Dr. Mohamed Kuziez, 35, is bragging about one of his favorite patients. “She is fierce,” the Denver pediatrician says, fishing out his phone like a proud dad.
He volunteered in Gaza for three weeks earlier this year, which is why his phone also contains images of decaying corpses in the wreckage of a building, a lineup of torched Palestinian ambulances, and human organs, red and incongruous on surgical sheeting, outside of the bodies they once served. He also photographed a message he scrawled in the dust left on a wall, after a missile struck al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza: “With love from Colorado,” it says.
Finally, Kuziez locates the photo of his 7-year-old patient Habiba, her hair glossy, a smile lighting up her face, and “Hello Kitty” earrings in both ears. Her name means “the little one who is beloved” in Arabic, and she is. When her mom posted about her on Instagram, the king of Jordan interceded on her behalf, asking the Israeli government to release her to his country for treatment.
In the photo Kuziez called up, Habiba’s dark eyes are riveting, so it takes a moment to register that both of her arms have been amputated above the elbow. Her left leg — her only remaining limb — is out of the frame. But to look at that photograph, you’d think “birthday party,” not “humanitarian crisis.”
In December 2023, UNICEF declared Gaza the most dangerous place on Earth to live as a child. Even back then, the United Nations estimated that there were about 130,000 children under age 2 in Gaza who weren’t receiving the food they needed to survive. Last month, a report from the UN sounded the alarm over a half-million Palestinians facing famine; 132,000 of those victims are children.
To make the point in human terms, UNICEF shared the story of 13-year-old Dina, who had lost her parents and a sibling in a bombing. She declared her intention to become a lawyer, to seek justice for herself and children everywhere. A day later she died when a bomb struck the hospital where she was recovering from an amputation.
“My blood is no more sacred than anyone else’s in Palestine.”
As a hospital pediatrician, Kuziez, a Syrian-American, heard that far-away cry. He had the skills to help, so he mustered the courage. “My blood is no more sacred than anyone else’s in Palestine,” he says, in his apartment in Aurora.
He applied for service in Gaza through Doctors Against Genocide and Rahma, both of which send medical professionals into the hearts of darkness around the world. After months of waiting for an opening, Kuziez flew to Gaza — the medical equivalent of a firefighter running into a burning building.
Before the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, by Hamas and Palestinian militants, there were 36 hospitals serving the 2 million residents of Gaza. Three remain standing. “Your taxpayer dollars are being used to bomb hospitals,” Kuziez says, pointedly.
“I don’t view any child’s life as more valuable than another’s,” he continues. “The kids in Gaza or the children from Israel who were killed on October 7th or my patients here in Denver — all of them deserve to be safe, to have security, to have happiness. Anything less than that is a failure for all of us as adults and as people.”
A message scrawled on a wall in a ruined building in Gaza by Colorado pediatrician Mohamed Kuziez. (Provided by Mohamed Kuziez)In Colorado, Kuziez works as a hospital “nocturnist,” caring for about 25 pediatric patients each night. “It’s my job to make sure they continue to improve until morning.” He asked The Colorado Sun not to share the name of his employer, which prefers to concentrate on local patients rather than global political conflagrations. Kuziez understands: “My hospital got a call from a guy who told them that I was a Hamas operative sent to kill Jew babies.” He pauses for a moment to let the idiocy of that accusation sink in. “They called the cops, who did a wellness visit. It turns out that the guy was a 70-year-old schizophrenic.”
So, yes, his hospital has reason to be concerned about reprisals. And, no, Kuziez is not a Hamas operative. He’s a caring bear of a man who wraps his arms around his healing mission. The day of our interview, he was wearing a Doctors Without Borders T-shirt with the words “Civilians are not a target.” It’s hard to argue that point.
Kuziez and his family fled persecution in Syria
The son of Syrian immigrants who fled persecution by Bashar al-Assad’s regime in the 1980s, Kuziez grew up in Alton, Illinois. His mom taught in an Arabic day school, and he spent his afternoons hanging out with his mother’s students. He learned to love and respect children, and he combined that with his aptitude for math and science, eventually attending med school in Puerto Rico. He chose pediatrics as his specialty, and picked up Spanish-language skills that would help him serve his young patients in Colorado.
When Hamas and other militant groups attacked Israel two years ago, the world became a more violent place. “I spent eight, nine months, seeing the news, the horror, all the kids who’ve been killed, the burned bodies, the children running from fires, from bombs.”
Dr. Mohamed Kuziez standing on a rooftop with hundreds of tents set up amid the rubble of a neighborhood in Gaza to shelter residents of the city. (Provided by Mohamed Kuziez)The UNICEF declaration flipped his switch into action mode. “Once there was a critical mass of 3,000 children killed, I knew I had to act,” Kuziez says. He began applying to medical aid charities, but they were looking for emergency room doctors and surgeons. At the end of 2024 he at last fielded a request for a pediatrician willing to risk his life in Gaza.
Before he left for the Middle East he visited his parents. “When I went into medicine,” he says, “they told me it’s not about how much money you make or how big your house is or how nice your car is. What actually matters is what you have given back to the world.”
After delivering the news to his family, and saying a provisional goodbye, he wrote his will. Then he saw a therapist, to help him prepare emotionally for the task ahead. She acknowledged the difficulties of what he’d be seeing and doing in Gaza, and counseled him to bring tokens of home, for comfort. “I ended up bringing the blanket I covered myself with as a child,” he says, “and a bar of my mom’s favorite soap.”
He would need all that and more.
In a talk he gave at the First Unitarian Society of Denver, Kuziez shared his experiences in January and February while working at the Patient Friends Benevolent Society Hospital in the al-Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City. The images were beyond shocking: The remains of a dialysis center that was targeted by Israeli artillery; a playground plowed under by Israeli tanks; a former fig orchard that now serves as a mass grave; a hospital facade pockmarked with gunfire. He also filmed a wooden donkey cart rolling through a street that had been reduced to rubble.
Dr. Mohamed Kuziez with one of his young patients in Gaza, who holds a sticker of a character from the Disney movie “Frozen.” (Provided by Mohamed Kuziez)There were also many photographs of children, because they are Kuziez’s touchstone. One video shows three kids bouncing on a trampoline set down amid the rubble. Another shows a young boy swinging like Spider-Man from a severed telephone wire. If you’re a kid in Gaza, anything can be your playground.
“They manage to find joy in the silliest things,” Kaziez says. “It’s amazing. I talked to kids in Gaza who have had their classmates killed. But they don’t say ‘F the Israelis, they did this to us.’ They say: ‘I hope the sky stops raining bombs so we can go out and play.’” One of his young patients begged him for one of the “Frozen” stickers he brought to distract his young patients, saying she needed it for her friend. Later, he spotted it on the friend’s gravestone.
Asked what he takes away from all of this, Kuziez pauses for a few weighty seconds. “Being in Gaza showed me that, sadly, the world does not care about kids the way I do,” he says. “A lot of kids will die before their time. But we have to fight for the ones who are still around.” He pauses again and then shares his personal mission statement: “I have taken on a personal challenge that, regardless of the hour of the day or what the request is, I will always show up for my patients.”
Now, he awaits the call to return to Gaza — soon, he hopes. If the Israeli government lets him in, he will show up for his young patients, like always.
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