Surviving Genocide: A Palestinian Doctor Speaks
Israel has continued to assault Gaza with bombs 13 months into a campaign. Most recently, in an Israeli air strike on a residential building in north Gaza. Donald Trump’s re-election in the United States has emboldened Israeli officials, who now speak openly of .
Palestinians are exhorting the world to act. Among them is Dr. Ahmed Abdeen, a 29-year-old aspiring neurosurgeon who graduated with top honors from Cairo’s Ain Shams University in 2022. Born in Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip, he was working in Gaza’s European Hospital when his medical training was cut short and he was evacuated from Gaza in early 2024.
His wife Reem Ahmed’s story of surviving 12 hours under rubble in October 2023 was in The Washington Post. Currently in Southern California seeking asylum while his family remains trapped in Gaza, Abdeen spoke with YES! Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali about the extensive trauma he and other surviving Palestinians are living with.
Sonali Kolhatkar
joined YES! in summer 2021, building on a long and decorated career in broadcast and print journalism. She is an award-winning multimedia journalist, and host and creator of YES! Presents: Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. She is also Senior Correspondent with the Independent Ƶ Institute’s Economy for All project where she writes a weekly column. She is the author of Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (2023) and Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (2005). Her forthcoming book is called Talking About Abolition (Seven Stories Press, 2025). Sonali is co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women’s Mission which she helped to co-found in 2000. She has a Master’s in Astronomy from the University of Hawai’i, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Sonali reflects on “My Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host” in her 2014 of the same name.
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