Diary of a Young Doctor: Notes from the Genocide in Gaza

A powerful eyewitness account of the genocide in Gaza by an extraordinary young writer and general physician.

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 to welcome him home. On 11 October, forty-two 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 at first hand catastrophic injuries and deaths, and working under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. Constantly targeted by the Israeli Defence Forces, the Indonesian hospital is ultimately destroyed.

In December 2024, Dr Shehab co-founds the Al-Rahma Medical Clinic to provide free medical care in northern Gaza, where no functioning hospitals remain. The 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.

In his testimony of these months, Dr Shehab’s clarity and humanity shine through. He describes the people he treats, the devastation of his homeland, and his incomprehension at the world’s silence in the face of the unfolding genocide. Diary of a Young Doctor is a deeply moving and unforgettable work that bears witness to one of the most shameful periods in recent history.

Dr Ezzideen Shehab is a young doctor from northern Gaza, born in 1995 and raised in Jabalia. He went to Arafat Gifted Secondary School and did his medical training in Iran at the University of Isfahan. He returned to Gaza just a few days before 7 October 2023 and has provided medical care to its people ever since.