As a physiotherapist, the white coat I lifted at Together 4 Palestine was my vow for Gaza

As I stood behind Dr. Victoria Rose and Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah at Wembley Arena, I lifted a white coat. The fabric pulled at my arms, heavier than I expected. Without words, it said care cannot be severed from justice and medicine cannot be divorced from morality — not in Gaza, not anywhere.

Backstage, solidarity with Gaza was ordinary and unspoken: a hand straightening a child’s scarf, another passing a bottle of water, a silence that settled heavier than applause. Strength moved quietly there, in gestures that refused to look away.

And in the hall itself, at Together 4 Palestine, a sold-out cultural fundraiser on 17 September 2025, our message thundered. Flags rose. Voices answered back. I stood on stage with fifteen other medical professionals, each carrying the duty to respond to human suffering. 

My thoughts were with my besieged colleagues in Gaza, over 1,700 of whom have been killed by Israel while continuing to treat their patients. My thoughts were also with the captives in Gaza, whose lives have been stolen or constrained. Both patients remind us that our responsibility as health professionals is universal. Empathy cannot be selective.

We are trained to treat patients without prejudice, to respect dignity and humanity regardless of circumstance. Yet neutrality is impossible when entire populations are deprived of healthcare; when hospitals are bombed; when patients are left without food, water, or medicine.

As a physiotherapist, I know that the value of my profession is as a bridge between dignity and trauma, how a man learns to use his arms after losing his legs, how a woman regains her breath after shrapnel punctures her lungs, and how a child dares, even for a moment, to dream of running again.

With over 50 physiotherapists killed by Israel in Gaza, our profession mourns not only the loss of individual lives, but the systematic erasure of a community’s capacity to heal and to hope. 

Silence in the face of this systemic suffering is not neutrality; it is a form of selective empathy. As Jamil Zaki writes in The War for Kindness, empathy is not fixed; it can be cultivated, strengthened, or eroded.

Our task as health professionals is to cultivate it actively, to extend our care beyond politics, identity and borders.

Throughout history, health workers from US civil rights protests to struggles abroad have shown that care knows no borders and does not end at the bedside. To heal the sick is to confront the structures that make them sick. If the "artist holds a mirror to society", as James Baldwin wrote, then as medics, our mirror is our care, our presence, our refusal to look away. It reflects the suffering of the world and asks: will we respond, or remain silent?

For my colleagues in healthcare, I say this: neutrality is not an option. As one BMJ editorial put it, “It is almost impossible to lead from sitting on the fence.”

Empathy is a muscle. For health workers, exercising it means refusing selectivity, remembering that every patient is equally worthy of dignity and care.

If our oath to care means anything, it means standing against the destruction of life and the systems that perpetuate it. It means defending human dignity wherever it is under threat, using our positions and our collective strength with courage and integrity.

To the public: when health professionals raise their voices in response to humanitarian crises, this is not politics. It is medicine practised at its fullest, a commitment to universal care and to the rights and dignity of every human being.

What lingers in me now is not only grief or outrage but the kind of hope Dr. Martin Luther King spoke of when he said that the "ultimate measure of a person is not where they stand in moments of comfort, but where they stand at times of challenge." We must be born of struggle and driven by the hope that compassion and shared humanity will not be abandoned.

Sevda Önder is a physiotherapist and a founding member of Health Workers for Palestine. She has worked across the NHS, private practice, and global health projects, bringing a commitment to empathy and community care. Alongside colleagues, she defends the right to health for all and has spoken out against the destruction of healthcare systems and the targeting of health professionals in Gaza.

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.