The human cost of the Israel-Gaza war

A veteran volunteer surgeon laments a well lived life.

Tim Goodacre

Tim Goodacre is a reconstructive plastic surgeon, and volunteer at a hospital in Gaza.

AbdulRahman at work.

Tim Goodacre.

The Israel-Gaza war rages on. Every few days a new tragedy hits our dulled senses. The West Bank and now Lebanon are getting dragged into the conflict. Palestinians and hostages continue to die, and hunger and disease threaten Gaza's displaced people as autumn and winter approach.

Yet what is often lost is the human face of this conflict. This is the story of one such life.

AbdulRahman was an intelligent, gentle and diligent young third year medical student in his early twenties, with judgement well beyond his peers. Towards the end of 2023, as the war spread more viciously towards southern Gaza, he was one a group of around 10 students who volunteered to join the team of health care workers at the European Gaza Hospital (EGH). I was volunteering there as a reconstructive plastic surgeon and and met him in the hospital.

Both medical schools in Gaza before the war began were in the north alongside their parent universities. They had been destroyed during the onslaught in the early months of fighting. In the southern town of Khan Younis, the EGH was the sole surviving operational facility to which the wounded could be transferred. It was overwhelmed by the vast numbers of families also taking refuge in what was deemed a safer space than most of the surrounding war zone.

Many of the senior medical staff and surgeons had retreated to scattered parts of the strip, displaced frequently by the ever-moving conflict and driven by the need to support their families and stay together. ‘Live together-die together’ is an understandable feature in the horror show of war. Students, frequently left with no money or resources, started to volunteer to serve in hospitals in exchange for a little food and a sense of worth in the work they could offer. Any functioning hospital, if briefly ‘deconflicted’ so they could provide relatively safe care, found itself staffed by a disparate crew of local staff, displaced students, and an indeterminate number of more senior surgeons from both Gaza and humanitarian agencies.

His desire to learn all that could be learnt, and to try to become the best surgeon possible, was palpable.

It was into this chaotic mix that young AbdulRahman walked having fled his family home in the east of Khan Younis in November 2023. A bright young man, with great aspirations to qualify as a surgeon and serve his community, he had spent the first six weeks of the war at home, unable to attend his medical school in Gaza City to the north, but working hard at his studies regardless, using every online and library resource available to him.

At some point in late November, the battle zone moved south, and his family home was shelled along with many dwellings in the vicinity. Caught in crossfire, he sheltered in his neighbouring relative’s house after his parents and other close family had escaped to Rafah.

Abdulrahman told me the dramatic story of his escape into the house in which he survived for a week alongside his relative’s family when I spoke to him in late January 2024. This young man not only survived an ordeal of indescribable fear and potential slaughter, but he was then arrested and interrogated in brutal fashion by IDF forces.

On his release after a harrowing week, he made his way barefoot to the nearest hospital, which happened to be the EGH. In that place of safety, he was given food and water and after recuperation, volunteered to work alongside a reconstructive plastic and burns surgeon who had recently returned to Gaza after training in the UK.

Although his family were still all alive in Rafah in displaced makeshift shelters, he opted to stay and throw his weight into whatever he could do to support the hospital whilst continuing to learn his profession as a doctor. Travelling occasionally at great personal risk to see and support his family, he devoted all his waking hours to surgical work in EGH operating theatres and wards. His excellent command of English made him immensely valuable to any visiting surgeons who managed to access Gaza during the war months. He was always cheerful, always willing to respond to requests for his time, however stressful the surrounding clamour from desperate patients and relatives might become.

When his working day was done, in the middle of the night he would arrange for his fellow students to have informal teaching seminars from whoever he could cajole to deliver them, and would absorb knowledge and ideas about best practice like a sponge. His desire to learn all that could be learnt, and to try to become the best surgeon possible, was palpable.

I had every intention of supporting this fine young man in achieving his professional aspirations by whatever means I could once a ceasefire arose and he could be brought safely to Europe to continue his training.

In the last week of August, AbdulRahman was sheltering in a relative’s house in Khan Younis. In the small hours of the morning an Israeli attack was launched on the neighbourhood and the house took a direct hit. AbdulRahman was killed instantly.

He knew, as does every Gazan in these troubled times, that nowhere was safe, and all lives in that tragic zone are at risk. His is a story of a life tragically cut short, of the randomness and destructiveness of war. His death strikes right at the heart of my hopes for the remnant of the fine young population of such a desperately sad nation state. He, and those like him, could have been at the heart of the re-building of Gaza, able to live in what now feels a far-off peace. I cannot translate this into anger, as AbdulRahman himself had a passionate concern for peace and reconciliation, and never once spoke to me in many conversations of support for Hamas, or of hatred for those who had destroyed his country.

What can be done however, is to honour his life and commitment with similar tenacity in supporting the pursuit of peace, justice for his people, learning and education for the remnant of the nation, and reconstruction of a Palestine that can proudly and honourably reflect the finest values it possesses. AbdulRahman was a great Palestinian, and his all too short life was one which I want to celebrate as one of the finest I have seen in many students of the next generation of doctors. May he rest in peace, and may a lasting peace come quickly to Gaza, to all of Palestine and the whole of the Middle East.

Snippet

America

Comment

Trauma

12 September 2025

3 min read

Why Charlie Kirk’s murder shook me so much

When violence hits close to home, we search for answers

Will Fagan

Will Fagan serves as a minister in the Episcopal Church in Birmingham, Alabama.

Mourning students at a vigil hold a sign about Charlie Kirk.

Students at Texas Tech hold a vigil for Charlie Kirk.

X.com/OldRowOfficial.

Unless you've managed to avoid all news this week, you’ll have heard of a series of unconnected violent attacks in the United States, the most recent being the assassination of 31-year-old conservative political activist Charlie Kirk during a speaking engagement at a university in Utah.

Every time there is a shooting in my country – whatever the motives – I become physically sick and had a similar reaction this week. I cannot watch the news; I delete social media and avoid the topic in conversation as much as possible. Our present and public culture of violence coupled with the resultant news cycle is simply too much, too fear-inducing, and leaves one with the helpless thought of, “what would happen if I was in a situation like this?” I’m sure I’m not alone in this response.

I do not agree with Kirk’s politics (though as an ordained minister, I wouldn’t tell you if I did), yet what I can tell you is that his death has gripped me in a way I couldn’t have foreseen, nor expected, becoming strikingly close to home. Kirk was 31 with a three- and one-year-old child. I am 32 with a three- and one-year-old. The idea that this could happen, period, followed by the thought of a prospect of never seeing my own children grow up completely undoes me.

This is undoubtedly a common response to when tragedy strikes individuals with whom we can readily identify. I doubt I have to list examples (were you 37 years old when Princess Diana died?; etc). because you’re probably thinking of certain instances right now in times where tragedy has hit, even metaphorically, quite close to home.

As I write this not from a gun control perspective, nor a political one at all, what is the theological answer to why events like this continue to happen? It is a question that I have been asked, unprovoked, by three young fathers (of diverse political persuasion) this week who have been gripped similarly to me.

What continues to come to mind is a blanket statement written by the Apostle Paul in his first century letter to the Galatian churches in which he calls the backdrop of our lives, “This present evil age.” It is a harsh statement, and it is unpleasant, but I also think it is true. How, you ask, can I apply this first century statement to 21st century life?

For one, Paul is writing about the time before Jesus Christ returns, a time that Christian teaching states that we presently occupy, so the statement does apply. But perhaps more importantly, when I look around, I confess that, especially in weeks like this one, “this present evil age” is an existence that I recognize. It is an existence that tragically we can largely expect, an existence that cannot be fixed politically, personally, or corporately as much as we would like to.

Rather than depressingly stripping us of agency, how is this helpful? I find it helpful in two key ways: First, this present evil age as a descriptor is helpful because it helps answer, “Why?” to my despondency, confusion, and nausea at senseless tragedy. It helps me put those feelings somewhere and begins to, if only slightly, give the nonsensical a name.

More than that, though, it forces me to look beyond this world, and to a power greater than the seen forces here – a power that I cannot see, a power that is good, merciful, and just, a power that will one day, and hopefully soon, make all things new.

Of course, we cannot make sense of senseless and violent and sickening tragedy. We weren’t meant to, and that is grievous. So might we only call on the name of the one who has come to this present evil age before, and that he might come again – soon.

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