When I first saw footage of Gaza doctor Munir al-Bursh and his family kneeling beside the white-shrouded body of his son, surrounded by mourners, I thought it was an old video. It was not.

My conclusion, however, was understandable. In December 2023, only months after the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, the al-Bursh family was targeted in an Israeli attack. Dr. Munir, director-general of Gaza’s Ministry of Health, was wounded. So were other members of his family. His daughter, Jinan, only 13, was killed.

That same day, Gaza’s beloved doctor was back at work, joining the many doctors across the strip trying to save lives as Israel’s killing machine claimed them by the thousands.

Between today and the next UN General Assembly lies an entire year—365 days in which those words can either acquire meaning or become yet another entry in the long archive of speeches on Palestine.

Alas, the latest footage was not old footage resurfacing. It was a new coffin, a new funeral, another child buried by the same family. This time, the attack took place during what some in the media continue to call the "Gaza ceasefire."

On September 19, an Israeli drone strike killed al-Bursh’s eldest son, Basir, outside a tent west of Jabaliya refugee camp.

“We were together side by side,” the grieving father recalled. Basir had warned him, “The Israelis are targeting both of us.” Moments later, his son stepped outside the tent and was killed.

One can be forgiven for confusing Gaza’s present with its recent past. The scenes emerging today are almost indistinguishable from those that preceded the so-called ceasefire of October 2025. The sequence repeats itself with terrible familiarity: Israeli strikes, shelling, and sniping; Palestinians killed; the bereaved carrying their dead through Gaza’s destroyed streets, searching among the ruins for somewhere to bury them.

Al-Bursh’s story is part of this terrible continuum, but its significance extends beyond his personal loss. Throughout the genocide, he and other Palestinian doctors became Gaza’s de facto spokespeople. They counted the dead and wounded, documented hunger and destruction, and chronicled the collapse of the medical system from within its hospitals. In the process, they became Gaza’s highest moral authority, more credible than politicians or self-proclaimed leaders.

And the world listened. Gaza’s doctors forged a bond with global civil society that no political institution could manufacture.

Perhaps that helps explain the staggering price Gaza’s medical community has been made to pay. According to the World Health Organization, more than 1,700 healthcare workers have been killed since 2023, amid at least 920 attacks on healthcare.

Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, like Dr. al-Bursh, became a symbol of that medical resistance. The director of Kamal Adwan Hospital remained at his post through siege and repeated Israeli attacks before Israeli forces detained him in December 2024. He remains imprisoned without charge or trial, amid reports from his lawyer of beatings and deteriorating health.

Dr. al-Bursh, meanwhile, remains steadfast despite repeated blows that would have broken many others. His wife, too, embodies sumud, the........

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