I saw them killed by sniper fire and drones. Why doesn’t Labour condemn it? Why do arms keep flowing in Israel’s direction?

I had never imagined, when working as a professor of transplant surgery at a large teaching hospital in London, that one day I would find myself operating on an eight-year-old child who was bleeding to death, only to be told by the scrub nurse that there were no more gauze swabs available. But I found myself in that situation last August while operating at Nasser hospital in Gaza as a volunteer with Medical Aid for Palestinians (Map). Reduced to scooping out the blood with my hands, I felt an overwhelming wave of nausea – I was anxious that the child would not survive. Luckily she did, although many others did not.

Having retired from the NHS, I decided to go to Gaza because it had become clear that there was a desperate need for surgical help, and I had the skills to contribute. Life as a transplant surgeon in London had been tough but hugely rewarding, and as a senior member of the transplant community I had enjoyed a certain status. This was going to be a different experience – but nothing prepared me for what I found when I arrived.

Nizam Mamode is a humanitarian surgeon and retired professor of transplant surgery. He was a volunteer surgeon in an emergency medical team in Gaza, which was organised by Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) in August/September 2024

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

According to a new poll, half of our 13- to 27-year-olds can’t see the point of all those time-wasting elections and parliaments. Why do they not know that authoritarianism is worse?

The phrase “shocking findings” is hugely overused in the media, which is strange because it’s so clumsy. The word endings nearly rhyme, but not quite, and there’s something infantile about the word “finding” for something you’ve found. Is your lunch your eatings? Did you do any pooings this morning? Always go for a weeing before leaving the house – or building.

Most “shocking findings” don’t turn out to be that shocking. The phrase gets deployed to dupe you into reading on and then it’s just some study that’s come out with something predictably depressing. Not this time. Last week, there were some genuinely shocking findings. I’d go so far as simply to call them shockings. Never mind that they were found – that’s not their key characteristic at all. They’re shockings, infuriatings and frankly frightenings.

Rachel Reeves is all for growth; her party and the country needs it. But still we hear nothing about the most obvious solution…

In 1935, Sinclair Lewis wrote a satirical book, It Can’t Happen Here, about a lying demagogue, Buzz Windrip, who rises to power and transforms the American scene for the worse within months.

There were fears of parallels with the plot of the book when Trump first became president. This time, the fears are far more serious, as Trump’s barrage of executive orders challenges the constitutional checks and balances designed by the founding fathers to inhibit the autocratic desires of a future wrong’un becoming president.

The chancellor’s apparent volte-face in backing a third runway has left many in her party disillusioned and led them to label it as an act of desperation

In 2020, Rachel Reeves, the MP for Leeds West and Pudsey, was clear why she opposed expansion of nearby Leeds Bradford airport. It would, she said, “significantly increase air and noise pollution”, so on environmental grounds, it should not happen.

By the autumn of 2021, as shadow chancellor, Reeves was the senior Labour figure chosen to lead her party’s hugely ambitious plans for a green industrial revolution.

Exclusive: Chief climate adviser calls on Starmer to make ‘strong, confident’ case for green UK that public can buy into

Ensuring that the costs of decarbonisation are shared fairly across society must be a top priority for ministers or they risk losing public support for net zero, the UK’s chief climate adviser has warned.

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves should be making a “strong, confident” case for decarbonisation as an engine of economic growth, according to Emma Pinchbeck, the chief executive of the Climate Change Committee, the independent statutory adviser.

From yearning for a ‘strong leader’ to being swept up in riots, the portents for our children are not good – and who can blame them for being so disillusioned, asks Marina Hyde. Oscar-nominated Cynthia Erivo has gone stratospheric as Elphaba in Wicked – what next for one of Britain’s brightest stars? And new research shows western medicine’s traditional split between brain and body is far from clear cut – could this new understanding provide a breakthrough for many complex conditions?