Events
Event: Eyewitness to Gaza – 18 June
Eyewitness to Gaza
Date: Thursday 18th June 2026
Time: 6pm – Doors open at 5.15 if you’d like to enjoy a drink ahead of the event
Location: Avalon Beach Surf Club
Tickets: $45, Tickets Here
Gaza has been largely closed to journalists and even international aid workers since the Israeli invasion following Hamas’s attack on Israel in 2023.
In April of this year, the UN and EU issued a statement saying that human development in Gaza had been set back 77 years, with nearly all schools destroyed or damaged, half of all hospitals non-functional, and over 60% of the population homeless or displaced.
After nearly three years of war in Gaza, what is left of the neighbourhoods, the hospitals, the people?
In a special Bookoccino evening, a Noble Prize recipient neurosurgeon, who has just returned from Gaza, and a prize-winning investigative journalist, who has spent years living and reporting from Israel, Palestine and across the Middle East, will discuss what they have seen.
Dr Ruth Mitchell was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 as part of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). She is currently Chair of the Boards of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) and the Children First Foundation. During her recent visit to Gaza she performed 17 neurosurgical operations in 11 days.
She’ll be joined by Antony Loewenstein, journalist, film-maker and author of the best-selling The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World, which won the Walkley Book Award in 2023.
