By Randy Wurster
Dr. Aziz Rahman’s Experience from Nasser Hospital
This past Saturday, a group of 90 members of the Sharon community and surrounding towns bore witness to a rare firsthand account from inside Gaza’s medical system. Dr. Aziz Rahman, a Massachusetts native and dual board-certified Diagnostic and Vascular/Interventional Radiologist, recently returned from a humanitarian mission to Nasser Hospital – Gaza’s last functioning medical complex.
Dr. Rahman’s lecture almost did not come to pass. Sharon, the first town in Massachusetts to adopt the IHRA definition of anti-semitism which conflates criticism of Zionism with anti-semitism, has a large pro-Israel contingency. In the days leading up to the event, some community members started an online petition to pressure the church into canceling the event. It was only through the courage and diligence of a group of Sharon organizers working alongside MAPA activists that Dr. Rahman was able to address the crowd on Saturday in a MAPA-sponsored event.
Over the course of an hour, Dr. Rahman used photos and stories from his trip to paint a vivid and sometimes graphic picture of the apocalyptic situation for Palestinians in Gaza. The doctor spoke of a healthcare system under complete collapse: hospital buildings razed by American-made bombs; Palestinian specialist physicians targeted and killed by the IDF; doctors without critical supplies and equipment due to Israel’s blockade; daily Mass Casualty Incidents which overload hospitals and staff; Palestinians with chronic conditions left untreated.
The presentation was at times difficult to bear. Dr. Rahman went through several patient case studies, including a pregnant 30 year old woman who underwent an emergency hysterectomy after an explosives injury. “This fetus is something I will never forget…it was basically an exploded fetus.” Dr. Rahman also showed what he calls the “foil of wrap of death” – an image of a one year old baby who died with 85% burns.
The doctor touched upon the famine, which just days before was declared level 5 (most severe) by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC). He spoke of a 9 year old boy he treated who was shot while attempting to retrieve food for his family at one of the Israeli/American operated “humanitarian” sites. Showing an X-Ray of the child with a bullet lodged in his spine, Dr. Rahman said the boy will be quadripelegic for the remainder of his life. Considering the state of Gaza, Dr. Rahman somberly noted that “it’s probably better to die than be paralyzed in Gaza, because there’s really no room for being handicapped in Gaza.”
Dr. Rahman ended the lecture by relaying two requests from the people of Gaza. The first is to share their stories: both of their struggle but also of their resilience in the face of annihilation. Dr. Rahman is certainly doing his part, as Sharon was the first of four talks he plans to give while in Massachusetts.
The second request from Palestinians is to simply convince the world that they are human, which Dr. Rahman noted is “a small ask of the world.”
It seems a similarly small ask to hope that Americans provide an audience for trained medical professionals like Dr. Rahman when they return from dangerous humanitarian missions. And yet, during the event itself, a group of a dozen genocide-apologists stood outside waving Israeli flags in protest of Dr. Rahman’s lecture. Occasional honks of approval from passerbys were a grim reminder that, despite a marked improvement in American support of Palestinian liberation of late, there is still a long way to go. For the Palestinians in Gaza, sadly, time is running out.
