relies on the idea
19:54that if you can't defeat them,
19:56drown them in their own blood.
20:03All the hospitals now are either working partially
20:07or half capacity,
20:09which is really good after the total destruction of the health system.
20:13So there was no single hospital in Gaza left without being targeted.
20:17Now they are all functioning,
20:19even if partially, even if like one department in one hospital.
20:23So this is with time, with the resilience we have,
20:26we will rebuild the hospitals.
20:28So I believe the rebuilding of the health system,
20:31if we say it's done in stages,
20:33we are in stage one and two.
20:35We are rebuilding the health system.
20:37We don't stop.
20:43Thank God, the Ministry of Health in Gaza
20:47has reopened the emergency department
20:51in the Shifa Hospital.
21:01This means that the people are alive.
21:03The people love life.
21:05The people want to serve the people and their families.
21:07We will not give up this occupation.
21:09By God's will, we will rebuild the Shifa Hospital again.
21:20It's a hope that some departments
21:23will be rebuilt to serve the Palestinian people
21:26in Gaza and the north.
21:29Some departments will be renovated,
21:32and some will be washed.
21:35The building in general doesn't look like much,
21:39but it contains a lot.
21:49By God's will, everything will be rebuilt.
21:59From the moment they allow us in, I am going back.
22:03I mean, that's...
22:05You know, this is the defining event
22:08for the rest of my life and the rest of my career.
22:12I left Gaza, to be honest, it's not my decision.
22:15It was the decision of the people.
22:17It was the decision of the people.
22:19It was the decision of the people.
22:21It was the decision of the people.
22:23It was the decision of the people.
22:25I left Gaza, to be honest, it's not my decision.
22:28It was the decision of the organization.
22:30So they pushed me to leave Gaza,
22:32and I was worried that I won't be able to go back.
22:36I didn't have the courage to look at my patients
22:38when I left the hospital.
22:40I didn't have the courage to say goodbye,
22:42because I felt I left them alone.
22:44I left them to face, you know, the future
22:47without having my help around them.
22:51I'm sure that one day I will be able to go back.
22:55I'm sure that one day I will be able to go back.
22:58I'm sure that one day I will be able to go back.
23:03If I think about my life,
23:05I wouldn't have left Gaza.
23:07If I think about my life,
23:09I wouldn't have left Gaza.
23:12But I thought that if I left,
23:17there would be a feeling of betrayal.
23:22Death is easier than betrayal.
23:25Death is easier than betrayal.
23:27Death is easier than betrayal.
23:29Death is easier than betrayal.
23:31Death is easier than betrayal.
23:33Death is easier than betrayal.
23:35Death is easier than betrayal.
23:37Death is easier than betrayal.
23:39Death is easier than betrayal.
23:41Death is easier than betrayal.
23:43Death is easier than betrayal.
23:45Death is easier than betrayal.
23:47Death is easier than betrayal.
23:49Death is easier than betrayal.
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