In recent weeks, Barbara Zind has experienced some of the calmest mornings she’s had in some time. It’s little wonder why: Just last month, Zind was trapped in Gaza, uncertain when she’d be able to get out of the besieged territory and home to the U.S.
Barbara is the sister of Steve Zind, a retired reporter and host for Vermont Public. Along with other members of the family, Steve — who lives in Braintree — worked to help extricate Barbara after a brutal Hamas attack on Oct. 7 on Israeli civilians and soldiers that has sparked some of the most devastating fighting in the region in decades.
Barbara, a retired pediatrician, had planned to spend just a few days in Gaza in early October volunteering with the nonprofit Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, which provides free medical care to injured and sick kids who are unable to access care through the local hospital system. But her plans there were upended almost overnight, from helping young families to getting herself out safely.
She arrived home in Grand Junction, Colorado, on Nov. 3. And while Barbara said she’s relieved to be back, she worries constantly about Gazans who cannot leave as she did as the death toll from the brutal conflict continues to climb.
“It’s devastating,” she said in an interview, noting there has been “so much” collateral damage. “Even if you had a cease-fire today, and everything stopped, the rebuilding there is just so difficult.”
Debate about whether there should be a cease-fire between Israeli forces and Hamas, which governs Gaza, has dominated U.S. politics in recent weeks. Just one member of Vermont’s congressional delegation, Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., has so far called for one.
After several days in the Gaza City hotel where she was staying, Zind took shelter at a United Nations compound in the city along with hundreds of other humanitarian aid workers. They remained at the compound until the Israeli military ordered a massive-scale evacuation of North Gaza, which preceded Israel’s ground invasion of the territory.
Barbara and other aid workers fled south through Gaza in a United Nations convoy to a U.N.-run school in the city of Khan Younis. The journey was harrowing, she recalled. Even though she felt fairly secure among U.N. personnel, she said, there was “constant bombing and near-constant drone strikes.” Crumbling buildings and roads were visible everywhere.
After three nights — one of which the group spent sleeping in vehicles — Barbara and other international aid workers relocated again to a U.N. facility close to the Rafah Border Crossing, through which they hoped to evacuate into Egypt. Rafah is the only border crossing to and from Gaza that is not controlled by Israel, which shut its crossings after the Hamas attack Oct. 7. Rafah has since become a critical passage for food and aid resources.
Hundreds of people were camped out near this third U.N. facility after fleeing violence in other parts of Gaza, Barbara recalled. Her group camped there for more than two weeks, with limited food and water and just a single toilet for some 50 people.
But conditions were far less comfortable, and possibly more dangerous, for those in the area without connections to international groups, Barbara said. She witnessed multiple fights break out over food and recalled hearing about one toilet shared by 400 people.
Barbara spent those two weeks waiting for word that she had been approved to cross into Egypt. She said she ultimately learned she had a green light from colleagues and family members — one of whom saw her name on a list posted on Facebook — and not from a U.S. government official tasked with helping her. (She said that she later got word from the U.S. official, but that the notice came after she had already crossed safely.)
It took 12 hours to get through the Rafah Border Crossing itself, she said. “People were frantic. I mean, they were desperate,” Barbara recalled, noting it took a long time just for the large crowd around her to calm down enough to file through the border gates.
Once she made it into Egypt, Barbara and other aid workers took a taxi through the Sinai Peninsula to Cairo, where she boarded a flight to Denver. Barbara was met by family at the Colorado airport, calling the reunion “low key” and “very nice.”
In the weeks since getting home, Barbara said she’s hardly had a moment’s pause. She has been giving numerous news interviews about her experience, she said, and still coordinating with people who work for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.
Barbara has volunteered as a pediatrician in Gaza before. She said it’s painful to see health care facilities that were destroyed in the past, and then rebuilt, get leveled again by Israeli bombing during this fall’s fighting. She pointed to one example of the impact on Gazans: The stress of war can contribute to preterm labor, she said, but the country has far fewer functioning neonatal intensive care units than it needs.
“When I hear people call it ‘genocide,’ I have a hard time arguing with that,” she said.
Barbara pointed, too, to the “incredible resiliency” of the Gazans she interacted with while in the territory. She recalled one Palestinian worker for the children’s relief fund named Hasan who had dozens of family members camped near the Rafah crossing.
“He would come and apologize that I was in that situation — that I was so unfortunate,” Barbara recalled. “And I said, ‘Well, you’re so much less fortunate than I am.’”
“He said to me, ‘Yeah — but we’re used to this,’” she added. “And he’s right.”
