AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, “War, Peace and the Presidency: Breaking with Convention.” I’m Amy Goodman, here in Chicago with Juan González.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: In Gaza, at least 50 Palestinians have been killed in the last 24 hours as the Israeli military continues its assault on the territory and expands its ground operation in Deir al-Balah. Over 40,200 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 93,000 wounded over the past 10 months.

AMY GOODMAN: Here in Chicago, a group of American doctors who treated patients in Gaza gathered on Tuesday for a press conference here at the DNC inside the McCormick Place Convention Center. The press conference was organized by the Uncommitted National Movement. Among those who spoke was Dr. Ahmed Yousaf, who just returned from Gaza three weeks ago. This is some of what he had to say.

DR. AHMED YOUSAF: My name is Ahmed Yousaf. I’m a board — double board-certified internal medicine, pediatrics doctor focused primarily in the ICU. I come from Arkansas. I may have a hard time doing this. I went to Gaza, about three weeks ago came back, after being there for about three weeks. I primarily worked in the ICU and in the emergency room in Al-Aqsa Hospital.

I thought — I’m not a politician, and I’m not a military strategist, but the moment we drove through Rafah with a U.N. convoy towards the middle area where we were going to be stationed, it became clear to me that what I was seeing was unfathomable. And at the same time, I had a small hope that when the doors are opened and the ceasefire is had, that when you all are allowed back in there, that it doesn’t require a military strategist to realize what they’re doing.

They are making Gaza unlivable. They’ve destroyed the water infrastructure, and so we were seeing kids die of diarrheal illness. They prevented all medical supplies in. And I can tell that by firsthand witness, not by hearsay. They refused me the medical supplies that I was able to gather over months from wonderful people in Arkansas, things like endotracheal tubes and Foley catheters, things like antibiotics and sedative medications, that were denied at the border. Firsthand experience. They do not allow medical supplies in to treat children that are dying.

And when we got to the hospital, everything I saw on TikTok and Instagram and all the television, all the stuff that we had in alternative media, because you can’t be there, it was a hundred times worse than I could have ever imagined. …

I have no ties to Gaza. I’m not from there. I have no blood there. But those people treated me better than I deserved as a member of the international community. With no food, they tried to feed me. And they’ll tell you the same. With no food, they tried to feed me. And when I asked them what we could do, because there was so little we could do as doctors, they said, “Just make sure people know we’re here.”

I’m going to mention the names of some of the girls that were in medical school that were with me. There was Lena. She was a fifth year medical student. There was Rahaf and Rahab. They were sixth year medical students. There was Fadah, who just graduated from medical school. These young women were displaced four or five times before I met them. They lived in tents, sometimes areas in the red zone, which mean they were free target practice if they crossed the roads. And they came every day to the hospital to learn, because their schools had been completely stopped. And they would take that trek every day knowing they could lose their lives, knowing that the value they present to their families as medical people could be lost, because they wanted to come and help in whatever way they could. …

On the first day I was there in Al-Aqsa Hospital, we were in a small trauma bay in the ER. And when the first mass casualty, which was one of almost one every day I was there, occurred, and we could hear the bombs in the distance, and we knew that about 45 minutes later people would come in pieces, that children would be carried in pieces by their loved ones, on donkey carts and in ambulances, four or five in one ambulance.

There was a young woman who got laid up right next to the young boy I was treating. She was 22 or 23 years old, full body surface area burns, and she was unable to speak, because she likely had inhalational injury, because the same burns that burned her skin likely burned her airway. And a woman screamed from outside the door, ”Hamil!” “She’s pregnant!” And so we turned her over quickly, because she had come and laid down on her belly. And somebody put an ultrasound probe on her belly, and she had a viable 18- to 20-week pregnancy. But when we did our secondary survey and tried to understand what other injuries she had, she had a shattered tib-fib from an explosive injury. She had burns that covered over 70% of her surface area, which is a death sentence in an environment where you can’t find gauze and there isn’t clean water and there aren’t antibiotics. We all knew what this meant on the ground in the trauma bay the first minutes we met her: She was going to die there, and her baby would die there.

And there was nothing we were going to be able to do about it, because the Israeli government, the IDF, had made it impossible to care for people to the extent which they deserve. Every human being deserves the right to medical aid in that situation. She was no fighter. She was a pregnant woman who was sitting in her home when a bomb dropped on her head.

And she eventually moved to the ICU. And every day she lived until she died, she was in pain, because we didn’t have the kind of medicine we needed to care for her pain. And when wound care came — in America, I’d give her two Dilaudid before changing her wound dressings. And there, I could give her nothing. And every morning, when we’d round, we’d stop by her bed first. And every one of us and the Gazan medical professionals, who are heroes — that one day will get to be here and tell you their stories themselves, so I don’t have to tell it for them — we’d all keep our mouth shut and keep the tears held back, because we knew we couldn’t do anything, and we knew the inevitable was coming, until one day I walked in, and the bed was empty.

And her story is just one of tens of thousands. And her family mourned for her just like we would mourn for our own family members. And she and every single person in Gaza deserves the dignity and support that humanity as a whole is burdened and has an obligation to provide.

I stand here, and I’ll conclude with this last thought, which is, the reason I lose sleep and the reason we cry tears isn’t sadness anymore. It’s a feeling that we have no ability, despite being from the most powerful country in the world, providing the bombs that drop on these innocent people, that we have no power to stop the bleeding. And so, we call for a ceasefire and a stopping of the bleeding by stopping the sales of bombs. There’s no reason that the bomb that dropped on that young woman’s head had to be made in America.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Dr. Ahmed Yousaf, who just returned from Gaza three weeks ago. The news conference he was a part of was organized by the Uncommitted National Movement.