“My work is with children. I am a pediatrician.”

On 27 December 2024, Israeli occupation forces surrounded Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza and ordered its evacuation. Moments later, from the ruins of the hospital—encircled by dozens of tanks—a doctor emerged wearing his white coat and began walking alone toward the tanks. Captured in one of the most iconic images of modern warfare, this moment stands as an emblem of honor for the medical profession and for the very notion of being a doctor, and as a moment of shame for humanity and for history. Palestinian painter Maram Ali immortalized this honor and this shame with her brush, engraving them into the conscience of humankind.

In Gaza, not only women and children were killed; all the humanity values have ever claimed to create were slaughtered as well. Alongside the ear-splitting roar of warplanes, missiles, tanks, and countless other instruments of destruction, justice, morality, and innocence were annihilated by the world’s deafening, hope-shattering silence. Yet, life itself and the profound faith in life, broke through the mute barriers of war machines and petrified hearts, reaching every soul still capable of remaining human.

From beneath the rubble and ruins of Gaza, a persistent whisper reaches the ears: “Even under the debris, hearts continue to beat.” It is not the dead who whisper, but a conscience that resists death, resists humiliation, and cries out—out of sheer defiance—for life and hope in a Gaza reduced entirely to wreckage. For more than two years, this conscience has shaken the world awake, stirring country after country, city after city, street after street into a vigil of protest.

Throughout these ominous times, when darkness has held the entire globe captive, the world has also borne witness to countless acts of heroism—bodies and souls set ablaze to keep hope alive for human existence, innocence, and morality. With his dignified and courageous walk toward the tanks, Dr. Hussam Idris Abu Safiya came to embody the stubborn rhythm of that healing conscience, standing watch with quiet resolve for a life that was being systematically erased.

Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya is a pediatrician, a husband, and a father. As the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, he transformed medicine and science into a relentless act of survival, bearing witness to his era with his very life, keeping an unspoken ledger for the Day of Reckoning. “I am speaking to you from the heart of the siege,”[1] he once said. This was no metaphor; it was the starkest form of reality. His hospital was the heart, and the siege was the tightening cage around it.

He was born on 21 November 1973 in the Jabalia Refugee Camp, a child of a displaced family. His family had been expelled in 1948 from Hamama[2], located 24 kilometers north of Gaza, following terrorist attacks by colonial militias. Like every Palestinian, Hussam grew up knowing that survival was never guaranteed. To live in Palestine, fragmented and occupied piece by piece by Israeli settlements, is to live perpetually on the edge of death. In the streets of Gaza, where death roamed freely, Hussam grew up internalizing the value of life more deeply with each passing day. He was a diligent student, a child with a strong sense of responsibility.

After completing his secondary education, he earned admission to medical school and traveled to Kazakhstan for his studies. There, after years of rigorous and successful training, he completed his specializations in pediatrics and neonatology. The 1990s he spent in Kazakhstan brought him not only professional expertise but also a life partner, Albina, who would become his unshakable support through years of exile and wars marked by devastating losses. Following the birth of their first son, Elias, Albina and Abu Safiya returned to Gaza in 1998 and settled in the Jabalia refugee camp. In the years that followed, Albina gave birth to three more sons and two daughters.[3]

For years, Dr. Hussam served at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. Thousands of babies were born into this hostile world in his compassionate, skilled hands. He was not only a pediatrician and neonatologist, but also a source of guidance for young mothers, families, and complicated births, a center of gravity offering solutions and moral support. Having successfully passed the examinations of the Palestinian Medical Council, Dr. Hussam often said, “My work is with children. I am a pediatrician.”[4]

After 7 October 2023, as the Israeli occupation forces’ attacks escalated into a full-scale genocide, new burdens fell upon Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya’s shoulders, beyond those of his patients. He had become the hospital’s director. As he himself stated, he did not regard this as a promotion, but as a responsibility. Gaza’s healthcare system was collapsing; water and sanitation networks had been destroyed, electricity was nonexistent, medical supplies had been cut off. Under these dystopian conditions, managing a hospital became an immense moral and professional burden. When fuel for electricity ran out, he performed resuscitations by candlelight. When incubator heaters stopped working, he tried to warm premature infants with his own breath. During moments of extreme scarcity, he was forced to make agonizing decisions that defied reason—deciding whose lives might be saved and who would be left to die. When his colleagues fell into despair, he would quietly tell them, “As long as we breathe, they will breathe too.”[5]

Amid his medical and administrative duties, Dr. Hussam struggled to make Gaza’s silenced voice heard by the world. From the darkened wards of a hospital where lights, medical devices, ventilation, and hygiene systems had all fallen silent, he called out: “Once again, we remind the world: there are laws you proudly........

© Stratejik Düşünce Enstitüsü