On Jan. 9, Dr. Mohamed Kuziez, a physician at the Children’s Hospital Colorado, began what was supposed to be a two-week mission in Gaza, using his skills as a pediatrician to provide care to those being subjected to deliberate and indiscriminate violence on behalf of the IDF. 

What he witnessed is additional evidence and testimony of the horrors the Palestinians of Gaza are being subjected to. Bullet holes peppered every ambulance he rode in, and many hospitals he worked in had either been bombed or infiltrated, then set ablaze by the IDF. 

But, what is most disturbing is what has happened to the children’s hospitals. During his time in Palestine, Kuziez witnessed not one but two children’s hospitals that had been intentionally damaged. One of these hospitals is the Patient Friends Association Hospital in Gaza City.

“I saw it after it had been sieged and burned,” he said. “It just stood out to me. Like these are children’s hospitals man; this is not a complex issue.”

As a doctor, he also touched on what Gaza looks like in terms of medical equipment shortages and the ways in which they are having to improvise. 

“We were short on antibiotics and pain medications, and so we were using really strong antibiotics that maybe you wouldn’t typically use here in the U.S. We had kids who had been post-op from surgery, and we were getting treated with Tylenol instead of something like morphine because morphine was reserved for people who are amputees,” Kuziez said. 

They also had issues making sure children had a sufficient amount of nutrition needed to stay healthy.

“We tried staying these kids on IV fluid that had sugar in them, but that’s not a sustainable solution. You’re not supposed to do it for more than five days. Otherwise, you run the risk of protein energy malnutrition because you aren’t actually getting any protein for fats.”

Making this situation even more dire is the blockade Israel put in place on March 2. Not only does this prevent the necessary medical equipment and medicines from entering Gaza, but it is preventing all humanitarian aid from entering the occupied territory. 

“It affects all aspects of life,” he said. “The people of North [Gaza] are still suffering from the effects of starvation. Everybody had lost a significant amount of weight, and they were just now starting to put on weight with the food being allowed in.”

“People who do not get enough calories have a tendency to get sick more. Their wounds don’t heal as well,” he said.

The direct impacts this blockade will have on medicine is important to note as well. When you have to continuously ration pain medication, for example, this can lead to excruciating situations. Kuziez helps us picture what this ends up looking like.

“When you get a kid who has a laceration in his head, people will decide that we’re actually not gonna do Lidocaine around the wound itself because we may need that for somebody who has a broken bone or something like that, and so people put in stitches without anesthesia for kids,” he said. 

He also pointed out that not enough aid trucks were getting in to begin with. 

“People are already starting at a deficit. So, completely blocking out supplies… the effects should be pretty immediate,” he said.  

Despite the suffering and harm inflicted on Gazans, he emphasized that we cannot just try to forget about the past and focus on rebuilding. Instead, we need to focus on making sure that they are safe.

“There’s still millions of people in Gaza who are trying to make a better future for themselves and their kids… The kids and the people, they are still experiencing joy. Still experiencing life,” Kuziez said. “We saw a wedding while we were there, and so we still have a responsibility to these people to try and ensure that no further harm comes to them before we start talking about ‘Okay, what’s the next step?’”

This comes amidst comments from Trump and his administration that the Palestinians in Gaza want to leave, and that they should leave in order to turn the rubble into a “Riviera of the Middle East.” What Kuziez witnessed was quite the opposite.

“These people are willing to do the work. They’re doing the work. From day one, from when we had the cease fire, they started trying to clear the roads and rebuild,” Kuziez said. “And, while so many different proposals are being thrown around, we need to remember that there’s still people there. They still have an autotomy of choice, and we cannot give up on them because they have not given up yet.” 

To conclude our conversation, I asked if he had any questions for those reading this article. 

“How many more children have to die before this becomes too much for you?” he asked. 

“One child should have stopped the world on its axis. And absolutely one child from both sides, it isn’t appropriate what happened to the children who were taken on Oct. 7. It’s a crime as well, but that happened, and then 15,000 more children died,” he said. 

“At what point do we just recognize that, you know, everything needs to stop to come up with a solution because children are dying, and there’s nothing in the world that justifies that,” he said.

Before we finished talking, he gave me a quote for all of us to walk away with by the late James Baldwin.

“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.”