The Good Samaritan: Dispatches from Gaza

What is it like to approach the front lines of a battle? What if you are with a medical corps—a volunteer group of surgeons from another country, inserting yourself, your beloved wife of 48 years (“Sarah”) and your colleagues into a volatile situation fraught with dangers for yourself and those you care about—because you’ve taken a vow to heal, to minister aid and comfort to the hurt and wounded?

In recent months I’ve had the privilege of exchanging e-mails with a vibrant U.K. “senior citizen” whose older brother is just such a dedicated and courageous surgeon. Some of the e-mails he wrote to his sister and friends read like war dispatches—and, indeed, they are.

Here, then, are some dispatches from an eye-witness (“Daniel”) to the recent incursions into Gaza that left more than 120 dead and hundreds more wounded—mostly civilians, many women and children—during another sad week in March. More