Opinion Today: A wrenching look inside Gaza’s hospitals

A surgeon who volunteered there shows what's at stake.

View in browser|nytimes.com May 21, 2024 SUPPORTED BY AMERICA MAGAZINE By Adam B. Ellick Executive Director, Opinion Video In February, I approached Dr. Samer Attar, a surgeon in Chicago, as he prepared for a volunteer medical mission to Gaza. He is a war zone medic who previously volunteered to treat patients in Syria, Ukraine and Iraq. It would be his second trip to Gaza, and I wanted to propose a collaboration with Opinion Video. His trip, I thought, could offer our viewers access to hospitals largely cut off from international media and the world. I wondered what a collapsed medical system looked like on the ground and how more civilian lives could be saved. Attar said that his video experience was minimal. I asked him if he'd be willing to take a crash course from our Opinion Video team to learn how to document his experience — that is, when he wasn't busy performing lifesaving surgeries. He declined. He was uneasy about being a central character in a film that, he said, should feature only Gazan doctors and patients. But by the time he returned from that trip to Gaza, he'd had a change of heart. The war was so dire that it must be documented and must be seen, he told me. The war that people outside the territory were seeing was a largely sanitized version, he said, and he wanted to do whatever he could to show the world the reality he had experienced. Just before Attar's third mission to Gaza, in late March, Amanda Su, an Opinion Video producer, met him at his home in Chicago and gave him a video tutorial. The result: more than 10 hours of raw smartphone video from inside Gaza's ravaged hospitals. The footage is gruesome and difficult to watch. This war, Attar said, was the most brutal of all the conflicts he had witnessed. In the resulting video, co-produced and edited by Alexander Stockton, which we published today, Attar argues that there are three tangible terms of any meaningful cease-fire that would save thousands of civilian lives. They are medical in nature, not political, and they are nonnegotiable, he says. This film is not easy viewing — and this version shows only a small amount of the footage he recorded. This is the warzone Attar wants you to see. Watch the video here: Two Weeks Inside Gaza's Ruined Hospitals Dr. Samer Attar, an American surgeon, shows the unfathomable brutality of the war in Gaza. By Samer Attar, Alexander Stockton and Amanda Su A MESSAGE FROM AMERICA MAGAZINE A Catholic President and a Jesuit Pope How does Joe Biden's Catholic faith influence his politics? How is Pope Francis changing the Catholic Church? Get a Jesuit perspective from America magazine. For over 100 years, America magazine has bridged the gap between the Catholic Church and global issues. With theological essays, political analysis, book reviews and more, America interprets the world for the church and the church for the world. From Congress to the Vatican: Get a smart, refreshing Catholic take on the news. Subscribe for $1 Here's what we're focusing on today: Editors' Picks Simon Bailly Guest Essay The Real Danger if Trump Is Reelected He could convert the United States from a dominant economic and military power into something he purports to abhor — a global loser. By Jacob Heilbrunn More From Opinion Jamelle Bouie Justice Alito Is a True Believer It is comforting to think that the red meat is for someone else. By Jamelle Bouie Michelle Goldberg Trump Could Soon Be a Felon. Does It Matter? A strange sense of anticlimax hangs over the Trump trial. By Michelle Goldberg Jesse Wegman There's No Sense of Shame at the Supreme Court Congress and the judiciary can no longer allow a few justices to trample on the court's reputation. By Jesse Wegman Guest Essay With I.C.C. 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