'American Doctor' shows Israeli brutality in Gaza

Los Angeles: Mark Perlmutter has treated patients hit by natural disaster and conflicts across 30 countries, including in his native United States. Yet, nothing prepared him for the horrors he would witness under Israeli bombardment.

“Just our first week in Gaza was worse than all of my experiences combined, ” the orthopedic surgeon told AFP of deployments that included the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in New York, Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, and the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

The suffering Perlmutter and his colleagues have seen in Gaza hospitals since Israel launched its war after the October 2023 Hamas attack forms the core of “American Doctor,” a documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and arrives in select US theaters this Friday.

In her documentary debut, director Poh Si Teng makes no attempt to explain the rights or wrongs of the conflict itself, focusing instead on the work in Gaza of three American doctors from different backgrounds. Perlmutter is Jewish; Thaer Ahmad is a Muslim of Palestinian descent; and Feroze Sidhwa is the son of Zoroastrian parents.

“People feel like they have to have a PhD in this topic to understand it, or to discuss it sensibly,” Sidhwa told AFP.

“The question isn’t how well you know Arab-Israeli history. The question is: Do you or do you not support the murder of children? Do you or do you not support the torture of physicians? Do you or do you not support the bombing of hospitals?”

– Hitting hospitals –

Israel’s military action has resulted in more than 73,300 deaths in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, whose figures the United Nations considers reliable.

Israel acknowledges it has intentionally hit medical facilities, but says it is targeting Hamas fighters using tunnels underneath those hospitals.

The three doctors in the documentary say they have not seen tunnels in any of the hospitals where they have worked in Gaza.

One of the documentary’s most harrowing sections shows a so-called “double-tap” where missiles strike first responders who are treating patients following a bombing at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis.

Deciding what to show on screen was a challenge for Teng, who has previously worked as a visual journalist for AFP, among other outlets.

“You show too much, and it’s gratuitous, and nobody’s gonna watch, and you want to be effective in telling the truth. You show too little, and it’s not real,” she said.

The film begins with precisely this dilemma. When Teng feels that including a photo of dead children violates their dignity, Perlmutter chides her, insisting that their obligation is to show Americans what their tax dollars are funding.

“Israel took away their dignity,” he says.

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“You’re not dignifying them unless you let their memory, their bodies tell the story of this trauma, of this genocide. You’re not doing them a service by not showing that,” he says, pointing to the photo.

“It was a moment for me where, you know what, there’s no halfway in this,” Teng told AFP.

– ‘We have to stop this’ –

For the three doctors in the documentary, having to endlessly reiterate the “urgency” of the situation in Gaza during media interviews or meetings with members of Congress is frustrating.

“If I tell you that there are kids starving, or if I tell you that there are mothers who are struggling to feed their children, or that there are teenagers who are being killed by these massive bombs, your response should be: ‘We have to stop this,'” emergency physician Thaer Ahmad said.

“I should not hear from you: ‘Oh, but what were they doing, or where were they, or what background are they from? What religion do they follow, or where were they born?'”

Teng said she frequently encountered this resistance, and at times found it difficult to get funding for the project as donors shied away from putting cash behind a project showing the damage being done by US-funded Israeli munitions.

But, she said, the moment felt like it was changing, and she hopes “American Doctor” might further shift the narrative.

It’s a hope Perlmutter shares. “The avalanche of truth starts with snowflakes,” he said.

“I’m optimistic that we’re all snowflakes in that snowball that’s getting bigger and bigger.”