About a week after Canadian doctor Yipeng Ge returned from Gaza, he got several surprise emails: legal and human rights groups were getting in touch to take his witness testimony.
There was a reason they wanted to get information from him that they could have gotten from doctors still in Gaza, he told The Breach in an exclusive interview—doctors are afraid of being killed if they speak out.
“There’s a safety and security risk for any healthcare worker within the Gaza Strip,” he said. “You essentially have a target on your back simply for wearing scrubs.”
After returning from separate trips to Gaza in February and March, Ge and another Ontario-based doctor Ben Thomson, told The Breach they were contacted by lawyers and interviewers from UK-based groups, the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians, and Forensic Architecture.
Both had witnessed the impact of a collapsing healthcare system, as Thomson had seen an example of a patient’s wounds that indicated they had been tortured.
I mean, they’ve already been to Gaza so unless they can hide that, testifying probably won’t brand them significantly more as enemies of Israel.