The two of us are humanitarian surgeons. Together, in our combined 57 years of volunteering, we’ve worked on more than 40 surgical missions in developing countries on four continents. We’re used to working in disaster and war zones, of being on intimate terms with death and carnage and despair.

None of that prepared us for what we saw in Gaza this spring.

The constant begging for money, the malnourished population, the open sewage — all of that was familiar to us as veteran war zone doctors. But add in the incredible population density, the overwhelming numbers of badly maimed children and amputees, the constant hum of drones, the smell of explosives and gunpowder — not to mention the constant earth-shaking explosions — and it’s no wonder UNICEF has declared the Gaza Strip as “the world’s most dangerous place to be a child.”