Film Follows US Doctors to Gaza as Israel Bombs Hospitals, Kills Staff, Patients

The new documentary American Doctor tells the story of how the besieged hospitals of Gaza have continued to treat the sick and wounded throughout Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinian territory, with local medical staff risking their own lives in the process. According to Palestinian officials, Israeli attacks have killed about 1,700 healthcare workers in Gaza since October 2023. The documentary follows three U.S. doctors as they volunteer in Gaza hospitals.

Director Poh Si Teng says the film rose out of her “deep despair” over what was happening in Gaza, including deadly Israeli attacks on her former Al Jazeera colleagues. American Doctor is her attempt “to bring Palestine back to the United States,” Teng says.

We also speak with two of the subjects of the film: trauma surgeon Dr. Feroze Sidhwa and emergency physician Dr. Thaer Ahmad, who is Palestinian American.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

We end today’s show looking at the new documentary American Doctor. It tells the story of three U.S. doctors who volunteered in the besieged hospitals of Gaza along with local medical staff who risk their lives on a daily basis to care for the sick and wounded. According to Palestinian officials, Israeli attacks have killed about 1,700 healthcare workers in Gaza since October 2023.

American Doctor follows the orthopedic surgeon Dr. Mark Perlmutter, the trauma surgeon Dr. Feroze Sidhwa from California and the emergency physician from Chicago, Dr. Thaer Ahmad, who is Palestinian American. This is the film’s trailer. It begins with Dr. Ahmad.

DR. THAER AHMAD: I want to take you through what Gaza looks like when a hospital is totally overwhelmed. You’re getting waves of patients. Who will be prioritized? What do you have to treat them? You’ve got no pain medicine to give the people whose legs have been blown off.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Three surgeons all working on one little girl, for what? Two-and-a-half hours? And she’s probably going to lose her right leg, left leg and her left arm.

DR. MARK PERLMUTTER: And she’s starting to wake up.

DR. THAER AHMAD: Let’s get her warm.

DR. MARK PERLMUTTER: As a Jewish physician, I knew nothing about Gaza. Like most Americans, I thought everybody out here were nothing but terrorists, because that’s what I was told.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: I’m not Israeli. I’m not Palestinian. I’m not Christian. I’m not Muslim. I’m not Jewish. And I don’t really have any connection to it. But as an American, I just don’t want my government involved in crimes.

DR. THAER AHMAD: I’m a Palestinian. I’m not a spokesperson. I’m a human being. I’m a U.S. doctor who wants to see babies like my babies not be killed anymore.

DR. MARK PERLMUTTER: What surprised me most was how the carnage was focused on journalists, healthcare workers and children.

UNIDENTIFIED: This bomb, pkwhhh!

DR. MARK PERLMUTTER: Where was that?

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: That bomb hit the building.

DR. MARK PERLMUTTER: There was a 15-year-old kid ready for discharge that was incinerated.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: And if I had gone down and been changing that kid’s dressing, there would have been three bodies, and I would have been one of them.

DR. THAER AHMAD: When they hit a hospital, that’s a deep tragedy that people will feel in the community for the foreseeable future. We’re just asking that hospitals not be targeted. Why that conversation is derailed in the United States is beyond me.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: We do not have to accept that as Americans.

The United States could stop sending jet fuel, bombs, all sorts of weapons. This is a political problem. We need a political solution.

DR. MARK PERLMUTTER: We’re a good pair. You talk intelligently, and I talk emotionally.

DR. THAER AHMAD: It’s on us to make sure that their stories are told.

I couldn’t go to Palestine.

I got rejected, and then I come back to the United States and get detained by the Department of Homeland Security.

DR. MARK PERLMUTTER: This is what my tax dollars did, what your tax dollars did, what my neighbors’ tax dollars did. They have the right to know the truth.

AMY GOODMAN: The trailer of the new film American Doctor. And this is a clip from the film featuring Dr. Thaer Ahmad.

DR. THAER AHMAD: And I want to just take you through what it looks like when a hospital gets targeted and attacked, because this has become a pattern when it comes to the Israeli military. This has become a behavior that they started in October of 2023 when they struck Al-Mamadani Ahli Baptist Hospital. And when that happened and that there was no accountability, we saw that this became a series of events that attacked every hospital.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Dr. Thaer Ahmad in the new documentary American Doctor that’s opening around the country, starting here in New York. Dr. Ahmad is joining us now from Chicago, along with Dr. Feroze Sidhwa from Stockton, California, also featured in the film, and the film’s director, Poh Si Teng.

We welcome you all. An astounding film, and this is your directorial debut, isn’t it, Poh?

POH SI TENG: Yes, it is, and I think I picked an easy subject.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s start with Dr. Thaer, who we just heard. I was just looking at the headlines this morning. Thousands of Palestinians in Gaza cannot get out right now, thousands of cancer patients and chronically ill people. What is the number? Who is defying that? And who is stopping them?

DR. THAER AHMAD: Yeah, the WHO tells us that there are 18,000 people that need urgent evacuation out of Gaza, because of what we’ve seen portrayed in this film — the deliberate attack by the Israeli military on the hospital and healthcare infrastructure, the killing of over 1,700 healthcare workers and the abduction of senior medical physicians.

And, you know, Amy, one of the things that we’re trying to push for here is a corridor that used to exist before October 7th. Palestinians in Gaza could go to Jerusalem and get treated by Palestinian doctors in the hospitals there or the West Bank. And the Israelis have refused to allow that corridor to work.

And so, instead, we are watching people on this list every day, that we get messages about, get their names scratched off because they have died, people with treatable cancers. Kids who should be surviving, their parents are having to bury them in Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Poh, talk about how you ended up making this film and focusing on these three men, and, of course, through them, focusing on what is happening in Gaza.

POH SI TENG: Amy, you know, I was a journalist for a long time before I became a documentary filmmaker and producer. And it really was — it really cut really deep as a former journalist to see my former colleagues at Al Jazeera English being targeted and executed. And then, sitting and being situated in New York and hearing the deafening silence, I just — I guess I didn’t know what else to do. It was like a lot of deep despair. And then, it came for the search on, like, OK, what can my contribution be, you know, as somebody who was a journalist, who was a documentary commissioner, who was an executive for a studio.

So, one thing, as a former studio executive, it wasn’t lost on me that Americans like to watch medical dramas. Every year, you’re going to see two or three, you know — and I’m a big fan of medical dramas, from The Pitt, going back to ER, going back to Grey’s Anatomy. I loved Scrubs. So, there was something about doctors, hospitals and human mortality. And I thought to myself, “You know what? Maybe this is the way. Maybe we could make The Pitt. The difference is it’s real, and it’s set in Gaza. And this is how we’re going to bring Palestine back to the United States.”

AMY GOODMAN: So, Poh, in the opening scene, we see you with Dr. Mark, with Dr. Perlmutter, and you are struggling with the question of whether or not to show the images of Palestinian children killed in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. And Dr. Mark tells you, “Israel took away their dignity. Their bodies tell the story of this trauma, of this genocide. You’re not doing them a service by not showing them.”

POH SI TENG: You know, on that scene, it was one where —

AMY GOODMAN: You were at his home in North Carolina.

POH SI TENG: I was at his home in North Carolina. It’s the second day of filming. And Mark is furious with me. And so, that moment, I was really confronted with — by Mark: “So, what are you doing here? So, why? What is the point of this film if you don’t want to show this?” And, you know, all my years as a documentary commissioner and also as a journalist, you know, it’s like, as filmmakers, as journalists, we always grapple with how much do we show. We show too much, it’s gratuitous. People are going to turn away. They’re not going to want to watch. They don’t — already don’t want to see what’s on the social media feeds. They don’t want to follow. You show too little, it’s a big disrespect, because it’s not real.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to Dr. Mark Perlmutter in a clip from American Doctor.

DR. MARK PERLMUTTER: Can you —

MOTHER: [translated] Do a thumbs up.

FATHER: [translated] One at a time, do a thumbs up, each finger at a time.

MOTHER: [translated] Do a thumbs up.

DR. MARK PERLMUTTER: I think augmenting his EPL and giving him some wrist extension would — because if I hold his wrist in extension, he has meaningful digital extension. So he would be a wonderful candidate for tendon transfers.

DOCTOR: At this time?

DR. MARK PERLMUTTER: Yeah, we can do it this mission.

DOCTOR: [translated] He will reconnect the tendons so he can lift his wrist and thumb.

AMY GOODMAN: And this is Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, sitting here in New York in our studio, but from the clip from American Doctor, preparing to leave Gaza.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: I’ll see you soon, man. Thanks for everything. Send me a picture of your wedding, yeah?

COLLEAGUE 1: Of course.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: I’ll see you soon.

COLLEAGUE 1: Thanks to come here.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: No, no. I hope I’ll see you soon.

COLLEAGUE 1: Thank you.

COLLEAGUE 2: Thank you for everything.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: No, thank you for everything, my friend.

COLLEAGUE 2: Stay in touch.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Nice to meet you, my friend. Thanks for everything. See you soon?

COLLEAGUE 3: Inshallah.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Inshallah.

COLLEAGUE 3: Inshallah.

COLLEAGUE 4: Was not prepared for this.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: It’s this weird thing that happens when you leave Gaza, and you really feel like you have no right to leave.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, that’s you leaving Gaza. Talk about how you went to Gaza, the number of times you were there.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Yeah, so, I went in March and April of 2024 and then again in March and April of 2025. That’s that, that you were watching there. I tried to go again in November of 2025, but the Israeli military blocked me from entering. You know, between the two times, Gaza changed a lot. It actually got a lot, very significantly worse. The overcrowding was worse. The damage to the healthcare system was much worse. But yeah, the second time is when you see me in that clip.

AMY GOODMAN: And talk about why you chose to go to Gaza.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Well, you know, I don’t have any ethnic or religious connection to the Middle East. My family’s from a small minority in India and Pakistan, but I grew up in the United States. I was born here. I’m an American.

And the United States is intimately involved in what’s going on, with all — we provide all of — almost all of the weapons, all of the funding, the diplomatic support at the U.N. stopping other countries from solving this issue, which is pretty easily solved. And I don’t — I don’t think Americans want to be doing that. I think that’s why most of this is hidden from them.

So, I knew that by going there, I could, number one, provide medical care, because I’m a trauma surgeon, so that’s what I’m good at doing. But I could also bear witness, and then I could come back and try to tell people what was going on and try to change things if we could.

AMY GOODMAN: And you say, “I don’t feel I have the right to leave.”

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: It’s a very strange thing when you — when you leave Gaza, you know, you almost — it seems like a moral or ethical obscenity that I just get to walk out of this place, and these children otherwise have to live in this Hobbesian place where their parents’ legs can be blown off, or they can be kidnapped and tortured, or they can be starved, or they can, you know, all —

AMY GOODMAN: How many kids have died?

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: How many children have died in Gaza? The count from the Ministry of Health is 20,000. By my estimate, it’s probably closer to 70,000. But that’s —

AMY GOODMAN: So, you got in twice. You’re denied once. Dr. Thaer Ahmad, you’re Palestinian American, with the Palestinian American Medical Association, as well. You weren’t able to get in as much.

DR. THAER AHMAD: Yeah, I’ve been denied five consecutive times, most recently July 29th.

AMY GOODMAN: On what grounds?

DR. THAER AHMAD: Because my parents and my grandparents are Palestinian, because I am Palestinian. That is the reason that we are being rejected.

There’s a deliberate effort, Amy, to separate the West Bank from Jerusalem, from Gaza. And the idea is to make sure that there can be no Palestine. And the way to do that is to make sure that this one people, this one land, cannot access each other. And that’s something that we’re seeing.

And I obviously push back on that, because what we saw in Gaza was a genocide unfold and ethnic cleansing. And what we’re seeing in the West Bank right now is that same institution, that same military wreaking havoc on the people of Palestine.

I mean, just last month, when I was in the West Bank working on a medical mission there, there was a 7-month-old, Sam Abu Haikal, driving with his parents in the car, going from Bethlehem to Hebron, a 10-, 15-minute drive. And an Israeli soldier shoots at the car, hitting Sam in the head. You know, his mom recently said that she’s not even wiping his fingerprints from the oven. She can’t bring herself to do that for her baby boy. And so —

AMY GOODMAN: Who died.

DR. THAER AHMAD: Yeah, who died. He was killed. They had to bury him.

AMY GOODMAN: The final scene of the film is of Israel’s double-tap strike on Nasser Hospital — this was exactly a year ago in August — that killed at least 20 people, including five Palestinian journalists: Hussam al-Masri, a photojournalist with Reuters; Mohammad Salama, a photojournalist with Al Jazeera; Mariam Abu Daqqa, a freelancer who worked with the Associated Press; Moaz Abu Taha, a photographer; and Middle East Eye freelancer Ahmad Abu Aziz. Talk about the significance of this moment — were any of you there? — and what it meant to hit the hospital. And then, when people went to try to save these people who had set up a camera, the journalists, they were hit.

DR. THAER AHMAD: Yeah, I mean, this is not something that is unique to Nasser specifically. That’s the third or fourth time it’s been attacked by the Israeli military. I was there one of the first times, in February — January and February 2024, when the Israeli military surrounded, raided, and actually abducted Dr. Khaled Alser, who’s been on this program, and as well as multiple times afterwards, when Feroze and Mark were actually there and it was — hit the building.

AMY GOODMAN: You were at Nasser, just not then.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Not during that attack that you mentioned, but on March 23rd.

AMY GOODMAN: Before.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Yeah.

POH SI TENG: And speaking of, you know, like, all the journalists that were killed on that stairwell, like, that is where our team would transmit footage to us. So, it’s not like they’re just attacking willy-nilly, you know. It’s a very concerted effort in targeting anywhere where journalists are trying to transmit information and footage out to the rest of the world.

AMY GOODMAN: And you use much footage from Palestinians, right?

POH SI TENG: Absolutely.

AMY GOODMAN: On their iPhones, on their phones.

POH SI TENG: Yeah — no, actually not, actually.

AMY GOODMAN: No?

POH SI TENG: We were relying on a cinematographer, a director of photography by the name of Ibrahim Al-Otla. There were two of our colleagues, Ibrahim and our co-producer Mohammed Sawwaf. So, so much of what you see in the film, it’s a credit to them, and also because of their sacrifice of how much they wanted out in the world.

AMY GOODMAN: And before we go, both of you doctors have a pin on, “Free Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya.” In this last 30 seconds, talk about, you know, the former head of Kamal Adwan, the pediatric hospital. Dr. Thaer, you knew him.

DR. THAER AHMAD: Yeah. I mean, this is somebody who has been abducted, is in prison without charge, is being tortured. His lawyer thinks that he is on the brink of death. And his family continues to ask the world to stand up. He’s one of 14 senior Palestinian medical doctors who should be in Gaza leading the recovery and reconstruction, and instead they’re being beaten to death by Israeli soldiers.

AMY GOODMAN: Where is he?

DR. THAER AHMAD: He’s in an underground prison in Israel, one that was shut down previously and reopened for this specific purpose.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to leave it there, but people can see this film all over the country. Poh, where?

POH SI TENG: You know, we’re kicking off in New York, and then we go to L.A., San Francisco, and then it’s going to be in 77 theaters across U.S. and Canada. And I will say, like, before we began, we did not ever think that, you know, a film like this could go mainstream. But now we have. And so, we hope people will be able to watch it.

AMY GOODMAN: Poh Si Teng, first-time director of this incredible documentary, American Doctor, and Dr. Feroze Sidhwa and Dr. Thaer Ahmad, thank you so much. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.