The Gaza neurosurgeon had a very difficult decision to make

What Happens to the Gaza Neurosurgeon Who Fashed a Wrecking Decision: A Palestinian Perspective on Israel’s Genocide

He doesn’t let his kids watch the news, but when they are not around he and his wife tune in. It is unbearable. But we really can’t turn away from it,” he says.

He says that exiting Gaza is God’s plan for him. I was saved from a genocide, and even though I am abroad I can help my family and patients through remote medical consultations and financial support. (The Israeli government has strongly denied accusations that it has violated the convention against genocide.)

When Israeli forces encircled Al-Shifa, Abukhedeir believed that his family was in danger and recognized that he was unable to serve his patients due to the lack of medical resources. So, he made the difficult decision to leave his homeland with his young family – taking advantage of their foreign passports to depart.

His wife and five young children, including a then 6-month-old baby, moved into a single room at the hospital with him after they felt their home became unsafe due to Israeli airstrikes.

At his new job in the UAE, he has had to start from ground zero. He needs to establish a name for himself and build a referral system for patients to come.

Their new life holds promise: as in Gaza, the main language is Arabic, there are nice places for his kids to go to and some restaurants that serve familiar Middle Eastern food. But he does not have the appetite for any of it.

Source: Whatever happened to … the Gaza neurosurgeon who faced a wrenching decision

The Life and Times of Abukhedeir a Latif’e: Loss of his Dad and His Mom

Even though he previously held a medical license to practice in the UAE, it took four months of waiting and paperwork for Abukhedeir to get permission to practice at a private medical center in the city of Al-Ain.

“He was one of the most diligent young men in the family. He was a third year computer science student in college. He loved his work and was full of passion and energy,” Abukhedeir says. All of that is gone. He can’t use his hands to work on computers. And it pains me that I can’t do anything about it.”

He lost his ear, can’t properly use his legs, as well as being unable to move his hands due to contractures, a condition where burn scars grow and begin to tighten, preventing movement of the affected area. The situation weighs heavily on him.

Farah Yousry is the managing editor of Side Effects Public Media, a health reporting collaboration of NPR member stations across the Midwest, based at WFYI in Indianapolis. Previously, she reported for BBC News’ Arabic radio and television covering a wide array of stories from the U.S. She has also worked as a journalist in Egypt, where she covered the Arab Spring.

A Palestinian Girl in Gaza Goes Viral: The Body of the Girl Whose Rolling Roller Skates Walks in a Graveyard

For nearly a year, hundreds of pictures of dead and injured children have poured out of the Gaza Strip.

One photo stands out this week, it shows the body of a girl covered in a white shroud and wearing pink roller skates. It’s been widely shared on social media, quickling becoming another defining image of the war in Gaza — a place UNICEF has called “a graveyard for children.”

The war lasted 332 days and did not end until the boy was a teenager. She and her family had fled on foot from one place to another eight times in the past 11 months, sometimes in the middle of the night.

“She’d say to me: Baba, why can’t we live like the other kids?”, her father, Hussam Abu Ajwa, tells NPR over the phone from Gaza City, the day after her death.

It was nearly 5 p.m. on Tuesday when the young girl headed downstairs to catch up with her 12-year-old brother, Salah, to play outside. Just as Tala reached the ground floor, an explosion rocked the building.

Shrapnel sliced through the air, piercing her neck. An Israeli airstrike had struck an apartment in the building belonging to the Kiheel family, her father says.

She died at the entrance of the building. He says he heard the airstrike and went down to look for her. It was a scene of carnage. She passed away within a few minutes.

Source: Killed in her pink roller skates, a Palestinian girl’s photo in Gaza goes viral

A Palestinian Girl’s Photo in Gaza Goes Viral: She Weeps with a Man Crumpled and Embarrased in the Shocked

The Israeli military says it takes precautions to limit civilian deaths in its hunt for Hamas, the group that launched the Oct. 7 attack that Israel says killed around 1,200 people.

At the hospital, photos show Tala still wearing her pink roller skates as her body’s covered in a white shroud. The man handed the skates off to her father. He was shown weeping in disbelief in the video. There is a woman crumpled over another person’s body.

“We’re all shocked. Her father says that they never imagined it. My other children are not prepared for this. It makes him feel like a nightmare. “Her mom, may God give her fortitude, is dazed.. She can’t believe what happened.

A neighbor’s toddler son and a family with three young children were among the 8 people who were killed in the airstrike.

The high school chemistry teacher was Abu Ajwa. His job meant he could afford the basics and some extras to lavish onto his eldest daughter, Tala.

Source: Killed in her pink roller skates, a Palestinian girl’s photo in Gaza goes viral

She died a year before she died. A memory of her mother, Abu Ajwa, and her younger brother Abu, who had a baby before the war

“Those roller skates she was wearing, she’d really wanted me to buy them,” he says. She died as a result of me getting them for her, praise be to God. The stairs to play on.

For most of her life, she was the middle child, wedged between two brothers, until her youngest sibling, a sister, was born a year ago.

The father shared pictures of the life before the war with NPR. In one, Tala’s got her arms wrapped around her dad’s neck in a pool. She has dolled up in a variety of costumes in other places. She is laughing and caked in foam.

She would ask me, why do we live like that? He said he would tell her that when the war was over, God would reward her.

The day before she died, Abu Ajwa says his daughter told him she dreamed of becoming a dentist and going back to school. The U.N. says most of Gaza’s schools have been destroyed or damaged in the war. Children haven’t been in school in nearly a year, with classrooms turned into crowded shelters for displaced families with nowhere else to go.

Tala also had one wish for September: She needed to distract from the war by having a birthday party for her younger brother. He promised to try.