From an account by Dr. Hammam Alloh that was told to Maya Rosen and published by Jewish Currents on October 30, 2023. Alloh was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on November 11.

I became a doctor to treat people in Gaza. I had to leave for fourteen years to get the degrees and certification necessary to become a nephrologist­—a specialty I chose because there was a need for it. When I returned, I was shocked by the lack of resources available to me. Even before this war, those of us providing medical care in Gaza were operating in conditions that were far from optimal. We regularly suffered from a dearth of vital medications, essential labs, and instruments critical to our work.

Since the war, things have become increasingly dire. We are dialyzing more and more patients­—including those who’ve come from the north, some of whom have suffered kidney injuries from the bombardments. We are cutting the duration of dialysis sessions in half. Many medications are completely unavailable. Doctors make decisions based on hunches because we don’t always have access to labs. Yesterday, I had to stop the resuscitation of a patient who went into cardiac arrest, because if she made it back to life, we had no ventilator to offer her. We have to prioritize patients who are younger, healthier.

This is not the medicine I thought I would be practicing. I always wanted to learn more, to teach more. In Gaza, I haven’t been able to do that. I hope to raise my kids to be ambitious­—not to think about war. I see a fear in their eyes that I can’t do much about. It’s very painful. We want to live freely like other people­—to grow scientifically and economically, to walk in the street without fearing bombardments, to make plans. We want to be able to learn, think, grow, travel, dream­—to feel like we are really human. Not to think only about meeting our basic needs. This is what life has always been about for us, and now we are being eradicated en masse. This is not what life should look like.