A volunteer doctor has shared the heartbreaking choices he has made trying to save lives as bodies flooded hospitals in Gaza, in a push for the Australian government to do more to help Palestinians.
Dr Mohammed Mustafa detailed some of the horrors he saw on two missions in the war-torn occupied Palestinian territory as he tries to get government support to help build a mobile children’s hospital there.
The Australian-British Palestinian last night told hundreds in Parliament House’s great hall and thousands more watching online that the first time he ever saw “my home, Palestine” was when he arrived to volunteer in June 2024.
He spoke of working in a hospital with no ventilators or even thermometers and trying to work out who to treat and how to treat them when so many people were being killed and hurt.
“It’s difficult. How do you deal with a mass casualty event when you have to step over children that are bleeding out to death, but you know you don’t have the medical resources and equipment to save their lives so you have to leave them to die?” he said.
“It’s difficult when those same children look like you.
“It’s difficult when you are scooping up part of the brain of a child and wrapping it up in a bandage to show the mother so that they can bury their child.”
It was difficult, he said, to see those deaths treated as a political issue.
“It’s not. Killing women and children is wrong, no matter if it’s Palestinian children and women or Israeli,” the doctor said.
As if to underscore that point, he read out a message from the family of one of the hostages still being held by Hamas almost 600 days after the militant group’s deadly October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
“The hostages’ cause is also an urgent humanitarian issue,” he said.
Hamas-led militants killed some 1200 people and abducted 251 people.
About a third of whom are believed to be alive, after most of the rest were released.
Israel’s 19-month offensive in retaliation has killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, destroyed vast areas of Gaza and displaced about 90 per cent of the territory’s population.
A months-long aid blockage by Israel, which has eased slightly in recent days amid controversy over who will distribute the supplies as Israel seeks to exclude groups currently operating in the territory, has further stoked concerns about illness and famine.
Mustafa told of the heartbreak of watching a man repeat the words “my girls” before he died on the bed of the hospital’s only CT scanner.
He spoke of the guilt he felt after getting another injured woman off the machine so he could scan the man’s three daughters first.
“She’s also someone’s daughter, but I felt so guilty that they’d lost a father, that I made them stop scanning her and to scan these kids,” he said.
He now genuinely believes in his plan to set up a paediatric facility in Gaza, with Australia’s help.
“I think that we can bring a children’s hospital to Gaza, and I think that we can do it with the Australian government and with the Australian people,” Mustafa said.
“And I think what this children’s hospital does is it doesn’t just heal the children in Gaza, it heals us as a society.”
Pressure has been growing on the Australian government to do more, both to impose sanctions over the war and continued aid blockade, and to help suffering Palestinians.
“I think if the horror unfolding in Gaza is not our country’s red line for stronger action then I don’t know what is,” Pocock said last night.
Labor former minister Ed Husic, who can now speak his mind more freely after being relegated to the backbench, called on the Israeli ambassador to be summoned and for Australia to consider applying targeted sanctions on Israel, as well as increasing aid.
He also praised Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s latest, stronger, condemnation of Israel’s actions.
“Israel’s actions are completely unacceptable,” the Labor leader said this week.
“It is outrageous for there to be a blockade of food and supplies to people in need in Gaza.”
Labor’s longest-serving foreign minister, Gareth Evans, echoed the calls for targeted sanctions and suggested the federal recognise Palestinian statehood within weeks.
“By far the strongest message Australia could send would be to announce at next month’s critical UN high-level conference that we are immediately recognising Palestinian statehood: not just as the final outcome of a political settlement but as a way of kick-starting it,” the former minister told The Sydney Morning Herald.
“Recognition is ALP policy, and Penny Wong and her colleagues have been wrestling only with the timing – and the timing now is absolutely right.”
