Speaker 1: Two days when it's day drawn twenty fifth, twenty five
Speaker 1: and it's still am.
Speaker 2: This is an emergency doctor living and working in central Gaza.
Speaker 2: We can't tell you his name or where he works
Speaker 2: because he's worried for his safety. But since last week
Speaker 2: we've been gathering voice notes from people working in hospitals there.
Speaker 1: Now approaching its second year, this war has drained us physically,
Speaker 1: emotionally and systemically.
Speaker 2: Last week, he was on night shift at the hospital
Speaker 2: when he heard screams.
Speaker 1: It was just past midnight when the screens began and
Speaker 1: dozens of wounded flooded buddies everywhere, cries blood on the floor.
Speaker 2: He rushed the emergency room, where he saw ten patients
Speaker 2: in a critical condition. There were four beds. The rest
Speaker 2: of the people were lying bleeding on the floor. Amid
Speaker 2: the chaos, someone shouted that one of the men on
Speaker 2: the floor had a head injury. When the doctor came closer,
Speaker 2: he recognized as the man in front of him. It
Speaker 2: was a fellow doctor who he'd worked alongside.
Speaker 1: I tricked his pulse.
Speaker 3: He was gone.
Speaker 1: A tank fired a pullet and shattered his skull. He
Speaker 1: died immediately.
Speaker 2: When he died, this doctor had been trying to get
Speaker 2: food for his family at an AID point.
Speaker 1: Even doctors here are starving. Most of us haven't been
Speaker 1: paid in months. We work twenty for our shifts with
Speaker 1: a single mir Doctor Rames died seeking food for himself
Speaker 1: for his children. May Allah rist his sole and bees.
Speaker 1: He honored his duty and died with dignity.
Speaker 2: The doctor who sent this note described a horrifying new
Speaker 2: pattern of casualties in Gaza's hospitals. Civilians seeking food for
Speaker 2: their families are being targeted by Israeli forces. According to
Speaker 2: authorities in Gaza, at least five hundred eighty three people
Speaker 2: have been killed in the past month at aid distribution centers.
Speaker 1: The situation here is catastrophic. Our hospitals are collapsing, our
Speaker 1: lives are shattered, and the world must look away.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am today, the risk
Speaker 2: of seeking aid in Gaza and the reality of providing
Speaker 2: medical care as the bombardment continues. It's Tuesday, July one.
Speaker 2: Doctor Ezizrahaman is an American doctor who's just completed a
Speaker 2: two week rotation in Gaza. Like the doctor you've just
Speaker 2: heard from, he spent the last few weeks treating patients
Speaker 2: whose families say they were shot out while waiting.
Speaker 5: For eight we were stationed at Naser Hospital, so we
Speaker 5: stayed at the hospital for the full two weeks. You know,
Speaker 5: the hospital itself is a green zone, but immediately around
Speaker 5: it is a red zone. So red zone basically means
Speaker 5: it's fair game for Israel to drop a bomb. So
Speaker 5: we were told to stay at the hospital at all times,
Speaker 5: not even going outside into the safe grounds, just because
Speaker 5: shrapnel can be at risk at any point. Because there's
Speaker 5: bombing happening two hundred meters away. Pretty much every thirty minutes,
Speaker 5: we're hearing some sort of a bomb and machine gun
Speaker 5: fire in the background.
Speaker 2: And you're working in a trauma base, so working with
Speaker 2: the people who are directly impacted by those blasts that
Speaker 2: you're hearing. So how many people are you seeing come
Speaker 2: through at any given time.
Speaker 5: I think one of the days was sixty dead and
Speaker 5: three hundred injured. We're talking about thirty are pretty much
Speaker 5: dead on arrival, thirty are pretty much headshots, so very
Speaker 5: poor prognoses, you know that. Thirty or pretty much neck
Speaker 5: or spine shots where they're going to be paralyzed neck down.
Speaker 5: Sometimes just the legs, but and then everything in between,
Speaker 5: whether it be the shots and the lungs, the heart
Speaker 5: requiring chest tubes, pericardial drains. And when you ask these patients'
Speaker 5: families like where were these patients coming from, you almost
Speaker 5: always hear the same story that they were trying to
Speaker 5: get food for the family at these Gods of Humanitarian
Speaker 5: fun ghf AID sites. And when we're extracting the bullets
Speaker 5: from these patients, we're seeing you know, rifle caliber rounds, right.
Speaker 2: So we're talking about people being shot in the head
Speaker 2: or the neck. So that's a very targeted shooting, right.
Speaker 5: Right exactly, It's a very accurate shot. And the thing
Speaker 5: is we're not just seeing it in men. We're seeing
Speaker 5: it in children. We're seeing it in women. And then
Speaker 5: you'll have you know, shrapnel injuries coming from different bombing sites.
Speaker 5: We actually saw a pregnant woman with a fetus that
Speaker 5: we had to abort and the bullet went right through
Speaker 5: the fetus intrauterine. And she's thirty years old and we
Speaker 5: had to do a hysterectomy, so she's never gonna have
Speaker 5: a a child ever again. So you know, you hear
Speaker 5: it on the news but seeing with your own eyes,
Speaker 5: it doesn't make much rational sense, it doesn't make any
Speaker 5: moral sense, and you see the pain that it caused
Speaker 5: to the family.
Speaker 2: And as a doctor in this hospital, tell me more
Speaker 2: about the challenges in terms of having to make decisions
Speaker 2: about how you treat people, how serious someone's injuries might be,
Speaker 2: and who gets trianged first.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a great question. So it was very disheartening
Speaker 5: to see how they have to do it. But if
Speaker 5: a patient has a bulletshot to the head, even if
Speaker 5: it's potentially survivable, they may forego that patient for someone
Speaker 5: who has less injury, and they basically just put that
Speaker 5: patient from what they call the red zone in the
Speaker 5: trauma bay to the black zone in the trauma bay
Speaker 5: where that patient kind of just dies off and there's
Speaker 5: just no time or resources to let the physicians and
Speaker 5: nurses and texts take care of that patient. The National
Speaker 5: House for those twelve ICU beds, at one point there
Speaker 5: had eighty ICU patients eight and zero to the point
Speaker 5: that we're putting ICO patients on wards. And the words
Speaker 5: obviously just don't have the supplies and the specialized nurses
Speaker 5: and specialized care that it takes for an ICU, so
Speaker 5: you can imagine not enough ventilators, is not enough oxygen tanks,
Speaker 5: and every single medical supply in between was a problem.
Speaker 2: And so what is it like for you treating these injuries?
Speaker 5: You know, as physicians, we like to compartmentalize our emotions.
Speaker 5: You know, the first time we saw it, it was
Speaker 5: quite overwhelming to see brain matter on the floor literally,
Speaker 5: you know, intestines what we call extravagating outside of the
Speaker 5: abdomen and just trying to tape it back in, and
Speaker 5: the extent of human beings injured into a small trauma bay.
Speaker 5: Noster Hospital was not made for this, so this trauma
Speaker 5: bay is not massive by any means. And to the point,
Speaker 5: there's not enough beds, so families are just putting the
Speaker 5: patient on the floor, which is extremely dirty. It's blood everywhere.
Speaker 5: You're trying to step between patients and you know, the
Speaker 5: bottom of your shoe has blood all over it. We
Speaker 5: actually had to move a patient and you know that
Speaker 5: we didn't evaluate the back of the head yet and
Speaker 5: there was brain just being you know, slid all over
Speaker 5: the ground. So, I mean it was terrible, but we
Speaker 5: didn't have time to process it. I found myself not
Speaker 5: crying in Gaza. But when I got back to the States,
Speaker 5: I found myself, you know, randomly just crying and randomly
Speaker 5: staring into space. Just I think this is how I'm
Speaker 5: processing it. But when I was there, there was just
Speaker 5: no time to process it. It was just constant every day.
Speaker 2: Well, doctor Brahman, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2: I really appreciate you talking with me today.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Ruby off to the brain A deadly game of red
Speaker 2: light green light for Gazans seeking food. Earlier this year,
Speaker 2: on March TI, the Israeli government imposed a total blockade
Speaker 2: on aid like food and medicine entering Gaza. When the
Speaker 2: blockade was finally lifted, Israel didn't let the UN and
Speaker 2: regular aid agencies go back to work. Instead, Israel took control,
Speaker 2: creating aid distribution sites run by a private American company.
Speaker 2: Now Gazans must go to highly militarized zones to collect food.
Speaker 2: In reporting this story, our team reached out to around
Speaker 2: a dozen people living in Gaza. Many of them are
Speaker 2: too physically and emotionally exhausted to speak publicly about their experiences,
Speaker 2: but they told us some version of the same thing.
Speaker 2: The aid system in Gaza is deliberately broken. Another doctor
Speaker 2: who sent us voice notes described his relative good fortune.
Speaker 2: His stockpiled enough food to avoid the aid points where
Speaker 2: billions are being attacked, and he won't let any of
Speaker 2: his family go near them either.
Speaker 3: We have this concert here in Guz that if you
Speaker 3: have enough money, you can buy your safety by not
Speaker 3: going there to the getge of center and instend spend
Speaker 3: your money on those overly briced goods.
Speaker 2: As he tells us about the inflated prices of basic goods,
Speaker 2: you can hear explosions in the background.
Speaker 3: A kilogram of sugar used to cost one dollar before
Speaker 3: the war and even during the seas fire, but it's
Speaker 3: now almost one hundred dollars.
Speaker 2: He says. For those who can't pay and have no
Speaker 2: choice but to go to these aid points, it's chaotic.
Speaker 2: Drones fill the air and soldiers surround the eight points.
Speaker 2: People are only allowed to go there when the IDF
Speaker 2: says so, but there is no set schedule and little
Speaker 2: warning about when they'll get the green light.
Speaker 3: There is a few drones that when the center or
Speaker 3: door it turns on a green light indicating that it's
Speaker 3: urban and start broadcasting. A voice by Eida christa rooms,
Speaker 3: telling them that it is urban and you can claim
Speaker 3: your head within, for example, twenty minutes and leave as
Speaker 3: soon as boshof.
Speaker 2: In the Israeli newspaper Herets late last week, Israeli soldiers
Speaker 2: admitted to deliberately firing at unarmed people waiting for aid
Speaker 2: as a form of crowd control. The soldier told haretes
Speaker 2: that once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they
Speaker 2: know they can approach. Our only form of communication is gunfire,
Speaker 2: the soldier said. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Etnahu and
Speaker 2: Defense Minister Israel Katz rejected the testimony as malicious falsehoods.
Speaker 3: One of our neighbors who was killed there was shot
Speaker 3: in his abdomen. He's a guy in his thirties. He's
Speaker 3: a father for three kids. Last rewards that those who
Speaker 3: brought him to the hospital have mentioned, and I quote
Speaker 3: here a man at susa Ula the car home sectem
Speaker 3: Johnny in which translated for I beg you must to
Speaker 3: let go of my kids, Please careful them. I left
Speaker 3: them Hungary.
Speaker 2: On Friday, the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterrez called
Speaker 2: these aid centers inherently unsafe, saying the search for food
Speaker 2: must never be a death sentence. Olga trev Co works
Speaker 2: for the UN in humanitarian affairs. She's currently in Gaza City.
Speaker 2: So Olga, welcome to seven AM. Thank you for coming
Speaker 2: on the show. Thanks for having me, Olga. The Haretz
Speaker 2: report quoted an Israeli soldier describing what is happening at
Speaker 2: eight Points as a version of the children's game red
Speaker 2: Light Green Light. When you read that report, what did
Speaker 2: you think.
Speaker 4: Well, we're clearly seeing that they are extremely dangerous. These
Speaker 4: I wouldn't call them aid sites. I would say these
Speaker 4: are militarized areas that put people at risk and force
Speaker 4: people to choose between an impossible choice.
Speaker 2: And it's being distributed by a new organization, a group
Speaker 2: back by the US and Israeli governments. What do you
Speaker 2: know about the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
Speaker 4: So we're not part of this scheme in any way,
Speaker 4: and we've made our position quite clear that we cannot
Speaker 4: participate in a scheme that is not in line with
Speaker 4: humanitarian principles that have been globally established. And we have
Speaker 4: also repeatedly emphasized that we had a system in place
Speaker 4: and we continue to have a system in place that
Speaker 4: has been tested over many years, and we have decades
Speaker 4: of experience in delivering aid and making sure that it
Speaker 4: actually reaches the people in need and does not force
Speaker 4: them to walk long distances or in anyway puts them
Speaker 4: that additional risk that they may face at these locations,
Speaker 4: and our position hasn't changed on that.
Speaker 2: And so you mentioned this a little bit. Tell me
Speaker 2: more about what impact all of this is having on
Speaker 2: the people who do still need aid in Gaza. Now,
Speaker 2: how are they now approaching this?
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, it's really difficult to go out
Speaker 4: anywhere in Gaza and see the faces of the people
Speaker 4: and the kind of the carrying the weight of the
Speaker 4: world's in difference on their shoulders. Some of them, I feel,
Speaker 4: are really losing hope at this stage. Others are just
Speaker 4: basically living from hour to hour, from day to day,
Speaker 4: and they really don't know where their next meal is
Speaker 4: going to come from. Of course, they cut corners everywhere,
Speaker 4: and they prioritize their children over themselves. I mean, I
Speaker 4: don't recognize some of my friends when I don't see
Speaker 4: them for a few days, and then they come and
Speaker 4: see me and they will have gotten so much dinner
Speaker 4: and really unrecognizable at this point, So I think the
Speaker 4: situation that we have now is the worst that we've
Speaker 4: ever seen. I mean, all indicators are pointing to the
Speaker 4: negative direction, including malnutrition of course continues to increase, and
Speaker 4: the types of aight they're allowed to enter are not
Speaker 4: everything that is needed. So shelter, for example, hasn't entered
Speaker 4: for over four months. Same with fuel. It's been about
Speaker 4: four months since any fuel has entered Gaza at all,
Speaker 4: and the severity of it now really cannot be overstated.
Speaker 4: I mean, if no fuel enters within immediate really within
Speaker 4: the immediate term, we will face immediate loss of life
Speaker 4: because more vital life saving equipment will have to shut down.
Speaker 2: And so, what in your view needs to happen to
Speaker 2: ensure the safe district aid now in Gaza, Well, it's
Speaker 2: very simple.
Speaker 4: What needs to happen is a consistent and unrestricted flow
Speaker 4: of aid into Gaza through the various corridors that we have,
Speaker 4: through the multiple crossings that are available. So they need
Speaker 4: to open more crossings. They need to allow us to
Speaker 4: bring aid and supplies into Gaza through these multiple corridors,
Speaker 4: and our work needs to be enabled. I mean some
Speaker 4: of our missions take days to complete and even then,
Speaker 4: some of them, you know, may have waited for forty
Speaker 4: plus hours and didn't actually come out with anything because
Speaker 4: it was too dangerous, or you know, there was fighting
Speaker 4: taking place and we have to maneuver our movements in
Speaker 4: between the offensive that is ongoing. But beyond that, I
Speaker 4: want to note that it's not just about aid. You know,
Speaker 4: you can't put a number on the dignity. They need
Speaker 4: much more than food, and they need much more than
Speaker 4: just humanitarian assistance. They need life to have some sort
Speaker 4: of semblance here, because I don't think that people have
Speaker 4: felt like they've had any sort of life. And you know,
Speaker 4: these conditions that were called living, they're not living conditions
Speaker 4: in any way.
Speaker 2: And why do you think it is that Israel is
Speaker 2: not allowing that unrestricted aid?
Speaker 4: Well, I think that would be a question for them.
Speaker 4: I don't have an answer for that. We obviously have
Speaker 4: done everything that we possibly could, and we continue to
Speaker 4: do everything in our power to appeal to anyone who
Speaker 4: is listening to highlight the extent of the needs and
Speaker 4: that the only way to address them is by allowing
Speaker 4: everything that is needed here to enter.
Speaker 2: Olga, thank you so much for your time today. I
Speaker 2: really appreciate it.
Speaker 4: That's Mac Sacsua.
Speaker 2: This episode of seven Am was produced by Haidi pet
Speaker 2: and the seven Am team. It's our first episode under
Speaker 2: new ownership. Our show was recently bought by an independent
Speaker 2: media company called Solstice Media. Also in the news today,
Speaker 2: after a nine week trial, the jury in the triple
Speaker 2: murder trial of Mushroom cook Erin Patterson are finally deliberating
Speaker 2: their verdict. Patterson has fleeted not guilty to all charges
Speaker 2: and even took the stand to argue the deaths were
Speaker 2: a tragic accident. Meanwhile, the prosecution called more than fifty
Speaker 2: witnesses to give evidence over the course of the trial.
Speaker 2: The verdict will be delivered once the twelve members of
Speaker 2: the jury unanimously agree and from today. Minimum wages across
Speaker 2: the country are increasing three point five percent. It's expected
Speaker 2: that two point six million Australians will get a pay rise,
Speaker 2: bringing the minimum wage to twenty four four dollars and
Speaker 2: ninety five cents an hour, or nine hundred and forty
Speaker 2: eight dollars per week. The new financial year also brings
Speaker 2: an increase in employer contributions to superannuation, up from eleven
Speaker 2: point five percent to twelve percent. I'm Ruby Jones. Thanks
Speaker 2: for listening.