Professor Khamis Al-Assi … and the alienation of Palestine – Najeh Ibrahim

• He obtained a Master’s degree in a rare specialty, then received an honor from the Palestinian Committee, and then became an Honorary Fellow of the prestigious Oxford University, where he became a Senior Fellow. He was the first Palestinian and Arab to become a member of the specialty’s committee. In 2018, he obtained a PhD at the Institute of Neurorehabilitation and Pain Therapy at the University of Oxford, and the following year received a scholarship from the University of Cambridge on health policy development and health systems development in the Arab world and the Middle East.

• In 2021, he was selected as a member of the World Health Organization and its expert committee on neurorehabilitation and pain, stroke and cartilage treatment. In 2023, he received the Best Researcher Award from the Far Eastern University and was awarded the Gold Medal.

• Before the October 7 war, many people offered him to leave the Gaza Strip, all these offers were tempting, but he refused without hesitation to be close to his mother, especially after his father’s death, he chose to stay and help. In order to teach his fellow doctors in Gaza about this rare speciality of medical care, he worked as a professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the Islamic University of Gaza.

• After the October 7 war began, he volunteered to work at the Baptist and Shifa hospitals in light of Israel’s suffocating siege on Gaza and its hospitals.

• The strangest thing about the story of this great scientist is that he and his family have been displaced 12 times in the Gaza Strip since the Israeli invasion of Gaza. During the Israeli war, I lived in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood, and as the residential buildings there were destroyed, I was forced to move because I received a call from my son telling me that I had to leave the house immediately. At the request of the Israeli army, my family and I fled under the fire of Israeli drones. We reached my sister’s burning house, and as soon as we sat in the house, we were surprised to find the belt. At dawn, Israeli planes and tanks attacked the area and penetrated into the area, so we had to move again to the Al-Nasr area.

• Professor Dr. Khamis goes on and on about his journey with his small family from Tal al-Hawa to the stairs, then olives, then Andalucia, then sand, then stairs, then olives, then stairs… etc. As Professor Khamis describes in the interview, there were 12 forced displacements in a series of horrific incidents of Israeli crimes.

• During the displacement, one of his children liked to document the displacement of his father and his family, so he took several photos of them fleeing with thousands of people and published them as a record of the forced evacuation of civilians, including him as a professor of medicine and colleagues at some of the leading universities in Europe, he attached these photos to an image of the famous Palestinian symbol “bearing camel”, which represents the alienation of Palestinians, and below it was written: “History repeats itself, similar to last night in history in 1948, and today we are in 2024, the tragedy is still tragedy, the pain is still pain.”

• Professor Khamis Abdel Karim Al-Assi was surprised to see his photo of a “bearing camel” take the social networking site by storm, garnering 30,000 shares in one night.

• As for the image of “Bearing Camel”, it was created by Palestinian artist Suleiman Mansour in 1973. It depicts the image of an old Palestinian man, barefoot, with strong arms and tattered clothes, carrying the worries of the nation. His back has become a symbol of Palestine to this day.

• Professor Khamis Al-Assi has become the new Palestinian icon because he works without pay. Since he has not received a salary since Israel invaded Gaza and demolished all the universities, he sold his car, then his wife’s gold, then the few valuable properties he owned, and then started borrowing money from relatives, then his friends, then his students, hoping for relief.

• The professor no longer has any remnant of the world, but he stands tall like a lion in the hospital, treating patients with patience and determination.

• His biggest wish now is to stop the genocidal process against the defenseless people of Gaza and let peace return to the Gaza Strip again, and his entire speech was filled with hope for a better tomorrow.

• He is one of the heroes of Palestine, who sacrificed hundreds of martyrs, including doctors, nurses and ambulance workers, compared to the determination of the most outstanding people. He is an example that should make you ashamed. Yourself, your petty goals, your struggle in the ruins, your competition with the world, and your determination to live.

• The determination, patience and concern of a professor who could not find money to feed his family and was forced to sell everything, from his car to his wife’s jewelry to the prized possessions he cherished, exposed the shallowness of our interest in trivial matters. Greetings to all doctors in Gaza and the Palestinian people in general.