Gaza Diaries with Dr. Omar Suleiman
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Nasser Hospital to Biden Walkout | Gaza Diaries
Dr. Omar Suleiman sits down with Dr. Thaer Ahmad, the doctor who made headlines for walking out of a meeting with President Joe Biden, to discuss his experience working at Nasser Hospital during a recent trip to Gaza.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Dr. Thaer Ahmed, Alhamdulillah, we have been obviously following your work from Gaza, you are Palestinian-American, from Chicago, you are a doctor, Alhamdulillah, you've been to Gaza multiple times with MedGlobal. First of all, may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala reward you for answering the call to go there multiple times and to work there. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala reward you for your efforts. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala accept all of the healing that you brought, and all of the awareness that you brought as well, and keep you under his protection. Allahumma ameen. Walk me through, you get a phone call that gives you an opportunity to go to Gaza in the middle of a genocide. How do you kind of process that on an emotional, spiritual, mental level? I think from our perspective, all of us here, we're thinking about what can we do. And we've been thinking about that since October. And so we were looking into how can we get in. Subhanallah, there was an actual planned trip to Gaza, October 22nd. But of course, after October 7th, it just got totally scrapped. Nobody was getting into Gaza. None of these organizations that usually bring in delegations or teams for anything were getting in. And we heard at the end of December, at the end of December, that there might be a chance that we could get in. And I remember texting Dr. Zeher, who's the founder of MedGlobal, and I said, if there's any chance, I'm going to be on that trip. And he said, of course, he understood just how emotional everybody was with respect to this, and that we needed to feel like we were doing something. So it wasn't really a tough decision.
I think most of us would seize the opportunity to kind of show up, and subhanallah, just have the opportunity to be able to go into Gaza as a physician. And that's what they needed at that time. But of course, as things move along and there's more requirements, I'm sure everybody will feel the same way. Everybody's going to want to step up. And I think that's, I always say this, but I think Gaza changed all of us. Gaza let us realize the ni'mah and the barakah that we're living in. I mean, just being able to wake up in your bed every single day, you think about the fact that people who look like us, who talk like us, that they're not able to do so. I'm able to jump in the shower. I think we think about that a lot more now, given what's happened in Gaza. And for me, that's really all that factored into the decision. I felt that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala gave us this opportunity to be comfortable here, and that our voice can maybe be amplified. And what better way than to go there, bear witness to what's going on, and then if I'm lucky enough to be able to get out, to share that with everybody that wants to know what's happening on the ground. When was the last time you've been to Gaza, prior to this one? It was in March, prior to October. I was at Shifa Hospital. I know the Shabab there very well. Great people that I talk to regularly. They're so thirsty for knowledge. They're always asking, what else can they learn? What else can they use? Very, very good relationship with them. Ever since I had met them, probably two years ago, I made it a habit to try to consistently go back. When October hit, I'm sure a lot of those images, the things you'd already seen in Gaza, were fresh. You were thinking about this. Can you talk to us about that? When the bombing started in October. It's really tough because Gaza is beautiful. It's amazing. The coastline is incredible. The scenery there is amazing. It's a tough place to live.
Make no mistake about it. There's a siege that's been there for 17 years, but the people, the life, they call it the haraka, the movement that's there, it's enchanting. It's mesmerizing. People are incredible to be around. When you just watch that place get leveled the way that it was since October, every single day a new block is being taken out, a new block is being destroyed, you start to think about these beautiful areas that are gone, the memories of the people that are there. One of the people that I had met, she had recently told me she's a country representative for MedGlobal, so she's been on the ground. She said, all that we have left is our misery. Even our memories, they've tried to destroy that by taking away the structures that were there. Just being on the beach, being able to look at the Mediterranean coast, now that area has become a death zone. You can't even walk up and down the beach anymore. It's really tough because it takes so long to build up the infrastructure in Gaza because of the siege, because of the blockade, and to just watch it be reduced to rubble within seconds by 2,000 bombs, it's a struggle. You feel helpless in that moment. You're trying to think, what are we supposed to do now? How do we pick it back up? Instead of being able to focus on that, it's another devastating destruction somewhere. It's another block that's taken out. Is there anyone that passed away early on, before you got back? Yeah, I knew a couple of the doctors, actually. There's been 400 doctors that have been killed, 400 healthcare workers since this started. There was one particular guy who attended one of the sessions where I did a training for. We got this portable ultrasound machine, so you can just plug it into a phone, into an iPad. I remember the doctors in Gaza, they were so excited about that. They're like, we're gonna use this, we're gonna be able to implement this.
One of the doctors who attended the very first training sessions, and he would always text and check up on me. He would always say, How are you doing, doctor? How's everything going? I didn't even realize this until I went, that he had died. That's sort of the tragedy, is I had showed up to a Nasser hospital, and I had recognized some of the guys from Shifa. This is a bizarre thing to do, but I started going through the pictures of the guys I had met before, and asked if they were still alive, the other doctors. Then you come up, and you're like, this person was a martyr. That's kind of just how tragic things are in Gaza. It's a challenge. That's the other thing. I think many of us who have friends in Gaza, or even family, it's bizarre. You're sending messages. Are you okay? You're hoping that it gets delivered on WhatsApp. Then you're hoping that there's a response. Then after there's a response, you don't know what to say. Allah ya'in koum, Allah ya'fav koum, making dua for them, trying to say, I hope Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la protects you, but what else can I offer? I think that goes back to your first question. It's factored into why I felt like I wanted to go, and I know everybody in the community feels the same way. I think it's, SubhanAllah, that thing about scrolling pictures, and is this person still alive? Is this person still alive? This genocide is unfolding on everyone's screen. When someone who's been reporting from the ground suddenly stops reporting for a few days, everyone's thinking, have they been martyred? It almost takes me on a personal level to like Jannah, where people are asking about each other, where you're looking around like, hey, where's this person? Where's this person? SubhanAllah, you wonder. Hopefully, Allah gives us that opportunity to ask about these names, and to go find these people in Jannah, and to rejoice with them once again in the nighttime. That's the hope.
That martyrdom. People who reduce Islam to a death cult don't understand that. We just believe in life in a way that they just cannot grasp. The people of Gaza have that belief more than anything else. Can I talk about that, like that concept of like, hey, we know we're gonna die, but we know that there's something after death. How did you kind of experience that for yourself and for other people when you were there? I mean, the first day that I showed up to Nasser Hospital, it reminds me of the very first patient that I had seen that had been killed. And it was somebody who had been injured in an airstrike, 22-year-old, 23-year-old, and he was brought in by his mom, his dad, and his siblings. And I remember because I had just shown up, I had put my bags in the room, I was gonna be sleeping at the hospital. And I remember because when we walk in, he had lost a pulse, and so they were doing CPR on this person. They were doing chest compressions, and he was on the floor of the emergency department. And I didn't recognize that his family was there to begin with. So I just kind of got on my knees, I was trying to help the doctor. His name is Dr. Majdi, very young, brilliant physician. But subhanAllah, I mean, that was his time. And he met his maker. And I remember kind of being shocked that it had happened so quickly. First day, I mean, first five minutes. And Dr. Majdi gets up, and he looks at the guy's father. And he said, his last words were, And then the dad said, which that was very overwhelming for me. But he looked at him and he said, those were his last words? That was one of the most comforting things you could say to the father of a martyr, to the father of the shaheed, his son who had just been killed. He said, promise me that you're telling the truth. He said those were his last words? He said, those were his last words. And he turned around to his siblings and to his wife. And he said, that was,
like he was comforting them. And then they picked him up in the blanket that they brought him in from their house. And they went to go bury their son. And right away you start realizing that the people in Gaza, the way that they've perceived everything, they look at that hardship is different. Because I'd have to be honest with myself. Could I have that sort of patience in that moment? On the emergency department floor, looking at my son, essentially die, pass away. Am I gonna have that moment to reflect and be able to take comfort? You have to have that belief in the afterlife. I mean, you have to believe there's a akhirah. If you don't, you're not gonna be comforted by that's your son's last words. And for me, I really start to think about all of what's been going on in Gaza, how people have been processing it. And I realized that when you have strong faith like that, when you have the iman like that, you get the resilience of Gaza. Because I think we've been, a lot of people have been around tragedy. They've had personal loss. They've been through their own struggles. And this is an entire community of people that is dealing with what seems like an insurmountable struggle. How do they stay so resilient? And the only answer is their faith. And you get inspired by that. In a moment of sorrow and tragedy, something inside of you clicks. I mean, something inside of me was coming alive when you're watching that. And so it makes you wanna do better, makes you wanna work harder, makes you wanna figure out solutions for things. And I'll never forget that moment. So what is like the difference between, you're an ER doctor, an ER in Chicago, an ER in Gaza? Yeah. Give me that contrast. I mean, I wanna paint the picture for you a little bit. I work at a trauma center in Chicago, a very busy place. We've got all of the specialties. We've got all of the tools.
All of the tricks are up our sleeve. We've got private rooms. We've got every single patient has a patient bed, has a private room that they can stay in. In Gaza, it's huddled masses. Many people are on the floor. Imagine just a concrete floor, bloodstained, muddy too because you're walking back and forth. That's where people have to seek care. But I'll say one thing. And SubhanAllah, this is, it's going to sound weird, but the respect for dignity in Gaza was, I've never seen anything like that in the United States. I was in Detroit, in Chicago. If somebody's belly was exposed in the process of us carrying them to a CT scanner or putting them on the floor, a nurse, a doctor was grabbing a sheet to cover them. If there is an elderly person that comes in that's sick, a young person who's injured or has all these different tubes and lines inside of them, he's getting up off of the bed to give it to the elderly person. I mean, the grandma who was shot by a drone, paralyzed from the waist down, everybody's calling her mama. Even you're not related to her, but she's mama. She's your mother. That's how they're all treating each other there. I mean, despite it literally being out of stock from any medication, any anesthetics, no space in the hospital at all, we're talking about 10,000 people who are sheltering inside the hospital and outside the perimeter there, no space. There's still an incredible amount of protection of dignity and respect. I don't see that in the States. And I just feel like they deserve all of the tools that I have in Chicago. They deserve the nice, fancy private room, the clean CT scanner to be able to have a private suite. They deserve that. But subhanAllah, the situation right now, it was overwhelming for me.
I think I was useless the first day that I was there. And if it really wasn't for my colleagues, my Palestinian colleagues there, I think I would have been an additional burden on them. They had to show me the ropes. I had to hold my hand for the first day and just be like, this is what we do in this situation. This is what we do here. So I owe them everything for that. I would have done nothing if it wasn't for them. Tell me about your first, if you don't mind, if it's not getting too personal, your first real faith realization when you were there, like salah or something that clicked with you that maybe hadn't clicked before, like about ibadah, a connection to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. SubhanAllah, you know, and I'm not trying to say anything about Muslims in the United States or Muslims anywhere else. I just want to kind of highlight and amplify our brothers and sisters in Gaza. But every single person there when it's time for salah is praying. Every single person, and they're praying anywhere. I remember in the ICU, that the ICU doctor and one of his nurses stepped out into the hallway to pray dhuhr. And they've got their sajjadah, they've got their carpet that they're laying down. Nobody's missing salah over there. In fact, they asked me one time, they said, I noticed you're combining prayers and they're like, you're home now. So you don't need to combine your prayers anymore. And I said, well, yeah, but I'm still living out of a suitcase. I was giving an excuse to make it easy on myself. And then just to make me feel better, they were like, well, what about the nazih, the displaced person? Can he combine their prayers too just to kind of make me feel better? And so, I mean, that's the thing is, I remember because Salatul Jum'ah basically had to be canceled in Khan Yunus for a couple of weeks because of the intense campaign. I mean, they were literally targeting the masajid. They made sure that there was no masjid still standing. And I remember them talking about just wanting to have that Jum'ah back,
to have Salatul Jum'ah back, to be able to go. And you see videos. I mean, the second they got a chance to do so in Rafah, they did Khutbatul Jum'ah and they were able to have a khutbah and they were able to have a salah, even though they was on top of rubble. I mean, I think they take the deen, I don't wanna say they take it very seriously. I mean, I think it's just a part of their life. I mean, it's just part and parcel for what they do. They all are talking about when Ramadan comes, they're all talking about being able to go and make hajj. And for a place like Gaza, everybody wants to be able to make hajj. I mean, you can barely get out to go to Egypt. It's just incredible how it's a part of their vernacular. It's a part of their everyday life. They're talking about what's halal and what's haram. And they look at it in a way where they wanna do the best. And they're all like, there's not a lot of putting down of each other either, which is incredible. There's not a lot of wagging their finger or condescension. It's everybody's, the idea of brotherhood, I felt it there. This truly, I mean, it's like these guys believe that and they practice that. The believers are brothers. The believers are brothers, yeah. If there was one story, one person who you feel like fundamentally changed you, one incident or one person, what would you share with us? There's plenty of them, but there's one that I always mention because it really got me. I mean, it really corrected me in a way that I needed that lesson. I needed that reminder. Every single night at Nasser Hospital, the nurses from the ICU would knock on the door where I was sleeping and they say, we're gonna have dinner together. And you have to keep in mind, this is Gaza. So everybody's dependent on the meals that are being distributed. And it's really just a can of beans, some dates and you get a bottle of water and sometimes there's some bread. And so there's not a lot to go around, but they wanted to invite me to make sure that I had dinner with them. They said, you're a guest
and we have to obviously treat the guest well. And we were sitting there and they're all combining their stuff and they would insist that I eat first and that I eat until I'm full. They would not sit down until I ate, until I was full. But I remember sitting and talking to a nurse whose house had been destroyed in Rafah. They had a farmland. It was him, his father, his brother, their families, their kids. And it just totally destroyed and he lost his brother, his family. And he actually was rescued from the rubble and he was showing me a video of himself, kind of the rubble on his face and his kids. And he was trying to make a joke about it, just saying like, look, I look so, look how disgruntled I look. I was so nervous, but Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la got me out of this. Then he said this line to me. He said, you know, Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la really was teaching us how to be better. He said, before the war, he said, I was complaining that I was only getting 60% of my salary. He said, before the war, he said, before the war, I was complaining that I can only go from the north to the south. Before the war, I was saying, we don't have a lot of different restaurants. It's always the same food over and over again. Before the war, I was complaining about the water and before the war, I was complaining about 12 hours of electricity because Gaza operates at an energy deficit. He said, after the war, I have 0% of my salary. He said, I've got no food, no water. He goes, I can't even go to the north of Gaza anymore. I can only stay in Khan Yunus and Rafah. And he goes, we have no electricity. He goes, we have no electricity now. He goes, so the day that this war is over, every single day, I'm gonna say alhamdulillah. I'm gonna appreciate the barakah that I live in. I mean, this was in January. I was really stunned by that. I mean, that moved me so much that he twisted it in that direction where he realized this is an opportunity to better himself. I think it's pretty easy, and I was doing this, to say, look how terrible it is. It's terrible, it's just so sad, so sad. You know, woe is me kind of mentality. And he really just corrected it in that moment. I mean, I'll never forget that he just kind of had that position.
And he did it with grace, too, and humility. He's not sitting there lecturing anybody. He's just telling you, this is what I'm gonna start doing. And you're like, I wanna be like that. So it really puts into perspective that it's not about the world around you. It's about how you see the world around you. And if you have that gratitude to Allah subhana wa ta'ala, then even an open-air prison can seem like a paradise. And even in the midst of a genocide, you can see rays of hope, and you can see a Gemina that awaits you. Should Allah subhana wa ta'ala choose you as a martyr. And Allah subhana wa ta'ala make it easy for our brothers and sisters and grant them victory. You know what I mean? Before we get into the Biden thing, I just wanna mention one more thing. You're actually, subhana wa ta'ala, you're from Chicago, particularly Bridgeview, where a young boy, little Palestine, and a little Palestinian boy was murdered very early on. Wadhir Fayoumi, Rahim Allah. May Allah subhana wa ta'ala make it easy for his family. Was murdered just within a couple of weeks of everything happening. I remember attending that janazah and thinking to myself like, man, I wish I could be in Gaza right now. And I'm wondering like, what were your emotions kind of being in a community where a young Palestinian boy was martyred for being a Palestinian? And how that kind of factored into it. If it did at all for you. I mean, we were reeling. I mean, you were there, you saw an entire community was grieving and it was across the United States. It wasn't just Bridgeview, right? I mean, everybody was mourning a six-year-old. And it really felt like, for us as Palestinians, as Muslims too, it's like, people don't think that we're human. It was like that whole dehumanization campaign. Like the fact that somebody could bring themselves to stab a six-year-old that many times. I'm an ER doctor, we see stab wounds. I just, the thought of sort of that trauma and that pain, I couldn't shake it. Obviously, I'm a father as well. And you're just thinking that,
I don't think we're given that same sort of, that same sort of, I don't know, is it dignity by other people? And so it's, from my perspective, I mean, it shook me in a way that made me realize that no one's gonna sort of help us or no one's gonna give us, no one's gonna extend their hand, especially in that moment. It seemed like the entire world was against Gaza, the entire world was against Palestinians. And for me, it was, okay, we're gonna have to do something ourselves. We're gonna, that whole idea, pick yourself up by your bootstraps. It's like, all we have is Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. And you hear that all the time, ma inna ghayrak ya Allah. You hear that in Gaza all the time. And so, and it's just, I think something that came out of Wadir's murder, that tragedy was realizing that it was on us to sort of do this, not to look to anybody else for help, not to look for it to any other human being, just sort of be prepared for this long haul. There's going to be a struggle here. It's still, I think, it's still pretty shocking, but there's been so many incidents too that have kind of afterwards where you're just, we continue to grieve and we continue to mourn, but it's just more reminders about, I think, our status. I mean, I think about those kids in New Haven, or I think it was in Connecticut, the three Palestinian kids. Oh, Raleigh, North Carolina. Oh yeah, Raleigh, North Carolina. I forgot about that. Yeah, Raleigh, North Carolina. Yeah, you're just like, this is the series of attempts. You're like, wow, there's a lot of people working against us and there's a lot of people who want to paint us in a certain light. And I think it's on each and every one of us to kind of fight that and fight that in our own way. Yeah, Yusuf, Wazzam, most points of mercy, Allah make it easy for my families. Obviously they're from Sham and are three winners, but they were murdered. And may Allah accept them as shahada as well. It's been years and we move on, the families don't move on, right?
It's something that I think is very important. Like we're gonna be coming up on a decade of that at some point very soon, you know. May Allah make it easy for them and for the mother of Wadiyar, the family of Wadiyar. The mother is an inspiring woman, by the way, SubhanAllah, she went through a lot. She's an inspiring woman. I was really, really shocked. And I think that's that idea of being nurtured in something different. Everything that you just said could be summarized in HasbunAllahu wa nirmal wakil. The first thing I heard from Wadiyar's mom was HasbunAllahu wa nirmal wakil. The first thing you hear from everyone of us is HasbunAllahu wa nirmal wakil. It's la ilaha illallah manifested in your deepest moment of tragedy, right? And they've been able to do that consistently. And we ask Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la to give us that tawfiq to be able to have the same type of orientation. So I'm gonna come to sort of what got you in the headlines recently, but it's important. And first of all, on behalf of, I think many of us, JazakAllahu khairan. Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la reward you for doing that. I think a lot of us have probably visualized, you know, walking out on the president the way that you did. We've obviously been chanting in front of the White House, but not in the White House. And just tell us about the meeting, man, maybe a little bit more than what you've shared. You've already been, Rashelle, on CNN, CBS, and some different things, but just tell us, how did you get invited? When you got there, did you already have the intention? It seems like you already kind of planned how to walk out, so walk us through it. Yeah, I mean, it was the week leading up to it really kind of solidified my decision. I mean, we get a phone call saying, you know, we wanna make sure that this year we don't do this big Ramadan fest, and we wanna do a working dinner with the president of the United States. And I was told that I would be the first person who would brief him about Gaza, who had actually been on the ground after October 7th. And there would be other medical professionals there, and other Muslim leaders there. And I had already known how the broader Muslim community
felt about engaging with the president at this time. I mean, it was clear, like, you know, we don't wanna do that. We don't wanna sort of tokenize ourselves. We don't wanna put ourselves in a position where we're gonna try to say something, but we're not listened to, and it just becomes like we're sort of whitewashing everything that's happened over six months. The photo op that was coming, right? Yeah, exactly. You and Biden, and then- Exactly. A tweet that- Right, exactly. So yeah. Heroic doctor from Gaza. Yeah, thank you for coming and sharing your experience, and thank you for supporting me, you know, kind of thing. But we, you know, I definitely was very concerned, and I'm still very concerned about Rafah, having been there, 1.7 million people in tents. They're talking about a ground invasion. So that, for me, has been something that I've been panicking about over the past couple of weeks. And so I really wanted to get that message out there. But then you heard about weapons approval, fighter jets being sold. You heard about undermining the UN Security Council resolution, calling for a ceasefire by saying, oh, it's not binding. I mean, everything that indicated that this meeting is not serious. I mean, I'm not gonna sit there, and while literally all of the pain and suffering is going on, and there may be a catastrophic event that takes place with respect to Rafah, I'm not gonna just sit there and, you know, sort of be played in kind of talking in Chicago terms. But I really, you know, I wanted to do something. I mean, I was so angry, I'm so resentful about everything that's been going on. And so we went to the White House, and, you know, you kind of walk through, and we wait in the room, and they said, you know, the president should be arriving any moment. And then you just kind of see different members of his staff, and it's the president and the vice president. And he kind of walks around, sits down, and I remember, you know, he's saying, okay, well, you know, kind of let's get started. You know, we've been working on this a lot, he said, and I said, and I just thought about what that meant, actually, you know, working on this a lot with respect to Gaza. He said, this is a listening session. You know, I hope you guys can trust that we know a little bit about what's going on, too.
And I, you know, for me, I could feel it building up. Like, I gotta stay calm. You just deliver the message that you wanna deliver, that Rafah has to be off limits because of all of the human beings that are there. And that, you know, it's not just about stopping an invasion or a ceasefire. There needs to be some help for the people that are there with respect to water, to even blankets. How are they gonna rebuild their homes again? Like, that needs to be in the calculation here moving forward. We need to help the people in Gaza rebuild everything that was destroyed. And then finally, I wanted to give him a letter from Hadeel, an eight-year-old orphan in Gaza, and Rafah, in a tent, who lost her family. She lost her uncles and her father. She's an orphan. And I was like, I have to do this. I mean, if I have any respect for myself, I gotta, I have to actually make this statement. I should get up and walk away. I'm not gonna throw anything around. I'm not gonna kick the chair. I'm not gonna yell. You know, I just want the message to be clear. Like, I'm doing this because of the pain and the hurt, and I want you to feel that. I want you to see that. And I knew that there would be people in the room that would also still be able to communicate the messages that we wanna get out there. You know, the idea of the humanitarian crisis and the famine and the malnutrition. So I wanted, I just wanted people to feel like they got a chance to tell the president, like, we're not happy with this. We're gonna walk away from you. We're walking away from this table. You need to do something. There needs to be concrete steps. And alhamdulillah, I got that opportunity. And, you know, people ask me, were you nervous at all? And honestly, I was not. I was just, I'm not nervous because I'm not doing anything special. Really, I'm getting up and walking. Alhamdulillah, I have the ability to walk. I can walk outside of a door. But for me, it's more about, can we use this moment to translate into change? If that happens, then I'll be incredibly happy. But until that, that's the case. You know, I think all of us are in that mode where what's the next? What's the next step here? What can we do to bring some attention,
to put some faces on the people that are there and to get the massacres to stop? And I know everybody feels the same way. So let me ask you like a deeper question. Did you feel like when you were speaking, you were getting through to anybody else in the room? Did you feel like, I mean, like you can read sentiments. Yeah. You're an emotionally intelligent like guy. Like you can probably feel like what's going on in the room, right? Who's, did you feel like staffers or like people were like, were you getting a sense like, man, like this is disgusting. Like we're doing this, right? You're literally, it's Ketimetu Hakkar speaking it right in his face, right? And like, you got a lot of people around him and we know like staffers and there's a lot going on in there, right? So did you feel like your message was actually getting across to anyone like in making their stomachs churn a bit, maybe their hearts? I think they felt the tension. I mean, I think they felt also in my voice, the urgency. I mean, when we talk about Azenaw, there's the tone that's there. I think people understood that. And you can't take away from the fact that we were on the ground and we saw this with our own eyes. I don't have an agenda. I'm not a registered participant in any political party. I'm not the president of any organization. I'm not selling anything that I need to make money off of to the president. I don't need his contracts. I'm just telling you based on what I saw and you can feel how nervous I am about what's happening in Gaza right now. And I feel, and I'm gotten to the point where I'm concerned about this invasion that may take place. And I do think that there were people who actually received that message. They understood. Because at the end of the day, I mean, when you are just only focused on the truth, then what can you argue against me? What can you push back in my face? And the one thing I did mention, because I know that they've been meeting with their Israeli counterparts and they're saying that there is no famine, there is no malnutrition, and that they are bringing aid into there. I said, I'm telling you firsthand and I can give you examples and details about how everything that they've said about this is not true and whether you want pictures or you want people.
I'm talking on behalf of thousands of starving children on Gaza Strip. We have been under Brussels siege for 135 days. No food, no water, no medicine. Our message to the world, tell on you, how dare you food your children while we eat animal food? Are you waiting our death? Tell on you, our message to world leaders, we don't ask you to fight Israel, we are asking for food. There are plenty of people who can attest to this and I'm here now in this room. So, I think I hope inshallah that that message does get through. I think it was received by several people. At the very minimum, I think you ever have that sort of feeling when you're about to discipline someone. I'm not saying that I was gonna discipline the president or the guy, I'm just saying, if you feel like maybe there's something wrong that happened, you have that feeling inside of you. And I do think some people felt like, yeah, something wrong did happen with respect to what's going on in Gaza. There are lots of areas where we fell short and we could have made a difference in people's lives. So, I do think that that message is loud and clear. Everybody's been saying it and I think I was just kind of repeating that message and I hope it soaks in. All right, last thing, American Muslims, courage. You learn courage and character and resilience and faith from the people of Gaza. By taking these types of steps in your career, you're risking your career. We got people that have been fired from hospitals over sharing an Instagram story, over a tweet. We've got people that have lost their jobs at law firms. The doxing is crazy. What's a message that you can give to American Muslims about courage right now? I mean, I'm gonna go back to the people in Gaza and I'm gonna mention two things from them, honestly, that stuck out to me. There's this level of honesty that's there that I haven't seen replicated anywhere else. Just this willingness to speak the truth,
even if it's against themselves. And I'll give you an example. I was at Shuhada al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah and there was an ICU doctor there and he was one of five people that stayed in the hospital to treat the patients when the Israeli tanks started to surround the hospital and actually hit the ICU. And many people fled, reasonably. Many people went to go take care of their families, they got out of there. But he was one of the people that decided to stay in the hospital. And as the Israeli tanks withdrew, many of the medical staff started to come back. And I remember them talking about it and he asked one of the guys, he said, why did you leave? Why don't you stay with me? And the guy told him, he goes, I'm gonna be very honest with you. I was terrified. I was scared. That's why I left. He goes, no, I'm not scared, so that's why I came back. And that sort of honesty to me is incredible. He was basically testifying against himself, but he's just willing to put it forward. I think that's something we have to think about. I mean, these people are willing to speak up the truth in the face of fighter jets, tanks, massive military. We should be able to at least say what we think is right and communicate in an effective way. My only message is think about how you're communicating it and messaging it. We want the person to respond to it because we know the truth is on our side. We know that we're speaking the truth. We're not lying. We're not propagandists. We're just trying to communicate about the suffering that's there. We want our people there to have the right to life, to be able to live freely and to live with dignity and to be able to do what they want without having to worry about being killed. Just think about how that message can be received. I know how my colleagues at work can receive it. It's gonna be different than how the president receives it. You know, within the community that you deal with, how they're gonna receive it, people who are also non-Muslim. Let's just get the story out there because we know we're speaking the truth. JazakAllah. Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la bless you. And I do wanna point out here, by the way, Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la your wife and you got two kids under three. Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la bless you and your family. Thank you. Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la, I think that when you take this type of a step, and I've said it and I mean it,
I'm extremely proud of all of my friends who are doctors, brothers who have gone forth. Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la, there are over 20 people that I know right now in Gaza that are doctors. And this is like, we have a community here in Dallas. We were just talking about this. We've sent more from Dallas probably than anywhere else. So indebted to each one of you guys, but also your families because your wives are at home, for the sisters that have gone, their husbands are at home. Little kids sometimes and not knowing what's gonna happen. So may Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la reward them as well, reward the families and reward you all InshaAllah. Allow this to be a means of bringing healing to our people in Gaza. And may Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la give victory to the oppressed everywhere and allow us to be vehicles of conveying that truth. Allahumma ameen. JazakAllah Khayran. JazakAllah, thank you. May Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la reward you. JazakAllah. BarakAllah for you Sheikh. Thank you.
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