“Tell the World What’s Happening Here,” Say Patients in Gaza
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Deconstructed Podcast
Dr. Mohammed Khaleel recounts his experience serving patients, mostly children and young adults with blasts injuries and bullet wounds.

“There were kids in the ICU that had bullet wounds to the chest or bullet wounds to the head,” Dr. Mohammed “Adeel” Khaleel recounts the harrowing scenes from his recent medical mission in Gaza to Ryan Grim on Deconstructed this week. An orthopedic spine surgeon hailing from Dallas, Texas, Khaleel witnessed firsthand the crushing toll on human life amid the rubble of decimated hospital infrastructure. Despite the overwhelming challenges, Khaleel highlights the unwavering dedication of medical personnel committed to providing whatever aid they can through the devastation. He returned back to the U.S. with a message from patients and doctors in Gaza: “Don’t forget us.”

[Deconstructed theme music.]

Ryan Grim: Welcome back to Deconstructed. I’m Ryan Grim.

Today, we’re going to be talking with Mohammed Khaleel, a doctor from Texas who just returned from a medical mission to Gaza. A husband and father of four, Dr. Khaleel is a spine surgeon in Dallas, but handled all manner of trauma while at the European hospital in Gaza this month. It’s effectively the only one not yet destroyed by the Israeli assault.

Dr. Khaleel told me that he would often ask people in Gaza what we back here in the States could do to help, and the answer was always the same: don’t forget us. Tell the world what is happening. It’s a sign of faith in humanity, the belief that if only enough people know what’s going on, the world won’t stand for it.

I don’t know if that’s true. But, if the Palestinians in Gaza can remain hopeful, the least we can do is try to spread the word.

Dr. Khaleel joined us from a medical facility in Dallas. Here’s our conversation.

RG: Dr. Mohammed Khaleel, welcome to Deconstructed.

Mohammed Khaleel: Thank you for having me.

RG: So, when did you get back from Gaza?

MK: We actually got back on April 11, I was there for about a week. We initially planned to be there for ten days, but we had some delays getting in, so we spent about a week at the beginning of April.

RG: And you were at the European Hospital in Khan Yunis. Is that correct?

MK: Exactly.

RG: Before we get into the work that you did as a surgeon, as a medical provider there, what were the conditions like where you stayed? Did you stay in a tent? Did they have rooms inside the hospital where visiting doctors could stay? Like, what’s the situation on the ground?

MK: They do have some rooms, like call rooms, where doctors can stay. Through the organization that I went with, FAJR Scientific, they had arranged a safe house, it was about three kilometers away. And so, that was the initial plan, was to stay in the safe house. But it took a while to try to travel between the safe house and the hospital, because you had to get clearance to start the trip, and then you had to go to a holding point, and get clearance again to get to the hospital.

So, most of the days we ended up staying in the hospital. We actually slept on the floor in the hospital CEO’s office, because the call rooms were taken when we initially got there. It’s a difficult situation with the overwhelming of the hospital system. There’s about 35,000 refugees living on the hospital campus. So, anywhere that you go in the hospital, in the hallways, there’s people sleeping. The ceiling tiles are kind of falling because people are hanging curtains from the ceiling tiles to make [makeshift] tents.

And so, it’s a very overwhelmed system, but they accommodated us in the administrative offices.

RG: And what’s the food and water situation like there?

MK: So, we actually brought in some water for the team, because we traveled through Cairo, so we made some purchases of some emergency-type food packages and water through Cairo. The actual water in the hospital we tried to avoid, in an attempt not to get sick. But I think, unfortunately for a lot of people staying on campus, they are relying on that water, which may not be clean.

With the hospital system being overwhelmed, you could actually smell raw sewage in certain parts of the hospital where there were pipe leaks and stuff. Unfortunately, the people staying in those parts of the hall had to just kind of put up with the smell.

RG: What about food? You brought enough for yourself the entire stay. I’m curious, what about the tens of thousands of people in the hospital grounds itself. What was their access to the food like?

MK: When we drive in, there are miles and miles of trucks just stopped at the border that are not able to bring food aid in.

RG: You said “miles and miles?”

MK: Yeah, there were thousands of trucks parked outside the border, and you pass by those going in. But doctors bring in — as part of their medical team — they are generally able to get in through the Rafah border. And so, every one of the teams that went in brought a lot of bags.

So, we brought about 80 to 90 suitcases full of medical supplies. But then, also, emergency food packets for people. Infant formula, feminine supplies, those basic necessities were also part of the luggage that we brought in.

The food situation, I mean, it does seem like there’s scarcity at every level. I think the team that we went with, they had—FAJR Scientific had done a couple of medical missions in the past before the war. And so, that was one of the comments that a lot of the surgeons were making, is how much weight the residents and the doctors have lost. And then the people living on the hospital campus, it’s really just you trying to get what you can.

The holy month of Ramadan was going on while we were there, so people were fasting, during the daytime we were all fasting. But to break fast, it is possible to get some basic supplies like rice and some food items, but it’s just, the pricing is incredibly inflationary.

So, our plan was to actually have a cow, and do like a— Typically, people will butcher a cow at the end of Ramadan and give the meat out to people in need. But what would normally cost about a thousand to twelve hundred dollars for a cow is about five thousand. But, when we got there, there were no cows to actually butcher. So, we ended up doing food packets for the people with that money, which was basically rice and chicken.

RG: And you said the residents and the medical staff had been losing weight, they were talking about having lost weight recently. Was it noticeable, or because Ramadan was going on and people in general weren’t eating during the day, [as if] it was something you didn’t really see until later?

MK: No, I think this was a significant amount of weight loss. Like, generally for Ramadan, you may lose a few pounds here and there, a lot of people don’t lose much weight. A couple of the residents in particular, the guys that were there the prior year, would give them a hug and say— They were talking about it. They’ve lost about 30, 40 pounds, because you may have to skip meals for days at a time, sometimes

RG: What were the medical services like? What do you remember the most from your interaction with patients?

MK: Yeah. The hospital infrastructure is completely collapsed. The European Gaza Hospital is probably the last standing tertiary-level hospital. So we had things that were referred to the hospital treated there, more complex types of surgeries. There are a few field hospitals still running, like al-Aqsa Martyrs and Al-Awda further up north, but European Gaza is kind of the main hospital where we’re seeing revision-type work.

A number of the patients that we saw had ex-fixes in place, or external fixators, which are pins going into the bone with carbon fiber rods attached to them to kind of hold the bony fragments in somewhat approximation, but with the plan of definitive treatment when the patient’s more stable or their wounds have healed somewhat. So, that was a bit of the work that we were doing, was trying to revise things so that people could actually walk. Because on those external fixators, you can’t typically bear weight on those.

And so, it was frustrating to indicate some patients for surgery. And then, I know that on a number of occasions, we had a full schedule that day, and so, we would tell the residents, this patient’s going to go tomorrow. But then, tomorrow would roll around and they couldn’t find the patient anymore, because they probably got lost in that sea of refugees, the 35,000 people staying on campus.

RG: What kind of patients did you treat?

MK: My specialty is spine surgery. I did one spine case. The majority of it was orthopedic trauma. I [did] my fellowship at Harvard, but I did my residency at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, and we get a ton of trauma experience there. So, that’s what all of us basically relied on.

So, converting external fixators to internal fixation for definitive treatment, and then the acute injuries did require some placement of external fixators, closure of wounds. One particular patient that really got to me was a kid that was about six or seven years old. He had an external fixator on his right arm, external fixator on his left leg, and then, on the right leg, he had a below-knee amputation that we were trying to clean up and get closed. He’d already been in the hospital for a few weeks, and it was just heartbreaking to see this kid wearing a diaper with a cartoon elephant on it, wearing a kid’s diaper with injuries that you would expect to see in an adult, maybe with a motorcycle accident or something.

And so, the amount of kids that we saw was really the most heartbreaking thing. Like, there were kids in the ICU that had bullet wounds to the chest or bullet wounds to the head and, because of how young they are, patients are often able to survive these injuries, but it’s a lot of supportive care. And then it overwhelms the system, because anybody that needs to be in the hospital for an extended period of time occupies a bed that someone else doesn’t have access to.

So, after a few of these surgeries, I remember we were putting patients onto hard gurneys, because there were no mattresses left.

RG: In general, what kind of people were coming in there with injuries? Is it mostly children? And how are the injuries occurring?

MK: So, a number of them are blast injuries, people that have been injured in either the blast itself or the rubble that has resulted from it. There are a lot of children, but there are also a lot of young adults. Not as many elderly patients as one would expect; it was mostly children and young adults. That is a large portion of the population there.

Unfortunately, talking to some other teams that have gone there were more of a medical focus than a surgical focus, they saw a number of elderly patients unfortunately expire. I don’t know if they had the reserve to do all the displacement, and moving, and deal with the medical problems.

So, a number of the patients that we saw several months into this war were younger patients. And there were gunshot wounds, blast injuries. That was probably the majority of what we saw.

RG: Did you talk to any of the children about how they got shot?

MK: Yeah. So, a number of them, these were high caliber bullets. So, the children weren’t really the best historians, but their parents would explain that they were— It sounds like it was either sniper fire— I mean, most of them did not actually see the soldiers at point blank range or anything like that. These are high caliber bullets that kind of came from a distance.

RG: That’s why I ask, because there was a Guardian report somewhat recently that said that doctors were seeing this in hospitals in Gaza, sniper bullets hitting children in the chest and in the head, in ways that led a lot of these doctors to question, how this could have happened other than deliberately, other than as if it was just target practice on children. A lot of the instances that the Guardian wrote about, it would be just a couple children playing in the street alone, with nobody nearby that could explain some type of missed shot or mistaken identity.

What did the parents that you talked to understand about how their children had come to get attacked?

MK: I think, unfortunately, for a lot of the parents, they are— I mean, they’re heartbroken. You’ve had the highest court in the world suggest a plausible genocide. For the people on the ground, they firmly believe that this is a genocide, and so, they feel that their kids were targeted.

A number of them were playing in an area where you would expect kids to be allowed to play. Some of them were playing in the rubble, and what remained of these homes and complexes. They believe that their children were targeted. A lot of the adults that you talk to feel that this is a war on children, and that the injuries are intended to kill and to maim.

RG: What are the other doctors who’ve been there for months now — or had been there or who lived there — what did you gather from them about their experience?

MK: We actually ended up working with some of the doctors that were displaced from Al-Shifa Hospital. And I know one doctor, Dr. Munther, he’s an orthopedic surgeon in Al-Shifa, and he’d been displaced to European Gaza, to the Khan Yunis area. And he was explaining how his home is destroyed, he’s lost family members. He felt that the destruction of Al-Shifa hospital was more heartbreaking to him than the destruction of his own home, because he was like, his home will eventually be rebuilt. But with the destruction of Al-Shifa— I mean, I guess that was the largest and most advanced hospital in Gaza? And he was just saying that the resources that were lost there will probably never be able to be replaced, at least in his lifetime.

That was one of the remarkable things about going over there. It’s very humbling to see what these providers are dealing with. I mean, they haven’t been paid in months, they’re literally volunteering to care for other people. Some of the medical students, one of the young ladies that we worked with, her medical school has been destroyed. There is no record of her first three years of medical school, she doesn’t even know who to contact to try to get documentation of that, but she’s just coming to the hospital and volunteering, and she scrubbed into a number of cases with us. And it was just remarkable to see how far ahead they are in their training; I mean, for a third-year medical student.

We had one case where a patient had bilateral tibia fractures and a humerus fracture. And when we fixed one limb, we moved on to the next limb, and she sewed up all the wounds pretty efficiently. I mean, that’s something that [makes up] the type of training people get later on in med school.

So, the resolve that some of these providers have is really incredible. And I think they’re kind of in a situation where they said it’s better to just come to the hospital and help than to be stuck in their tent just lamenting the situation.

RG: There’s also been an increasing number of reports in the last couple of days of newly discovered mass graves at different hospital sites around Gaza. Some of those we saw in reporting in the past were created and dug by Gazan doctors and medical personnel themselves, because there was no other way to handle treatment. Others are reported to have been dug by IDF soldiers.

Did you hear anything about these mass graves? And what was the situation if somebody died in your care?

MK: I think the mass graves situation, some of it may be just the only way to safely dispose of the corpses. But the perception that we got from some of the doctors that were up north at Al-Shifa and Al-Nasser in particular was that they felt that they were being targeted, and that the hospital, which would normally be a safe environment, is no longer safe.

So, it was actually kind of chilling to hear some of them discuss how they appreciated the European and the American teams being there, and they were very welcoming and generous while we were there. But they knew that once we stopped showing up that the European Gaza Hospital was going to be destroyed next.

And so, they’re anticipating either getting some heads-up and leaving. But yeah. I know one of the doctors in particular said that the notice to leave Al-Shifa was not feasible to get people out. So, a lot of the people that left Al-Shifa before that got destroyed were the refugees that were on campus that were able to walk away. But a lot of the patients, a lot of the doctors that were taking care of those patients, they couldn’t leave immediately. And so, they were lost.

RG: My colleague Jeremy Scahill had heard from some medical personnel at other hospitals that, when IDF soldiers were coming in, some doctors were taking off scrubs and were putting on more civilian clothes, and that they felt that being dressed as a medical personnel actually made them more of a target. And so, they did everything they could to kind of blend in with the crowd.

Did you hear anything from Dr. Munther or others who came from Al-Shifa, does that sound accurate? Because when I first heard that, I was like, that’s the most ghoulish thing I’ve ever heard. That wearing scrubs wouldn’t protect you, but it would actually make you more of a target.

MK: That’s consistent with what they were relaying.

So, that doctor in particular, I asked him if he’d feel comfortable making a video, if I just recorded his story. And that’s, specifically, he said he didn’t feel so comfortable relaying his story as if it was that bad, because he told me the story of his colleague in the orthopedic department who had passed his boards a year prior. And now, one year being board certified, he was targeted, sustained a bullet wound to his spine, is now paraplegic, has lost his entire family, and had to get transferred out for care. And so, he was like, when you compare that story to my story of getting out, there’s no comparison.

So, I think a number of the doctors there felt that they were targets for attack, and that’s specifically one of the reasons that they felt having foreign nationals in the hospital was probably more protective than anything else. Because just being a doctor was not going to be protective.

RG: And so, they now feel that now that you and some other foreign national doctors have left, that the European Hospital will be next on the chopping block?

MK: That’s the overwhelming feeling. The resolve is remarkable. I mean, they talk about it pretty frankly that, you know, this is next.

There’s been communications from the Israeli leadership that it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. And I think the people on the ground are totally convinced of that, that Rafah will be next.

And so, they don’t know if that’s going to mean having to move back up north; there’s very limited ability to live anywhere up north. Some of the teams that were with other groups — I mean, we connected with all the surgeons that were there — and there were a number of different groups there at the same time. But the day before they left, some of the groups from the north stopped by European Gaza Hospital before going back to Cairo, and they were just relaying some of the pictures and the videos that they took. I mean, it is completely destroyed up north, the entire cities are flattened.

And so, the people in Rafah, a number of them don’t know if it’s going to be feasible to go back up north, but they assume that that’s where they’ll have to go whenever Rafah gets invaded. Or, I think they’ve reserved themselves to the idea that there may not be anywhere to go.

RG: What makes this war unique — certainly, in our lifetimes, and maybe multiple lifetimes — is that Russia brutally invades Ukraine, for instance, and you see people fleeing into Poland, Romania, the rest of Western Europe. This is the first time that people haven’t been able to flee from the fighting.

MK: Exactly.

RG: Just stuck there for months and months and months on end. They can move somewhat around, from Gaza City to Khan Yunis, Khan Yunis to Rafah. But, like you said, what are people hoping that they’re able to do?

MK: We had discussions with a couple of doctors that were trying to ask about the possibilities of getting out and continuing medical training. But the majority of them, they’re like, once the war is over, we’ll continue if. If we can’t continue, then it is what it is.

I think, for a number of them, there’s no getting around the fact that— The times where you would hear the bombings and the gunshots most frequently were at the times of prayer, where people were congregated together. And so, as far as the population there is concerned, this is a targeted effort for ethnic cleansing. And so, they’re like, if that is the price that we pay, then that is what it is.

I think a number of them don’t expect to be able to get into Egypt if those borders open up. It’s a controversial thing. You talk to people who say, this is our home, we don’t intend to leave. And then you talk to some people that would say, we would leave if we could.

And a number of the doctors, unfortunately, have left. That is another strain on the medical system. But that was the discussion that they were having among the physicians when we were all sitting around to eat, is that it’s heroic in the sense that some people stay and continue to provide medical care, but it’s also, in some ways, heroic to try to get your family out.

And so, I think it requires a lot of resources to try to get out, which a lot of people just don’t have. I mean, I think, currently the discussion was that it’s about $5,000 American to try to get someone through the Rafah border. That’s just money that people don’t necessarily have.

And everything is in American. It’s wild that there’s no discussion of other currency. When we were talking about getting a cow for Ramadan, that was $5,000 American, not in any other sort of currency. And that’s one of the most heartbreaking — we actually took a video of it — one of the most heartbreaking scenes was when we were leaving, the day that we were leaving Rafah. There was a kid just crying and waving through the window, and you can see his father on the sidewalk trying not to cry; you know, he’s sending his wife and kids out, to try to get to safety.

And then, the driver that we had to get us from the border back to Cairo, that’s what he was explaining, was that a lot of these people that are getting out are women and children. And he tries to lighten the mood for him, and share his Wi Fi, because a number of them haven’t had any internet access for the past several months. But he’s like, the overwhelming majority of people that he transfers across are women and children without the father.

RG: There was a report recently, and actually some audio of it released, of a quadcopter, a little drone that was playing the sound of women and children screaming. People would then rush to it because, if you hear women and children screaming, you might think that somebody needs help. So, people would run toward it, and then it would open fire on these crowds.

Did you hear of anything like that while you were there? And what are these kinds of quadcopters and drones, like, in an ever-present way?

MK: Oh, yeah. So, I didn’t hear anything about the ones that were playing decoy, I heard about that after I got back. The drones that we did hear were just incredibly loud. I mean, it’s remarkable to think that you’ve got kids that are going to sleep through that noise. For those of us that are not used to it, it was overwhelming.

You know, generally, in this part of the world, you can hear the Azan being announced, the call to prayer being announced from the local mosque, and these drones were drowning out that sound. And so, I actually, out of the window, I caught a picture of a drone. The rest of my team was like, do not share that until you get back into the States. But it is an overwhelming sound, and it’s nonstop.

You hear that a lot of this bombing is indiscriminate, but that’s where the question comes in, of how much of it is targeted? Because the drones are ever-present. You get the sense that nothing moves in that area without it being caught on drone video. They’re all over the place.

I think it’s just one of those things where they’re ever-present and they’re a constant reminder that you’re being watched.

RG: And just so people understand — and correct me if I’m wrong here — those calls to prayer are loud.

MK: Yes.

RG: At their peak, that is loud. You’re like, ah, gee, does it have to be that loud? Like, we hear it, it’s time to pray. But you’re saying that they were drowning out even that.

MK: Yes. Yeah, they were. I mean, they’re just incredibly loud.

The video that I took, actually, I was trying to capture the sound, and then in the background you can see bombs going off. And so, it’s really unnerving. I think, as a medical team coming from the outside-in, you understand that there’s risk associated with that. But then there’s some level of safety that’s kind of suggested with clearance from the W.H.O., clearance from the U.N., clearance from COGAT.

But I know when we got to the safe house that first night, we found out that the coordinates were in error. And so, the correct coordinates weren’t communicated. That freaked out some of the guys in the group. Luckily, it was corrected by the morning.

But even still, at our safe house, we lost water for a couple of days because one of the water tanks had a bullet hole in it. And so, the team on the ground tried to repair it, and got it up and running after a couple of days.

But just to think that that’s— It’s ever-present. And, for us, we have some sense of privileged security that the people there do not have.

RG: What is the interaction like with Hamas or Hamas-adjacent police forces? And I ask because the presence of Hamas is always used by the IDF to justify the bombing of a hospital or the raiding of a hospital. At the same time, Hamas is the governing body in the area. And so, Hamas has police officers, Hamas does some security.

But, in the context of drones everywhere and a live war, I’m wondering, do those police officers, are they visible? Do they show up? What is security like? And, by security I mean, pickpockets, your tent getting robbed, the kinds of things that you might expect to fall apart after seven months of this.

MK: That’s actually one of the things that was somewhat surprising. There wasn’t that much— I mean, there was no point in time where we felt uncomfortable walking and getting mugged or getting pickpocketed. Even though it’s so overcrowded and you’re shoulder to shoulder with people walking through the hallways, I think people would ask where you’re from, and then you tell them you’re American, and they’d be like, you’re welcome. And they’d actually hand you their kid to take a picture with them. There wasn’t much of a sense of that much of a loss of order.

Now, in the market areas where people were trying to sell— Like, gas stations have turned into basically these canisters full of diesel that people are trying to sell on the sidewalk. And so, to protect that, you did see some people in street clothes carrying a baton, just to kind of maintain some sense of order. But at no point in the entire trip did we come across anybody that visibly looked like what you see on the news, like, a Hamas soldier wearing any face covering or anything like that. We didn’t really come across anything.

Now, we didn’t seek out to get a handle on anybody’s politics, either. We specifically don’t want any part of that. I mean, the only reason we’re there is to help the civilians. And so, we tried to avoid any political discussions or anything like that.

But no, we didn’t see anybody that looked like a Hamas soldier at all.

RG: What was it like leaving, knowing that, now, the doctors you were leaving behind and the patients you were leaving behind felt like, uh oh, there goes some of our protection. And were there any other international personnel coming in to replace you, or were you guys kind of the last round?

MK: No, I think they’re coming in. That’s what’s really remarkable about these missions, when you come across some very remarkable people that are willing to give up their time and willing to risk their safety. And it’s a constant stream.

While we were there, there were probably 15 different medical teams on the ground in different specialties. Like NICU services, medicine services, ER. And I don’t think there’s any shortage of doctors willing to go. I mean, the guys from Norway were particularly impressive, because they landed and immediately went straight up north to Al-Awda, which is an even more dangerous setting. There was a German team of paramedics that were setting up a field hospital.

So, I think as long as it is being allowed, there’s no shortage of doctors willing to go, and medical providers. I think we’re all blessed with certain skills to be able to help. And I think, when you have that call, I think a lot of us feel uncomfortable saying no, so I don’t think there’ll be a shortage of doctors willing to go. What is going to be the problem is when we’re no longer allowed to go.

So, whenever the teams are no longer getting the clearance to get in, I think that’s when everyone knows that it’s about to go down.

RG: Were the types of injuries that you were seeing different in only degree? Or were they also different in kind? Or was there anything that you kind of hadn’t seen before? I mean, working in Parkland Hospital, you must have seen enormous amounts of trauma from one end to the other, but I’m curious how it compares.

MK: Yeah. No, you see a lot of polytrauma with these terrible car accidents, highway speed accidents in Texas. But, particularly, the high caliber bullets are really unique. Because normally you see a gunshot wound from a nine millimeter, or you can go up a little bit from there. But these high-powered rifles, these large sniper bullets, that’s really unique.

And then, the amount of trauma sustained by, really, the children, these very small bodies that are broken at all four extremities, or three out of the four extremities, flailed chests from rib fractures from something heavy falling onto the chest. I mean, these are unique injuries that you don’t typically see in the States unless somebody has had a terrible accident. And that’s just once in a while.

RG: I remember reading about a category that they had created in the medical community there called WC NSF: Wounded Child, No Surviving Family.

MK: Exactly.

RG: When I heard that, it’s just such a gut punch. Is that a category that you would see?

MK: Yeah. That was one of the questions that I had for one of the other doctors when we were treating one of the kids. The question is, who’s going to take care of this child once they’re stable enough to leave? And he said that, generally, an aunt or an uncle will pop up. And, if they don’t, then a neighbor will take them. It’s really remarkable to me to see how parts of the community, really, would come together for these children, and for neighbors.

One of the medical students — she’s actually an intern, she completed her intern year — her house fell down because the neighbor’s house, actually, was targeted, but it was close enough to where her house also turned into rubble. And they ended up moving in with the neighbors, into a tent for the surviving families.

RG: How did your experience there compare to what you expected you would see there?

MK: From following things on social media— I think the sad part is, I don’t know if we’re getting the full story on a lot of the mainstream media outlets. Following social media and independent news organizations like yours, you get a little bit of a better sense of what to expect. So, I expected it to be bad when I went in, but I was surprised to see that it was worse than expected.

I think you always get this wonder, if there’s some of it being exaggerated and stuff, but it is not at all an exaggeration. It was very eye-opening and incredibly humbling to see these injuries, and the destruction. And the sad part is, on an individual level, as doctors, we’re able to help the patients that we treat but, on a larger scale, you feel so powerless to help in these settings. Because we really have no way to sway the support of our elected leaders and do anything to effectively stop what’s going on.

But talking to the people that we came across, they have no doubt that they are likely to be ethnically cleansed.

RG: Well, here we are six months— More than six months into it. I remember the U.S. Secretary of State telling the Israeli government it couldn’t go past December.

MK: Yeah,

RG: It is well past December. It seems like everybody’s just given up on it ever ending.

MK: Yeah. And that’s the thing. I think even a lot of these families will say that they’re waiting to go back north to rebuild their homes. And talking to some of the doctors there, they were just like, realistically, that is probably going to be resettled, and a lot of the people that are in Rafah right now have just kind of accepted that that’s where they’re going to be.

It’s interesting. They don’t seem to have much interest in — a number of the people that we talked to don’t seem to have much interest in — moving down past the Rafah border. I think a lot of them have this resolve that you’re not going to be able to wipe Palestine off the map. Like, we’re going to stay right here.

RG: All right. Well, Dr. Khaleel, thank you for what you did while you were over there. And thank you for joining me on Deconstructed. I very much appreciate it.

MK: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

RG: All right. That was Dr. Mohammed Khaleel. And, in case you bump into him in Dallas, he goes by “Khaleel.”

Deconstructed is a production of The Intercept. This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. The show is mixed by William Stanton. Legal Review by Shawn Musgrave and Elizabeth Sanchez. Leonardo Faierman transcribed this episode. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw.

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Dr. Mohammed Khaleel recounts his experience serving patients, mostly children and young adults with blasts injuries and bullet wounds.
“There were kids in the ICU that had bullet wounds to the chest or bullet wounds to the head,” Dr. Mohammed “Adeel” Khaleel recounts the harrowing scenes from his recent medical mission in Gaza to Ryan Grim on Deconstructed this week. An orthopedic spine surgeon hailing from Dallas, Texas, Khaleel witnessed firsthand the crushing toll on human life amid the rubble of decimated hospital infrastructure. Despite the overwhelming challenges, Khaleel highlights the unwavering dedication of medical personnel committed to providing whatever aid they can through the devastation. He returned back to the U.S. with a message from patients and doctors in Gaza: “Don’t forget us.” [Deconstructed theme music.] Ryan Grim: Welcome back to Deconstructed. I’m Ryan Grim. Today, we’re going to be talking with Mohammed Khaleel, a doctor from Texas who just returned from a medical mission to Gaza. A husband and father of four, Dr. Khaleel is a spine surgeon in Dallas, but handled all manner of trauma while at the European hospital in Gaza this month. It’s effectively the only one not yet destroyed by the Israeli assault. Dr. Khaleel told me that he would often ask people in Gaza what we back here in the States could do to help, and the answer was always the same: don’t forget us. Tell the world what is happening. It’s a sign of faith in humanity, the belief that if only enough people know what’s going on, the world won’t stand for it. I don’t know if that’s true. But, if the Palestinians in Gaza can remain hopeful, the least we can do is try to spread the word. Dr. Khaleel joined us from a medical facility in Dallas. Here’s our conversation. RG: Dr. Mohammed Khaleel, welcome to Deconstructed. Mohammed Khaleel: Thank you for having me. RG: So, when did you get back from Gaza? MK: We actually got back on April 11, I was there for about a week. We initially planned to be there for ten days, but we had some delays getting in, so we spent about a week at the beginning of April. RG: And you were at the European Hospital in Khan Yunis. Is that correct? MK: Exactly. RG: Before we get into the work that you did as a surgeon, as a medical provider there, what were the conditions like where you stayed? Did you stay in a tent? Did they have rooms inside the hospital where visiting doctors could stay? Like, what’s the situation on the ground? MK: They do have some rooms, like call rooms, where doctors can stay. Through the organization that I went with, FAJR Scientific, they had arranged a safe house, it was about three kilometers away. And so, that was the initial plan, was to stay in the safe house. But it took a while to try to travel between the safe house and the hospital, because you had to get clearance to start the trip, and then you had to go to a holding point, and get clearance again to get to the hospital. So, most of the days we ended up staying in the hospital. We actually slept on the floor in the hospital CEO’s office, because the call rooms were taken when we initially got there. It’s a difficult situation with the overwhelming of the hospital system. There’s about 35,000 refugees living on the hospital campus. So, anywhere that you go in the hospital, in the hallways, there’s people sleeping. The ceiling tiles are kind of falling because people are hanging curtains from the ceiling tiles to make [makeshift] tents. And so, it’s a very overwhelmed system, but they accommodated us in the administrative offices. RG: And what’s the food and water situation like there? MK: So, we actually brought in some water for the team, because we traveled through Cairo, so we made some purchases of some emergency-type food packages and water through Cairo. The actual water in the hospital we tried to avoid, in an attempt not to get sick. But I think, unfortunately for a lot of people staying on campus, they are relying on that water, which may not be clean. With the hospital system being overwhelmed, you could actually smell raw sewage in certain parts of the hospital where there were pipe leaks and stuff. Unfortunately, the people staying in those parts of the hall had to just kind of put up with the smell. RG: What about food? You brought enough for yourself the entire stay. I’m curious, what about the tens of thousands of people in the hospital grounds itself. What was their access to the food like? MK: When we drive in, there are miles and miles of trucks just stopped at the border that are not able to bring food aid in. RG: You said “miles and miles?” MK: Yeah, there were thousands of trucks parked outside the border, and you pass by those going in. But doctors bring in — as part of their medical team — they are generally able to get in through the Rafah border. And so, every one of the teams that went in brought a lot of bags. So, we brought about 80 to 90 suitcases full of medical supplies. But then, also, emergency food packets for people. Infant formula, feminine supplies, those basic necessities were also part of the luggage that we brought in. The food situation, I mean, it does seem like there’s scarcity at every level. I think the team that we went with, they had—FAJR Scientific had done a couple of medical missions in the past before the war. And so, that was one of the comments that a lot of the surgeons were making, is how much weight the residents and the doctors have lost. And then the people living on the hospital campus, it’s really just you trying to get what you can. The holy month of Ramadan was going on while we were there, so people were fasting, during the daytime we were all fasting. But to break fast, it is possible to get some basic supplies like rice and some food items, but it’s just, the pricing is incredibly inflationary. So, our plan was to actually have a cow, and do like a— Typically, people will butcher a cow at the end of Ramadan and give the meat out to people in need. But what would normally cost about a thousand to twelve hundred dollars for a cow is about five thousand. But, when we got there, there were no cows to actually butcher. So, we ended up doing food packets for the people with that money, which was basically rice and chicken. RG: And you said the residents and the medical staff had been losing weight, they were talking about having lost weight recently. Was it noticeable, or because Ramadan was going on and people in general weren’t eating during the day, [as if] it was something you didn’t really see until later? MK: No, I think this was a significant amount of weight loss. Like, generally for Ramadan, you may lose a few pounds here and there, a lot of people don’t lose much weight. A couple of the residents in particular, the guys that were there the prior year, would give them a hug and say— They were talking about it. They’ve lost about 30, 40 pounds, because you may have to skip meals for days at a time, sometimes RG: What were the medical services like? What do you remember the most from your interaction with patients? MK: Yeah. The hospital infrastructure is completely collapsed. The European Gaza Hospital is probably the last standing tertiary-level hospital. So we had things that were referred to the hospital treated there, more complex types of surgeries. There are a few field hospitals still running, like al-Aqsa Martyrs and Al-Awda further up north, but European Gaza is kind of the main hospital where we’re seeing revision-type work. A number of the patients that we saw had ex-fixes in place, or external fixators, which are pins going into the bone with carbon fiber rods attached to them to kind of hold the bony fragments in somewhat approximation, but with the plan of definitive treatment when the patient’s more stable or their wounds have healed somewhat. So, that was a bit of the work that we were doing, was trying to revise things so that people could actually walk. Because on those external fixators, you can’t typically bear weight on those. And so, it was frustrating to indicate some patients for surgery. And then, I know that on a number of occasions, we had a full schedule that day, and so, we would tell the residents, this patient’s going to go tomorrow. But then, tomorrow would roll around and they couldn’t find the patient anymore, because they probably got lost in that sea of refugees, the 35,000 people staying on campus. RG: What kind of patients did you treat? MK: My specialty is spine surgery. I did one spine case. The majority of it was orthopedic trauma. I [did] my fellowship at Harvard, but I did my residency at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, and we get a ton of trauma experience there. So, that’s what all of us basically relied on. So, converting external fixators to internal fixation for definitive treatment, and then the acute injuries did require some placement of external fixators, closure of wounds. One particular patient that really got to me was a kid that was about six or seven years old. He had an external fixator on his right arm, external fixator on his left leg, and then, on the right leg, he had a below-knee amputation that we were trying to clean up and get closed. He’d already been in the hospital for a few weeks, and it was just heartbreaking to see this kid wearing a diaper with a cartoon elephant on it, wearing a kid’s diaper with injuries that you would expect to see in an adult, maybe with a motorcycle accident or something. And so, the amount of kids that we saw was really the most heartbreaking thing. Like, there were kids in the ICU that had bullet wounds to the chest or bullet wounds to the head and, because of how young they are, patients are often able to survive these injuries, but it’s a lot of supportive care. And then it overwhelms the system, because anybody that needs to be in the hospital for an extended period of time occupies a bed that someone else doesn’t have access to. So, after a few of these surgeries, I remember we were putting patients onto hard gurneys, because there were no mattresses left. RG: In general, what kind of people were coming in there with injuries? Is it mostly children? And how are the injuries occurring? MK: So, a number of them are blast injuries, people that have been injured in either the blast itself or the rubble that has resulted from it. There are a lot of children, but there are also a lot of young adults. Not as many elderly patients as one would expect; it was mostly children and young adults. That is a large portion of the population there. Unfortunately, talking to some other teams that have gone there were more of a medical focus than a surgical focus, they saw a number of elderly patients unfortunately expire. I don’t know if they had the reserve to do all the displacement, and moving, and deal with the medical problems. So, a number of the patients that we saw several months into this war were younger patients. And there were gunshot wounds, blast injuries. That was probably the majority of what we saw. RG: Did you talk to any of the children about how they got shot? MK: Yeah. So, a number of them, these were high caliber bullets. So, the children weren’t really the best historians, but their parents would explain that they were— It sounds like it was either sniper fire— I mean, most of them did not actually see the soldiers at point blank range or anything like that. These are high caliber bullets that kind of came from a distance. RG: That’s why I ask, because there was a Guardian report somewhat recently that said that doctors were seeing this in hospitals in Gaza, sniper bullets hitting children in the chest and in the head, in ways that led a lot of these doctors to question, how this could have happened other than deliberately, other than as if it was just target practice on children. A lot of the instances that the Guardian wrote about, it would be just a couple children playing in the street alone, with nobody nearby that could explain some type of missed shot or mistaken identity. What did the parents that you talked to understand about how their children had come to get attacked? MK: I think, unfortunately, for a lot of the parents, they are— I mean, they’re heartbroken. You’ve had the highest court in the world suggest a plausible genocide. For the people on the ground, they firmly believe that this is a genocide, and so, they feel that their kids were targeted. A number of them were playing in an area where you would expect kids to be allowed to play. Some of them were playing in the rubble, and what remained of these homes and complexes. They believe that their children were targeted. A lot of the adults that you talk to feel that this is a war on children, and that the injuries are intended to kill and to maim. RG: What are the other doctors who’ve been there for months now — or had been there or who lived there — what did you gather from them about their experience? MK: We actually ended up working with some of the doctors that were displaced from Al-Shifa Hospital. And I know one doctor, Dr. Munther, he’s an orthopedic surgeon in Al-Shifa, and he’d been displaced to European Gaza, to the Khan Yunis area. And he was explaining how his home is destroyed, he’s lost family members. He felt that the destruction of Al-Shifa hospital was more heartbreaking to him than the destruction of his own home, because he was like, his home will eventually be rebuilt. But with the destruction of Al-Shifa— I mean, I guess that was the largest and most advanced hospital in Gaza? And he was just saying that the resources that were lost there will probably never be able to be replaced, at least in his lifetime. That was one of the remarkable things about going over there. It’s very humbling to see what these providers are dealing with. I mean, they haven’t been paid in months, they’re literally volunteering to care for other people. Some of the medical students, one of the young ladies that we worked with, her medical school has been destroyed. There is no record of her first three years of medical school, she doesn’t even know who to contact to try to get documentation of that, but she’s just coming to the hospital and volunteering, and she scrubbed into a number of cases with us. And it was just remarkable to see how far ahead they are in their training; I mean, for a third-year medical student. We had one case where a patient had bilateral tibia fractures and a humerus fracture. And when we fixed one limb, we moved on to the next limb, and she sewed up all the wounds pretty efficiently. I mean, that’s something that [makes up] the type of training people get later on in med school. So, the resolve that some of these providers have is really incredible. And I think they’re kind of in a situation where they said it’s better to just come to the hospital and help than to be stuck in their tent just lamenting the situation. RG: There’s also been an increasing number of reports in the last couple of days of newly discovered mass graves at different hospital sites around Gaza. Some of those we saw in reporting in the past were created and dug by Gazan doctors and medical personnel themselves, because there was no other way to handle treatment. Others are reported to have been dug by IDF soldiers. Did you hear anything about these mass graves? And what was the situation if somebody died in your care? MK: I think the mass graves situation, some of it may be just the only way to safely dispose of the corpses. But the perception that we got from some of the doctors that were up north at Al-Shifa and Al-Nasser in particular was that they felt that they were being targeted, and that the hospital, which would normally be a safe environment, is no longer safe. So, it was actually kind of chilling to hear some of them discuss how they appreciated the European and the American teams being there, and they were very welcoming and generous while we were there. But they knew that once we stopped showing up that the European Gaza Hospital was going to be destroyed next. And so, they’re anticipating either getting some heads-up and leaving. But yeah. I know one of the doctors in particular said that the notice to leave Al-Shifa was not feasible to get people out. So, a lot of the people that left Al-Shifa before that got destroyed were the refugees that were on campus that were able to walk away. But a lot of the patients, a lot of the doctors that were taking care of those patients, they couldn’t leave immediately. And so, they were lost. RG: My colleague Jeremy Scahill had heard from some medical personnel at other hospitals that, when IDF soldiers were coming in, some doctors were taking off scrubs and were putting on more civilian clothes, and that they felt that being dressed as a medical personnel actually made them more of a target. And so, they did everything they could to kind of blend in with the crowd. Did you hear anything from Dr. Munther or others who came from Al-Shifa, does that sound accurate? Because when I first heard that, I was like, that’s the most ghoulish thing I’ve ever heard. That wearing scrubs wouldn’t protect you, but it would actually make you more of a target. MK: That’s consistent with what they were relaying. So, that doctor in particular, I asked him if he’d feel comfortable making a video, if I just recorded his story. And that’s, specifically, he said he didn’t feel so comfortable relaying his story as if it was that bad, because he told me the story of his colleague in the orthopedic department who had passed his boards a year prior. And now, one year being board certified, he was targeted, sustained a bullet wound to his spine, is now paraplegic, has lost his entire family, and had to get transferred out for care. And so, he was like, when you compare that story to my story of getting out, there’s no comparison. So, I think a number of the doctors there felt that they were targets for attack, and that’s specifically one of the reasons that they felt having foreign nationals in the hospital was probably more protective than anything else. Because just being a doctor was not going to be protective. RG: And so, they now feel that now that you and some other foreign national doctors have left, that the European Hospital will be next on the chopping block? MK: That’s the overwhelming feeling. The resolve is remarkable. I mean, they talk about it pretty frankly that, you know, this is next. There’s been communications from the Israeli leadership that it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. And I think the people on the ground are totally convinced of that, that Rafah will be next. And so, they don’t know if that’s going to mean having to move back up north; there’s very limited ability to live anywhere up north. Some of the teams that were with other groups — I mean, we connected with all the surgeons that were there — and there were a number of different groups there at the same time. But the day before they left, some of the groups from the north stopped by European Gaza Hospital before going back to Cairo, and they were just relaying some of the pictures and the videos that they took. I mean, it is completely destroyed up north, the entire cities are flattened. And so, the people in Rafah, a number of them don’t know if it’s going to be feasible to go back up north, but they assume that that’s where they’ll have to go whenever Rafah gets invaded. Or, I think they’ve reserved themselves to the idea that there may not be anywhere to go. RG: What makes this war unique — certainly, in our lifetimes, and maybe multiple lifetimes — is that Russia brutally invades Ukraine, for instance, and you see people fleeing into Poland, Romania, the rest of Western Europe. This is the first time that people haven’t been able to flee from the fighting. MK: Exactly. RG: Just stuck there for months and months and months on end. They can move somewhat around, from Gaza City to Khan Yunis, Khan Yunis to Rafah. But, like you said, what are people hoping that they’re able to do? MK: We had discussions with a couple of doctors that were trying to ask about the possibilities of getting out and continuing medical training. But the majority of them, they’re like, once the war is over, we’ll continue if. If we can’t continue, then it is what it is. I think, for a number of them, there’s no getting around the fact that— The times where you would hear the bombings and the gunshots most frequently were at the times of prayer, where people were congregated together. And so, as far as the population there is concerned, this is a targeted effort for ethnic cleansing. And so, they’re like, if that is the price that we pay, then that is what it is. I think a number of them don’t expect to be able to get into Egypt if those borders open up. It’s a controversial thing. You talk to people who say, this is our home, we don’t intend to leave. And then you talk to some people that would say, we would leave if we could. And a number of the doctors, unfortunately, have left. That is another strain on the medical system. But that was the discussion that they were having among the physicians when we were all sitting around to eat, is that it’s heroic in the sense that some people stay and continue to provide medical care, but it’s also, in some ways, heroic to try to get your family out. And so, I think it requires a lot of resources to try to get out, which a lot of people just don’t have. I mean, I think, currently the discussion was that it’s about $5,000 American to try to get someone through the Rafah border. That’s just money that people don’t necessarily have. And everything is in American. It’s wild that there’s no discussion of other currency. When we were talking about getting a cow for Ramadan, that was $5,000 American, not in any other sort of currency. And that’s one of the most heartbreaking — we actually took a video of it — one of the most heartbreaking scenes was when we were leaving, the day that we were leaving Rafah. There was a kid just crying and waving through the window, and you can see his father on the sidewalk trying not to cry; you know, he’s sending his wife and kids out, to try to get to safety. And then, the driver that we had to get us from the border back to Cairo, that’s what he was explaining, was that a lot of these people that are getting out are women and children. And he tries to lighten the mood for him, and share his Wi Fi, because a number of them haven’t had any internet access for the past several months. But he’s like, the overwhelming majority of people that he transfers across are women and children without the father. RG: There was a report recently, and actually some audio of it released, of a quadcopter, a little drone that was playing the sound of women and children screaming. People would then rush to it because, if you hear women and children screaming, you might think that somebody needs help. So, people would run toward it, and then it would open fire on these crowds. Did you hear of anything like that while you were there? And what are these kinds of quadcopters and drones, like, in an ever-present way? MK: Oh, yeah. So, I didn’t hear anything about the ones that were playing decoy, I heard about that after I got back. The drones that we did hear were just incredibly loud. I mean, it’s remarkable to think that you’ve got kids that are going to sleep through that noise. For those of us that are not used to it, it was overwhelming. You know, generally, in this part of the world, you can hear the Azan being announced, the call to prayer being announced from the local mosque, and these drones were drowning out that sound. And so, I actually, out of the window, I caught a picture of a drone. The rest of my team was like, do not share that until you get back into the States. But it is an overwhelming sound, and it’s nonstop. You hear that a lot of this bombing is indiscriminate, but that’s where the question comes in, of how much of it is targeted? Because the drones are ever-present. You get the sense that nothing moves in that area without it being caught on drone video. They’re all over the place. I think it’s just one of those things where they’re ever-present and they’re a constant reminder that you’re being watched. RG: And just so people understand — and correct me if I’m wrong here — those calls to prayer are loud. MK: Yes. RG: At their peak, that is loud. You’re like, ah, gee, does it have to be that loud? Like, we hear it, it’s time to pray. But you’re saying that they were drowning out even that. MK: Yes. Yeah, they were. I mean, they’re just incredibly loud. The video that I took, actually, I was trying to capture the sound, and then in the background you can see bombs going off. And so, it’s really unnerving. I think, as a medical team coming from the outside-in, you understand that there’s risk associated with that. But then there’s some level of safety that’s kind of suggested with clearance from the W.H.O., clearance from the U.N., clearance from COGAT. But I know when we got to the safe house that first night, we found out that the coordinates were in error. And so, the correct coordinates weren’t communicated. That freaked out some of the guys in the group. Luckily, it was corrected by the morning. But even still, at our safe house, we lost water for a couple of days because one of the water tanks had a bullet hole in it. And so, the team on the ground tried to repair it, and got it up and running after a couple of days. But just to think that that’s— It’s ever-present. And, for us, we have some sense of privileged security that the people there do not have. RG: What is the interaction like with Hamas or Hamas-adjacent police forces? And I ask because the presence of Hamas is always used by the IDF to justify the bombing of a hospital or the raiding of a hospital. At the same time, Hamas is the governing body in the area. And so, Hamas has police officers, Hamas does some security. But, in the context of drones everywhere and a live war, I’m wondering, do those police officers, are they visible? Do they show up? What is security like? And, by security I mean, pickpockets, your tent getting robbed, the kinds of things that you might expect to fall apart after seven months of this. MK: That’s actually one of the things that was somewhat surprising. There wasn’t that much— I mean, there was no point in time where we felt uncomfortable walking and getting mugged or getting pickpocketed. Even though it’s so overcrowded and you’re shoulder to shoulder with people walking through the hallways, I think people would ask where you’re from, and then you tell them you’re American, and they’d be like, you’re welcome. And they’d actually hand you their kid to take a picture with them. There wasn’t much of a sense of that much of a loss of order. Now, in the market areas where people were trying to sell— Like, gas stations have turned into basically these canisters full of diesel that people are trying to sell on the sidewalk. And so, to protect that, you did see some people in street clothes carrying a baton, just to kind of maintain some sense of order. But at no point in the entire trip did we come across anybody that visibly looked like what you see on the news, like, a Hamas soldier wearing any face covering or anything like that. We didn’t really come across anything. Now, we didn’t seek out to get a handle on anybody’s politics, either. We specifically don’t want any part of that. I mean, the only reason we’re there is to help the civilians. And so, we tried to avoid any political discussions or anything like that. But no, we didn’t see anybody that looked like a Hamas soldier at all. RG: What was it like leaving, knowing that, now, the doctors you were leaving behind and the patients you were leaving behind felt like, uh oh, there goes some of our protection. And were there any other international personnel coming in to replace you, or were you guys kind of the last round? MK: No, I think they’re coming in. That’s what’s really remarkable about these missions, when you come across some very remarkable people that are willing to give up their time and willing to risk their safety. And it’s a constant stream. While we were there, there were probably 15 different medical teams on the ground in different specialties. Like NICU services, medicine services, ER. And I don’t think there’s any shortage of doctors willing to go. I mean, the guys from Norway were particularly impressive, because they landed and immediately went straight up north to Al-Awda, which is an even more dangerous setting. There was a German team of paramedics that were setting up a field hospital. So, I think as long as it is being allowed, there’s no shortage of doctors willing to go, and medical providers. I think we’re all blessed with certain skills to be able to help. And I think, when you have that call, I think a lot of us feel uncomfortable saying no, so I don’t think there’ll be a shortage of doctors willing to go. What is going to be the problem is when we’re no longer allowed to go. So, whenever the teams are no longer getting the clearance to get in, I think that’s when everyone knows that it’s about to go down. RG: Were the types of injuries that you were seeing different in only degree? Or were they also different in kind? Or was there anything that you kind of hadn’t seen before? I mean, working in Parkland Hospital, you must have seen enormous amounts of trauma from one end to the other, but I’m curious how it compares. MK: Yeah. No, you see a lot of polytrauma with these terrible car accidents, highway speed accidents in Texas. But, particularly, the high caliber bullets are really unique. Because normally you see a gunshot wound from a nine millimeter, or you can go up a little bit from there. But these high-powered rifles, these large sniper bullets, that’s really unique. And then, the amount of trauma sustained by, really, the children, these very small bodies that are broken at all four extremities, or three out of the four extremities, flailed chests from rib fractures from something heavy falling onto the chest. I mean, these are unique injuries that you don’t typically see in the States unless somebody has had a terrible accident. And that’s just once in a while. RG: I remember reading about a category that they had created in the medical community there called WC NSF: Wounded Child, No Surviving Family. MK: Exactly. RG: When I heard that, it’s just such a gut punch. Is that a category that you would see? MK: Yeah. That was one of the questions that I had for one of the other doctors when we were treating one of the kids. The question is, who’s going to take care of this child once they’re stable enough to leave? And he said that, generally, an aunt or an uncle will pop up. And, if they don’t, then a neighbor will take them. It’s really remarkable to me to see how parts of the community, really, would come together for these children, and for neighbors. One of the medical students — she’s actually an intern, she completed her intern year — her house fell down because the neighbor’s house, actually, was targeted, but it was close enough to where her house also turned into rubble. And they ended up moving in with the neighbors, into a tent for the surviving families. RG: How did your experience there compare to what you expected you would see there? MK: From following things on social media— I think the sad part is, I don’t know if we’re getting the full story on a lot of the mainstream media outlets. Following social media and independent news organizations like yours, you get a little bit of a better sense of what to expect. So, I expected it to be bad when I went in, but I was surprised to see that it was worse than expected. I think you always get this wonder, if there’s some of it being exaggerated and stuff, but it is not at all an exaggeration. It was very eye-opening and incredibly humbling to see these injuries, and the destruction. And the sad part is, on an individual level, as doctors, we’re able to help the patients that we treat but, on a larger scale, you feel so powerless to help in these settings. Because we really have no way to sway the support of our elected leaders and do anything to effectively stop what’s going on. But talking to the people that we came across, they have no doubt that they are likely to be ethnically cleansed. RG: Well, here we are six months— More than six months into it. I remember the U.S. Secretary of State telling the Israeli government it couldn’t go past December. MK: Yeah, RG: It is well past December. It seems like everybody’s just given up on it ever ending. MK: Yeah. And that’s the thing. I think even a lot of these families will say that they’re waiting to go back north to rebuild their homes. And talking to some of the doctors there, they were just like, realistically, that is probably going to be resettled, and a lot of the people that are in Rafah right now have just kind of accepted that that’s where they’re going to be. It’s interesting. They don’t seem to have much interest in — a number of the people that we talked to don’t seem to have much interest in — moving down past the Rafah border. I think a lot of them have this resolve that you’re not going to be able to wipe Palestine off the map. Like, we’re going to stay right here. RG: All right. Well, Dr. Khaleel, thank you for what you did while you were over there. And thank you for joining me on Deconstructed. I very much appreciate it. MK: My pleasure. Thank you for having me. RG: All right. That was Dr. Mohammed Khaleel. And, in case you bump into him in Dallas, he goes by “Khaleel.” Deconstructed is a production of The Intercept. This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. The show is mixed by William Stanton. Legal Review by Shawn Musgrave and Elizabeth Sanchez. Leonardo Faierman transcribed this episode. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. If you’d like to support our work, go to theintercept.com/give. And, if you haven’t already, please subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week. And please go and leave us a rating or a review, it helps people find the show. 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