This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Gaza. On Friday, an Israeli airstrike hit the home of a Palestinian pediatrician, killing nine of her 10 children. The children ranged in age from 7 months to 12 years old. Dr. Alaa al-Najjar was working in the emergency room at Nasser Medical Complex at the time of the attack on her home. Her husband Hamdi, who’s also a doctor, was seriously wounded in the strike, is now being treated at Nasser. Their 11-year-old son Adam survived but was also severely wounded.
By the time Dr. Alaa arrived at her home, emergency workers were pulling the charred bodies of her children out of the rubble. This is her brother-in-law, the uncle of her children, Ali al-Najjar, who also rushed to the scene.
ALI AL-NAJJAR: [translated] We searched through the rubble, calling from Yahya to Adam, “Answer us. Uncle. Is anyone there?” Not a single person beside us. Right next to us, my cousin rented three shops, or maybe two, tire repair shops. The fire had spread to the tires. And Civil Defense extended the hose to extinguish the flames, because the hose was at risk of collapsing from the fire. One of the shops was full of rubber tires. As we were trying to put out the fire, we were shocked to find the first charred body. …
They quickly continued extinguishing the fire, and we started pulling out charred bodies. One of the Civil Defense workers was handing me one of the bodies. She, who was standing next to me, recognized it. She said, “This is Reval. Give her to me.” Look at her instinct as a mother, as if her daughter were still alive. She asked to hold her in her arms. She’s a pediatrician. See the subconscious reaction? She wanted to embrace her daughter, forgetting that her daughter was burned in front of her eyes. We took those charred children and transferred them to Nasser Hospital. I took the doctor with me. She is now caught between the dead, her only surviving child and her husband, who is between life and death. May God grant her patience and grant us patience, too.
AMY GOODMAN: U.N. special rapporteur Francesca Albanese condemned the attack on the al-Najjar family, describing Israel’s targeting of families as a, quote, “distinguishable sadistic pattern of the new phase of the genocide,” unquote.
We go now to Gaza, where we’re joined by Dr. Graeme Groom, an orthopedic surgeon with the NHS — that’s the National Health Service — in London. He’s volunteering with the charity IDEALS at the Nasser Hospital in Gaza, where he treated Dr. Alaa al-Najjar’s sole surviving child, 11-year-old Adam.
We thank you so much for being with us, Dr. Groom. Can you describe the horror? What happened to the doctor’s family?
DR. GRAEME GROOM: Well, it’s difficult for me to describe the horror of what happened to his — to her family, because we were in the operating theater all day, and this little scrap of humanity arrived when we should have finished what we had planned to do. And poor Adam was sent up to us for us to remove his left arm.
I think we can imagine — or, perhaps, we can’t imagine — what it’s like for poor Dr. Alaa to go to work in the morning, but when she goes to bed at night, if she goes to bed at night, she has only two living members of her family. The rest are dead. And the two living ones are gravely injured and may be permanently damaged.
What we do in theater in this ghastly situation is that his little body is covered from top to toe in penetrating injuries. He is literally peppered. And, of course, the explosion makes him filthy. So the first thing is to clean him from top to toe and then look for other injuries. Now, the arm injury was bad enough. He also had a wrist injury on the same side. But the thing that made us worry about him is that he was bleeding from both ears, which means he may have had a fracture at the base of his skull, a laceration on his skull. He was unconscious, and so that a head injury would be a more significant and possibly permanent issue than his arm injury. But what we do with that is we clean it. We clean it. We stabilize the bone, and we remove the dead and devitalized tissue.
And I’m pleased to say that this poor little boy has — he has not recovered. That would not be a sensible word to use. But he is improving. So, when I saw him the following day, he was eating breakfast with his right hand.
When we could have a look at him properly, it was clear that he had a cranial nerve injury, so that one of the muscles to his right eye wasn’t working properly. When he tried to look to the right, it was as though he had a lazy eye. Now, fortunately, we’ve got an ophthalmologist here, and that is improving. But the significance of that is that people who are very, very close to explosions have what we call a traumatic brain injury. Their brains are scrambled, and their cognitive function may be permanently damaged. We will continue to work on his arm and his other injuries. Time will tell about his brain injury.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Dr. Groom, many people have speculated, the enormous number of medical personnel who’ve been killed by the Israelis, that they are targeting medical workers. What is your sense of, among the medical community that works there, your view of what the Israelis are doing to these folks who are seeking to save lives?
DR. GRAEME GROOM: We’ve heard that a lot. We’ve been coming to Gaza with our little charity for 16 years, and we’ve done a lot of training, so we know many of the doctors in my line, in orthopedic surgery. We’ve had seven fellows come to train with us in London — three surgeons, two nurses, two physiotherapists. The first of our fellows, in the context of targeting doctors, was arrested before Christmas 2023 and died in Israeli prison on the 19th of April, 2024. So, we have a personal involvement in this, in this view that medical workers are being targeted. Another of our very close colleagues is a superb surgeon, [inaudible], is in an Israeli prison. Nothing has been heard of him for many, many months, and we are all very fearful that he will suffer the same fate.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And the Israeli military —
DR. GRAEME GROOM: I should say that —
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes, Doctor, the Israeli military has reissued a wide evacuation warning for all of Rafah and Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. That’s where you are now. What are you seeing in terms of this major ground offensive of the Israelis?
DR. GRAEME GROOM: Well, earlier on, before this evacuation order, we were seeing a great increase in casualties. But we’re not now, because there’s no access to Nasser. The evacuation line has swept past us, but we’ve not been ordered to evacuate, so we are a little island in the midst of the Red Zone. We will wait and see.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Graeme, I wanted — Dr. Graeme Groom, I wanted to ask you about another doctor. In 2024, the prominent Palestinian orthopedic surgeon Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, was killed by torture after being detained by Israeli forces for over four months at the Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank. He was head of orthopedics at Al-Shifa Hospital but was arrested by Israeli soldiers when he was temporarily providing care at Al-Awda Hospital in Jabaliya, in the north of Gaza. Dr. Groom, Dr. Adnan al-Bursh was a fellow in your training program for limb reconstruction? Was that in London? And can you tell us more about him?
DR. GRAEME GROOM: Well, he was — yes, he was. I didn’t name him because it may be a distraction. But, yes, he was a lovely fellow. He came to us not within our limb reconstruction training program, not within the British one, but as an additional fellowship which was funded separately. He was with us for six months. He was a delightful fellow. He was extremely enthusiastic. He sat at our table. He was — he loved every moment of his time in London. And we loved him, because he was such an admirable, lovely fellow. And we grieve for his family and his six children now that he’s gone.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Dr. Groom, you work with the National Health Service in London typically. And last week, the United Kingdom suspended trade talks with Israel and said it will impose sanctions on West Bank illegal settlers. The British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called Israel’s announcement that it would allow a small quantity of food into Gaza as “totally and utterly inadequate.” What more would you like to see the world do right now about the situation in Gaza?
DR. GRAEME GROOM: I would want firm pressure to stop the slaughter of the innocents. Only a tiny proportion of the people killed have any relation to Hamas. There is a mighty military machine that is seeking to defeat a nimble and elusive foe. And between them, there’s this huge number of civilians who are totally uninvolved, but they are the ones who are being attacked. They’re the ones who are being killed. They are defenseless and almost entirely blameless. And I would like the world to say, “Stop.”
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, I wanted to ask you about this latest news of this nonprofit backed by Israel and the U.S. which began distributing this limited amount of aid in Gaza, despite objections from the U.N., which says the mission could force the further displacement of Palestinians and likely violates international humanitarian law. Groups like Mercy Corps, Save the Children have distanced themselves from it. It’s called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. It began operations just hours after its executive director, approved by Israel and the U.S., Jake Wood, resigned. He wrote in a statement, calling for Israel to allow more aid into Gaza, adding, “It is clear that it is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon,” he said as he resigned. If you can talk about what that means as you treat people, when people are starving, I mean, even people who are starving, who are burned, the inability to graft skin onto them because their skin won’t tolerate it?
DR. GRAEME GROOM: I think those are two separate issues. I must say, I read his statement. I’m full of admiration for him. I entirely support his position. I think it is impossible to be consistent with the principles of international humanitarian aid in the context of this new organization. And, of course, it’s unnecessary. There is another — there is another agenda. But we’re moving from the humanitarian into the political, and I’m not a politician. I’m a doctor.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I thank you so much for being there. You’re also, to say the least, extremely brave. Dr. Graeme Groom, orthopedic surgeon with the NHS, the National Health Service, in London, volunteering with the charity IDEALS at the Nasser Hospital in Gaza in Khan Younis, where he treated Dr. Alaa al-Najjar’s sole surviving child, 11-year-old Adam. Dr. Alaa al-Najjar’s other nine children were just killed in an Israeli airstrike on her home. Her husband had just taken her to work. He, too, is a doctor. He arrived home, and the blast took place. He, too, is in intensive care.
Coming up, we look at President Trump’s escalating war on Harvard University as he attempts to block almost a third of the student body, the international students, from attending the school. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Malian singer Khaira Arby in our Democracy Now! studio.
