Children with 'single gunshot wounds to the head': US surgeon recounts harrowing experience in Gaza

​​​​​​​By Diyar Guldogan

WASHINGTON (AA) — Despite treating wounded in conflict zones all over the world, US trauma surgeon Dr. Feroze Sidhwa was shocked by what he witnessed in the Gaza Strip.

Like many medical professionals, Sidhwa rushed to the Palestinian enclave in the weeks following the start of Israel’s devastating offensive that left much of Gaza in ruins.

"The thing I remember best as a doctor was a little girl named Jouri. She was 9 years old, and she had actually been injured about two weeks before I got there.

"When we found her, she actually just was brought to the pre-operative area ... When we examined her, she was dying of sepsis," Sidhwa, who served at the European Hospital in southern Gaza in late March and early April.

Jouri was "very, very severely" injured, he told Anadolu.

"Her buttocks were both flayed open. Her left femur was missing about two inches of the bone. Most of the muscle was gone in the leg. It was, it was a very, very bad injury. And it was, it turned out to have been from an explosion in the house. She was saying it," Sidhwa added.

The little girl, now in Egypt, recovered after five or six surgeries, he said.

"Actually, I just got a video message from her a few weeks ago," he said with a chuckle. "Now, she's actually happy, and she's not in pain all the time, and she's not angry."

"I'm sure she's very, very traumatized from what she went through and what she saw. But she's back to being a little nine-year-old girl," he added.

"That was a good memory," he added, but said no hospitals left in Gaza and tens of thousands are dying slowly of sepsis, a life-threatening condition marked by widespread inflammation following an infection and possible organ damage if untreated.

"But … the criminal part of it is that there were, even just in that hospital, hundreds of kids like Jouri, and we have four operating rooms. How can we take care of hundreds of kids like this?" he asked.

- US 'support for those crimes is just shocking and totally indefensible'

Turning to the "shocking crimes" perpetrated by Israel that he witnessed in Gaza, Sidhwa said he could not forget how many of the children he treated had been shot.

"The one thing that I've talked about a lot since I got back was the shooting of children, the widespread shooting of children.

"It's pretty shocking to see in person when almost every day you see a new young — and I don't mean 17-year-old kids, I mean young children — come into the hospital with single gunshot wounds to the head," he said.

"The crimes are so shocking … I'm an American, so for me, it's not just the crimes. With my support for those crimes, my government’s support for those crimes is just shocking and totally indefensible," he asserted.

Sidhwa was one of 100 health professionals who sent a letter to US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris last month to demand an immediate halt to Washington’s military, economic and diplomatic support to Israel.

"This is the only thing I can think to do," he said.

For Sidhwa, the main message of the letter to the US government was, "We witnessed atrocities with our own eyes, and we would like to tell you about them, because you're funding them."

There is no lack of evidence of what is going on in Gaza, he stressed. "That's not the issue. And the Biden administration didn't need me to tell them what was going on there. They already knew."

Sidhwa says US support for Israel is the main reason behind his concern for Gaza. Still, some people have misunderstood his motivations.

"If Israel and the Palestinians were on Mars and they were killing each other, okay. It doesn't have anything to do with me. But I'm an American, and my government is funding these crimes all the way.

"It's not subtle, it's not unknown, or something like that. So, that's where my concern for it comes from," Sidhwa said.

- Palestinians 'presented as if they're Godzilla'

There were lots of other things that stood out in Gaza, he said. "One was the dignity and humanity that these people refused to give up."

As people in Gaza preserve their culture, dignity, families, and faith, they have made an "impressive" endeavor, stressed Sidhwa, who believes that Palestinians are "presented as animals" both in the US and in Israel.

"They're presented as if they're Godzilla. They're just some lunatic force of nature that's just out to destroy everything, and when you meet them, it's very different."

Today, Sidhwa works at the San Joaquin General Hospital in Stockton, California. He has served in Ukraine, Burkina Faso, and Zimbabwe.

Asked if he would return to Gaza, Sidhwa responded: "I'm hoping I'll be able to go back, you know, it's a little bit scary going back to a place where the Israelis can just kill anybody that they want."

The Israeli army has continued a devastating offensive on Gaza since a Hamas attack last year, despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire.

More than 43,160 people have since been killed, mostly women and children, and over 101,500 others injured, according to local health authorities.

The Israeli onslaught has displaced almost the territory’s entire population amid an ongoing blockade that has led to severe shortages of food, clean water, and medicine.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its brutal war on Gaza.