“I am not a hero. I am terrified” – Palestinian doctor on the horrors of Israel’s genocide

Palestinian doctor Ali Tahrawi, who has so far survived Israel’s genocide and its targeting of healthcare workers, has published a moving, harrowing message to the world – and to its ‘leaders’ who collaborate in Israel’s genocide.

Ali Tahrawi: I am terrified

I am not a hero. I am terrified, terrorized; as I sit on my couch, watching a drone gets closer to my house. I feel unbearably helpless before my dying patients. Countless times, I’ve failed to piece together the shattered bodies of children.

I am a human being, abandoned by other humans; left to be torn apart by mad beasts and forced to beg for mercy from a pig, a butcher, who has unleashed hell on me and my family. What a sick, unbearable joke.

Gaza is being wiped out as I write this. The explosions haven’t stopped since morning, and the sky’s been all day thick with smoke. And that yellow coward [Trump] claims to be Gaza’s “peace man”? No; you are cursed by everyone in Gaza: by all the mothers, all the children, and every soul burned by the hell you’ve unleashed upon us.

A nurse was shot this morning in the head by occupation forces while on duty at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. His name is Marwan Abdeen.

My neighbour Ahmad, who suffered a head injury in the market attack, died this morning.

Three young men; my closest neighbours; Abood, Sari, and Ahmad, were all martyred in a single day, in separate attacks.

May they rest in peace. And may those who killed them rot in hell.

I’m going now to offer condolences to Ahmad’s family. Two days ago, on my way to the hospital, I offered condolences to Sari’s family.

But there’s no one left from Abood’s family to console; they were all martyred. Gaza’s sky is never free of smoke, nor of souls rising.

Ahmad’s brother told me they had to carry him from the market, through our street, to reach the hospital. He also told me that Ahmad had just welcomed a baby daughter one week ago.

Ahmad had been planning to evacuate with his mother, who suffers from brain tumours and a stroke, and who
can’t even find paracetamol for her headaches

Ali Tahrawi closed his message with some words for fascist US president Donald Trump and his supporters:

Trump [said]: “I challenge the Palestinians to take responsibility for their destiny, because this is what we are offering them; we are giving them responsibility for their destiny.”

Damn you, and every corrupt leader like you. You turned our homeland into hell, and now you pretend to care about our lives; even daring to say that if we are erased, it will be our responsibility, simply because we demand justice before peace.

Damn you and your so-called peace. Damn your nations that failed to save mine.

World, I speak with absolute honesty: what is happening to us in Gaza is far worse than genocide, far worse than hell. It’s indescribable. They are killing everyone and destroying everything at a speed we’ve never seen before; all because Trump wanted to brand himself a “man of peace.”

And I have a message for you, Mr. Trump: fuck you. Fuck every Arab and Muslim leader who stood by in silence and now dares to pretend that Israel and the US want peace for us. Fuck all the cowardly leaders who are talking about you like if you were a god, offering us mercy and redemption.

And fuck anyone who ever believed you were a man of peace. I curse this complicit world.