I met the young Palestinian Fayez Abed in 2013 when he had just arrived in Cuba, he barely spoke Spanish. Tall, cheerful, big beautiful eyes with a smile always, like all his compatriots, committed to their beloved Palestine and just causes.
He graduated from the Latin American School of Medicine in Cuba in 2020. I never saw him again.
On Sunday another Palestinian physician Dr. Watan identified him in a hospital video as they were rushing in a stretcher with the wounded. I did not recognize him at the time.
Today we got his message sent in the early hours of Tuesday morning from a Gaza Hospital before the collapse of the health system.
It is the same Fayez who used to call me “teacher or mother”. His beautiful face is no longer smiling. This is his message to Cuba and to the world.
“I am Dr. Fayez Abed, a graduate of the Latin America School of Medicine in Cuba in 2020, currently working at the Al-Awda Clinical Surgical Hospital, Gaza Strip. I am sending this message from my trench as a doctor here in the Hospital, today isTuesday October 24, 2023.
In this early morning I send through this message, my testimony to the whole world especially to my comrades everywhere and especially to my comrades in Cuba.
Today what is happening in the Gaza Strip is an ethnic cleansing in every sense of the word, it is a genocide of the Palestinian people, after 18 days of continuous bombing day and night, the numbers of martyrs killed are on the rise, 400 civilians are being killed daily in the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli occupation army threatened to bomb our hospital four times and we are not surprised after the massacres that this criminal regime has committed, but we decided to defy this regime and stay at our work place providing service to the wounded and saving lives.
We need your support to continue fighting, and remain firm in our land, we need supplies and medical brigades to strengthen our resilience, so far we have not received anything.
We remain firm in our land.
Long Live Free Palestine
Long Live the Struggle of the Palestinian People
To die for the homeland is to Live
Homeland or Death. We shall overcome!”
Source: Cuba en Resumen
