A British Surgeon's Gaza Testimony
Dr. Nicholas Maynard's shocking eyewitness testimony cannot be ignored.
My sabbatical from paying attention to disturbing media reporting ended explosively this morning when a friend sent me the link to Tucker Carlson’s just-dropped interview with Dr. Nicholas Maynard, a gastrointestinal surgeon and Associate Professor at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
Dr. Maynard’s eyewitness testimony about his extensive experience working as a volunteer humanitarian surgeon in Gaza is so shocking that it should disturb the conscience of all of mankind, especially Israeli citizens who may not be aware of what their government and military are doing.
Even people who are strongly inclined to reject such testimony out of hand should take the time to think about it and examine the innumerable indications that Dr. Maynard’s testimony is credible. Denying the veracity of his testimony — without supporting evidence for the denial—is not an intellectually or morally tenable position to take.
Dr. Nicholas Maynard has worked repeatedly in Gaza since 2010 (following his first visit in 2008), leading or participating in medical missions to teach and mentor Palestinian doctors and students, and and to provide surgical care.
He has returned to Gaza multiple times during the current conflict, volunteering at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. He serves on the board of Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) and has chaired or led emergency medical teams there.
Education and Professional Background
Education: Trained at Exeter College, Oxford, and Guy’s Hospital Medical School (King’s College London). He also completed training as a Senior Registrar in Melbourne, Australia.
Career: He is a leading consultant Upper GI (gastrointestinal) surgeon with over 25 years of experience, specializing in adult upper gastrointestinal cancer surgery at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. He has held leadership roles, including as President of the Association of Upper GI Surgery of Great Britain and Ireland.
Humanitarian Work: He regularly travels with Oxford colleagues to teach surgical techniques, trauma care, and other skills to medical students and doctors in the West Bank and Gaza. He has emphasized mentoring and capacity-building, describing Palestinian healthcare workers as among the most heroic and inspirational people he has met. Dr. Maynard was awarded the Humanitarian Medal by King Charles III in February 2025 for his work in Gaza
Maynard is known for talking about the humanitarian conditions he has witnessed, including interviews with outlets like Democracy Now, NPR, and BBC’s Newsnight. He describes the collapse of Gaza’s healthcare system, preventable deaths from malnutrition and lack of supplies, and injury patterns he attributes to targeting of civilians and medical infrastructure. His firsthand experience as a long-term volunteer with deep ties to the region has made him an outstanding voice in discussions of the conflict’s impact on healthcare.
Increasingly, the response of the British and US media to the situation in Gaza reminds of Walter Duranty’s reporting for the New York Times about the situation in the Soviet Union during the 1930s. As I report this bizarre and disturbing chapter of history in my forthcoming book, Mind Viruses: America’s Irrational Obsessions:
Walter Duranty, who became the New York Times Moscow bureau chief in 1922. Duranty became a key propagandist for Stalin, and for his mendacious reporting he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. [i] The Pulitzer Board cited his “dispassionate interpretive reporting” on Russia, especially for his 1931 articles on the USSR’s Five-Year Plan. The Board further praised Duranty for his “profound and intimate comprehension of conditions in Russia.”
Duranty was instrumental in shaping American sentiment in favor of formally recognizing the Soviet Union in 1933. He was a guest of honor at a lavish dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City on November 24, 1933, to celebrate the establishment of diplomatic relations. The gala happened about six months after Duranty whitewashed one of the worst crimes in European history, committed by Stalin’s regime in the winter of 1932–33. The Holodomor (Ukrainian “famine extermination”) was caused by Stalin’s forced collectivization of agriculture, confiscating the farms of prosperous landowning peasants, as well as his insistence on the delivery of unattainable grain quotas from the especially fertile farmland of Ukraine. An estimated 5 million died of starvation.[ii]
In his reporting for the New York Times, Walter Duranty did not mention the Holodomor apart from denying the veracity of reports by Malcolm Muggeridge, the only western journalist who covered the atrocity. Malcolm Muggeridge lived in Moscow in 1933, working for the Manchester Guardian. Though attracted to communism in his youth, the experience of being in Stalin’s Russia and observing what was going on in the country caused him to become disillusioned. He was especially disturbed by his realization that Stalin’s army and police were—as part of their collectivization program—starving millions of people.
When Muggeridge’s reports were published in 1933, many of his fellow writers—including George Bernard Shaw, Aldous Huxley, Jean-Paul Sartre, Upton Sinclair, Theodore Dreiser, and Sidney and Beatrice Webb—refused to believe them and passionately asserted that he was spreading falsehoods about Stalin’s regime. On March 2, 1933, Shaw and twenty other writers and intellectuals published an open letter in Manchester Guardian that dismissed Muggeridge’s reports of famine as malicious lie. In the final analysis, Duranty and his fellow propagandists prevailed in presenting Stalin as a great leader, worthy of full US support. The legacy of his New York Times reporting in the twenties and thirties is still evident today in the simple fact that most Americans have never heard of the Holodomor or Malcolm Muggeridge.
[i]S.J. Taylor, Stalin’s Apologist: Walter Duranty: The New York Times’s Man in Moscow, Oxford University Press, 1990.
[ii]Robert Conquest, Harvest of Sorrow, Oxford University Press, 1987
Almost all the "Palestinians" are, or were, from Jordan. Almost all of them are trained as toddlers, and continuously, to commit genocide (including October 7) against the people of Israel . . . and they are actively engaged in that. It's part of the Islamic documents they follow. There is a reason for overreaction by Israel. You would too. The fire bombing of Dresden and Tokyo proves that. The bottom line is that the "fire" in Gaza was started and is maintained by the MUSLIMS. There would not be any atrocities by Israel, and comparatively speaking there is not much, but for the genocide by the MUSLIMS.
A great movie about the Holodomor is "Mr. Jones", about Gareth Jones, who visited and spent much time in the bloodlands, documenting the genocide by Stalin.