When Dr. Mimi Syed returned from her first volunteer trip to Gaza in the summer of 2024, she started flipping through her notes and came to a shocking conclusion: In one month, the ER physician had treated at least 18 children with gunshots to the head or chest. And that’s only the patients she had time to make a note of. 

“They were children under the age of 12,” she says. “That’s something I saw every single day, multiple times a day, for the whole four weeks that I was there.”

Syed’s not the only one. Other physicians who’ve worked in Gaza report seeing similar cases on a regular basis, suggesting a disturbing pattern. The doctors allege that members of the Israeli military may be deliberately targeting children. 

This week on Reveal, in partnership with Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines, we follow Syed from Gaza to the halls of Congress and the United Nations, as she joins a movement of doctors appealing to US and international policymakers to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. 

This is an update of an episode that originally aired in May 2025.

Dig Deeper

Watch: Kids Under Fire (Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines)

Read:“The Target Is Unmistakable”: The Shooting of Gaza’s Children (Drop Site)

Credits

Reporters: Najib Aminy and Josh Rushing | Producer: Najib Aminy | Editor: Lu Olkowski | From Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines: Laila Al-Arian, Amel Guettatfi, Singeli Agnew, Adrienne Haspel, Yousif Al Saifi, and Mehr Sher | Fact checkers: Serena Lin, Nikki Frick, Kim Freda, and Ruth Murai | Legal review: Victoria Baranetsky | Production manager: Zulema Cobb | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Score and sound design: Jim Briggs, Fernando Arruda, and Claire Mullen | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Host: Al Letson | Special thanks: Sophie Hurwitz and Jacob Rosenberg 

For Kids Under Fire from Fault Lines: 

Director and producer: Amel Guettatfi | Senior correspondent and producer: Josh Rushing | Executive producer: Laila Al-Arian | Director of photography: Singeli Agnew |

Editor and story producer: Adrienne Haspel | Associate producer: Mehr Sher | Writers:  Amel Guettatfi, Josh Rushing, and Laila Al-Arian | Directors of photography in Gaza: Mohammed Ibaida, Hussien Jaber, Omer Zineldeen, Mahmoud Kulab, and Yousuf Alsaifi | Production manager in Gaza: Hasan Mashharawi | Producer in Gaza: Ashraf Mashharawi | Production services in Gaza: Media Town

Support for Reveal is provided by listeners like you, and the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Park Foundation, The Schmidt Family Foundation, and the Hellman Foundation.

Transcript

Reveal transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. Please be aware that the official record for Reveal’s radio stories is the audio.

Al Letson:From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson.  
Speaker 2:I believe in the future of the two-state solution. [inaudible 00:00:09].  
Al Letson:Back in July, French President Emmanuel Macron announced France would recognize Palestine as an independent state. Soon after, Canada announced it would do the same, and so did Australia. Here’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.  
Speaker 3:I’ve said it publicly and I said it directly to Prime Minister Netanyahu, the situation in Gaza has gone beyond the world’s worst fears.  
Al Letson:Belgium followed suit with its foreign minister explaining their decision.  
Speaker 4:Why at this moment? Because we’ve seen the horrible situation on the ground. And with people starving, it is totally unacceptable.  
Al Letson:These announcements were made at a strategic moment because Palestinian statehood is on the agenda for the United Nations General Assembly, which is taking place this week in New York.  
 Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had this to say about the wave of countries signaling their support for a Palestinian state.  
Speaker 5:To have the European countries and Australia march into that rabbit hole is disappointing, and I think it’s actually shameful.  
Al Letson:Countries pushing for statehood cite the humanitarian crisis in Gaza as the main reason Israel and Palestine should be separate countries. So, this week, we’re bringing you an updated version of a story we aired earlier this year about the conditions on the ground in Gaza and a group of Americans who have witnessed them firsthand.  
 Like many Americans, Mimi Syed followed Israel’s response to the October 7th Hamas attacks through videos on Instagram and TikTok. This part of the world was foreign to her.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:Shamefully, I didn’t know anything about the history. I didn’t know anything about the occupation and things going on there.  
Al Letson:But she became glued to her phone. Mimi kept scrolling, watching post after post. Then in the summer of last year, she saw one image too many.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:It was a child that was pulled out of rubble and just like a rag doll and was completely dead. I remember driving in the morning to work and I said to my husband, “Hey, babe, I got to talk to you about something.” I texted him. And he messaged me back, he goes, “You’re going to Gaza, aren’t you?”  
 I have these skills that this population needs. I need to show up.  
Al Letson:Mimi is a board-certified emergency room doctor who knows how to help in a very practical way.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:There was a medical obligation on my part just as a physician. There is a need.  
Al Letson:At the time, doctors were one of the only groups consistently led into Gaza. Israel wasn’t allowing outside observers from groups like Human Rights Watch, and the only foreign journalists allowed in were embedded with the Israeli army. Now, Mimi, a medical director at a level four trauma center in Olympia, Washington, was about to enter one of the most restricted parts of the world.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:I knew that it was dangerous. I actually didn’t realize how much more dangerous it was until I actually got there.  
Al Letson:We’re teaming up with Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines to look at Gaza through the eyes of American doctors. And a heads-up, this story contains descriptions of trauma and violence. Reveal’s Najib Aminy takes it from here.  
Speaker 7:One after another, hundreds of injured people are brought to Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis.  
Najib Aminy:When Mimi Syed first arrived in Gaza in August of 2024, she goes straight to work at that same location, Nasser Hospital. It’s just a few weeks after this news report. It’s in disarray and overcrowded. Far too few beds, far too few doctors, hardly any supplies, and so many people in need of care. And just hours into her first shift, she gets hit by her new reality. Mass casualty events on a daily basis, sometimes multiple times a shift.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:I was seeing things that I never in my life thought I would see. I think that the explosive injuries and the shrapnel and gunshot wounds overwhelmed my view at that time because there’s nothing else that I was seeing, because those are such severe injuries.  
Najib Aminy:Then there was something else she rarely saw back home.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:Kids would come in dead with single shots to the head. There was no other injury on them. It’s never normal to have a child with a gunshot wound in his head or her head or chest.  
Najib Aminy:Mimi was working in the emergency trauma bay, where they used a green, yellow, red triage system to handle the influx of patients. Green for minor cases, yellow for more moderate ones, and red for the most critical. And then there’s one other color. Black.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:Yeah, black is the patient’s dead or there is nothing you can do to salvage them, or if you could, it’s wasting resources because the prognosis is so poor.  
Najib Aminy:One morning around 8:00 or 9:00 AM, the hospital quickly gets overwhelmed. Another mass casualty event. Patients are flooding in. That’s when a four-year-old girl named Mira shows up to the trauma bay. Her injuries are not considered green, yellow, or red, but black.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:She had a wound in her head.  
Najib Aminy:Mimi knows what the other doctors in the room know. Mira’s chances at survival are not great. In fact-  
Dr. Mimi Syed:The prognosis for that to survive is very poor. Very, very low.  
Najib Aminy:Near impossible. Taking the time and resources to save Mira could mean that someone else might not be saved. But then she notices Mira wince.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:And that usually is a good neurologic sign.  
Najib Aminy:Mimi pulls out a medical device, a laryngoscope, which is a small curved blade with a light that allows a doctor to see inside one’s throat. She says she had to smuggle this basic device into Gaza because of Israel’s restrictions on medical equipment out of security concerns. In the medical world, this device is used for airway protection, and she uses it to help intubate Mira right away. As the girl’s breathing steadies, Mimi orders a CT scan.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:There was a bullet lodged in her head. And I just remember thinking immediately she needs to go to surgery.  
Najib Aminy:Mimi sprints upstairs to get the attention of a neurosurgeon. They rush Mira to surgery, and miraculously, she survives. It’s a tiny win for Mimi, who immediately is tending to newer patients. She only gets to reflect on it much later.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:This was the only child that actually, that I saw, I was able to get to the CT scan that survived. A lot of them came in very similar to her presentation but were dead already.  
Najib Aminy:During this trip, Mimi says she treated at least 18 children with gunshot wounds to the head or chest. To her, these injuries seemed deliberate.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:They were in children under the age of 12. That’s something I saw every single day multiple times a day for the whole four weeks that I was there.  
Najib Aminy:It would take an investigation to determine whether these shootings were deliberate, but to pursue one would be impossible because the Israeli Defense Forces haven’t allowed independent observers to enter Gaza.  
 After 30 days in Gaza, Mimi returns home feeling deflated.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:In Gaza, there is no end. It just keeps going. And futility is the only way to describe it because no matter what you do, you’re not changing the outcome.  
Najib Aminy:But that feeling changes one day when Mimi gets an email.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:Feroze had actually sent out an email shortly after I’d gotten back asking physicians to complete a survey with some questions about what they saw when they were in Gaza.  
Najib Aminy:His name is Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon who’s based in Stockton, California.  
Dr. Feroze Sidh…:I kept a diary while I was there. And actually, it wasn’t until I came back I realized (beep), I saw a lot of kids shot in the head. I saw a lot of kids maimed. War doesn’t explain why half the people in your ER are 10 years old or younger.  
Najib Aminy:Like Mimi, Feroze also worked in Gaza, making his first trip in the spring of 2024. Now, he was writing a letter to then President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. The letter called for an immediate ceasefire and weapons embargo on Israel. He was trying to corral signatures from other American doctors and healthcare workers who also worked in Gaza, but getting them to sign on was harder than he thought.  
Dr. Feroze Sidh…:They were like, “Oh, no, it’s not going to make any difference. Why sign the letter?” I’m like, “Dude, just sign the (beep) letter. What is your problem? It takes 30 seconds of your time.” “Oh, I read it. It’s a good letter, but I don’t think it’s going to do anything.” Who cares? Just try.  
Najib Aminy:He landed with 99 signatories, including Mimi.  
 Next, Feroze created a survey for the doctors to complete and he began tallying the data for an op-ed for the New York Times. Mimi filled out the survey and submitted a few photos, including one of Mira’s CT scan showing a bullet, bright white, lodged deep in her skull. After a rigorous round of fact-checking, the op-ed went live.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:Suddenly, everyone becomes a ballistic expert and radiologist on X, apparently.  
Najib Aminy:People didn’t believe Mira had been shot in the head.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:There was particular radiologists, surgeons, trauma surgeons who all started saying, “That’s impossible. It is an impossibility that a bullet would just get retained. This is obviously a bullet taped onto a child’s head, or a person’s head or something.”  
Najib Aminy:Taped?  
Dr. Mimi Syed:Taped.  
Najib Aminy:People accused Mimi of lying, even though the CT scan showed the entry wound and swelling in Mira’s brain. For Mimi, having other physicians second-guess her work felt like a betrayal.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:Honestly, it felt like this is an impossibility that physicians who call themselves humanitarians are ignoring that children are being shot in the head. How could you do that?  
Najib Aminy:The Israeli military hasn’t publicly commented on the New York Times op-ed, but they have in the past rejected the claim that its troops have deliberately fired on civilians. Here’s Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  
Speaker 5:Israel does not target Palestinian civilians. We target Hamas terrorists, and when these terrorists embed themselves in civilian areas, when they use civilians as human shields, they’re the ones who are responsible for all unintended casualties.  
Najib Aminy:Hamas has rejected the Israeli claim that they use human shields.  
 The overall response to the op-ed didn’t change the reality on the ground in Gaza, which at the time was facing a famine. Israel continued its blockade on aid, and the multiple attempts at ceasefires had all broken down. So Mimi, defeated but undeterred, decides to book a return trip back to Gaza.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:I decided to go back because it was getting worse.  
Najib Aminy:This time, Mimi goes with a different intention.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:Well, I went back because I felt I was needed, but because I’m a healthcare worker, we are one of few that actually go in to witness this, so I felt another moral obligation to go witness and report and to bring it to attention of media, of humanitarian organizations around the world so that we could stop this.  
Najib Aminy:And this time, she also recorded audio diaries. This is how that second trip starts.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:It’s about 6:00 in the morning, and that’s what we’re waking up to.  
Najib Aminy:Mimi spends most of her time in central Gaza working shifts at al-Aqsa Hospital, a large medical complex that’s been the target of multiple Israeli attacks since October 7th. She’s living inside the hospital in a small area that has been repurposed with a few mattresses laid out on the floor. The kitchen area is just a hot plate. There’s no heat. It’s cold, and the windows provide very little insulation. The hospital is crowded with people living in the hallways and outside in tent encampments. But as the days unfold, one major difference Mimi notices since her last trip to Gaza is that there aren’t as many mass casualty events.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:The trauma cases that we are seeing secondary to military conflict is decreased.  
Najib Aminy:Instead, she notices a different kind of medical emergency, the kind of thing you see when you look at photos of Holocaust survivors in concentration camps.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:We are noticing patients with temporal wasting and cachexia.  
Najib Aminy:Picture images of people with unusually thin faces and protruding cheekbones. That is usually a sign of extreme malnourishment.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:Just terrible conditions that you would typically not see in any other normal country.  
Najib Aminy:Mimi was seeing this at scale in Gaza.  
 Mimi continues to treat patients and take photos and document what she can, but the magnitude of it all gets to her.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:I feel defeated, discouraged, and like coming here was a big mistake.  
Najib Aminy:And then a surprise. Mimi gets to visit with Mira, the four-year-old girl she helped save.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:Hi, Mira.  
Speaker 10:Mira.  
Speaker 11:[foreign language 00:14:30].  
Speaker 10:[foreign language 00:14:31].  
Dr. Mimi Syed:I’m Mimi. Dr. Mimi.  
Speaker 10:Dr. Mimi.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:You remember me?  
Speaker 10:[foreign language 00:14:35].  
Dr. Mimi Syed:Hi. How are you?  
Speaker 10:Good. I miss you.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:I missed you.  
Speaker 10:Mira missed you.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:Can I have a hug?  
Najib Aminy:Mira is wearing a pink hoodie sitting in a tent next to her mom, who you can also hear. Mira is a little shy, but she’s showing off her nail polish.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:How are you? Look at your fingers.  
Speaker 11:[foreign language 00:14:57].  
Speaker 10:[foreign language 00:15:00].  
Dr. Mimi Syed:Oh, manicure.  
Speaker 10:On finger.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:Wow, I love it.  
Speaker 11:[foreign language 00:15:06].  
Speaker 10:[foreign language 00:15:08].  
Dr. Mimi Syed:She’s talking. Good.  
Speaker 10:Yes.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:Yes, very good. And she’s playing and interacting normally?  
Speaker 10:[foreign language 00:15:16]. Yeah, that’s amazing.  
Najib Aminy:Seeing Mira temporarily brightens Mimi’s spirits, but Mimi can’t shake the fact that so many kids didn’t survive and she wants policymakers to know what she’s seen. So, not long after she returns home, she plans another trip. This time, it’s to Washington, D.C.  
Al Letson:Up next, Mimi walks the halls of the Capitol.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:I have a little bit of hope being here.  
Najib Aminy:Hope?  
Dr. Mimi Syed:Hope. Hope that someone will listen.  
Al Letson:That’s coming up on Reveal.  
Al Letson:From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson.  
 This hour we’re bringing you an update to a story we aired this past spring about doctors trying to meet the moment in Gaza. Back in January, Dr. Mimi Syed, fresh off her second medical mission, is making her way towards the US Capitol.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:We’re in DC, and we’re walking to some meetings with state reps, and hoping to discuss the various issues that are ongoing in Gaza.  
Al Letson:Mimi is here as a part of a grassroots movement of doctors who want to share what they saw in Gaza. Reveal’s Najib Aminy is tagging along.  
 How are you feeling?  
Dr. Mimi Syed:A little anxious.  
Al Letson:Why?  
Dr. Mimi Syed:I’m not sure what to expect. I’ve not done anything like this before.  
Al Letson:Donald Trump has just started his second term and is already making headlines.  
Donald Trump:You’re talking about probably a million and a half people. And we just clean out that whole thing.  
Al Letson:A new ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has gone into effect. Mimi sees the ceasefire as an opportunity to bring relief to those in Gaza.  
 Her day on Capitol Hill is jam-packed, meeting both Democrats and Republicans. She’s lobbying to get aid in and patients out for treatment, and she brings a photo of one of the patients who she believes needs medical evacuation.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:Yeah. It’s a Walgreens photo envelope that says, ‘Find Smiles Inside’. It’s not filled with smiles at all, actually. It’s filled with pretty disturbing images of a child with a bullet in her head.  
Al Letson:The child is four-year-old Mira, who you heard about earlier in the show. One child of many who suffered a critical gunshot wound.  
 As Mimi heads towards one of her meetings, she runs into a familiar face, Feroze Sidhwa, the trauma surgeon who penned the New York Times op-ed. They walk down the hallways, passing senators on their left and right.  
Dr. Feroze Sidh…:I’m not a political expert. Honestly, I could recognize Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump. I’m just walking into Pete Aguilar’s office in California.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:Yeah, we’re about to walk into Senator Thune’s office. He’s the majority leader of the Senate.  
Dr. Feroze Sidh…:We are going to representative Ronny Jackson from Texas. Who, as I understand, is President Obama’s former physician. So this’ll be interesting.  
Al Letson:The two never meet with any representatives or senators, mostly junior staff and aides. Mimi shows the photo of Mira’s CT scan, but during one meeting there’s skepticism.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:Feroze was pointing out the swelling in the head, and the entrance of the wound here, the bullet here on the front there. [inaudible 00:02:55].  
Dr. Feroze Sidh…:And still people are skeptical of this image. It’s just completely insane.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:Yeah. It seems kind of odd to have to convince people that shooting kids in the head is wrong.  
Al Letson:They aren’t given any assurances that members of Congress will take action, all they hear is that their requests will be passed on to the Congress member.  
 For Mimi and Feroze meaningful action from policymakers would involve the US cutting back military support to Israel, which is by far the biggest recipient of aid from Washington. And there’s a law already in place that’s supposed to do that. It prohibits US aid from going to foreign military units accused of human rights violations.  
 Our partners for this hour, Josh Rushing and the team at Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines, spent time looking into that law and how it applies to Israel. Here’s Josh.  
Josh Rushing:Policymakers in the United States have been trying to figure out how to punish countries who were accused of violating human rights for decades. So in the ’90s, policymakers came up with the Leahy Law.  
Tim Rieser:The Leahy Law has utility and is consistent with who we are, what we stand for.  
Josh Rushing:Tim Rieser wrote the Leahy Law when he was a senior advisor to former Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont. He’s known as one of the more influential people on the hill when it comes to crafting US foreign policy.  
 Under the Leahy Law, if a country doesn’t hold its security forces accountable for violations like rape, torture, and murder, then the US is supposed to withhold its security assistance from those specific units.  
 And in a lot of cases it worked. When the State Department recognized a pattern of human rights violations in countries like Colombia, Guatemala, and Indonesia, it had a mechanism to cut military aid to the units in question. But with Israel, it’s never been enforced.  
 The US has poured billions of dollars into Israel and regularly contributes about 15 to 20% of Israel’s annual defense budget. That’s gone up even higher since Hamas’ attack on October 7th, 2023.  
Tim Rieser:There’s probably not a unit in the Israeli army that either hasn’t been trained and/or received equipment from the United States. That’s just the reality, because we provide far more to Israel than we do to any other country.  
Josh Rushing:But for decades, there has been extensive documentation showing that units in the Israeli security forces have committed human rights violations, often against children. One of the most famous cases was caught on camera in 2000, 12-year-old Muhammad al-Durrah was shot in his father’s arms.  
Speaker 1:This weekend a video that has been shown around the world is the video of a man trying to protect his son. He is pleading with the soldiers saying, “I have a child. I have a child.” And the next frame is his son shot dead.  
Josh Rushing:Three years later, before Israeli forces withdrew from Gaza and Hamas took over, three children were killed in a four-hour standoff in a refugee camp there. And then, between March 2018 and March 2019, during a series of protests at the border with Gaza, Israeli forces killed at least 41 children. Mostly by live fire, according to the UN.  
Speaker 2:The commission has found reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli security forces committed serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law.  
Josh Rushing:According to a number of NGOs, the Israeli military has committed gross violations of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, both before and after October 7th.  
 Take this one report from Defense for Children International Palestine. Between October 2023 and July 2024, they documented 141 Palestinian children killed by Israeli security forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.  
 More than three-quarters were shot dead, often to the head or torso. That kind of fatal injury, as opposed to an airstrike or a stray bullet, can qualify as a gross violation of human rights under the Leahy Law. Yet, according to Tim Rieser…  
Donald Trump:No Israeli defense unit has ever been denied US assistance under the law that we’re aware of. It is the only country that we’re aware of that the law has been so consistently not applied to.  
 Had the Leahy Law from its inception been applied as it was intended in the West Bank and Gaza, that the Israeli defense forces, who we train often and whose equipment we provide, guns, ammunition, bombs, et cetera, knew that the Leahy Law was there and could result in that unit being denied assistance, it would help to prevent those types of crimes from occurring.  
Josh Rushing:Tim, the guy who wrote the law, believes the issue isn’t with how it’s written.  
Donald Trump:I think the law is fine. It could be applied to Israel, just the way it is to other countries. It’s a matter of political will. And I think if you talk to people even in the State Department or who were in the State Department, they would tell you the same thing, that there was a conscious decision not to apply the law.  
Charles Blaha:The standard, the Leahy Law Standard, is credible information. It’s an intentionally low standard. Why is that? Well, it’s because it’s very difficult to get information about gross violations of human rights.  
Josh Rushing:Charles O. Blaha, who goes by his initials, C-O-B, Cob, worked at the State Department for 32 years. He was the director of the Office of Security and Human Rights, before retiring in 2023.  
 His office vetted about 200,000 cases a year of allegations against US backed security forces around the world. In most cases, US military aid is earmarked for specific foreign units. But some countries, including Ukraine, Egypt, Jordan, and Israel, have received money and equipment in a lump sum to distribute as they wish. For three of those countries the US has given a list of units that shouldn’t receive aid, but not for Israel.  
Charles Blaha:Israel receives assistance that’s untraceable. And that’s a problem under the Leahy Law.  
Josh Rushing:Cob tried to solve this problem. He helped design a new process, the Israel Leahy Vetting Forum. A forum, a convening of staff from the embassy, the State Department, and the Department of Defense, who would develop a list of ineligible units.  
Charles Blaha:So the Israel Leahy Vetting Forum was designed to consider credible allegations of gross violations of human rights against Israeli units.  
Josh Rushing:He says the Vetting Forum has asked Israel about credible allegations against specific units, and that the US accepts Israel’s investigations without question, if they respond.  
Charles Blaha:The government of Israel, to whom we give billions and billions and billions of dollars, should be responsive to those requests.  
Josh Rushing:Both Tim Rieser, who wrote the Leahy Law, and Charles O. Blaha, who helped carry it out at the State Department, have come to a similar question. One that was posed to then Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, during a press briefing back in 2024.  
Antony Blinken:Do we have a double standard? The answer is no. The Leahy Law report that I think you were referring to at the outset, this is I think a good example of a process that is very deliberate, that seeks to [inaudible 00:10:52].  
Josh Rushing:The State Department under Marco Rubio and the Trump administration has taken a more hard-line approach, providing even more aid to Israel.  
Speaker 3:Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, used emergency authority to expedite delivery of about $4 billion of weapons and ammunition.  
Josh Rushing:Secretary Rubio released a plan to reorganize the State Department and drastically reduce the size of the teams that typically oversee the Israel Leahy Vetting Forum. Here he is referring to it during a Cabinet meeting.  
Marco Rubio:We’ve also, by the way, Mr. President, under your direction, reorganized the Department of State. We had offices within offices within offices that didn’t even know they existed themselves.  
Josh Rushing:Meanwhile, credible reports of human rights violations continue to stream out of Gaza. While reporting this story, we spoke to 20 American doctors who served there, including doctors Syed and Sidhwa, who you heard from earlier. Altogether, their observations are eerily similar.  
Dr. Tammy Abugh…:I did take care of a child who was brought in dead on arrival, who was shot once in the left side of the chest, so through and through to the heart.  
Dr. Yassar Arai…:And they took me to a room where a mother was holding her baby, and they said this baby was shot, was shot when he was 10 days old. I picked him up and I looked on one side of his head, and he had a bullet entry wound on the back of his skull that came out on the other side, towards the back of his head.  
Dr. Mark Perlmu…:So it’s not just a random sniper, it’s not a rogue soldier that lost their ethics, it’s widespread throughout the entire Gaza Strip.  
Josh Rushing:Those doctors were Tammy Abughnaim, an ER physician from Illinois, Yassar Arain, a neonatologist from Texas, and Mark Perlmutter, a hand surgeon from North Carolina.  
 Both Al Jazeera and Reveal sent detailed lists of questions to the Israeli military’s press office and the State Department. We also asked for an interview. We wanted to speak with them about a number of cases involving children, including Mira, the four-year-old treated by Dr. Mimi Syed, but we never heard back.  
 Cob retired from the State Department in August 2023, a couple of months before the Hamas attack. Now, two years later, he still wrestles with his decision to approve a forum that gave the appearance of accountability while actually providing none.  
Charles Blaha:I signed off for two reasons. I believed at the time that the State Department would implement that process in good faith, and I believed at the time in the Israeli military justice system. Both of those beliefs turned out to be incorrect.  
Josh Rushing:Well, what do you believe now?  
Charles Blaha:Well, I believe that the highest levels of the State Department in Embassy Jerusalem had no intention of ever finding an Israeli unit had committed gross violations of human rights.  
Josh Rushing:So you’ve gone 180 degrees on two major beliefs that are consequential in a lot of people’s lives. How does that sit with you?  
Charles Blaha:I don’t really know what to say. If I’d objected at the time, I certainly would’ve been overridden, but my name wouldn’t be on the approval line.  
Josh Rushing:It is.  
Charles Blaha:That’s right.  
Josh Rushing:So how do you reconcile that?  
Charles Blaha:I was mistaken. I was wrong.  
Josh Rushing:Would you accept it as credible if dozens of US doctors said there was a pattern of children being targeted by the Israeli military?  
Charles Blaha:Yes. And I’d find it credible enough to warrant diplomatic action. But remember, the lack of political will at the highest levels of the State Department to impose any consequences on Israel.  
Josh Rushing:So it doesn’t really matter if kids are being targeted by the IDF. There’s no reason to expect that would change US support for Israel?  
Charles Blaha:In the current environment, I doubt that anyone in a position of authority in the United States government would accept the premise that the IDF is targeting children, even in the face of credible evidence.  
Al Letson:That report was from Al Jazeera Fault Line’s senior correspondent Josh Rushing and producer Amel Guettatfi. You can watch their film, Kids Under Fire, online.  
 Up next, after getting little traction with policymakers on Capitol Hill, doctors Mimi Syed and Feroze Sidhwa take what they learned in Gaza to the world stage.  
 So just yesterday you were meeting with aides and now you’re meeting the Secretary General. How do you feel about that?  
Dr. Mimi Syed:Yeah, it’s a privilege.  
Al Letson:The doctors head to the UN. That’s next on Reveal.  
Al Letson:From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson. Dr. Syed and Sidhwa’s efforts on Capitol Hill came to an end without any assurance that US Congress members would act. Next, the doctors head to New York where Reveal’s Najib Aminy joins them for another round of meetings. This time, with a more global audience. Here’s Najib.  
Najib Aminy:Okay, if that wasn’t obvious, we’re in New York now. All right. We’re walking into the Chrysler Building for what is a prep meeting for the rest of the day.  
 It’s January 2025. Mimi and Feroze are inside, along with two other American doctors, Thaer Ahmad and Ayesha Khan, who also worked in Gaza. There’s coffee and pastries, but it’s mostly untouched as the prep meeting gets underway. Later that day, they have a series of meetings at the United Nations, including one with the Secretary General António Guterres.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:I think what I want to know is how do I relate the Mira story in terms of the UN? Is it medical evacuation? That’s a good-  
Dr. Thaer Ahmad:Maybe you start with that case-  
Dr. Mimi Syed:I’ll do this.  
Dr. Thaer Ahmad:… that medical evacuation.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:Yeah.  
Dr. Feroze Sidh…:Ayesha covers the [inaudible 00:01:17]. Yeah.  
Dr. Thaer Ahmad:Ayesha, you’ll go next. You’ll cover the malnutrition part, as well as the-  
Najib Aminy:Four doctors know what’s at stake. This is a rare opportunity to bring attention to the most immediate needs in Gaza before the institution that is perhaps best positioned to bring about change.  
 So just yesterday, you were meeting with aids, and now you’re meeting the Secretary General. How do you feel about that?  
Dr. Mimi Syed:Yeah, it’s a privilege.  
Dr. Feroze Sidh…:Again, if it’s one more kid out, one more sack of flour in, that’s good and it’s worthwhile.  
Najib Aminy:They make their way up to the 38th floor of the UN building where they’ll meet the Secretary General. They’re led to a conference room with a long, glossy wooden table. Before the meeting starts, there’s a quick photo op.  
Press:Okay. If you look this way. Okay. Okay. Thank you very much.  
Najib Aminy:Then the press gets shooed away.  
Speaker 7:Okay, guys. We have to go. The meetings already started.  
Dr. Feroze Sidh…:The meeting with Secretary General was great. And to see his reaction to the stories we told him about treating children, about really actually just treating humans in general, it wasn’t just kids, it was very heartening.  
Najib Aminy:The Secretary General shared a post on X thanking the doctors for their work. But perhaps more important, he called for the medical evacuations of 2,500 children out of Gaza.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:Secretary General just tweeted a positive note that he was receptive, that he will see to change. I feel a lot better than I did yesterday when I came from DC.  
Najib Aminy:But a post on X, a tweet, really can only go so far. In March, Israel launched a surprise military offensive, effectively ending a two-month ceasefire. Since then, some of Gaza’s largest remaining hospitals have come under attack. Israel also cut off all food and supplies. The heads of UN agencies, like the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the World Food Program responded in a joint statement saying, “We are witnessing acts of war in Gaza that show an utter disregard for human life.”  
 The international community has responded in several ways to Israel’s military offensive in Gaza. The UN Security Council, which was set up after World War II to help prevent atrocities, has passed two resolutions since October 7th, calling for a ceasefire. But the political gridlock and veto power of countries like the United States has significantly weakened the Council’s impact. There’s also the International Criminal Court, or the ICC, which focuses on individuals accused of war crimes.  
Speaker 8:A story now developing in the last few minutes, the International Criminal Court at The Hague has issued arrest warrants for the-  
Najib Aminy:The ICC issued arrest warrants for leaders of both Hamas as well as Israel, notably its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  
Speaker 8:It’s alleged that Netanyahu used starvation as a tool of war. Just reading some-  
Najib Aminy:The US under President Trump responded by placing sanctions on the court and the court’s chief prosecutor.  
 And then there’s the International Court of Justice, the World’s court.  
Dr. Thaer Ahmad:That’s where the United Nations highest court is hearing allegations that Israel is committing genocide with its military campaign in Gaza.  
Najib Aminy:Two months after October 7th, South Africa filed an application in the International Court of Justice, or ICJ, alleging that Israel violated the genocide convention that it had agreed to follow when it joined the United Nations.  
Katie Gallagher:The fact that the International Court of Justice is looking at a genocide case against Israel is a very big deal.  
Najib Aminy:Katie Gallagher is a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. She spent 25 years specializing in war crimes and crimes against humanity.  
Katie Gallagher:There have been ICJ cases that have resulted in countries being sanctioned. It’s also a pretty egregious stamp to have on you as a country, to be a genocide-committing country.  
Najib Aminy:South Africa’s case against Israel marks only the fifth time that a country has been formally accused of violating the Genocide Convention at the ICJ. Their case centers around the premise that Israeli leaders intended to “create conditions of death for Palestinians in Gaza.” In their opening testimony, the South African legal team tried to establish the intent of top Israeli officials making dehumanizing comments.  
Speaker 10:The defense minister Yoav Gallant gave a situation update to the Army where he said that as Israel was imposing a complete siege on Gaza, there would be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything would be closed, because Israel is fighting human animals.  
Najib Aminy:They also shared a video of Israeli troops echoing that sentiment.  
Speaker 10:Israeli soldiers in Gaza were filmed dancing, chanting, and singing in November. May their village burn. May Gaza be erased.  
Najib Aminy:Establishing intent is one thing, but how do you go about collecting evidence of genocide when access on the ground is so limited, like in Gaza? A big part of the answer, doctors.  
Katie Gallagher:At the time, we collected statements from doctors. We knew that one of the venues that we would be asking them to put the statements into was the ICJ.  
Najib Aminy:Katie is one of a handful of people who have collected testimony from American doctors who worked in Gaza, and she had firsthand experience of how invaluable the medical community’s point of view was.  
Katie Gallagher:They are very good at capturing detail, relevant detail. Maybe they don’t know whether the shirt was green or blue, but what is the age of the victim? Where did the entry wound happen? Did it happen from the front or from the back? Was it at close range?  
Najib Aminy:South Africa’s case against Israel is sealed per ICJ rules, so it’s hard to get a lot of detail about the case.  
Katie Gallagher:What I can say is that we have shared the statements that we took from some of the US medical professionals with the legal team for South Africa, and what I can confirm is that the legal team found every statement that we shared with them to be credible enough to use in preparing the memorial. So every single medical professional statement went into their memorial.  
Najib Aminy:The memorial is South Africa’s legal filing. It contains more than 750 pages of evidence and more than 4,000 pages of supplemental material, making it one of the most extensive cases in decades. We did reach out to the South African legal team about the importance of the doctor’s testimony. They declined to comment, because they’re not allowed to speak about ongoing cases. I also asked for Rose and Mimi if they gave a statement to legal organizations like the Center for Constitutional Rights. They both said they spoke to a number of organizations but couldn’t say more. When it comes to the doctor statements included in the African legal briefing, it’s now in the hands of the International Court of Justice.  
Katie Gallagher:Now, what we can’t say yet is whether the International Court of Justice itself will find them as compelling as I did or as we did and as the South African team did.  
Najib Aminy:The court has already made a few provisional rulings, notably ordering Israel to prevent its military from committing genocidal acts, to lift its blockade of humanitarian aid and halt its offensive in the southern part of Gaza. Israel’s military has continued its operations in Southern Gaza. Top leaders say its military offensive is in line with international law. And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called the ICJ proceedings a disgrace.  
Prime Minister …:The charge of genocide leveled against Israel is not only false, it’s outrageous. And decent people everywhere should reject it.  
Najib Aminy:Israel was given a deadline to submit its defense to the overall claims of breaking the Genocide Convention. They asked for a six-month extension, which the ICJ granted. Israel now has until January 2026 to respond.  
Katie Gallagher:Look, international justice doesn’t happen on its own. It needs to be pushed. And in this case, the doctors unintentionally maybe have become important witnesses to what the victims have suffered.  
Najib Aminy:As Israel’s offensive continued through the spring, there was growing concern from humanitarian groups, as well as some Israeli military officials, about widespread starvation spreading in Gaza. President Trump expressed concern too.  
President Trump:We’re looking at Gaza, and we got to get that taken care of. A lot of people are starving, a lot of people are… There’s a lot of bad things going on.  
Najib Aminy:In May, the Trump Administration in Israel authorized the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to take control over food distribution in Gaza, bypassing the United Nations. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or GHF, is a non-governmental organization backed by Israel and the US. Before, there were 400 distribution sites coordinated by the UN. After the GHF took over, there were just four sites in all of Gaza with plans to go to 16, 16 sites meant to feed nearly 2 million people. UN critics called the plan a fig leaf for further violence and displacement.  
 In August, Trump officials, Steve Witkoff, US Special Envoy to the Middle East, and Mike Huckabee, US Ambassador to Israel, visited Southern Gaza. They left touting the GHF as a huge success.  
Mike Huckabee:The GHF food program is working. It’s working very well. In fact, today, we passed over 100 million meals having been served in two months.  
Najib Aminy:In the months since the GHF took over, more than 2100 Palestinians have been killed near these sites. This, according to UN report, but Ambassador Huckabee downplayed reports of mass casualties and deaths taking place at these new distribution sites.  
Mike Huckabee:I’m so tired of people saying that the IDF are just shooting people. That is simply not true.  
Najib Aminy:We invited the Israeli Military and Foreign Ministry of Affairs for an interview or to comment on the story. One question we asked was whether they would still allow American doctors to treat patients in Gaza. Neither agency responded. For doctors like Feroze and Mimi, the work continues. Feroze plans to return to Gaza as soon as he’s able.  
Dr. Thaer Ahmad:There’s an element of professional solidarity, but also, again, of just general solidarity, “I’m an American, and I’m destroying your country.” So this is the only way that I know to provide reparations. I don’t think in my lifetime my government will ever do it, and so I can try this way.  
Najib Aminy:When I spoke to Mimi earlier this year, she also had plans to return. I asked her, given all that she’s been through, how she felt about her journey.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:Like an idiot.  
Najib Aminy:Like what?  
Dr. Mimi Syed:Like an idiot.  
Najib Aminy:Why is that?  
Dr. Mimi Syed:I keep failing, and nothing… I just keep going back at it. I don’t know.  
Najib Aminy:Failing in what sense?  
Dr. Mimi Syed:I have not been able to accomplish any change for the people of Gaza. It feels like everything I do is moot. I mean, it is literally started over again. And our government is right behind it proudly and smugly, saying, “Yes, we stand by Israel.” And it is absolutely discouraging, and I don’t know how else to describe that.  
Najib Aminy:And yet, you have plans to go back?  
Dr. Mimi Syed:That’s all I can do. I can go back, I can be there in solidarity. And that’s the least I can do.  
Najib Aminy:In August, on her way back to Gaza, Mimi shared this video from Jordan.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:And I want to show you what I have here with me and why it was so important. Not only do we possess life-saving skills, but I have formula for babies, protein to give to people. Half of my suitcase, as you can see, is filled with baby formula.  
Najib Aminy:But this trip would be different.  
Dr. Mimi Syed:I just found out the night before we were supposed to enter that I’m denied from entering. We were given no reason as to why we were denied. We were just told that we’re denied, and both of my colleagues, myself and my other colleague that was denied, have been pretty vocal in the media about what we saw in our last missions in Gaza.  
Najib Aminy:I tried to get a hold of the Israeli military to ask why Mimi was denied entry. They didn’t respond to my specific question about Mimi. Instead, they said, “It should be emphasized that the state of Israel does not limit the number of humanitarian teams that can cross into the Gaza Strip on behalf of the international community, subject to the required security arrangements and the operational situation.”  
 When Mimi returned to the US, she says she gave the baby formula to a shelter for battered mothers, because she wanted to give it to someone who needed it. She hopes to return to Gaza one day. First though, she needs to understand why her entry was denied.  
Al Letson:According to the UN, Gaza is in a state of famine with more than half a million people facing catastrophic food insecurity, and they say conditions are worsening. Since the start of the conflict, more than 64,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 164,000 have been wounded. In recent days, a commission from the United Nations Human Rights Council released its latest report. It cited the testimony of multiple doctors who worked in Gaza.  
Speaker 14:The commission concluded that Israel has committed genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza and that it’s continuing with that genocide.  
Al Letson:Israeli military officials dismissed the report, saying that the three judges involved in the UN Commission are serving as Hamas proxies. Meanwhile, Israel has launched a new ground invasion to take full control of Gaza.  
 Our lead producer for this week’s show is Najib Aminy. Lu Olkowski edited the show. Our partners from Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines include Laila Al-Arian, Josh Rushing, Amel Guettatfi, Singeli Agnew, Adrienne Haspel, Yousef El-Safi, and Mehr Sher. You can find a link to their documentary Kids Under Fire on our website. Also, special thanks to Sophie Hurwitz and Jacob Rosenberg for their help on this story. Serena Lin, Nikki Frick and Kim Frieda are our fact-checkers. Legal Review by Victoria Baranetsky. Our production manager, Zulema Cobb. Score and Sound Design by Jim Briggs and Fernando Arruda. They had help this week from Claire Mullen. Our Deputy executive producer is Taki Telonidis. Brett Myers is our executive producer. Our theme music is by Comarado Lightning. Support for Reveals provided by the Riva and David Logan Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Park Foundation, the Schmidt Family Foundation and the Hellman Foundation. Support for Reveal is also provided by you, our listeners. We are a co-production of the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX. I’m Al Letson. And remember, there is always more to the story.  

Najib Aminy joined Reveal in 2018 and has worked as a production manager, associate producer, reporter, and producer. His reporting has landed him on Democracy Now, The Brian Lehrer Show, and Slate’s What Next podcast. His work at Reveal has earned him the George Polk Award, two Edward R. Murrow awards, two Gerald Loeb awards, multiple Investigative Reporters and Editors awards, and recognition as a DuPont-Columbia finalist. In a previous life, he was the first news editor at Flipboard, a news aggregation startup, and he helped build the company’s editorial and curation practices and policies. Before that, he reported for newspapers such as Newsday and the Indianapolis Star. Najib also created and hosted the independent podcast Some Noise, featured by Apple, the Guardian, and the Paris Review. He is a lifelong New York Knicks fan and is a product of Stony Brook University’s School of Journalism, and mainly works so he can feed his cat.

Victoria Baranetsky is general counsel at the Center for Investigative Reporting (d/b/a Foundation for National Progress), where she advises the organization on its full range of legal activities, including counseling reporters on newsroom matters (newsgathering, libel, privacy, subpoenas), advising the C-level on business matters, and providing legal support to the board. She has litigated on various issues on behalf of the organization, including arguing before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Prior to CIR, Victoria worked at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the Wikimedia Foundation, and the New York Times. She also clerked on the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals. She holds degrees from Columbia University, Columbia Journalism School, Harvard Law School, and Oxford University. She teaches at Berkeley Law School as an adjunct professor and is a fellow at Columbia’s Tow Center. She is barred in California, New York, and New Jersey.

Claire Mullen worked at The Center for Investigative Reporting until September 2017. is an associate sound designer and audio engineer for Reveal. Before joining Reveal, she was an assistant producer at Radio Ambulante and worked with KALW, KQED, the Association of Independents in Radio and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. She studied humanities and media studies at Scripps College.

Fernando Arruda is a sound designer, engineer, and composer for Reveal. As a multi-instrumentalist, he contributes to the music, editing, and mixing of the weekly public radio show and podcast. He has held four O-1 visas for individuals with extraordinary abilities. His work has been recognized with Peabody, George Polk, duPont-Columbia, Edward R. Murrow, Gerald Loeb, Third Coast, and Association of Music Producers awards, as well as Emmy and Pulitzer nominations. Prior to joining Reveal, Arruda toured internationally as a DJ and taught music technology at Dubspot and ESRA International Film School. He also worked at Antfood, a creative audio studio for media and TV ads, as well as for clients such as Marvel, MasterClass, and Samsung. His credits also include NPR’s 51 Percent; WNYC’s Bad Feminist Happy Hour and its live broadcast of Orson Welles’ The Hitchhiker; Wondery’s Detective Trapp; and MSNBC’s Why Is This Happening?. Arruda releases experimental music under the alias FJAZZ and has performed with jazz, classical, and pop ensembles such as SFJazz Monday Night Band, Art&Sax quartet, Krychek, Dark Inc., and the New York Arabic Orchestra. He holds a master’s degree in film scoring and composition from NYU Steinhardt. Learn more about his work at FernandoArruda.info.

Jim Briggs III is a senior sound designer, engineer, and composer for Reveal. He joined the Center for Investigative Reporting in 2014. Jim and his team shape the sound of the weekly public radio show and podcast through original music, mixing, and editing. In a career devoted to elevating high-impact journalism, Jim’s work in radio, podcasting, and television has been recognized with Peabody, George Polk, duPont-Columbia, IRE, Gerald Loeb, and Third Coast awards, as well as a News and Documentary Emmy and the Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Sound. He has lent his ears to a range of podcasts and radio programs including Marketplace, Selected Shorts, Death, Sex & Money, The Longest Shortest Time, NPR’s Ask Me Another, Radiolab, Freakonomics Radio, WNYC’s live music performance show Soundcheck, and The 7 and Field Trip from the Washington Post. His film credits include PBS’s American Experience: Walt Whitman, the 2012 Tea Party documentary Town Hall, and The Supreme Court miniseries. Before that, he worked on albums with artists such as R.E.M., Paul Simon, and Kelly Clarkson at NYC’s legendary Hit Factory Recording Studios. Jim is based in western Massachusetts with his family, cats, and just enough musical instruments to do some damage.

Nikki Frick is a copy editor for Reveal. She previously worked as a copy editor at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and held internships at the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and WashingtonPost.com. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was an American Copy Editors Society Aubespin scholar. Frick is based in Milwaukee.

Al Letson is the Peabody Award-winning host of Reveal. Born in New Jersey, he moved to Jacksonville, Florida, at age 11 and as a teenager began rapping and producing hip-hop records. By the early 1990s, he had fallen in love with the theater, becoming a local actor and playwright, and soon discovered slam poetry. His day job as a flight attendant allowed him to travel to cities around the country, where he competed in slam poetry contests while sleeping on friends’ couches. In 2000, Letson placed third in the National Poetry Slam and performed on Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Jam, which led him to write and perform one-man shows and even introduce the 2006 NCAA Final Four on CBS.

In Letson’s travels around the country, he realized that the America he was seeing on the news was far different from the one he was experiencing up close. In 2007, he competed in the Public Radio Talent Quest, where he pitched a show called State of the Re:Union that reflected the conversations he was having throughout the US. The show ran for five seasons and won a Peabody Award in 2014. In 2015, Letson helped create and launch Reveal, the nation’s first weekly investigative radio show, which has won two duPont Awards and three Peabody Awards and been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize twice. He has also hosted the podcast Errthang; written and developed several TV shows with major networks, including AMC+’s Moonhaven and Apple TV+’s Monarch; and is currently writing a comic for DC Comics. (He loves comics.) When he’s not working, Letson’s often looking for an impossibly difficult meal to prepare or challenging anyone to name a better album than Mos Def’s Black on Both Sides.

Zulema Cobb is an operations and audio production associate for the Center for Investigative Reporting. She is originally from Los Angeles County, where she was raised until moving to Oregon. Her interest in the wellbeing of families and children inspired her to pursue family services at the University of Oregon. Her diverse background includes banking, affordable housing, health care, and education, where she helped develop a mentoring program for students. Cobb is passionate about animals and has fostered and rescued numerous dogs and cats. She frequently volunteers at animal shelters and overseas rescue missions. In her spare time, she channels her creative energy into photography, capturing memories for friends and family. Cobb is based in Tennessee, where she lives with her husband, three kids, three dogs, and cat.

Artis Curiskis is an assistant producer at the Center for Investigative Reporting. Previously, he was an editorial fellow at Mother Jones. Before that, he produced and reported the Peabody-nominated series The COVID Tracking Project podcast with Reveal and led data reporting efforts with The COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic. He was also an artist-in-residence at UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art and a Thomas J. Watson fellow. You can reach him at acuriskis@revealnews.org.