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Diary of a Young Doctor: Notes from the genocide in Gaza
Five days before 7 October 2023 a young Palestinian doctor returns to Gaza, having completed his medical studies abroad. His family gathers to celebrate his achievements and welcome him home. On 11 October seventy-five members of his extended family are killed in an airstrike, and thus begins his incredible story of survival and service to his people. For more than eight months Dr Ezzideen Shehab volunteers at the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza, witnessing first-hand catastrophic injuries and deaths, and working under the most difficult circumstances imaginable, including shortages of life-saving medicines and equipment. Constantly targeted by the IDF, the Indonesian hospital is ultimately destroyed. In December 2024 Dr Shehab co-founds the Al-Rahma Medical Centre, to provide free medical care in northern Gaza where no functioning hospitals remain. The Al-Rahma clinic is damaged multiple times and in July 2025 is forced to close. Dr Shehab and his family are displaced for the fifth time with no hope of ever returning to their demolished home in the north of Gaza. Throughout it all, Dr Shehab posts regular updates on the situation for his patients and for his people. His clarity and humanity shine bright as he describes those he treats, and his incomprehension at the unfolding genocide and the silence of the world in the face of the ongoing atrocities. Diary of a Young Doctor is an unforgettable testimony of one of the most shameful periods in recent history.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 29, 2025
Diary of a Young Doctor: Notes From the Genocide in Gaza by Ezzideen Shehab
The first publication from Readers and Writers Against the Genocide, this diary is a searing firsthand account by a practicing doctor of life under genocide. Written in a painfully-poetic voice of witness, the book documents day-by-day, month-by-month, the unfolding horrors inflicted on Palestinians by the settler-colonial, apartheid, genocidal state of Israel—an account that mainstream media has too often rendered invisible in the name of “impartiality” but can and should we ever be impartial to genocide?
Dr. Shehab brings us intimate, unforgettable stories: a man in Jabalia, the sole survivor of his family, who refuses to abandon the ruins of his home and the remains of his loved ones, only to later lose even his makeshift tent to fire; Dr. Mahmoud Assaf, a scholar forced to burn his treasured books to feed his children; a woman carrying her children across rubble, offering roots from her farm as a gesture of hope after seeking medicine for her pain.
This is more than a chronicle of genocide—it is a record of endurance, moral courage, and the unbroken humanity of a people under siege, enforced displacement, ethnic cleaning and genocide. Dr. Shehab’s diary demands the world bear witness, holding silence and neutrality accountable, and reminds readers that even under genocide, acts of care and hope persist.
The first publication from Readers and Writers Against the Genocide, this diary is a searing firsthand account by a practicing doctor of life under genocide. Written in a painfully-poetic voice of witness, the book documents day-by-day, month-by-month, the unfolding horrors inflicted on Palestinians by the settler-colonial, apartheid, genocidal state of Israel—an account that mainstream media has too often rendered invisible in the name of “impartiality” but can and should we ever be impartial to genocide?
Dr. Shehab brings us intimate, unforgettable stories: a man in Jabalia, the sole survivor of his family, who refuses to abandon the ruins of his home and the remains of his loved ones, only to later lose even his makeshift tent to fire; Dr. Mahmoud Assaf, a scholar forced to burn his treasured books to feed his children; a woman carrying her children across rubble, offering roots from her farm as a gesture of hope after seeking medicine for her pain.
This is more than a chronicle of genocide—it is a record of endurance, moral courage, and the unbroken humanity of a people under siege, enforced displacement, ethnic cleaning and genocide. Dr. Shehab’s diary demands the world bear witness, holding silence and neutrality accountable, and reminds readers that even under genocide, acts of care and hope persist.
January 14, 2026
Returning to Gaza after his studies and qualification, Ezzideen was just visiting family before deciding what next. Then the current genocide started, from October 7, 2023, and he got to work. Volunteering at a hospital, and then setting up a clinic, he has kept a diary of notes through it all.
Harrowing reading, witnessing. The injuries, the hopelessness of needing to treat wounds, infections, and starvation with next to no supplies.
Medical training is no match for the unbearable conditions of the hospital and clinic, nor for the range of traumas with so little life-preserving tools at hand.
He outlines the difficulties of cases he is seeing regularly, that does get coverage or consideration. The plight of women managing menstruation, and all its usual rollercoasters, but in the context of life threatening, grief debilitating stress. The example of a girl with autism losing her predictable world that keeps her safe, in bombardment, displacement and loss.
A record of a Palestinian doctor living and working through this genocide.
"And in the corners of these broken rooms, I see them: the ghosts of nurses, the whispers of surgeons, the ticking of clocks that no longer tick. We were told hospitals are holy. But here holiness is a joke told to corpses. Here hospitals are not spared, they are taught a lesson. And somewhere, far away, a man stamps a paper. Another man adjusts his spectacles. A third one says, 'We need more information.' But we have all information we need. We are watching the soul of mankind walk off stage, bowing to no one. And the curtain falls."
Harrowing reading, witnessing. The injuries, the hopelessness of needing to treat wounds, infections, and starvation with next to no supplies.
Medical training is no match for the unbearable conditions of the hospital and clinic, nor for the range of traumas with so little life-preserving tools at hand.
He outlines the difficulties of cases he is seeing regularly, that does get coverage or consideration. The plight of women managing menstruation, and all its usual rollercoasters, but in the context of life threatening, grief debilitating stress. The example of a girl with autism losing her predictable world that keeps her safe, in bombardment, displacement and loss.
A record of a Palestinian doctor living and working through this genocide.
"And in the corners of these broken rooms, I see them: the ghosts of nurses, the whispers of surgeons, the ticking of clocks that no longer tick. We were told hospitals are holy. But here holiness is a joke told to corpses. Here hospitals are not spared, they are taught a lesson. And somewhere, far away, a man stamps a paper. Another man adjusts his spectacles. A third one says, 'We need more information.' But we have all information we need. We are watching the soul of mankind walk off stage, bowing to no one. And the curtain falls."
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March 30, 2026“How can some, once burned to the bone, branded with history’s shame, now hold the match? How does the survivor become the executioner? I search for answers, and all I find are graves.”
How could they forget, or far worse, pretend to not remember? It is unconscionable.
Ezzideen Shehab returned home, a qualified doctor, full of optimism and zeal to apply his hard-won skills. Five days later Hamas perpetrated the October 7th 2023 atrocity triggering the current situation in Gaza. On October 11th, 42 of Ezzideen’s extended family were killed by an IDF airstrike.
In this incredibly humane, moving and ultimately devastating account, Ezzideen eloquently shares his contemporaneous observations, thoughts and emotions while volunteering in hospitals and in a clinic he set up to try to bring succour to survivors of the daily annihilation of buildings and the systematic extermination of the people who called those buildings “home”. By the Diary’s final entry, denied access to even the most basic medical supplies, Ezzideen shares his unwarranted but wholly understandable sense of guilt at not being able to treat the simplest of medical conditions.
The Western media talks of bombs and missiles, but this Diary lays bare the cold, calculated enaction of genocide through the consequences of isolation and forced famine: hunger, malnutrition, constant displacement to inhumane shelters, an erosion of the will to survive let alone live. Most chilling is the impact on the children, “lives uprooted, futures erased”, where once playful imagination has been replaced by a death wish to rejoin deceased loved ones.
Crucially, the author is clear that although he abhors the oppression being inflicted on his people, he is no supporter of Hamas, who he also scathingly condemns.
Each successive Diary update amplifies a sense of hopelessness, frustration at the inability to make a difference, the loss of dignity, and above all despair at being abandoned by the rest of the world.
Ezzideen’s final plea is simply to ask that we don’t forget, that we remember the people who have lost their lives and those still eking out a hellish existence.
We must not look away.
Please read this Diary.
How could they forget, or far worse, pretend to not remember? It is unconscionable.
Ezzideen Shehab returned home, a qualified doctor, full of optimism and zeal to apply his hard-won skills. Five days later Hamas perpetrated the October 7th 2023 atrocity triggering the current situation in Gaza. On October 11th, 42 of Ezzideen’s extended family were killed by an IDF airstrike.
In this incredibly humane, moving and ultimately devastating account, Ezzideen eloquently shares his contemporaneous observations, thoughts and emotions while volunteering in hospitals and in a clinic he set up to try to bring succour to survivors of the daily annihilation of buildings and the systematic extermination of the people who called those buildings “home”. By the Diary’s final entry, denied access to even the most basic medical supplies, Ezzideen shares his unwarranted but wholly understandable sense of guilt at not being able to treat the simplest of medical conditions.
The Western media talks of bombs and missiles, but this Diary lays bare the cold, calculated enaction of genocide through the consequences of isolation and forced famine: hunger, malnutrition, constant displacement to inhumane shelters, an erosion of the will to survive let alone live. Most chilling is the impact on the children, “lives uprooted, futures erased”, where once playful imagination has been replaced by a death wish to rejoin deceased loved ones.
Crucially, the author is clear that although he abhors the oppression being inflicted on his people, he is no supporter of Hamas, who he also scathingly condemns.
Each successive Diary update amplifies a sense of hopelessness, frustration at the inability to make a difference, the loss of dignity, and above all despair at being abandoned by the rest of the world.
Ezzideen’s final plea is simply to ask that we don’t forget, that we remember the people who have lost their lives and those still eking out a hellish existence.
We must not look away.
Please read this Diary.
February 3, 2026
Only 180 pages but I put this book down often to absorb, reflect on the stories and insights in this first hand account of a Doctor in Gaza. I have no words to do justice to the humanity in this book. Just read it!!
"Walking. Such a gentle word for such a violent act. She had walked over corpses and rubble, over forgotten treaties and abandoned neighborhoods. She had walked across the graves of promises".
"Walking. Such a gentle word for such a violent act. She had walked over corpses and rubble, over forgotten treaties and abandoned neighborhoods. She had walked across the graves of promises".
January 14, 2026
This is a must read. A look at what life is like for a doctor operating during a genocide. Read from those who are on the ground, who live this day to day. Not from mainstream media pushing an agenda, dehumanising a group of people who are being displaced and ethnically cleansed.
From the river to the sea.
From the river to the sea.
March 11, 2026
Diary of a Young Doctor - Notes from the genoside in Gaza by Ezzideen Shehab
Beautiful poetic and heartbreaking writing from Ezzideen who bears witness to what has occurred and continues to occur in Palestine.
Everyone should read this book!
Beautiful poetic and heartbreaking writing from Ezzideen who bears witness to what has occurred and continues to occur in Palestine.
Everyone should read this book!
January 12, 2026
As heartbreaking and deeply saddening as anticipated.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews