Owen Jones: So, it’s been over a year now of some of the worst atrocities committed in the 21st century, the mass slaughter and maiming as well. Really important, unfortunately, to have to make that point, of huge numbers of Palestinian people in Gaza, as well as all the trauma, the forceful repeated mass displacements, the basics of life being besieged, and the destruction of the healthcare system, which is a point a UN commission report has just made. That’s a concerted attempt, deliberate attempt, to destroy the healthcare system, which they say is tantamount to the crime against humanity of extermination. Now, in the context of all this, we know of course that Palestinian doctors, nurses, paramedics have been doing the most incredible work in the most unimaginable circumstances. Many of them have been killed. There has been a mass slaughter of Palestinian medics. Often, or too often, with their families, and also their incarceration, and doctors have been killed in Israeli incarceration, torture, you name it. As well as that, there have been large numbers or significant numbers of doctors, medics, nurses from around the world who have gone to Gaza to try and help the Palestinian medical system in the state of collapse and during these apocalyptic conditions. And one of them is the brilliant doctor, Ana Jeelani, who is a consultant pediatric orthopedic surgeon, who is currently not far from where I grew up, but was in Gaza twice this year. On March 24th this year, for two weeks at Al Aqsa hospital, which people will know about because it has just been bombed by the Israeli state, and we saw, horrifically, a young Palestinian being burned alive, while attached to an IV drip. And then another month in September at Nassar Hospital, Khan Yunis. Ana firstly, thank you so much for joining us.
Dr. Jeelani: Thank you for having me Owen. Thank you for listening for what I want to say.
Interviewer: That’s, that’s the most important part of what I do, so thank you. I’m just going to start, actually, in terms of those, I guess, maybe still in denial after a year of this, who maybe say, well, is it really genocide? Yes, maybe Israel’s been disproportionate, but what do you say? What do you say to those at this point having witnessed Gaza firsthand and having had to, to care for Palestinian civilians who’ve suffered hideous injuries and who have died as a consequence. What do you say to people who say, oh, is this really genocide?
Dr. Jeelani: I have to take the biggest deep breath of my life because I am fueled by rage when someone asks me that. And I think that’s why people don’t ask me actually, because I think with people who have been on the ground, it’s very difficult to disagree with us and argue with us, because we have seen it firsthand, and I actually think that people will not ever encourage that in conversation because they know that all the propaganda and all the things that they see just pales in significance to when we start talking and say, well, if it’s not a genocide, then what about the fact that I’ve seen someone die or be murdered of malnutrition? Okay, so how about the scores of videos that I have on my phone of children running with cans of water to try and get water in the morning? You know, how about all the destruction that I’ve seen, the infrastructure? How about my friends who, some of them, have been tortured and taken away to these two Israeli prison camps, and they tell me what’s happened to them? So, I think what people struggle with is, you know, disputing that because I can give you a name, I can give you a story, I can give you where they were. So, I actually don’t have that conversation with many people because – and it’s really interesting – because I was speaking at a protest and there was a counter protest at the same time, and the counter protest was pretty quiet. But then when I got up as a doctor who’s being in Gaza, suddenly the music went on, everyone was trying to drown out what I was trying to say because that’s what the eyewitness account is, and that’s why they don’t want independent press in there, they don’t want outside agencies going in because you can’t argue with our testimony, and it’s a really sad situation. I’m a surgeon, I’m used to being in an operating theatre, giving medical lectures, I did one this morning about my subject topic. I am not used to talking to journalists and giving my side as a witness to war crimes, right? And you’ve thrust a population of people who have been into Gaza into this position, and actually it’s like a moral duty to speak up about what we’ve seen.
Interviewer: Now according to World Health Organization between 7th of October 2023 and July 2024, Israel carried out nearly 500 separate attacks on health care facilities in Gaza. They report, between 7th of October and 23rd of June, so that’s many months ago now unfortunately, but in that period 500 medical staff were killed. They talk over 113 ambulances being attacked. They say 20 of the 36 hospitals in Gaza now completely non-functional with 16 partially operating. Can you just give us a picture, and then there’s the siege of medicine? Just… Yeah, just give us a picture of what it’s like, what the medical… And what you saw in those two different places, what is the hospital system?
Dr. Jeelani: So there was a difference, definitely, and I think the difference is Rafah and the invasion of Rafah, when that happened, the siege. So, in March when we went, I went in the first two weeks of Ramadan, and we had a mass casualty every evening coinciding with when people were opening their fast because that’s when families are together. The hospital had 200 beds at the time. It was at a capacity of 700 patients. So that we were crawling over patients to get to other patients. Theaters were, you know, it was never empty. It was all… And you know, everyone asked me what’s the one image that you remember. I can’t… I just remember standing in the middle of the theaters and just looking at this incredible destruction and chaos, and to operate in that it’s a testament to the Palestinians. To do that. Because I can tell you, I was a trainee when the Manchester bomb happened in Manchester, and you know if they had to deal… If the NHS system had to deal with the amount of mass casualties that were coming through the door in Palestine, in Gaza, there would not. You know, all work would stop in the whole hospital. Because I’ve seen how mass casualties work in the UK, and it’s testament. So, people have this misconception that, you know, Palestinians might not be as good doctors. They are better than all of us. We are helping them. They know how to run a mass casualty. They know how to operate in this, and the whole thing of this aggression is, Israel are taking out the most senior people in hospitals. The most or senior people have been evacuating themselves, you know, fair enough – you have to make a decision to – your security and your family security. So you have like this massive gulf of inexperience because medical students are now being doctors, you know, that everyone that I’ve met who’s a resident in orthopedics have said, you know. We’ve done so many, so much training like you can never get this out of your book, like they’re just being thrust into dealing with all these mass casualties, and some of them are their own family members. So, one of my colleagues, I thought he’d gone home, and he came back, and the guy that I was dealing with, who had both legs amputated and an arm amputated, is his brother-in-law and, you know, the trauma of having to deal with your own population that this is happening to. Horrific, absolutely horrific, and that’s just the people, right? So, if you talk about supplies, there’s no supplies. This time that we went, because Israel purposely does not let us take in medical aid, that’s been as well documented about how aid is not getting into Gaza. You know, they’re running out of swabs to, like, stop bleeding to a point where they were cutting up clothing and sterilizing that and trying to use that as swabs. Simple, basic, life-saving stuff is not there anymore. You know, ultrasounds — gone. And there’re videos that you see then on Instagram of Israeli soldiers like bashing up, you know, ultrasound scans. And you’re like, that is, if that’s not a destruction of the healthcare service, what is? I was at Nassar the second time and it had been sieged. So when we walked in, the weirdest thing I saw was all the doors had this like mark on them and it’s where the Israeli army had gone systematically through the whole hospital and cleared the rooms, and they’re still on the doors. And, you know, then we walked out into our accommodation, and there was this balcony, we were on the fourth floor, and the weirdest thing is that was quite high in Gaza, because everything else has been destroyed, and you look out, and you looked out into the mass graves, like, where they found 300 medical workers and patients. Some of them were still catheter bags attached to them in a mass grave. And they’re living in this. They are continuing to serve their population in this. It’s just everywhere you turn, they have a deliberate way to destroy it, and it’s heartbreaking. I can’t describe to you the pain that you feel when you see all of that. Because, and they’re still going, and they’re still continuing and show up to work. It’s just horrific. Sorry, I don’t know if that was the right way to describe it, but it’s just horrific.
Interviewer: It’s exactly the right way. I don’t know, it’s difficult to know how to express it.
Dr. Jeelani: I think the other thing is when I saw Al-Aqsa this week, burning. I’ve spent two weeks in that hospital and knew every bit of that hospital, because you know we were, when you go out with the charity, with MAP, you’re not allowed to kind of leave the hospital, right, so you’re in the hospital for two weeks. We were living in the end of a ward, in a room, and it seems you open the door to your room there’s patients in front of you. And those tents, I’ve walked through those tents, because you wanted to get a bit of exercise, to get out for a bit of fresh air, so, and you know, a lot of the family members of those who work in the hospital live in those tents because it’s difficult for them to live far away, because it’s treacherous for them getting into the hospital. So, after I left, a week after, it was the first time they bombed Al-Aqsa. And that was a worst day when I got back because I text everyone I knew being, like, are you safe, are you not safe. And the fact that they feel that by being a British citizens, by having a British passport, we are protective to the hospital, and then when we leave. Because every, all of our movements are coordinated with Israel, right, so they know when we’re in the hospital and when we’re not. So, when we leave there’s this theory that, you know, um that’s when they’ll attack the hospital. A week after I left last time, the World Central Kitchen workers were attacked, and then they had a British passport, right? So, then that took that theory out. But I can’t explain, those hospitals are communities, there are children, there are so many displaced people living in the hospital, and to attack a hospital repeatedly, and to attack patients, because they’re overflowing, I was stunned.
Interviewer: I think you talked about the demographics of the, of the patients you were dealing with. I mean, who were they?
Dr. Jeelani: So, it’s a really horrible way to say it, but if you’re dead on arrival, or you’re pretty much, you’re not going to make it, then you never really made it to my area of treating, because I was in theatre most of the time. So a lot of children, a lot of children, a lot of children were with shrapnel injuries, some horrific burns that I saw this time, a lot of young males, okay, because they are the people who will go out to get the water, will go out to the shops, go and get stuff for their families, and then elderly, so many elderly. And the saddest thing is with medical evacuation, the elderly were not the priority to get evacuated, so you saw people who probably lived a really difficult life, now with amputations, losing their whole families, and it was – I know we concentrate on women and children – but the elderly was where my heart really sank, because you just thought that, you know, towards the end of your life you should be having a restful life, you shouldn’t now be dealing with an amputation, or your family members killed, your generation – many other people have been killed. So, actually it doesn’t distinguish, we dealt with all people of all ages and for me, um, I saw a lot of amputation wounds in my first trip. As a team we did 30 amputations. This time it was less because we were trying to do more limb saving operations, because we had availability of a little bit more kit, but yeah, it doesn’t discriminate, it doesn’t discriminate.
Interviewer: And I mean, so the sorts of injuries you’re dealing with were often from explosive impact?

Dr. Jeelani: And some kinds of, so burns were a lot of stuff that we saw and burns dressings. I dealt with limb injuries, limb-threatening injuries, so open fractures, everything’s pretty much open. And what you don’t really realize is that shrapnel gets everywhere, so you know, and shrapnel is so hard to, like, dig out of a person. Um, and amputations. One of my cases that I spoke to my friends about was, there was a guy who was walking with his friends, in his 30s, he’s walking in Rafah, and then a quadcopter hits him and his friends. There’s four of them, two of them die or killed, I should say, one survives with minor injuries, and then he came in with an amputation of his one arm above his elbow, and amputation of his other leg. And you know this guy was just walking with his friends, and I just thought there’s nothing different between me and you, and yet you have been gunned down and slaughtered, and you just don’t know when or who’s the next person’s this happens to is going to be.
Interviewer: I mean for those who don’t know quadcopters are armed drones which are remotely piloted by the IDF. And I spoke to another doctor, he’d been in Gaza and spoke of the very distinctive kind of pellets that you know you, know when it’s a quadcopter
Dr. Jeelani: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that that’s included, but you know a bomb would go off, or a missile attack, and then the quadcopters has come in and then. So interestingly we found that a lot of the quadcopter injuries were groin. And because that’s quite high, so it dictates the level of your amputation. And if they hit you below… At the March of Great Return, I know there were a lot of knee injuries because of that, that was the aim right, so they wanted you to have an above knee amputation.
Interviewer: For those who don’t know, those protests in 2018 where Palestinians from Gaza that came to the fence, to protest for the right to return, against the occupation, and then were often massacred and shot by the Israelis.
Dr. Jeelani: So this is groin and higher leg, yeah, but the quadcopters were probably… one of my friends, he had about 30 people martyred from his family, and he said that the airstrike hit his house and then other family members ran to help, and to get the martyrs, or to try and see if anyone’s alive, and then a quadcopter followed and then shot them and so everyone was killed.
Interviewer: From what you have experienced and witnessed, what would you say in terms of just about the overall death toll? I mean obviously, you know, there are different estimates. The official death toll is very widely regarded to be a severe and drastic underestimate, partly because it excludes those who are missing under the rubble, for example. Thousands of people, they’re just excluded altogether, but then there’s, you know, the reporting system collapsing, the hospital system collapsing civilization collapsing, you can’t really you know entire families just wiped out, and no one to report them, indirect causes. What do you think in terms of, because you just mentioned, and this is a recurring theme, and when I speak to Palestinians in Gaza, they say: She just said 30 members of the family killed, she’s talking about one person, 30 members of his family killed. And just from your experience, just you know, the Palestinians you speak to, and how many relatives they’ve lost, what would you say? Because the official death tolls 42,000 and to be honest it hasn’t, I mean, you know…
Dr. Jeelani: It hasn’t changed. There’s no reporting system, like we can’t even track a patient. I don’t know how you track, like, the destruction that has happened. So you’re right like, we don’t know how many have been killed. When we were in Nassar, the 80 unidentified bodies arrived that Israel had sent in a kind of in a truck. You know that you don’t know whether that is 80. They’ve said that’s 80, but they were so unidentifiable that no one will ever know who those bits were, or people were, so you know there could be 100 for all we know. Are we, are we trusting their figures? Are we trusting their numbers. So I think you will never understand the actual death toll that is there. But what it doesn’t take into account is how many people will die from pneumonia now because you know, winter’s coming there’s no, nutrition is low how, many people will die from, you know, sepsis, because you can’t tell. It’s just impossible to know the death toll, but I know the 42,000 is such a mis- underestimation. I cannot explain to you because, yeah, and we all focus on the death toll, but the people who are surviving, you know. I’d like to see how many of those survived the year, because they might have survived initially, but the consequences of their injuries that they’ve sustained will eventually, you know, I’ve seen so many patients who have got infected stumps, okay, and they keep going back to theater, to theater, they’re getting sicker, antibiotics are not working, they will eventually not survive a whole year, right, but they will not come up in a statistic because you know you can’t, you can’t, you can’t, you can’t count that.
Interviewer: It’s worth putting out, for example back in July three health experts academics sent a letter to the Atlantic, for example, suggesting it would be 186,000. I mean one thing I often think about, it seems like cancer patients, people with heart condition type, I mean, this is a health system which is every day, which has been destroyed in so, you know, so many ways
Dr. Jeelani: So it’s interesting you bring up cancer because in our team there was a cancer surgeon, Mr. Tahseen Qureshi, a great guy who works in Liverpool, and he went out there to do cancer surgery, and they wouldn’t let his kit in, so he had no way of getting his kit to do his cancer operations. And everyone he was consulting on, you know if that cancer had been treated six months ago, it was survivable but now, it’s not survivable. There’s also, with any kind of mass that you have, you need to get histopathology so to work out what cancer it is. They’ve killed two histopathologists, there’s no staining so you can’t do the samples, so you don’t even know like, kind of, what cancer there is, there’s no radiotherapy, there’s no chemotherapy, so everything he’s doing now is kind of life, that he did, was kind of life protecting, as in you know stenting the cancers so they can still eat, but it’s not curative, because there’s no curative means now, because they’ve destroyed all of that and so he found it incredibly frustrating being out there because he was seeing all these cancers that have lit… And, and this is the thing, you, someone would have a cancer but they going back to a tent. How are you going to do a big operation on them and their recovery is a tent and their malnutrition. You know there… everything about it you know, when we go into hospital the first thing our parents will say is, have you eaten have you slept well – they’re sleeping in a tent with bombardment and threat of displacement, and you’re going to try and recover from any kind of cancer intervention. It’s huge. It’s absolutely huge, the devastation they’ve caused and it’s systematic. They’ve done it in a systematic way. They’ve, everyone has lost psychological security there, they have lost actual security there, they have lost food, they have lost water, they have lost every kind of component of a health care system that you need for it to thrive, so even if you brought in all the aid, your population is in a place where it’s not meant to thrive because they’ve, they’ve done that. We drove past the biggest desalination point, so to make safe drinking water if you look opposite it, there’s the biggest sewage tip. Its cholera is waiting to.. and all the people talk about polio, but cholera will be the next thing that will appear in Gaza, because there’s no way you can guarantee clean drinking water.
Interviewer: I mean, many public health experts point out that, and I hate the fact I hesitate to use the word ‘conflict’, because it’s too one-sided and also this is so extreme, it’s difficult to compare to what we would describe as conflict in other cases, but that in the end, it’s not the direct violence that would kill the majority of people in these sorts of circumstances, do you think that’s true?
Dr. Jeelani: Yeah. Agreed,100% The direct violence is what everyone focuses on, correctly so because we have to stop that, but we talked a lot about, if a ceasefire comes, what does the day after look like. And the day after looks like a population that has no infrastructure, whose healthcare has been purposely taken out. That there’s no way of recovery of that now — if there’s one set of people that can recover it is the Palestinians, I will put that as a footnote — just even little things like, how they get around the barriers that are placed in front of them, is incredible. And so if there is a population that can do it, is them, but it’s going to be a big job, so yeah.
Interview: Before I ask you about that, because I know it’s really important we talk about that. Before I ask you about that, I just refer to this UN Commission of inquiry, which was recently published, on the 10th of October in fact, a week ago, and they said that Israel has implemented a concerted policy, a deliberate policy to destroy the healthcare system in Gaza, and its forces deliberately killed, wounded, arrested, detained, mistreated and tortured medical personnel, and targeted medical vehicles, and that this constitutes, A) the war crime of willful killing and mistreatment and B) the crime against humanity of extermination. From your experience, when you hear that, what do you say when you hear that it’s a deliberate attack, ghat they go out of the way to destroy it.
Dr. Jeelani: 100% 100% I think when you talk to people and you say what’s different about this time compared to others, when they bombed al-Ahli hospital, the Baptist hospital that was the first one, they thought this is different. This is, you know, they have gone after a hospital and – 100%. So in Nassar hospital, there’re anesthetists that I met, had been arrested, detained, they told me about their time in detention. And they are picked out because they are wearing scrubs. So one of my really good friends, he was evacuating from Shifa hospital and he was arrested, detained, he was in captivity for 52 days, I think. He was released before I met him for the first time in March, and you know he was beckoned by the soldiers because he was wearing scrubs, so they, people who were there would change out of their scrubs before they walked out of the hospital grounds, because you were a target. And the way they tell, their detention, they tell the stories of their detention, it’s very deliberate. And that’s what you do, because Shifa, taking out Shifa, as one of the doctors said, it’s the beating soul of Gaza, and what is the best way to crush someone’s spirit is by taking out the beating soul. And that was Shifa hospital. So the destruction that happened there with the burning of the buildings, that was not just you know a target of the people there, but a target of the infrastructure and the target to the soul of Gaza.
Interviewer: Before I ask you actually, about the point, about the humanity, so they’re just, that just a final point on the destruction of the healthcare system. I mean when you mentioned Shifa hospital right near the start of this, which I’m not going to go into it, is this big discussion about the big bombing of al-Shifa, who did it, was it misfired, was it Israel. The point about that was, it was seen – it’s the reason it was such a big discussion – was, it was seen as a completely depraved and grotesque act to have a hospital being bombed. But since then, you’ve now seen the relentless bombing of hospitals and their destruction and medical personnel. Just how you explain, it’s just, kind of like moral decline we’ve kind of witnessed where this is normalized, where the healthcare system of a society can be violently dismantled.
Dr. Jeelani: It baffles me, and you know, what baffles me the most is that medical institutions are not calling this out, and not saying, come on people. Like, we go into medicine majoritively to, I know it sounds corny, but help people and be, you know, be that very neutral voice for people, because we would treat anyone, right. But the fact that these people are being absolutely targeted, hospitals are being bombed. We’ve witnessed this week Shaban – his name – burning with an IV drip in his arm, and the silence that, that has around the world. Why are not all medical institutions being like, this is wrong? And and you just have to breathe really deeply and sigh, but 100% Owen. And like we met the health minister, and I asked, I said, I’m a health worker and I’m going to go back to you the UK. What do you want them to know? And he said plain and simple, after saying they need a ceasefire, which they do, but he said, tell them that this is a target on our healthcare service. And, and I’ve done that for Dr. Yusuf. This is a target on healthcare.
Interviewer: Yeah. Well we’ve seen multiple examples of the lack of solidarity. Speaking as a journalist, the silence of British journalists about the biggest slaughter of journalism recorded in history, and would there be that response if there was a consensus here that Palestinians were human beings of equal worth, and that’s what I want to ask about now . About the humanity you saw, that in impossible circumstances, I mean, even though you’re talking to us, and it feels vivid and all the rest of it, it’s only a tiny, kind of, you know, of a real sense of what it’s actually like, that we could ever possibly imagine. Let’s just be honest about that. But we know, I think people understand, these are just apocalyptic conditions. How you know, you think people would just be so broken and destroyed, and just you know hopeless. What was the kind of, what did you see, the human responses that really stuck with you
Dr. Jeelani: You know what they are people who just want to live. And one of the guys said to me which was like such a poignant thing. He said animals in the UK have more rights than we do as Palestinians, and he said to me, Ana, do they not see us as people? And you know, that’s why I am an advocate for them, because they are people, they have hopes and dreams and the same problems that we have, right, that’s going on with their life, they got the brothers annoying them, there’s all the same stuff. I think there’s so much discussion in the media and on social media and everything about you know statistics. But they are people at the end of it, and they are so welcoming, right. So you know when we got there as medical workers, the minister of health of Gaza came to meet us and he came to meet us when we were leaving as well, you know. And he remembered stories about us, and they’re so, they’re so just want to live, they, they, they want to survive. It is so strong, and I was there for the October the 7th, and I hate using word anniversary because it always seems to have like a good connotation – anniversary, but I was there on October the 7th, and you know the only thing that I could think was “existence is resistance”, and that’s what they do. Like my friend that I told you, who’d been arrested and detained and has had unspeakable things done to him in detention, which has been documented while, like, you know has been documented in the media of how they’ve treated prisoners. He got married whilst we were there right, and I met his wife, and he brought me a candle that they’d made, from their wedding, and it’s like, he’s had unspeakable things happen to him, but he’s getting married and he’s, you know, trying to combat the extermination that they’re facing with love and hope. And he works at Al-Aqsa and that day when Al-Aqsa was bombed, he lives in the in the Nuseirat camp, and he sent me an audio of quadcopters shelling outside his house, and he said this might be my goodbye to you, and he was like, always remember me. And I don’t know how we humanize these people, because they are, and it saddens me that when media say 10 kills or 10 dead, because those 10 people have names, and they deserve to be said.
Interviewer: I mean when you see media coverage, which so blatantly treats Palestinian life as having so little worth. Or, you know we saw, when we met, we talked about that young lad about 19 years old being burned alive with an ivy drip. You know, Sky news did a segment where they mournfully listed the names of Israeli soldiers who’d been killed, so they were just 19 years old, their pictures up and all the rest of it. They’ve never done that for Palestinians civilians. How does that make you feel when you’ve been up and close, on a daily basis, to see in person that humanity granted, in that case more humanity to combatants who are Israeli, than kids ordinary people.
Dr. Jeelani: It makes me want to scream inside. I feel like I’ve come back and I’m just screaming internally, and I just don’t know where we went as a society that has allowed that to happen. Where, when was the point when these people were not named, you know, and, and people say, you know there’s too many of them or there’s loads of them. That doesn’t minimize their worth. That doesn’t minimize who they are and what they’ve achieved in their life. You know Owen, I spent most of my weeks since I’ve been back holding my breath and internally screaming because I just really wish someone else was allowed into Gaza, I really wish that an independent person that people would listen to could be allowed, because you’d think they’d listen to us. We’ve written to the Prime Minister, we’ve written to David Lamy, we’ve told them everything that you know you’ve mentioned before, the New York Times article, we have told people what is happening, we have tried to humanize these people as best as we can, and no one listens, and the news cycle continues and it’s going to Lebanon now. The most unreal bit of this trip was sitting in Gaza watching Lebanon burning, you know, and thinking how can they’ve destroyed this place, why are we as a society letting this happen in another place? Um and, and, and Palestinians genuinely. one of one of the guys I remember from my first trip came to say goodbye to me; He’s an anesthetist, and he’s had a child that’s been killed, and he said to me you know Dr. Ana you didn’t have to touch a single patient when you came here. You didn’t have to do anything in the operating theatre. The fact that you left the security of your family and your bed in the West and came here and showed solidarity is more important towards than anything that you’ve operated on. And that’s what I’d say is, like, solidarity cannot be underestimated in these situations. And they see it right, so when I was there, I would show them, um because I’m a Scouser (from Liverpool) by heart, I showed them the Liverpool March. And you know they’re like, people know this. The first time I went, people they were like do they know what’s going on about us, because if they know why is it not stopped? And that was heartbreaking so I’m trying to answer, why we’re not being able to stop this, and now they’re just like, oh they’re still seeing us being killed. But you know there are good people there, and you showed them the videos and the marches. And that I showed them videos of the national march, um I read them Jeremy Corbyn’s words that he’d said, and you know they feel that, they feel, they know this, they’ve all got social media, they see everything that’s going on, and the conversations, and they still ask do they not think we’re human.
Interviewer: I mean I know you’ve written along with the doctors to the government and had a response. I’m just wondering about that, but also how do you feel when you hear British politicians sometimes they’ll talk about, you know how terrible it is in Gaza, and they’ll you know hand wring about it like it’s some sort of natural disaster basically.
Dr. Jeelani: Uh, Owen, honestly, I’m screaming, it’s really, that’s the only thing you’ll get from this is pure unadulterated rage. So we had a response from the government, it wasn’t even um David Lamy it was Falkner, MP Falkner and it was a stock Answer. We were very specific in the things that we said needed to, mainly the assistance of humanitarian aid and humanitarian workers going there. I don’t think that is, you know, we’re asking for the world in those things, and the response that you’ve also read, it was a stock answer to anyone. It was very much, well we have trying and everything is, you know it’s very complex. It’s not complex. I’ve driven past like about a hundred trucks at the Rafah crossing when we went in March, that are stopped at the border. I have a video that’s 10 minutes long of trucks waiting with aid. It’s not that complicated. You apply the pressure to open up aid to these people and the fact that the government cannot even make that concession, and then also there’s a thing of well, aid is getting through. It’s not. Everybody, UNICEF, UNWRA, UN, everyone is saying aid is not getting through
Interviewer: Even the US government, I should make this point, I mean the US AID, their official international agency and the State Department’s refugee agency, have all said that Israel is deliberately blocking aid. And now even the US government has sent a letter making clear that Israel is still going to be blocking aid, not that they’re doing anything about it. I mean just so we know, we shouldn’t have to, like the fact we even have to debate this as though it’s like a contested issue, is that you know it’s like debating the sky being blue, except talking about the siege of basic aid, do you see I mean?
Dr. Jeelani: Yeah, I mean it must be just, it’s just I just don’t know where humanity went wrong. I just don’t know where, where it all went wrong.
Interviewer: I mean Hamish Falken, you mentioned the Minister of the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and he said, please rest assured that the foreign secretary, his entire ministerial team will continue to do all they can to secure lasting peace in the region. And it’s important to say they suspended 8% of arms sales but kept 92%, that they also continue to supply crucial components for F-35 jets, which are raining down and the explosives, and then causing the sorts of injuries you personally had to tend to. How do you say, I mean it just seems the world turned upside down. We all think these are open.
Dr. Jeelani: You know, Owen, it’s so interesting because this week I was on BBC news on Tuesday, I think, and they wanted to talk to me about the polio vaccination campaign, and I said to them what is the point in vaccinating children and then killing them in the evening with bombs and quadcopters that you’re supplying? Like it makes no sense, is that not a dystopian world, where you know I stood on the balcony and I remember seeing the aid drops you know those parachutes with the thing. And it’s so weird to see in real life. It’s like you’re living in the Hunger Games. And even today that’s killed someone, a Palestinian.
Interviewer: Several people have been killed by the new…
Dr. Jeelani: Hundreds, and the thing is, it’s like just open a border and do aid properly. Why you make it’s like, they do tokenism, they’re tokenism sending in some aid. The one truck has gone in, when Gaza prior to October 7th had 500 trucks going in every day. It’s, it just, I just can’t, I can’t reconcile with the narrative that is happening right now.
Interviewer: And just finally, if there’s one thing that you saw, witnessed, thought while you were there, which if there was someone, I mean we’re talking about people here who just aren’t speaking out. I mean this is the problem actually, if you look at the polling most people think Israel is committing war crimes. Most people think that Benjamin Netanyahu should be arrested for war crimes. 55% according to YouGov in Britain. So, in that sense the battle for public opinion is won on the kind of headline figures. But that doesn’t mean people are speaking out or doing what they could. So what, if there’s one thing that you, just in Gaza your experience, you know that would you, I know a lot of this is just, I can’t even, I feel constant rage and you know, I haven’t been there. So, what would you say to people to kind of, like please, just grab them by the lapels, this is what I went through, this what I saw, this what I heard, even if it’s about reminding people about the humanity of the people who are suffering unimaginable horror.
Dr. Jeelani: I don’t, I don’t, I don’t know because it’s so big. It’s so, so big. But all I’d say is, I used to wake up every morning and stand on the balcony and it overlooked the morgue, and I know how the night had been by how many people were at the morgue, and every day for 30 days I saw at least 10 to 15 funerals, and some of the shrouds were very, very small and little, and people were carrying them, and that was every day. And I can’t explain what seeing that, those children would be alive, and actually there’s one story. And I have said it. One of my friends, his family were killed. He’s a surgeon, he was operating. His family were completely, um a strike hit their house, um, he lost his wife he lost his two children. That happened in July. If we’d had a ceasefire in January, his family would be alive. And I just think if we had, if someone had listened to us, if someone, if we worked harder, if we’d done more, and we’d had a ceasefire earlier, how many lives would we have saved, and I and I just think every day, and that’s why we talked to journalists right, because we think, who’s going to be the one person that listens to one story from us and, and makes this all stop. Um, and I can’t give you one story because that would be disservice to the whole population. Anyone you speak to has had hurt and pain. Our security guy was in an air strike. He woke up 48 hours later with a rat trying to eat his uncle because they thought it was dead, and his two friends were being eaten by dogs. My friend has been arrested and horrifically treated he’s got marks on his arms, he doesn’t sleep now, he can’t sleep. So you know the psychological tear of what he’s gone through. One of my friends and, if it’s all right with you, I just want to read one text that one of my friends sent me yesterday, and he said this: So I am not afraid for myself more than I’m afraid for my mother father and family. This war is devastating, full of stories and tales.If we stay alive we will need global libraries to record what we saw in this devastating war. You feel like there’s a rock on your heart because you feel death every moment, and you think about the unknown every moment. How will I die. Will the stones of the house fall on my body, will I become pieces, will the rescue teams be able to find my body, how will I die. We ask us all these questions every day not because we are afraid of death. On the contrary, because we want to die and become a martyr in an ethical way. You know and he’s a 20-year-old guy who was a displaced person, who was just living outside our room, and helped look after the bathroom when we needed to go, but that’s just, just one person right. And that’s what they’re asking how will I die.
Interviewer: Just beyond words. Well those words of his certainly eloquent beyond, you know, I don’t know the horror you’ve seen, but they experience it on a daily basis. It is almost just impossible for us here to, to fully realize, but we have to, and we have to, we have to act on what you’ve said so eloquently. You say, you have to do your best speaking to journalists, and the truth is the western media across the board have facilitated this from day one. They have failed to accurately present what is a great crime. They fail to, they’ve whitewashed atrocities, they’ve ignored atrocities, they’ve ignored often the declared intent of Israeli leaders and officials from day one. And it is a disgusting travesty that you go there and you see unspeakable horrors and then you get a pathetic letter in response from your own government, which can’t even engage in the reality of what you’ve see.
Dr. Jeelani: One of my friends, Tanya Haj Hassan, she was on my first trip with me, and she’s recently been on CNN, and what she said rings true, that one day, the Western media will have to reckon about their place in this, and misleading people, and I don’t think anyone could have said it better than her. She, she says that truly and I agree with you Owen.
Interviewer: Well I’ll be honest. I promise you this and some of who are very brave, who make sure that we pursue the western media for what they’ve done because as Palestinian after Palestinian told me, this would not have been possible, including the slaughter of their families without what the western media have done, and they have to be held to account. I would note that journalist in the Rwandan genocide were prosecuted and anyone should, I think, very carefully read the UN genocide convention of 1948, which has five crimes and that includes complicity in genocide and public incitement of genocide. But yeah, I can assure for those few journalists who actually did speak out, the western media has to be pursued, the guilty men and women of this genocide, that includes the western media, includes people here and they have to be held to account ,and your testimony is crucial to that, so important. So you know, to all those listening, please share this video, make sure it gets out, leave comments because that’s good for the algorithm as more people, and press like, more people then watch the video and share. That’s what we need. And I just want to say on behalf of I know, everyone who would have watched or listened to this, it’s been such a privilege. Thank you so much for sharing this with us and I hope listening to this, this encourages people to speak out more so thank you so much.
Dr. Jeelani: Thank you Owen, very kind.