'The Doctor Told Us We Had To Choose Between The Girl And Her Leg'

Edited by Sam Thielman

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AL-JAZEERA'S FAULT LINES documentary series has put together yet another crucial piece of journalism about the Gaza genocide. All That Remains tells the story of Leyan Abu al-Atta, a 12-year old girl who lost her right leg to shrapnel from Israeli military operations in December 2023 near the Deir el-Balah tent where her family sheltered. All That Remains, which al-Jazeera released this morning, is a harrowing reminder of the ongoing horror that tens of thousands of children have suffered. We see it unfold through the eyes of a girl not much older than my oldest. Accordingly, I can't remember a documentary I found harder to watch—maybe Hearts and Minds, about Vietnam?

It's an unbearable thing, to see and hear a man point to the spot on the ground where he found his daughter barely conscious and bleeding. We watch TikToks people filmed of Leyan's older brother Ayoub carrying her tiny frame, barely conscious and pale from blood loss. "For almost three hours, [doctors] told me, 'Your daughter is dying,'" Leyan's mother Raghda recounts. 

As you gathered from the headline, doctors whom Leyan was able to reach across the border in Egypt, thanks to the organization HEAL Palestine, amputated Leyan's right leg. We hear Leyan—and it is a very good choice to show us very early on that she lives—recount summoning the faith to accept the will of God. "Hopefully, my leg will be in heaven," Leyan tells the camera. Her clothes feature Bambi and Donald Duck. She makes braided bracelets in her spare time, like my oldest started doing this past summer.

Leyan required spinal surgery to have a hope of repairing nerve damage inhibiting the use of her remaining leg. HEAL Palestine got her on a flight to Philadelphia to have it performed. In the documentary, on her way to the Cairo airport, she watches a plane landing, and, with a face full of childlike wonder, says, "You know what I'm picturing? An Israeli warplane firing missiles." 

Not long before I watched All That Remains, I saw the Palestinian journalist Plestia Alaqad post that the world is moving on from Gaza even though the Israelis are not. Haaretz reported last week that the IDF is constructing the infrastructure in Gaza necessary for ongoing occupation of "no fewer than four large areas in different parts of the Strip" that it intends to hold through 2025. I carried that with me during the moments I needed a break from this documentary. Palestinians don't get to experience any such break. 

And so we have to see Leyan's story. As 20 White House staffers reminded President Biden and his inner circle in an open letter on Monday, "of those dead," whether you tally them at 43,000 or the Lancet's estimate of 186,000, "the most vulnerable and highly affected group has been children." 

The heroic surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah goes on camera to estimate that he performed between 50 to 100 amputations during his 43 days in post-October 7 Gaza, half of them on children. It was more than he had ever performed in all his warzone experiences, from Iraq to Syria to Yemen to earlier wars on Gaza. Abu-Sittah explains that because a child's body is "programmed to grow," childhood amputations require repeated surgeries for years, as well as a host of new prostheses. His point seems obvious once he makes it, but it never would have occurred to me, because I have no medical background. As he flips through pictures on his phone from his operating theater, Abu-Sittah observes, "Sometimes the memories are so horrendous that you have to see it to believe that it did happen." 

Bear witness to these slain and grievously wounded children as if they are your own children, for they are being killed with your money. In my case as a Jew, they are being killed with my money and in the name of my safety, and this is an obscenity I feel I can't ever fully express through language. A camera crew stays behind in Deir el-Balah with Leyan's father Ali and her brothers. We see them packed into their tent, which is capable of keeping the weather off not much more than the gym mats they sleep on, and learn that at one point they were frighteningly close to what Ali described as an Israeli attack helicopter. (I can't tell when this happened, but I note that at least one eyewitness account of a one such IDF operation on Deir el-Balah records the presence of U.S.-provided Apaches.) When Raghda cries in Philadelphia on a video call with her husband Ali, the wheelchair-bound Leyan consoles her mother: "We won't remain like this forever."

Later today, the Senate will vote on a disapproval measure to block $20 billion worth of weapons shipments to Israel. I'm not naive enough to think anyone voting against the bill would change their vote after seeing Leyan's story. But they should see it, so that her angelic 12-year old face can haunt them every time they close their eyes for the rest of their lives. 

SPEAKING OF THAT HAARETZ ARTICLE, it's clear from its reporting—and also by Benjamin Netanyahu firing Yoav Gallant, who is every bit a war criminal but who was a force for imposing an end to the slaughter of Gaza—that there will be no Middle East Quiet by the time Donald Trump is inaugurated. Ha'aretz:

"The way it looks on the ground, the IDF won't leave Gaza before 2026," an officer in one of the brigades fighting in Gaza said. "When you see the roads being paved here, it's clear that this isn't intended for the ground maneuvers or for raids by the troops into various places. These roads lead, among other places, to the places from which some of the settlements were removed. I don't know of any intent to rebuild them, that isn't something we're told explicitly. But everyone understands where this is going."

The officer means the settlement of Gaza by Israelis, to go along with Bezalel Smotrich's recent declaration that Israel will next year impose "sovereignty" upon the West Bank, by which he means Israeli annexation. If Biden envoy Amos Hochstein is not merely bullshitting—and Hochstein spent most of 2024 bullshitting about a diplomatic solution in Lebanon while the IDF attacked—then it looks like Israel plans to hand Trump a ceasefire in Lebanon for his parcel of Quiet in exchange for an American green light to clear and resettle as much of the remaining Palestinian territories as possible.

JEREMY SCAHILL WRITES AN EXTENSIVE PIECE ON TULSI GABBARD, the director of national intelligence-designate, so I don't have to. I probably will anyway—I've got a library hold placed on her recent book—but read Jeremy's first. And in advance of Gabbard taking office, Nick Schwellenbach at the Project on Government Oversight reports that the two most significant intelligence inspectors general, at the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, have tendered their resignations rather than stick around to be purged. 

JEREMY'S DROPSITE NEWS colleague Sharif Abdel Kouddous reports on the bandit groups that hijack, extort, loot and even kill drivers of the few aid trucks entering Gaza through the southeastern Kerem Shalom crossing. His piece corroborates and deepens recent reporting in the Washington Post and Haaretz that highlights the banditry taking place in territory controlled entirely by the IDF. While Israel claims Hamas steals the contents of the trucks – and by implication blames Hamas for the famine Israel is creating – these reports consistently and from varied sources describe Hamas as fighting the thieves that Israel, at a minimum, tolerates. Haaretz reports that the seniormost levels of the IDF are aware of what's happening: 

IDF Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi recently visited the Southern Command and discussed the problems surrounding humanitarian aid with officers there, including the fact that some soldiers have refused to be involved in anything to do with aid distribution.

Speaking more broadly, the presence of organized crime to profit off scarcity and assert authority in areas of civil collapse is a thoroughly predictable phenomenon. The Post spoke to a person said to be at the head of this criminal network, and now Kouddous reports that Hamas has killed him. All three reports cite a key contributing factor to the rise of the bandit network: the IDF killing the Hamas security personnel that once guarded the aid convoys. It's bitter to think that in those cases, the IDF could accurately claim that they were killing Hamas gunmen—just the kind of Hamas gunmen who made sure that people got food, water and medicine without imposed-scarcity prices of basic necessities manipulated even further by criminals.

WALEED SHAHEED'S POST-MORTEM for the Harris campaign at The Nation is also worth reading. There's a lot of insight in here competing for space to highlight—such as a great point about Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador's media strategy—but the REIGN OF TERROR-ness of this point of his can't be beat:

[Adam] Jentleson’s criticism of progressive advocacy groups rings especially hollow when you consider the track record of his own political mentors. In 2010, his former boss, Harry Reid, publicly opposed the “Ground Zero mosque,” a proposed Islamic cultural center near the World Trade Center. While technically acknowledging the developers’ rights, Reid capitulated to Republican culture wars by suggesting Muslim Americans build the mosque elsewhere. This wasn’t a principled stance—it was a political maneuver that lent legitimacy to Islamophobia, feeding into narratives from figures like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, who compared the center to a Nazi building next to the Holocaust Museum. In doing so, Reid allowed bigotry to flourish, leaving a vulnerable community to bear the brunt of political scapegoating.

From asylum seekers to transgender rights, today’s debates mirror the “Ground Zero mosque” controversy. From 2017 to 2020, Democrats, including Harris, were eager to condemn Trump’s cruel immigration policies. Now, however, they seem more focused on dodging the topic altogether. These are issues demanding a new approach, one that emphasizes year-round persuasion and agenda-setting over political convenience. Thermostatic public opinion might be a reality of politics, but voters appreciate when you stand for something with conviction and authenticity.

Readers of REIGN OF TERROR know that I consider the manufactured 'Ground Zero Mosque' crisis one of the seminal events of 21st century American politics. 

Another good post-mortem published in The Nation comes from John Ganz, whose riffs alone are worth the price of admission.

Measured in raw vote counts, Trump’s reelection likely doesn’t qualify as a realignment. Yet in deeper structural terms, there may be a realignment in the offing—one that bodes poorly for the Democrats’ electoral prospects. The basic terms of political rivalry that have prevailed at least since the New Deal have been turned upside down: The Democrats became Republicans and Republicans became Democrats. The Democrats, in retreat from any meaningful mandate of popular accountability, have transformed themselves into the party of the establishment: wonks, statisticians, professionals, hectoring nonprofit advocates, celebrities, reformers, lecturers (in all senses of the word), assistant professors, and corporate bean-counters. They worship G-men, spooks, and generals as minor deities. In a postelection piece for The New Yorker, Rachel Maddow lamented that the American people didn’t listen to the “experts.” That sentence alone tells you everything you need to know. 

A SPORTS TAKE YOU DIDN'T ASK FOR: Ichiro Suzuki should enter the Hall of Fame with his Japanese records honored, enshrining him as baseball's all-time hits leader, because he is. 

A MUSIC RECOMMENDATION YOU DIDN'T ASK FOR: The incorporeal spirit of Fat Beats (of blessed memory) is selling a deluxe vinyl reissue of Stress: The Extinction Agenda by Organized Konfusion. This is a classic record that I've only ever heard on dubbed cassette or the Video Music Box at my friend Justin's. If you've never heard Organized Konfusion, imagine a goth version of De La Soul, but a duo instead of a trio. Included in the package is an instrumental LP that I'm going to draft IRON MAN #8 to. Crush, kill, destroy, stress.

WE'VE BEEN PUBLISHING MORE FREQUENTLY than our typical pace lately. So this is FOREVER WARS calling it a week. I've got to spend the rest of this week attending to THE TORTURE AND DELIVERANCE OF MAJID KHAN. Remember to get IRON MAN #2, in stores Wednesday, November 30! One of next week's editions will probably be a tear-down of the issue—but that's going to be for paid subscribers only, so if you're here for comics stuff, hit that button!

WALLER VS. WILDSTORM, the superhero spy thriller I co-wrote with my friend Evan Narcisse and which the masterful Jesús Merino illustrated, is available for purchase in a hardcover edition! If you don't have single issues of WVW and you want a four-issue set signed by me, they're going fast at Bulletproof Comics! 

No one is prouder of WVW than her older sibling, REIGN OF TERROR: HOW THE 9/11 ERA DESTABILIZED AMERICA AND PRODUCED TRUMP, which is available now in hardcover, softcover, audiobook and Kindle edition. And on the way is a new addition to the family: THE TORTURE AND DELIVERANCE OF MAJID KHAN.