By DemocracyNow!<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">As the official death toll in Gaza passes more than 42,400, the true number may be impossible to know until Israel\u2019s war is over. But medical workers who witnessed the carnage in Gaza\u2019s hospitals are speaking out. We speak with Dr. Feroze Sidhwa about his op-ed in\u00a0<em>The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0that features harrowing stories from dozens of healthcare workers and CT scans of children shot in the head or the left side of the chest. The\u00a0<em>Times<\/em>\u00a0called the corresponding images of the patients too graphic to publish. \u201cI personally wish that Americans could see more of what it looks like when a child is shot in the head, when a child is flayed open by bombs,\u201d says Sidhwa. \u201cI think it would make us think a little bit more about what we do in the world.\u201d We also speak with Palestinian nurse Rajaa Musleh, who worked at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. \u201cI will never forget the dogs were eating the dead body inside Shifa Hospital at the front of the emergency department. This will be stuck on my mind for my whole life,\u201d says Musleh. \u201cMy message for the whole world: We are human beings. We are not numbers. We have the right to receive healthcare inside Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" \/>\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Transcript<\/h4>\n<p>This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AMY\u00a0GOODMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0As the official death toll in Gaza passes more than 42,400, the true number may be impossible to know until Israel\u2019s war is over. But medical workers who witnessed the carnage in Gaza\u2019s hospitals are speaking out.<\/p>\n<p>We begin today\u2019s show with a surgeon who volunteered at the European Hospital in Khan Younis and wrote a devastating\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2024\/10\/09\/opinion\/gaza-doctor-interviews.html\">opinion piece<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0<em>The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0headlined \u201c65 Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In a minute, we\u2019ll be joined by Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, who begins the piece writing, quote, \u201cI worked as a trauma surgeon in Gaza from March 25 to April 8. I\u2019ve volunteered in Ukraine and Haiti, and I grew up in Flint, Mich. I\u2019ve seen violence and worked in conflict zones. But of the many things that stood out about working in a hospital in Gaza, one got to me: Nearly every day I was there, I saw a new young child who had been shot in the head or the chest, virtually all of whom went on to die. Thirteen in total.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt the time, I assumed this had to be the work of a particularly sadistic soldier located nearby. But after returning home, I met an emergency medicine physician who had worked in a different hospital in Gaza two months before me. \u2018I couldn\u2019t believe the number of kids I saw shot in the head,\u2019 I told him. To my surprise, he responded: \u2018Yeah, me, too. Every single day,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>The piece quotes dozens of healthcare workers and includes three X-rays or CT scans of pediatric patients who were shot in the head or the left side of the chest. The person who provided the scans was Dr. Mimi Syed, who worked in Khan Younis from August 8th to September 5th and said the children usually arrived at the hospital either dead or in critical condition after suffering a single shot.<\/p>\n<p>On Tuesday,\u00a0<em>The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0opinion section editor issued a statement refuting claims circulating online that the images were altered, saying the editors had, quote, \u201cphotographs to corroborate the CT scan images,\u201d but, quote, \u201cbecause of their graphic nature, we decided these photos \u2014\u00a0of children with gunshot wounds to the head or neck \u2014\u00a0were too horrific for publication.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For more, we\u2019re joined by Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, the trauma and general surgeon who wrote this\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2024\/10\/09\/opinion\/gaza-doctor-interviews.html\">piece<\/a>. He also spearheaded an\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gazahealthcareletters.org\/usa-letter-oct-2-2024\">open letter<\/a>\u00a0to President Biden and Vice President Harris signed by 99 U.S. medical professionals who served in Gaza, testifying to the unprecedented scale of the healthcare catastrophe and calling for an immediate ceasefire and the end to all U.S. support for Israel.<\/p>\n<p>We are also joined in Chicago by Rajaa Musleh, the country representative in Gaza of MedGlobal, a medical humanitarian aid group. She previously worked as a nurse at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.<\/p>\n<p>We welcome you both to\u00a0<em>Democracy Now!<\/em>\u00a0Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, let\u2019s begin with you. Thank you for joining us in the studio. We heard from you in Gaza and spoke to you right when you came out. This is very significant, this\u00a0<em>New York Times<\/em>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2024\/10\/09\/opinion\/gaza-doctor-interviews.html\">op-ed<\/a>, first that the\u00a0<em>Times<\/em>\u00a0agreed to run it, and then the controversy around it, what they published and what they didn\u2019t publish. Tell us the story.<\/p>\n<p><strong>DR.\u00a0FEROZE\u00a0SIDHWA:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, the\u00a0<em>Times<\/em>\u00a0piece was interesting. Actually, the opinion section reached out \u2014\u00a0the visual opinion team reached out to me and asked me to write the piece. And, you know, so we came up with the idea together. And that was after we wrote an open letter, like you mentioned. We wrote one in October, but we also wrote\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/FerozeSidhwa\/status\/1816488896005648589\">one in July<\/a>\u00a0to the Biden administration. That was when the\u00a0<em>Times<\/em>\u00a0reached out to me and said, \u201cCan we get information about exactly who wrote or who saw what in Gaza?\u201d So we did. We designed a poll. I got everybody to answer it that I could. And we went on from there.<\/p>\n<p>You know, the controversy that you mentioned about the images is just manufactured nonsense. It\u2019s got no connection to reality whatsoever. These pictures are \u2014 there\u2019s no reason to doubt them at all. Furthermore, I\u2019ve seen the full CT scans. I\u2019ve seen the photos of the actual wounds on the children. It\u2019s not surprising. And these were common injuries in Gaza. I mean, like, almost everybody saw the same thing. Everybody saw kids get shot in the head. Almost everybody saw severely malnourished children.<\/p>\n<p>And yeah, so, it seems like the piece has had an effect. It seems like it\u2019s making its way around and people are seeing it, and they\u2019re kind of horrified by what they see, which they should be.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AMY\u00a0GOODMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0And then, talk about the whole issue of whether to show the dead or dying children and their injuries.<\/p>\n<p><strong>DR.\u00a0FEROZE\u00a0SIDHWA:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. So, that was never \u2014 so, in the piece as I wrote it, that was never part of the plan, I guess you would say. But after \u2014 once all this nonsense about people saying the images are faked came out,\u00a0<em>The New York Times<\/em>, I guess they \u2014\u00a0and I wasn\u2019t involved in that decision at all, but they had to decide whether or not to put,\u00a0you know, the picture they\u2019re talking about. She\u2019s probably a 4- or 5-year-old girl. Her eyes are closed. She has a breathing tube down. And she has a bullet wound right here. There\u2019s some brain matter that you can see on her hair. You know, I\u2019m a trauma surgeon, so I\u2019m used to seeing things like that, but I can understand what they mean when they say that they\u2019re too horrific to publish. I personally wish that Americans could see more of what it looks like when a child is shot in the head, when a child is flayed open by bombs. I think it would make us think a little bit more about what we do in the world.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AMY\u00a0GOODMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0Did the\u00a0<em>Times<\/em>\u00a0also do a news piece on this, given the level of the scans you had, the pictures you had?<\/p>\n<p><strong>DR.\u00a0FEROZE\u00a0SIDHWA:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, we collected a lot of documentary evidence from people who \u2014\u00a0or, from healthcare workers who had been in Gaza quite a bit. And all of them have quite a bit more. Yeah, everyone takes a lot of photographs and videos and things like that when they\u2019re there. And they\u2019re all date- and location-stamped. They\u2019re not faked.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t know if the\u00a0<em>Times<\/em>\u00a0news section has reached out to other people who \u2014 because, you know, their names are mostly public. I don\u2019t know if they\u2019ve reached out to them or not for specific comment about specific things.<\/p>\n<p>I have been contacted by, I don\u2019t think I\u2019m exaggerating if I say, dozens of journalists since coming back from Gaza, news journalists, saying that \u201cWe want to publish about the children being shot in the head, the extent of malnutrition, especially small infants dying of malnutrition and dehydration.\u201d And they all say that they need an overwhelming \u2014 they need a way of just kind of overwhelming their editors\u2019 skepticism. They need just a humongous mass of evidence. So, like, I know \u2014\u00a0I probably shouldn\u2019t name them, but I know editor \u2014 or, I know journalists at the\u00a0<em>Post<\/em>, at the\u00a0<em>Times<\/em>, at\u00a0BBC\u00a0\u2014<\/p>\n<p><strong>AMY\u00a0GOODMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0<em>The Washington Post<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>DR.\u00a0FEROZE\u00a0SIDHWA:<\/strong>\u00a0Sorry,\u00a0<em>The Washington Post<\/em>, yes \u2014 who have been working on such stories for months, but still not out, despite having massive amounts of evidence.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JUAN\u00a0GONZ\u00c1LEZ:<\/strong>\u00a0And, Dr. Sidhwa \u2014\u00a0Dr. Sidhwa, what is the implication of so many children being shot in the head, when you would assume that if children are, as the Israelis claim, unfortunate collateral damage of their bombing attempts to kill militants in Gaza, how \u2014\u00a0what does this mean to you, that so many children are being found to be shot in the head?<\/p>\n<p><strong>DR.\u00a0FEROZE\u00a0SIDHWA:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, it\u2019s a good question. So \u2014\u00a0excuse me. So, you know, as physicians and nurses, we can\u2019t say that this particular child or that particular child was shot on purpose or by Israel or somebody else. That\u2019s not what we can possibly do. We\u2019re not war crimes investigators.<\/p>\n<p>But I think it\u2019s pretty clear that when there\u2019s a pattern of, if in every catchment \u2014 in the catchment area of every hospital in Gaza, every time any international has been around, for an entire year, on a daily basis, a child has been shot in the head in a place of 2 million people, it seems unlikely to me that that\u2019s an accident. You know, if you look at the differential of killing between Ukraine and Israel \u2014\u00a0it depends on what day you calculate it, but the differential is literally hundreds of times. The rate of killing of children in Gaza is hundreds of times higher than it is in Ukraine. So, it\u2019s very hard for me to believe that this is just a byproduct of a war that\u2019s being fought in otherwise just ways. I find that hard to believe.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JUAN\u00a0GONZ\u00c1LEZ:<\/strong>\u00a0And you mentioned other battles in other wars. Your experience in those other war zones, what is the difference from what you see, aside from the children being shot in the head, other specific differences between what\u2019s happening in Gaza and what you\u2019ve seen in other places?<\/p>\n<p><strong>DR.\u00a0FEROZE\u00a0SIDHWA:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, there\u2019s a few. One is the massive level of destruction. Not only have the hospitals been attacked, the universities, it\u2019s getting down to the level of destroying the water, sanitation and hygiene infrastructure and concentrating an entire population on the Mawasi \u2014\u00a0in the Mawasi area, which is basically just the beach of Gaza. Oxfam wrote a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.oxfam.org\/en\/press-releases\/famine-risk-increases-israel-makes-gaza-aid-response-virtually-impossible-oxfam\">report<\/a>\u00a0where they estimated that when there were 500,000 people in the Mawasi area, there was one toilet for every 4,130 people there. That\u2019s just totally outrageous. I mean, those numbers don\u2019t exist anywhere else on the planet. Now there might be a million. Nobody really knows how many people have been pushed to the Mawasi. But these are just totally outrageous numbers.<\/p>\n<p>So, you have a largely child population. Gaza is very young. It\u2019s been incredibly concentrated. It\u2019s been starved for a year. And the winter rains are coming, which are going to lift, you know, all the sewage and everything up out of the ground. Every sewage plant has been destroyed. Ninety percent of the water, sanitation and hygiene infrastructure has been destroyed. And the healthcare system has been destroyed. So, that\u2019s pretty unique in my experience.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JUAN\u00a0GONZ\u00c1LEZ:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, and I also wanted to ask you \u2014 you recently were supposed to speak at Columbia Medical School, but your event was canceled at the last minute. Could you talk about what happened?<\/p>\n<p><strong>DR.\u00a0FEROZE\u00a0SIDHWA:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. I wouldn\u2019t call it my event, just because I wasn\u2019t the organizer. But yeah, you know, I was invited with Adam Hamawy, who is an American veteran and a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, and Dr. Mark Perlmutter, who is an orthopedic and hand surgeon, a Jewish American \u2014\u00a0I think he\u2019s been on\u00a0<em>Democracy Now!<\/em>; he\u2019s definitely been on\u00a0<em>Democracy Now!<\/em>\u00a0before \u2014\u00a0and Lana, whose name, last name, I just can\u2019t pronounce, who is a surgical nurse who also was working in Gaza, and she was actually one of the first internationals to go into Gaza.<\/p>\n<p>You know, we had a medical talk planned. It was a technical exercise in surgical and medical care in an extremely difficult setting. It wasn\u2019t a political talk. But the organizers were smart. They recognized that it was very likely to be canceled at the last minute. It was canceled as we walked in the building, from what I can tell. And so, they had organized a bookstore down the street to be available. And so, smart on their part. It\u2019s not surprising, but I think it\u2019s pretty shameful, to be perfectly honest.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AMY\u00a0GOODMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0I wanted to bring in, in addition to Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, Rajaa Musleh, who is the country representative in Gaza of the medical humanitarian aid group MedGlobal. Earlier this year, she worked as a nurse at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. She\u2019s currently joining us from Chicago.<\/p>\n<p>Rajaa, thank you so much for being with us. You sheltered at Al-Shifa. And, of course, the head of Al-Shifa Hospital was arrested by the Israeli military. Can you describe what the situation was like then, when you were there, and what you understand, as you deal with Gaza every day, even as a nurse in Chicago, is happening now and what you\u2019re calling for?<\/p>\n<p><strong>RAJAA\u00a0MUSLEH:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. Sorry.<\/p>\n<p>Actually, I\u2019m has trapped. I have trapped, actually, for hospital for more than 40 days. And what I\u2019m witnesses in this period, actually, I can describe it as crimes, because we received at the hospital a huge number of injured persons coming to the emergency department, and the majority of the cases, unfortunately, women and children. And the massive of the injured for these cases was severe. It is the first time of my whole life I\u2019m witness this kind of injury. Many people or many children come without legs, without arms. And even I\u2019m witness a father, like, hold his children in two bags. This is the first time of my life I\u2019m witness that severity of the bombing that using during this war.<\/p>\n<p>The situation in Shifa Hospital was really very critical and very bad. There is no access to food, because there\u2019s more than 80,000 IDPs inside the Shifa Hospital. There\u2019s no electricity. They cut the electricity. They cut the water. And, you know, he situation was very bad.<\/p>\n<p>One of the cases that I will never, ever forget it, for a girl, her age is 10 years. She was completely burned. Ninety percent of her body was burned. And she asked me to stay beside her and hold her hand, until the moment \u2014 I will never, ever forget her burned skin at my hands \u2014\u00a0until the moment I feel that, until the moment I feel guilty because I did not obey or stay beside her in the bed, because she requested that, and I did not do that; until the moment I feel guilty when she asked me about her mother and father and sister, brothers, and I cannot respond to her request, because the whole family has been killed during bombing her house.<\/p>\n<p>I will never forget the dogs were eating the dead body inside Shifa Hospital at the front of the emergency department. This will be stuck on my mind for the whole life.<\/p>\n<p>I will never, ever forget a boy, after the operation, his leg has been amputated, and he asked me to move his leg. What I should respond for a kid \u2014\u00a0his age is 9 years \u2014 when he asks me, \u201cJust move my leg\u201d? I pretend that I move his leg, and I ask him, \u201cIs that OK?\u201d He said, \u201cYes.\u201d In this moment, I feel like my heart is broken, because the suffering of my people inside Shifa Hospital and in the whole Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n<p>Now the situation on the ground, I receive calls from my colleagues from the north of Gaza. There\u2019s no access to food, no access to water, no access to fuel for the hospitals to operate the centers or to operate the hospitals here in north Gaza. The situation is very, very critical.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m here in Chicago just to send my people\u2019s message: We need ceasefire now. We need ceasefire now. Enough is enough. More than one year, and the people inside Gaza are suffering from and taste many types of death. Enough is enough. Three hundred sixty-five days, and the people inside Gaza taste all kind of death.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m witness the horrible of this war. I\u2019m witness four wars before, and this war is completely different, the death everywhere, the suffering everywhere. The people just eat one time. They save the food for the children. And the children are suffering from malnutrition inside Gaza.<\/p>\n<p>My message for the whole world: We are human beings. We are not numbers. We have the right to receive healthcare inside Gaza. We have the right to raise up our children. We have the right to return back our lives, our dignity. We have the right to rebuild our universities, our schools. We are human beings, and we are not numbers.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JUAN\u00a0GONZ\u00c1LEZ:<\/strong>\u00a0And, Rajaa Musleh, I wanted to ask you, the interactions you had, if any, with the Israeli soldiers. How did they treat the medical personnel, especially those who had come from other countries?<\/p>\n<p><strong>RAJAA\u00a0MUSLEH:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, actually, now we send the doctors from outside Gaza through Karem Abu Salem. But, you know, they prevent the Palestinian people, even they are American, to enter Gaza. So, all the people we send from outside Gaza go through Karem Abu Salem, because of Rafah border now is completely closed.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AMY\u00a0GOODMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0And finally, Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, as we hear this devastating description from Rajaa Musleh, who worked at Al-Shifa and is a Palestinian American nurse, comes from Gaza City, as you talk about the spaces being closed in this country \u2014 I mean, the lack of follow-up on your piece, when you try to speak at, for example, Columbia, it\u2019s shut down. You have to go to a local independent bookstore. And yet the\u00a0<em>Times<\/em>\u00a0did publish this\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2024\/10\/09\/opinion\/gaza-doctor-interviews.html\">column<\/a>. And what it\u2019s meant, the kind of response that you\u2019ve gotten? You haven\u2019t stopped since you\u2019ve come back, as you organize with doctors and nurses and medical personnel to describe what\u2019s happening there. I also wanted to ask your response to the latest letter of the Biden administration, saying if they don\u2019t stop \u2014 improve the situation in Gaza, if Israel doesn\u2019t, the U.S. will cut off weapons \u2014 not this week or next week or the next week, but in a month.<\/p>\n<p><strong>DR.\u00a0FEROZE\u00a0SIDHWA:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. So, I think the\u00a0<em>Times<\/em>\u00a0piece is significant in that it might represent a shift in elite opinion about just, like, Rajaa said, enough is enough, and how much more destroyed do they want Gaza to be? And that opens up some possibilities for us to be able to do things that can actually help the people of Gaza, and not just Gaza, but elsewhere, as well.<\/p>\n<p>Like you mentioned,\u00a0<em>The Times of Israel<\/em>, there was a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.timesofisrael.com\/us-gives-israel-30-days-to-address-gaza-aid-crisis-threatens-to-curb-weapons-supply\/\">letter<\/a>\u00a0leaked, apparently, to\u00a0<em>The Times of Israel<\/em>\u00a0that the Biden administration sent on Sunday \u2014\u00a0excuse me \u2014\u00a0to Ron Dermer and Yoav Gallant, the strategic affairs and defense ministers in Israel, saying that Israel has \u2014 needs to start immediately, but has up to 30 days to improve the humanitarian situation.<\/p>\n<p>And they pointed out some interesting things in that letter. They said that in September, the lowest amount of aid that has ever \u2014\u00a0that\u2019s gone into Gaza in the past year went in, in September, which means the least amount that has ever gone into Gaza. Of course, the Israelis will deny that, but it\u2019s nevertheless quite obviously true.<\/p>\n<p>And they raised the possibility of what they called consequences under\u00a0NSM-20 and other American laws, meaning the laws that prevent the provision of arms to human rights abusers. Well, I think you played a Reuters journalist pointing out earlier there\u2019s no reason to wait 30 days. It\u2019s not like Israel hasn\u2019t been attacking Gaza for a year. So, this has been going on for, like Rajaa said, long enough. We can stop sending them arms tomorrow, and the U.S. can lead an arms blockade against not just Israel, but Israel and all Palestinian and Lebanese armed groups. And that can stop, or at least dramatically decrease, the fighting, the death and the misery immediately.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AMY\u00a0GOODMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0I want to thank you both for being with us, Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a surgeon in California, the San Joaquin General Hospital, his\u00a0<em>New York Times<\/em>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2024\/10\/09\/opinion\/gaza-doctor-interviews.html\">op-ed<\/a>, \u201c65 Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza.\u201d And Rajaa Musleh, country representative in Gaza of MedGlobal, a medical humanitarian aid group, previously worked as a nurse at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. She is a Palestinian from Gaza.<\/p>\n<p>___<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/scheerpost.com\/2024\/10\/17\/israel-is-routinely-shooting-children-in-the-head-in-gaza-us-surgeon-palestinian-nurse\/\">https:\/\/scheerpost.com\/2024\/10\/17\/israel-is-routinely-shooting-children-in-the-head-in-gaza-us-surgeon-palestinian-nurse\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-257451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=257451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257451\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=257451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=257451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=257451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">As the official death toll in Gaza passes more than 42,400, the true number may be impossible to know until Israel\u2019s war is over. But medical workers who witnessed the carnage in Gaza\u2019s hospitals are speaking out. We speak with Dr. Feroze Sidhwa about his op-ed in\u00a0<em>The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0that features harrowing stories from dozens of healthcare workers and CT scans of children shot in the head or the left side of the chest. The\u00a0<em>Times<\/em>\u00a0called the corresponding images of the patients too graphic to publish. \u201cI personally wish that Americans could see more of what it looks like when a child is shot in the head, when a child is flayed open by bombs,\u201d says Sidhwa. \u201cI think it would make us think a little bit more about what we do in the world.\u201d We also speak with Palestinian nurse Rajaa Musleh, who worked at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. \u201cI will never forget the dogs were eating the dead body inside Shifa Hospital at the front of the emergency department. This will be stuck on my mind for my whole life,\u201d says Musleh. \u201cMy message for the whole world: We are human beings. We are not numbers. We have the right to receive healthcare inside Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" \/>\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Transcript<\/h4>\n<p>This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AMY\u00a0GOODMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0As the official death toll in Gaza passes more than 42,400, the true number may be impossible to know until Israel\u2019s war is over. But medical workers who witnessed the carnage in Gaza\u2019s hospitals are speaking out.<\/p>\n<p>We begin today\u2019s show with a surgeon who volunteered at the European Hospital in Khan Younis and wrote a devastating\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2024\/10\/09\/opinion\/gaza-doctor-interviews.html\">opinion piece<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0<em>The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0headlined \u201c65 Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In a minute, we\u2019ll be joined by Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, who begins the piece writing, quote, \u201cI worked as a trauma surgeon in Gaza from March 25 to April 8. I\u2019ve volunteered in Ukraine and Haiti, and I grew up in Flint, Mich. I\u2019ve seen violence and worked in conflict zones. But of the many things that stood out about working in a hospital in Gaza, one got to me: Nearly every day I was there, I saw a new young child who had been shot in the head or the chest, virtually all of whom went on to die. Thirteen in total.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt the time, I assumed this had to be the work of a particularly sadistic soldier located nearby. But after returning home, I met an emergency medicine physician who had worked in a different hospital in Gaza two months before me. \u2018I couldn\u2019t believe the number of kids I saw shot in the head,\u2019 I told him. To my surprise, he responded: \u2018Yeah, me, too. Every single day,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>The piece quotes dozens of healthcare workers and includes three X-rays or CT scans of pediatric patients who were shot in the head or the left side of the chest. The person who provided the scans was Dr. Mimi Syed, who worked in Khan Younis from August 8th to September 5th and said the children usually arrived at the hospital either dead or in critical condition after suffering a single shot.<\/p>\n<p>On Tuesday,\u00a0<em>The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0opinion section editor issued a statement refuting claims circulating online that the images were altered, saying the editors had, quote, \u201cphotographs to corroborate the CT scan images,\u201d but, quote, \u201cbecause of their graphic nature, we decided these photos \u2014\u00a0of children with gunshot wounds to the head or neck \u2014\u00a0were too horrific for publication.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For more, we\u2019re joined by Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, the trauma and general surgeon who wrote this\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2024\/10\/09\/opinion\/gaza-doctor-interviews.html\">piece<\/a>. He also spearheaded an\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gazahealthcareletters.org\/usa-letter-oct-2-2024\">open letter<\/a>\u00a0to President Biden and Vice President Harris signed by 99 U.S. medical professionals who served in Gaza, testifying to the unprecedented scale of the healthcare catastrophe and calling for an immediate ceasefire and the end to all U.S. support for Israel.<\/p>\n<p>We are also joined in Chicago by Rajaa Musleh, the country representative in Gaza of MedGlobal, a medical humanitarian aid group. She previously worked as a nurse at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.<\/p>\n<p>We welcome you both to\u00a0<em>Democracy Now!<\/em>\u00a0Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, let\u2019s begin with you. Thank you for joining us in the studio. We heard from you in Gaza and spoke to you right when you came out. This is very significant, this\u00a0<em>New York Times<\/em>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2024\/10\/09\/opinion\/gaza-doctor-interviews.html\">op-ed<\/a>, first that the\u00a0<em>Times<\/em>\u00a0agreed to run it, and then the controversy around it, what they published and what they didn\u2019t publish. Tell us the story.<\/p>\n<p><strong>DR.\u00a0FEROZE\u00a0SIDHWA:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, the\u00a0<em>Times<\/em>\u00a0piece was interesting. Actually, the opinion section reached out \u2014\u00a0the visual opinion team reached out to me and asked me to write the piece. And, you know, so we came up with the idea together. And that was after we wrote an open letter, like you mentioned. We wrote one in October, but we also wrote\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/FerozeSidhwa\/status\/1816488896005648589\">one in July<\/a>\u00a0to the Biden administration. That was when the\u00a0<em>Times<\/em>\u00a0reached out to me and said, \u201cCan we get information about exactly who wrote or who saw what in Gaza?\u201d So we did. We designed a poll. I got everybody to answer it that I could. And we went on from there.<\/p>\n<p>You know, the controversy that you mentioned about the images is just manufactured nonsense. It\u2019s got no connection to reality whatsoever. These pictures are \u2014 there\u2019s no reason to doubt them at all. Furthermore, I\u2019ve seen the full CT scans. I\u2019ve seen the photos of the actual wounds on the children. It\u2019s not surprising. And these were common injuries in Gaza. I mean, like, almost everybody saw the same thing. Everybody saw kids get shot in the head. Almost everybody saw severely malnourished children.<\/p>\n<p>And yeah, so, it seems like the piece has had an effect. It seems like it\u2019s making its way around and people are seeing it, and they\u2019re kind of horrified by what they see, which they should be.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AMY\u00a0GOODMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0And then, talk about the whole issue of whether to show the dead or dying children and their injuries.<\/p>\n<p><strong>DR.\u00a0FEROZE\u00a0SIDHWA:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. So, that was never \u2014 so, in the piece as I wrote it, that was never part of the plan, I guess you would say. But after \u2014 once all this nonsense about people saying the images are faked came out,\u00a0<em>The New York Times<\/em>, I guess they \u2014\u00a0and I wasn\u2019t involved in that decision at all, but they had to decide whether or not to put,\u00a0you know, the picture they\u2019re talking about. She\u2019s probably a 4- or 5-year-old girl. Her eyes are closed. She has a breathing tube down. And she has a bullet wound right here. There\u2019s some brain matter that you can see on her hair. You know, I\u2019m a trauma surgeon, so I\u2019m used to seeing things like that, but I can understand what they mean when they say that they\u2019re too horrific to publish. I personally wish that Americans could see more of what it looks like when a child is shot in the head, when a child is flayed open by bombs. I think it would make us think a little bit more about what we do in the world.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AMY\u00a0GOODMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0Did the\u00a0<em>Times<\/em>\u00a0also do a news piece on this, given the level of the scans you had, the pictures you had?<\/p>\n<p><strong>DR.\u00a0FEROZE\u00a0SIDHWA:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, we collected a lot of documentary evidence from people who \u2014\u00a0or, from healthcare workers who had been in Gaza quite a bit. And all of them have quite a bit more. Yeah, everyone takes a lot of photographs and videos and things like that when they\u2019re there. And they\u2019re all date- and location-stamped. They\u2019re not faked.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t know if the\u00a0<em>Times<\/em>\u00a0news section has reached out to other people who \u2014 because, you know, their names are mostly public. I don\u2019t know if they\u2019ve reached out to them or not for specific comment about specific things.<\/p>\n<p>I have been contacted by, I don\u2019t think I\u2019m exaggerating if I say, dozens of journalists since coming back from Gaza, news journalists, saying that \u201cWe want to publish about the children being shot in the head, the extent of malnutrition, especially small infants dying of malnutrition and dehydration.\u201d And they all say that they need an overwhelming \u2014 they need a way of just kind of overwhelming their editors\u2019 skepticism. They need just a humongous mass of evidence. So, like, I know \u2014\u00a0I probably shouldn\u2019t name them, but I know editor \u2014 or, I know journalists at the\u00a0<em>Post<\/em>, at the\u00a0<em>Times<\/em>, at\u00a0BBC\u00a0\u2014<\/p>\n<p><strong>AMY\u00a0GOODMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0<em>The Washington Post<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>DR.\u00a0FEROZE\u00a0SIDHWA:<\/strong>\u00a0Sorry,\u00a0<em>The Washington Post<\/em>, yes \u2014 who have been working on such stories for months, but still not out, despite having massive amounts of evidence.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JUAN\u00a0GONZ\u00c1LEZ:<\/strong>\u00a0And, Dr. Sidhwa \u2014\u00a0Dr. Sidhwa, what is the implication of so many children being shot in the head, when you would assume that if children are, as the Israelis claim, unfortunate collateral damage of their bombing attempts to kill militants in Gaza, how \u2014\u00a0what does this mean to you, that so many children are being found to be shot in the head?<\/p>\n<p><strong>DR.\u00a0FEROZE\u00a0SIDHWA:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, it\u2019s a good question. So \u2014\u00a0excuse me. So, you know, as physicians and nurses, we can\u2019t say that this particular child or that particular child was shot on purpose or by Israel or somebody else. That\u2019s not what we can possibly do. We\u2019re not war crimes investigators.<\/p>\n<p>But I think it\u2019s pretty clear that when there\u2019s a pattern of, if in every catchment \u2014 in the catchment area of every hospital in Gaza, every time any international has been around, for an entire year, on a daily basis, a child has been shot in the head in a place of 2 million people, it seems unlikely to me that that\u2019s an accident. You know, if you look at the differential of killing between Ukraine and Israel \u2014\u00a0it depends on what day you calculate it, but the differential is literally hundreds of times. The rate of killing of children in Gaza is hundreds of times higher than it is in Ukraine. So, it\u2019s very hard for me to believe that this is just a byproduct of a war that\u2019s being fought in otherwise just ways. I find that hard to believe.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JUAN\u00a0GONZ\u00c1LEZ:<\/strong>\u00a0And you mentioned other battles in other wars. Your experience in those other war zones, what is the difference from what you see, aside from the children being shot in the head, other specific differences between what\u2019s happening in Gaza and what you\u2019ve seen in other places?<\/p>\n<p><strong>DR.\u00a0FEROZE\u00a0SIDHWA:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, there\u2019s a few. One is the massive level of destruction. Not only have the hospitals been attacked, the universities, it\u2019s getting down to the level of destroying the water, sanitation and hygiene infrastructure and concentrating an entire population on the Mawasi \u2014\u00a0in the Mawasi area, which is basically just the beach of Gaza. Oxfam wrote a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.oxfam.org\/en\/press-releases\/famine-risk-increases-israel-makes-gaza-aid-response-virtually-impossible-oxfam\">report<\/a>\u00a0where they estimated that when there were 500,000 people in the Mawasi area, there was one toilet for every 4,130 people there. That\u2019s just totally outrageous. I mean, those numbers don\u2019t exist anywhere else on the planet. Now there might be a million. Nobody really knows how many people have been pushed to the Mawasi. But these are just totally outrageous numbers.<\/p>\n<p>So, you have a largely child population. Gaza is very young. It\u2019s been incredibly concentrated. It\u2019s been starved for a year. And the winter rains are coming, which are going to lift, you know, all the sewage and everything up out of the ground. Every sewage plant has been destroyed. Ninety percent of the water, sanitation and hygiene infrastructure has been destroyed. And the healthcare system has been destroyed. So, that\u2019s pretty unique in my experience.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JUAN\u00a0GONZ\u00c1LEZ:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, and I also wanted to ask you \u2014 you recently were supposed to speak at Columbia Medical School, but your event was canceled at the last minute. Could you talk about what happened?<\/p>\n<p><strong>DR.\u00a0FEROZE\u00a0SIDHWA:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. I wouldn\u2019t call it my event, just because I wasn\u2019t the organizer. But yeah, you know, I was invited with Adam Hamawy, who is an American veteran and a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, and Dr. Mark Perlmutter, who is an orthopedic and hand surgeon, a Jewish American \u2014\u00a0I think he\u2019s been on\u00a0<em>Democracy Now!<\/em>; he\u2019s definitely been on\u00a0<em>Democracy Now!<\/em>\u00a0before \u2014\u00a0and Lana, whose name, last name, I just can\u2019t pronounce, who is a surgical nurse who also was working in Gaza, and she was actually one of the first internationals to go into Gaza.<\/p>\n<p>You know, we had a medical talk planned. It was a technical exercise in surgical and medical care in an extremely difficult setting. It wasn\u2019t a political talk. But the organizers were smart. They recognized that it was very likely to be canceled at the last minute. It was canceled as we walked in the building, from what I can tell. And so, they had organized a bookstore down the street to be available. And so, smart on their part. It\u2019s not surprising, but I think it\u2019s pretty shameful, to be perfectly honest.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AMY\u00a0GOODMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0I wanted to bring in, in addition to Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, Rajaa Musleh, who is the country representative in Gaza of the medical humanitarian aid group MedGlobal. Earlier this year, she worked as a nurse at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. She\u2019s currently joining us from Chicago.<\/p>\n<p>Rajaa, thank you so much for being with us. You sheltered at Al-Shifa. And, of course, the head of Al-Shifa Hospital was arrested by the Israeli military. Can you describe what the situation was like then, when you were there, and what you understand, as you deal with Gaza every day, even as a nurse in Chicago, is happening now and what you\u2019re calling for?<\/p>\n<p><strong>RAJAA\u00a0MUSLEH:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. Sorry.<\/p>\n<p>Actually, I\u2019m has trapped. I have trapped, actually, for hospital for more than 40 days. And what I\u2019m witnesses in this period, actually, I can describe it as crimes, because we received at the hospital a huge number of injured persons coming to the emergency department, and the majority of the cases, unfortunately, women and children. And the massive of the injured for these cases was severe. It is the first time of my whole life I\u2019m witness this kind of injury. Many people or many children come without legs, without arms. And even I\u2019m witness a father, like, hold his children in two bags. This is the first time of my life I\u2019m witness that severity of the bombing that using during this war.<\/p>\n<p>The situation in Shifa Hospital was really very critical and very bad. There is no access to food, because there\u2019s more than 80,000 IDPs inside the Shifa Hospital. There\u2019s no electricity. They cut the electricity. They cut the water. And, you know, he situation was very bad.<\/p>\n<p>One of the cases that I will never, ever forget it, for a girl, her age is 10 years. She was completely burned. Ninety percent of her body was burned. And she asked me to stay beside her and hold her hand, until the moment \u2014 I will never, ever forget her burned skin at my hands \u2014\u00a0until the moment I feel that, until the moment I feel guilty because I did not obey or stay beside her in the bed, because she requested that, and I did not do that; until the moment I feel guilty when she asked me about her mother and father and sister, brothers, and I cannot respond to her request, because the whole family has been killed during bombing her house.<\/p>\n<p>I will never forget the dogs were eating the dead body inside Shifa Hospital at the front of the emergency department. This will be stuck on my mind for the whole life.<\/p>\n<p>I will never, ever forget a boy, after the operation, his leg has been amputated, and he asked me to move his leg. What I should respond for a kid \u2014\u00a0his age is 9 years \u2014 when he asks me, \u201cJust move my leg\u201d? I pretend that I move his leg, and I ask him, \u201cIs that OK?\u201d He said, \u201cYes.\u201d In this moment, I feel like my heart is broken, because the suffering of my people inside Shifa Hospital and in the whole Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n<p>Now the situation on the ground, I receive calls from my colleagues from the north of Gaza. There\u2019s no access to food, no access to water, no access to fuel for the hospitals to operate the centers or to operate the hospitals here in north Gaza. The situation is very, very critical.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m here in Chicago just to send my people\u2019s message: We need ceasefire now. We need ceasefire now. Enough is enough. More than one year, and the people inside Gaza are suffering from and taste many types of death. Enough is enough. Three hundred sixty-five days, and the people inside Gaza taste all kind of death.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m witness the horrible of this war. I\u2019m witness four wars before, and this war is completely different, the death everywhere, the suffering everywhere. The people just eat one time. They save the food for the children. And the children are suffering from malnutrition inside Gaza.<\/p>\n<p>My message for the whole world: We are human beings. We are not numbers. We have the right to receive healthcare inside Gaza. We have the right to raise up our children. We have the right to return back our lives, our dignity. We have the right to rebuild our universities, our schools. We are human beings, and we are not numbers.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JUAN\u00a0GONZ\u00c1LEZ:<\/strong>\u00a0And, Rajaa Musleh, I wanted to ask you, the interactions you had, if any, with the Israeli soldiers. How did they treat the medical personnel, especially those who had come from other countries?<\/p>\n<p><strong>RAJAA\u00a0MUSLEH:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, actually, now we send the doctors from outside Gaza through Karem Abu Salem. But, you know, they prevent the Palestinian people, even they are American, to enter Gaza. So, all the people we send from outside Gaza go through Karem Abu Salem, because of Rafah border now is completely closed.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AMY\u00a0GOODMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0And finally, Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, as we hear this devastating description from Rajaa Musleh, who worked at Al-Shifa and is a Palestinian American nurse, comes from Gaza City, as you talk about the spaces being closed in this country \u2014 I mean, the lack of follow-up on your piece, when you try to speak at, for example, Columbia, it\u2019s shut down. You have to go to a local independent bookstore. And yet the\u00a0<em>Times<\/em>\u00a0did publish this\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2024\/10\/09\/opinion\/gaza-doctor-interviews.html\">column<\/a>. And what it\u2019s meant, the kind of response that you\u2019ve gotten? You haven\u2019t stopped since you\u2019ve come back, as you organize with doctors and nurses and medical personnel to describe what\u2019s happening there. I also wanted to ask your response to the latest letter of the Biden administration, saying if they don\u2019t stop \u2014 improve the situation in Gaza, if Israel doesn\u2019t, the U.S. will cut off weapons \u2014 not this week or next week or the next week, but in a month.<\/p>\n<p><strong>DR.\u00a0FEROZE\u00a0SIDHWA:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. So, I think the\u00a0<em>Times<\/em>\u00a0piece is significant in that it might represent a shift in elite opinion about just, like, Rajaa said, enough is enough, and how much more destroyed do they want Gaza to be? And that opens up some possibilities for us to be able to do things that can actually help the people of Gaza, and not just Gaza, but elsewhere, as well.<\/p>\n<p>Like you mentioned,\u00a0<em>The Times of Israel<\/em>, there was a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.timesofisrael.com\/us-gives-israel-30-days-to-address-gaza-aid-crisis-threatens-to-curb-weapons-supply\/\">letter<\/a>\u00a0leaked, apparently, to\u00a0<em>The Times of Israel<\/em>\u00a0that the Biden administration sent on Sunday \u2014\u00a0excuse me \u2014\u00a0to Ron Dermer and Yoav Gallant, the strategic affairs and defense ministers in Israel, saying that Israel has \u2014 needs to start immediately, but has up to 30 days to improve the humanitarian situation.<\/p>\n<p>And they pointed out some interesting things in that letter. They said that in September, the lowest amount of aid that has ever \u2014\u00a0that\u2019s gone into Gaza in the past year went in, in September, which means the least amount that has ever gone into Gaza. Of course, the Israelis will deny that, but it\u2019s nevertheless quite obviously true.<\/p>\n<p>And they raised the possibility of what they called consequences under\u00a0NSM-20 and other American laws, meaning the laws that prevent the provision of arms to human rights abusers. Well, I think you played a Reuters journalist pointing out earlier there\u2019s no reason to wait 30 days. It\u2019s not like Israel hasn\u2019t been attacking Gaza for a year. So, this has been going on for, like Rajaa said, long enough. We can stop sending them arms tomorrow, and the U.S. can lead an arms blockade against not just Israel, but Israel and all Palestinian and Lebanese armed groups. And that can stop, or at least dramatically decrease, the fighting, the death and the misery immediately.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AMY\u00a0GOODMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0I want to thank you both for being with us, Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a surgeon in California, the San Joaquin General Hospital, his\u00a0<em>New York Times<\/em>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2024\/10\/09\/opinion\/gaza-doctor-interviews.html\">op-ed<\/a>, \u201c65 Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza.\u201d And Rajaa Musleh, country representative in Gaza of MedGlobal, a medical humanitarian aid group, previously worked as a nurse at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. She is a Palestinian from Gaza.<\/p>\n<p>___<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/scheerpost.com\/2024\/10\/17\/israel-is-routinely-shooting-children-in-the-head-in-gaza-us-surgeon-palestinian-nurse\/\">https:\/\/scheerpost.com\/2024\/10\/17\/israel-is-routinely-shooting-children-in-the-head-in-gaza-us-surgeon-palestinian-nurse\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-257451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=257451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257451\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=257451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=257451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=257451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}