Ukraine War Day #634: Russian Doctor Recounts The Horrors Of Gaza

Dear Readers:

Today I have this story from KP, the reporter is Angelina Sharypova. She interviewed a Russian doctor named Juliana, who recounts a harrowing story of survival.

The genocide continues as the world watches on…

The Israeli blockade of Gaza is not 100%. The Israelis have allowed the evacuation of a handful of people who are fortunate to be citizens of other countries, or have dual citizenship. Every nation with a functioning diplomatic service has put some effort into rescuing their own people. [yalensis: Alas, if only there were someone who could rescue everybody! Or, even better, deliver a crushing defeat to the Israeli army. But those are pipe dreams.] Thus, the Russian government has succeeded in saving a few lucky ones with Russian or dual citizenship. Already three flights have delivered a lucky few from the jaws of death.

Exhausted but lucky evacuees are on their way to Russia.

Among these fortunate ones are children, pregnant women, the elderly, and even non-elderly adults. All of these people have lived through hell the past few weeks, awaiting rescue, struggling to survive with minimum rations of water and food. But now, thankfully, they are safe from the horror.

Juliana describes to Angelina what she saw and endured. She had left Russia for Palestine back in 2000, a few years after marrying a Palestinian man. Her husband is also a doctor. Apparently he had studied medicine and got his degree somewhere in Russia, but eventually he wanted to return to his homeland, and so the family picked up and moved to Gaza. And this is not the first time, in their life together in the Palestinian homeland, that they have been dodging Israeli bullets.

Juliana: I might even say that we got accustomed to war situations. But we never before encountered such a mindless and ferocious war, as this one. In the past people have been bombed before, some would die, but it was still possible to find a safe place, to go away for a time, to wait it out while the politicians come to some kind of agreement. But this time around [the Israelis] are simply flattening out every single house and building. It was impossible to find any safe place to hide.

Juliana’s family consists of herself, her husband, a 15-year-old son and a grown-up, pregnant, daughter. When the current war began, they fled their home and went to live with relatives. But soon that place also became unsafe. They decided to find shelter in the local hospital.

Traumatized refugees still startle at the sound of loud noises.

Juliana: I am a therapist, so I am not used to working with the wounded. My husband, though, is a surgeon, he is accustomed to performing operations. They were bringing the wounded into the hospital literally every minute. And also corpses. It was a horror show. The doctors simply did not know how to cope. They were working literally day and night. They said they simply couldn’t feel their own arms and legs any more, after performing so many operations. And now there is a shortage of medications. Many operations are performed without anesthesia, because they simply don’t have the anesthesia meds any more. Peaceful civilians have perished in all of the previous conflicts, but not in these kinds of numbers. Over 6,000 children have died. This reflects our demographics: Half of the population are children. No matter where you drop a bomb, you are going to hit children. As for the grown-up men, the so-called “militants”, we never actually saw any of them. Probably they are running around in those underground tunnels, and the bombs are just flying at the houses. There are no bomb shelters in Gaza, none were ever built, nobody foresaw this.

In the early days, according to Juliana, the Israelis would give a brief warning to the residents: They would drop one bomb on, say, a housing complex, and then give the residents 5 minutes to flee before starting the real bombardment. But then they stopped even giving a warning:

“We know some people who had a warning bomb drop on their building. They grabbed their kids and fled to their neighbor’s house. And then the neighbor’s house was demolished by bombs. Over 40 people died. The only survivors in this particular family were the older daughter and her dad.”

Juliana’s own family eventually left the hospital when it became too dangerous there. They sought shelter in a school, located in the southern part of the Gaza strip. There they joined a collection of around 20,000 people, all clumped together and trying to live, without a roof over their heads.

Juliana: Just imagine the situation. A schoolhouse. Corridors. Classrooms. People are trying to carve out for themselves some little corner, in which to spend the night. We all slept on the bare floor, including my pregnant daughter. Men were not allowed to sleep inside the building, so my husband and son slept outside on the street or pavement. This went on for a month, and they got sick a couple of times. Some people [indoors] constructed tents for themselves, out of chairs and tables. Outdoors they constructed tents from wooden sticks and blankets. They were really afraid that it was going to rain. With every day that passed, more and more people kept arriving at the schoolhouse.

And with every arrival, the scarcity of food and water became ever more critical.

Gaza evacuees arrive at the Moscow airport.

Juliana: There was no “normal” type of food. At first one was able, for a price, to cook somewhat on portable gas-powered hot plates. But then the gas ran out. So people started setting fires to cook on, but then the food ran out. A few times some UN aid workers were able to bring in some humanitarian aid, this was mostly tinned food, some packets of milk, biscuits, cheese spreads. Everything else we could still buy in a few stores, until they ran out of products as well. All the store shelves became empty, you couldn’t even get lemonade, this is something that people traditionally drink to bring their blood sugar up when they are hungry.

Juliana’s son lost 15 kilos of body weight during this time. Eventually the family was reduced to one meal per day, and a small one at that.

Juliana: We also lacked drinking water. We were forced to drink what they call “technical” water. Dirty water. We would have liked to boil it first, but there was no way to do that, the electricity was turned on only one hour a day, and 3-5 hours per night. We were reduced to pure survival. And people stood in lines even for the technical water, they needed it to do their laundry. It was hot outside, after all. Later they started to bring in some water and would sell it to us. But a new horror arose: We would purchase some rationed water, but if we had to leave [our spot] for a while, then it wasn’t there when we came back.

Juliana and her family spent 37 days hiding out in the schoolhouse, until eventually they were able to get their names onto a list for evacuation. Currently they are living in a refugee camp just outside of Moscow. Juliana’s pregnant daughter had to be taken to the hospital, though: “She is already in her eighth month, I have been very worried about her. We are hoping that the stress we endured will not affect her baby. After we arrived in Russia, they immediately admitted her to the hospital, where she is under observation. Even though we ourselves never had bombs fall on us, when we were still living in the Northern part of Gaza, we would be woken up every 15 minutes by the sound of explosions. Even now, loud noises and whistling sounds make us all jump out of our skins.”

Juliana’s family does not know if their house back in Gaza, is still standing. It had been destroyed once before, in the previous war, after which they had it rebuilt. It was just this past January that they were finally able to move back into it, and then this happened. They have escaped to Russia, but with very few of their belongings, not much more than a single packet of things hastily grabbed. Everything else they own is back there…