Good morning, this is Michelle. After 16 months of war and barely two months of reprieve, Israeli bombs have started raining down on Gaza again this week, bringing relief operations to a grinding halt.
War surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah, who tended to the wounded in Gaza at the start of the war in 2023, was in Geneva last week for the screening of a documentary that captures his harrowing experiences on the ground.
We spoke to him about his duty of care, which he says goes beyond the operating table, and his dismay at the relentless killings. |
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War surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah at the screening of the film A A State of Passion at the International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights in Geneva, 8 March 2025. The documentary portrays his advocacy to raise awareness about the war in Gaza through his experience there as a war surgeon. (FIFDH/Manon Volan)
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On 8 October 2023, Ghassan Abu-Sittah entered the Gaza Strip like he had done many times before during conflict flare-ups. What he witnessed there shook him like never before. For 43 harrowing days, amid relentless bombardment, the plastic surgeon amputated limbs and operated, often without anaesthesia. He recalled the “soul-destroying” screams of children and parents. “Everyone knew that if we didn’t act, the child would die from infection by day’s end.”
Since then, the 56-year-old has campaigned tirelessly to shedding light on a war that has killed over 50,000 Palestinians and 1,700 Israelis – a journey captured in Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi’s 2024 documentary, A State of Passion, presented at the Geneva human rights film festival, FIFDH, last week. Geneva Solutions met Abu-Sittah during the brief two-month ceasefire.
Read the full story on Geneva Solutions.
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