Dr. Ismail Mehr watched as Palestinian doctors attended to a young boy who needed stitches for a head wound at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza last January. Mehr stood close by as the doctors held the boy’s head down and began stitching up the wound without applying any kind of anesthetics, though a small amount of a local anesthetic was available at the time. When Mehr asked why they didn’t use any, one of the doctors said, “We don’t waste local anesthetics on things like this.”

Mehr, an anesthesiologist for St. James Mercy Hospital in Hornell, N.Y., traveled to Gaza in January 2009 to give aid to its citizens following attacks on the city by Israel. Mehr shared his experience of his relief work Monday evening in a presentation called “Gaza’s Dilemma.” Mehr traveled to Gaza after a three-week-long war in which Gaza was attacked by Israel.

His discussion was sponsored by Ithaca College’s Students for Justice in Palestine, which also brought Mehr to Ithaca College in April.

Beth Harris, associate professor of politics and adviser of Students for Justice in Palestine, said she thought the presentation was educational.

“I hope that people who come tonight will get a different picture of what’s going on in Gaza,” she said.

Graduate student Andrea Levine, who helped bring Mehr to the college in April, said she thinks Mehr’s presentations are always eye-opening.

“He educates the public on not just the effects of the attack, [but] normal everyday health problems [of the region],” she said.

Senior Brooke Reynolds, president for Students for Justice in Palestine, said about 40 to 50 people showed up to the event in April. She said the organization decided to bring Mehr back this semester because feedback from his presentation in the spring was positive.  

Mehr began the presentation by giving a brief history of Palestine. He then showed slides, many of which included his own photos from his 10-day trip to Gaza, providing narration of his trip as he went along.

Reynolds said Mehr’s pictures of his work in Gaza were powerful.

“Pictures show what exactly he went through,” she said. “People are getting hurt. People are dying over there. And this opened people’s eyes to it.”

The trip was sponsored by the Islamic Medical Association of North America, an organization that is a resource for Muslim physicians.

“[The president of IMANA] said the board of directors wanted to try to put a team in Gaza to help provide medical aid,” Mehr said. “I had been on multiple missions before, and they asked me if I would lead this team.”

Mehr had been to places such as Pakistan and Indonesia following natural disasters to provide aid. He said he didn’t hesitate when asked to go to Gaza.

“I felt that if I said no I would be breaking a promise to myself that if I ever had the opportunity to go and do relief missions again that I would,” he said.

 Mehr then gathered a team of 11 doctors, along with two others who helped organize the trip. The group arrived in Gaza on Jan. 22.

“[When] we arrived there, we saw convoys, trucks, aid and people from Portugal, Cuba, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, South Africa,” Mehr said. “They’d been waiting there for days and [kept] being turned away.”

The American Medical Mission to Gaza was denied entrance on the first day, after being told that no more doctors were needed in Gaza and that the borders were closed for the day. Finally, a member of the group called someone who worked at the border who helped the group sneak in.

Mehr said out of the 13 hospitals in Gaza, five were destroyed in the attacks and many others were damaged. The AMMG went to work in al-Shifa Hospital, the only untouched hospital.

Mehr said the hospital was lacking even basic supplies and that the majority of people his group treated were dealing with routine illnesses, such as pneumonia and diabetes. They also worked with cancer patients who could not receive chemotherapy because of the embargo. Some of the slides that Mehr showed included photos of a jaundiced 4-year-old with liver cancer being treated by doctors and the football-sized kidney of a boy whose kidney should have been smaller than a fist. Mehr said he particularly wanted to work with children because he has two young children at home.

The AMMG also went to the local orphanage. Two doctors from the group stayed at the orphanage over the course of the 10-day trip, giving routine health checks to the children. Mehr shared a story about a man who frequently visited the orphanage and returned to visit the children the day after his house was destroyed and his family killed.

“That story got to me,” Harris said. “No one should have to have this kind of resilience.”

Mehr said he would love to return to Gaza if he got the opportunity, but it is difficult to get into the region.

“You come back a different person,” he said. “Somehow, someday I’ll get back.”