On 26 November 2024, pediatric intensive care physician Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan stood before a United Nations body not as a politician, not as an activist, but as a witness — a doctor who has repeatedly volunteered in Gaza’s hospitals and seen, with her own eyes, the devastating toll of war on children, families, and healthcare workers.
Her testimony was raw. It was unvarnished. It was deeply human.
“My name is Tanya Haj-Hassan. I am a pediatric intensive care doctor and have worked in Gaza many times over the past decade.”
She described herself not as an observer from afar, but as someone embedded in suffering — someone who has treated the wounded, witnessed the destruction of life and infrastructure alike, and held the hands of children as they died.
“You cannot witness what is happening in Gaza and not emerge enraged and determined to stop it.”
A Hospital Like No Other
Dr. Haj-Hassan did not speak abstractly. She spoke of real hospital wards, real families, and real children whose lives were erased:
“Spend just five minutes in a hospital there and it will become painfully clear that Palestinians are being intentionally massacred, starved, and stripped of everything needed to sustain life.”
This was not a humanitarian “crisis” in a generic sense, she implicitly argued — it was something much grimmer and more deliberate.
She spoke of “entire families eliminated, wiped off the civil registry.”
She spoke of children who had lost every adult who ever loved them:
“We have treated countless children who lost their entire families, a phenomenon so frequent in Gaza that they have been given a specific name:
Wounded Child — No Surviving Family.”
And she described one of the most haunting realities of all:
“We held the hands of children as they took their last breaths with no one but a stranger to comfort them.”
Those words — simple, chilling, unsparing — echo far beyond the walls of any clinic or conference room.
Not Just Patients — Colleagues
She wasn’t just speaking about civilians. She spoke of her own colleagues:
“Our healthcare and humanitarian colleagues are being killed in record numbers.”
She recalled her friend and fellow physician, Dr. Mohammed Ghanim, who cared for patients for more than 400 days under siege before he was killed by a quad-copter drone.
No bullet points. No euphemisms. Just the truth as she saw it — names, faces, human beings.
A Call to the World
The weight of her testimony was not simply to describe suffering, but to challenge the conscience of the international community. She reminded the world that:
“History has clearly shown us that doctors cannot stop genocide. This is why it’s called the ‘Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.’ And why I am here today.”
Her testimony laid before the global stage a stark moral reckoning: witnessing suffering is not enough. To bear witness carries responsibility. That responsibility, she argued, belongs not just to humanitarian workers or medical professionals, but to each of us — citizens, governments, and institutions alike.
Why This Matters
Dr. Haj-Hassan’s testimony was reported with emotional resonance worldwide, including scenes where another American surgeon broke down in tears while reading stories from Gaza doctors, underscoring the raw human impact of these narratives.
But beyond the emotional reaction lies something deeper — the testimony provides a first-hand medical account of what bombarded hospitals, isolated caregivers, and orphaned children are experiencing in Gaza.
Her words weren’t crafted for headlines; they were born from trauma, loss, and the kind of truth that refuses to remain silent.
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