What Gaza taught me about human beings is that people can remain profoundly beautiful even inside unimaginable suffering.

I was working in resuscitation bays so hot that sweat would drip off my arms while we worked on children torn apart by bombs.

And still, families would tap me on the shoulder to hand me water.

The cook at the hospital learned that I loved fried eggplant. Whenever he made it, he would come find me somewhere in the hospital, sometimes in the middle of chaos, just to hand me one small piece because he knew it made me happy.

People who had lost almost everything still wanted to take care of someone else.

Sometimes a person would simply take my hand and quietly walk with me to sit down for a moment so we could just exist together as human beings for a minute before going back into the horror.

And one moment will stay with me forever.

I told a father that I was American. That my country had paid for the bombs that killed his child.

And instead of anger, he hugged me.

He rejected the idea that I carried personal blame for what had happened to him. He gave me kindness at the exact moment when I felt least deserving of it.

I went to Gaza thinking I was going there to help people survive genocide.

Instead, they helped me survive it too.

Gaza showed me something devastating and beautiful about humanity itself.

That even surrounded by death, grief, fear, hunger, destruction, people still reached toward each other.

Still shared food.Still offered comfort.Still protected tenderness.

And to walk away from that was much harder than I ever imagined.

–doctormarkbrauner/IG

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