On a stone wall at the Genocide Memorial in Kigali, Rwanda, there is a quote that inhabits the periphery of my mind: “If you knew me, and you really knew yourself, you would not have killed me.”

I was in Rwanda to teach a trauma surgery course, but I have never felt closer to home than I did at that moment. As I walk the halls of my hospital south of Tel Aviv, the last few years have been, to put it in medical terms, completely heartbreaking.

The hemodynamic collapse of our region is visible everywhere. I see them in the photos from a Palestinian resident’s wedding that I missed because of the war. I see them in the continued clinic visits of a 23-year-old woman, shot five times on October 7th, whose father looks at me with eyes that mirror my own, also as a father of a teenager – protective, weary, and simmering with rage. Outside the endless ‘booms’, the clinks of falling shrapnel in front of my feet, the infinite footage of mass destruction and suffering.

As this regional war expands, we have moved the majority of our hospital underground, bracing for a “mega-mass casualty” event. I know the situation is complex. I know the intelligence agencies are neck-deep in a web of global interests, alliances, and agendas. I realize only a fraction of reality is broadcast by news agencies and social media experts. Yet, while leaders talk about the expansion of borders and billion-dollar munitions deals, I am anchored by a different reality: the one we are persistently and stubbornly........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)