AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we bring you Part 2 of our conversation about the new documentary that’s opening around the United States and Canada called American Doctor. It tells the story of three doctors, U.S. doctors, who volunteered in the besieged hospitals of Gaza, following the orthopedic surgeon Dr. Mark Perlmutter from North Carolina, the trauma surgeon Feroze Sidhwa from Stockton, California, and the Chicago emergency physician Dr. Thaer Ahmad, who is Palestinian American.

In March of last year, we actually spoke to Dr. Feroze Sidhwa and Dr. Mark Perlmutter when they were volunteering at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, Gaza. I asked Dr. Perlmutter about the Palestinian doctors and medical staff in Gaza who had been detained by Israeli forces.

DR. MARK PERLMUTTER: I have a colleague, an orthopedic surgeon, specializes in pediatric orthopedics, who was abducted from the hospital, from the operating room, in February of 2024. He was just released. When he was arrested, he was strip-searched, marched naked in front of his colleagues, beaten on a daily basis in an Israeli prison, beaten more intensely when he asked to speak to a lawyer, and even more intensely after he spoke to his lawyer. He had his fingers broken and his hand. He had, while handcuffs on, guards step on the handcuffs to torque them into the nerves of his hand, ruining the nerves in his operative hands.

And if the physical daily beatings and the loss of his hand function wasn’t enough, the psychologic torture, which is their specialty, according to almost everybody who’s been released — and there are still approximately 350 healthcare workers in Israeli prisons, all without charges — the psychologic torture is immense.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Dr. Mark Perlmutter on Democracy Now! in early March of 2025, featured in the new documentary American Doctor. He was sitting next to, in front of the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Dr. Feroze Sidhwa. Dr. Thaer Ahmad is also joining us in the studio, with Dr. Feroze and the film’s first-time director, an amazing film, Poh Si Teng.

So, Dr. Feroze, you’re now seeing that maybe for the first time sitting here, was the two of you sitting in front of the hospital. I think that was something like March 13th, 2025.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: The hospital would soon be struck, as the Israeli military attacked it.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Yeah, a few days after that clip, you know, that was a — what they call a ceasefire was going on at that time, like there is now. It’s hardly a ceasefire. But there was a ceasefire at that time, so things were less chaotic. A few days after that, on March 18th, the Israelis carried out this huge aerial blitz across Gaza, killing about 400 people in 10 minutes. And after that, it was just work, work, work the entire time. You know, it was incredibly busy after that. And the hospital was again very quickly overwhelmed, total disaster.

AMY GOODMAN: And even before that, can you talk about the man who filmed the two of you sitting there for Democracy Now!?

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Yeah, so, the journalist that I met there, I — honestly, I can’t remember his name, unfortunately. He was a very nice man. On March 18th — so, I had the interview with him, kept in touch with him. I interviewed later with him for his own news organization. And on March 18th, one of the people I took care of was a 25- or 26-year-old woman, a mother of three, who had been hit by shrapnel in her tent. Her pelvis was destroyed. Her — I’ll spare your listeners the details, I suppose, but —

AMY GOODMAN: No, you don’t have to spare us.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Well, her vagina was torn. Her rectum was torn. Her entire pelvis and spine were destroyed. And this young woman, in the United States or Israel or Europe, she wouldn’t have died. She would have been viciously disabled for the rest of her life, but she wouldn’t have died. But in Gaza, you don’t have blood products. You don’t even have a relatively clean, let alone sterile, environment to take care of her in. So she bled to death 12 hours later in the ICU.

AMY GOODMAN: The cameraman’s sister.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: This is the cameraman’s sister, which I learned after I — after I operated on her the first time. And, you know, he was outside the — he was in the waiting area with her children. And I saw him, and I recognized him. And he said, “Lubna’s my sister.” And I said, you know, “We’re doing everything we can, but, you know, she’s probably not going to make it.”

AMY GOODMAN: And then the airstrike happened of March 23rd —

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — that you and Dr. Perlmutter survived, but so many didn’t. Talk about the boy you had worked on.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Yeah, so, the last case that I did, the last operative case I did, on March 18th was a 16-year-old boy named Ibrahim Barhoum. He was a twin. His brother, his twin brother, had been killed in December of 2023 in the genocide. And Ibrahim, he had injuries to his colon and rectum. I gave him a colostomy, where your intestine comes out to your skin. And unlike most 16-year-old boys, he was pretty much fine with it. He was a — he was a good kid. He never complained about pain. He just wanted to get up and go home and go back to his tent with his family. And on March 23rd, five days later, he was ready to be discharged from the hospital. He had actually healed up well. He didn’t have infections, which was very uncommon in Gaza. Almost everything — almost everybody got infected with something. He had — 

AMY GOODMAN: Everyone gets sepsis.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Almost everyone gets an infection of some kind. If we find it early enough, then maybe we can prevent sepsis from setting in, but almost — it’s almost universal that every surgical infection get — or, every surgical incision gets infected, because everyone’s malnourished, the hospital is filthy and overcrowded, and there are very few antibiotics available. And, you know, it’s a long-standing problem that Thaer probably knows more about than I do. But Gaza has been such a severely wounded population with high-powered military equipment for so long that they have been — that these people have been exposed to so much antibiotics that there’s an enormous amount of antibiotic resistance in Gaza relative to anywhere else.

But yeah, so, on March 23rd, I was on my way down to Ibrahim’s room to change his bandages one last time, and then we were going to discharge him in the morning. And I guess just to make a long story short, on the way down to his room, the Israelis fired a drone-fired missile into his room. They were trying to kill the other guy in the room. They claimed he was the prime minister of Gaza. I don’t think he knew that. He was a patient admitted to the hospital. But Ibrahim was also killed in that attack, and I found his body later in the emergency room.

AMY GOODMAN: The boy you had saved.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Yeah, the 16-year-old boy. And, you know, he was perfectly healthy, ready to go home. And, you know, if you can believe it, the BBC actually reported that the — that this 16-year-old boy was the assistant to the prime minister of Gaza, and that’s why he was killed. And I’ve told them a hundred times that that’s not true, but this news story is still up.

AMY GOODMAN: Also, Nasser Hospital, talk about the wall and, right on the other side of it, the journalists’ tent. It became a famous image when they struck the journalists’ tent.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Yeah, so, right outside the wall of Nasser, to the south of Nasser, is a market. And in that market, there was a journalists’ tent. They had high-speed Wi-Fi, a little generator for charging their camera and their phones and stuff. And that tent — and I hung out there. I think you you’ve been there, too. Yeah. I hung out there.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Thaer.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Yeah, Dr. Thaer’s been there, as well, a few — I’ve been there a few times. I hung out there a few times with them. And after I left — I believe it was May of 2025 — that tent was struck also by, most likely, a drone-fired missile. The tent was set on fire, and there was a famous photojournalist in the tent who was set ablaze. And there’s a famous video of him burning in this tent. People were able to get him out of the tent, extinguish the flames, and because Nasser is only a hundred feet away, he was able to get into the hospital, and the emergency doctors there were able to save his life for that moment.

And, you know, the second floor men’s surgical ward had already been destroyed in the March 23rd strike. This young man was admitted to the new men’s surgical ward, which is on the third floor. And a few weeks — I think two weeks later, the Israelis bombed that surgical ward to kill him. So now the second floor surgical ward is destroyed. The third floor, the new surgical ward is destroyed. The hospital at that point had lost about 20% of its beds just to bombing. And yeah, it’s just an absolute disaster, and a crime, a major crime that we were responsible for.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Thaer Ahmad, Poh does such a good job in showing — I mean, in showing — here you are getting in, so many people desperate to get out. In Part 1, we talked about the thousands of cancer patients and chronically ill people who can’t get out of Gaza, chronically ill Palestinians. But you are trying to get in. Talk about what motivated you and how you ended up on this journey, which American Doctor does so well in conveying.

DR. THAER AHMAD: You know, I think — and something that I think comes through in the film and Poh was able to capture as she spent time with the Palestinian diaspora here in the United States was there is a survivor’s guilt that’s at play for all of us here in the States, the Palestinians that are here. There is a sense of duty and responsibility. And I can guarantee you that if there was any opportunity for any Palestinian American to be able to go to Gaza, even if it’s just to, you know, move some rubble or to help with screwing a light bulb in, everybody would take that opportunity. This is — you know, when you look at the screens and you see what’s happening to these people, when you heard Hind’s voice, I heard my daughter’s voice on the other side of that phone.

AMY GOODMAN: When you say Hind, you’re referring to the 5-year-old, 6-year-old Hind Rajab.

DR. THAER AHMAD: Hind Rajab, yeah. And, you know, as Poh kind of — 

AMY GOODMAN: Who was killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza.

DR. THAER AHMAD: Who was killed in an Israeli strike as her family was fleeing because they were told to evacuate. So, her and her family were told to leave Gaza City to go south, and they were listening to the Israeli military. And as a result of that, a tank fired over 300 shells into her vehicle. And we had to listen for an agonizing three hours as she was begging for people to come and help her.

And so, you know, that’s something that every single Palestinian was aware of. Everybody heard Hind’s mom asking the world to intervene. And I think what you get to see in the film is the diaspora here in the United States struggling with what they were seeing, and realizing how the United States was playing such a massive role in what was taking place. I mean, I get paid every couple of weeks, and I can tell when I look at my check, I know that maybe there’s a few of these dollars or pennies that are actually going to slaughter my own people. And that’s something that, you know, we wrestle with and we struggle with.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you got in once.

DR. THAER AHMAD: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: You’ve been denied five times, most recently in the last few weeks.

DR. THAER AHMAD: Yes, that’s exactly right. I mean, this is something that every Palestinian healthcare worker who has tried to enter has experienced the same thing. We are being rejected. We are being asked where our parents are born, where our grandparents are born. And if you somehow say that — you know, if they happen to have been born in Palestine, you can rest assured that you will be rejected, regardless of whether your specialty is needed or not.

And I’ll just say one thing: I’m happy that Feroze and Mark and people like them exist, because they’re going in and standing in solidarity with our Palestinian healthcare workers. But the idea, too, is you want to separate sort of this connection that exists between Palestinians. We speak the language. We understand the culture. We want to be able to help with what’s going on. We want to stand and put our hands on their shoulders, the people who have been dealing with this for over two-and-a-half years, the doctors who are emerging from their tents because they lost their homes, or like Dr. Hussam, who had to bury his son Ibrahim.

AMY GOODMAN: You’re talking about Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya.

DR. THAER AHMAD: Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya.

AMY GOODMAN: Former head of the Kamal Adwan pediatric hospital.

DR. THAER AHMAD: Kamal Adwan Hospital. One month before he was abducted in that famous image of him walking up to an Israeli tank in December of 2024 — 

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, walking through the — 

DR. THAER AHMAD: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — utter destruction —

DR. THAER AHMAD: And rubble, absolutely.

AMY GOODMAN: — the rubble, in his white coat.

DR. THAER AHMAD: Coat, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: And you see him from the back, walking —

DR. THAER AHMAD: Yes, absolutely.

AMY GOODMAN: — climbing up to this Israeli tank.

DR. THAER AHMAD: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Why was he climbing to it?

DR. THAER AHMAD: I mean, they had — that’s exactly what they had instructed him to do. You know, people don’t realize, in those moments, he miraculously evacuated all of the patients from Kamal Adwan, because the Israeli military was getting ready to destroy that hospital. And so he worked tirelessly to save the kids in the ICU and get them to another hospital safely.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: In the only NICU in Gaza.

DR. THAER AHMAD: In the only NICU in northern Gaza — 

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Yeah.

DR. THAER AHMAD: — which had been absolutely devastated.

AMY GOODMAN: Neonatal intensive care unit.

DR. THAER AHMAD: Neonatal intensive care unit. And this is somebody who, just a month earlier, had buried his son Ibrahim in the compound of the hospital. This is somebody who had just written a New York Times op-ed just weeks before that, begging the world to intervene and stop what he knew was going to happen, which is what we all knew would happen, because it was a Gaza hospital.

And so, this is — again, this is a pattern. It’s a policy that had been at play. This is not just random moments. You know, Feroze can mention about how they’re trying to target certain people. But the truth is that it didn’t matter what was going on or who you were. If you were Palestinian and you were in Gaza, you were being targeted, whether you were a doctor, a nurse, a journalist, a cameraman, or even just a child getting ready to go to school that morning.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to stick with Dr. Hussam for a moment.

DR. THAER AHMAD: Sure.

AMY GOODMAN: We talked about him in Part 1. You’re both wearing pins that say “Free Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya.” He’s been held for now?

DR. THAER AHMAD: More than 2 years.

AMY GOODMAN: Without charge.

DR. THAER AHMAD: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: And this is a recent video message. Dr. Abu Safiya’s son Elyas said his father showed clear signs of torture and medical neglect during a meeting with his lawyer, in which Dr. Abu Safiya described being beaten with a hammer.

ELYAS ABU SAFIYA: [translated] My father was unable to breathe. My father was unable to speak. His face was disfigured from the marks of torture and pain, especially after the last court session held in Jerusalem at the Supreme Court. … We still call out, plead and appeal and beg to all the free people of the world and to everyone with an atom of humanity in their heart, to save my father’s life before it’s too late.

AMY GOODMAN: Elyas is in northern Gaza right now, and you just communicated with him?

DR. THAER AHMAD: Yeah, I just sent him a message. Later on today, myself and Feroze will try to speak to European countries and members of the national — of the U.N. Security Council, asking for them to intervene in terms of Dr. Hussam, as well as 13 other senior Palestinian medical physicians who are being held without charge in Israeli dungeons.

AMY GOODMAN: And what does Israel say?

DR. THAER AHMAD: This is — they continue to claim bogus claims that they have no evidence for. They’re not able to even — 

AMY GOODMAN: Well, they haven’t charged him.

DR. THAER AHMAD: They have not, but they continue in the public domain to try to paint these doctors as somehow nefarious characters. And every single person, every single institution, organization, humanitarian response, human rights group knows that it’s completely garbage and false. There’s not a shred of evidence that you can provide against them.

I think if you really look at what’s happening here, is these are 14 senior physicians who Gaza needs. The patients in Gaza need them. They play a vital role in saving the lives of people. And when you abduct them and you keep them in these torture camps, you’re sending a message to all of Gaza: “Leave. Your doctors will not be able to heal you or save you. Even doctors who are supposed to be protected, even they are not safe. Get out of Palestine.”

AMY GOODMAN: And yet they can’t get out. I mean, you have the thousands of cancer patients and chronically ill people who cannot get out.

DR. THAER AHMAD: And that’s the sick game. I mean, the yellow line continues to encroach on the Palestinians. This is the Israeli military’s yellow line that, on October 9th, during the ceasefire announcement, was probably 50% of the Gaza Strip, and is now closer to 70%. So, they continue to encroach on Palestinian land. They continue to fire on Palestinians who even approach this yellow line. And so, the shrinking space of Gaza leaves Palestinians with only one direction, and that’s heading towards the Mediterranean Sea.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you are a member of many communities, both of you, and one of them — well, you, Dr. Thaer Ahmad, are Palestinian American. But you’re also medical doctors, and that is a major community in the United States and around the world. What has been the response of the American Medical Association? You’re part of the Palestinian American Medical Association.

DR. THAER AHMAD: Yeah, I mean, the professional societies in the United States, in Europe and in the U.K. have been absolute cowards when it has come to Palestine and to Gaza. They were ready to speak and release statements when it came to Ukraine, which was totally appropriate and something that needed to happen. But the second that it came to Palestine, they decided that this was too controversial and this was something that people were too divided over. It’s an embarrassment. These are people who share the same profession as us. They took oaths like we did. They put on white coats. They heal children. And instead, you’re seeing them step up and refuse to even acknowledge that this is happening.

AMY GOODMAN: Poh Si Teng, you chose to focus on these incredibly brave U.S. doctors who go into Gaza, many times get rejected, but sometimes get in. And as you told us in Part 1 of this conversation, while you couldn’t get in, you worked with Palestinian videographers to film them inside. One of them — I mean, you worked with a cameraperson and one who became your director of photography — didn’t speak English. These are U.S. doctors. Talk about how you navigated that.

POH SI TENG: You know, I’ll say that this — it all happened because of a team, and a team that spanned eight different countries. No one person can make this film. And it’s the dedication of everybody who wanted to contribute something.

And so, in terms of our team and our crew in Gaza, Ibrahim Al-Otla, our cinematographer, and Mohammed Sawwaf, you know, we worked with them. I have a producer, Reem Haddad. So, Reem and I used to work at Al Jazeera English. And I saw their work, like incredible vérité. I mean, this is like top-notch cinematography. And I was like, “Reem, I want to work with them.” And Reem’s like, “They want to work on this, too. But their message for us: We will do this, but you have to bring it back to the United States. Bring it back to the American people.”

And so, you know, they shot this film, Ibrahim did, at great risk to his family. And I will say this: Like, when Ibrahim was filming for Dr. Faroze and Dr. Mark, there was already a blockade in place. This was March. So there was no food going in. Now, Ibrahim and Mohammed each have five children.

So, we’re talking about people at the top of their craft, still dedicated to do their work. And when Nasser Medical Complex was hit, you know, Ibrahim’s first instinct, he had messaged this: “I’m going to go to Nasser. How is Dr. Faroze?” I remember him saying that. And we had to communicate with him and say, “You cannot go to the hospital. It is late at night, and you would be a moving target for the Israelis.” And so, those were some of the conversations that we had to have with him. And this really speaks to their dedication.

And so, the reason why we push this film so hard is because we want to honor the Gazan doctors. We want to honor the Gazan journalists and the cinematographers. And we have so much power here. And never — even for them, never would they have thought that a film that we made together would be, you know, across theaters in U.S. and Canada.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Faroze, your agreement to do this with Poh, you say you don’t think it’s going to go anywhere, at the beginning.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Yeah, that —

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about how you feel the climate has changed and public opinion in the United States, which is, of course, the U.S. so important in providing weapons for Israel, why that matters.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Yeah, you know, the last two, two-and-a-half, three years has seen a radical change in American perceptions, American attitudes towards support for Israel, support for Israeli crimes, which is fantastic, because that’s exactly what should happen.

You know, yeah, like you mentioned, in the movie, I say that, you know, I don’t think that my combined 10 minutes on mainstream television has done anything useful. And I don’t think it — you know, I didn’t have anything to do with it, honestly. It was the Palestinian journalists there and the Palestinians themselves who just broadcast what was happening to the world. But people were willing to listen, and that has resulted in this sea change.

And now, you know, at the Angelika, just this mainstream theater with a mainstream audience, where —

AMY GOODMAN: Here in New York.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Here in New York, where it’s sold out every night, which is amazing. Like, you know, last night, somebody said, you know, “Do you think things have changed?” And I, like — during the Q&A at the Angelika. And I said, “Yeah, I mean, look at this room. This room is full. That’s wild.” I mean, I, like — you know, Thaer and I both told Poh that she was wasting her time by making this movie. But we were wrong, which is wonderful.

AMY GOODMAN: And then you’re heading to San Francisco and Los Angeles.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Thaer, you’re going home to Chicago, where it’s going to be playing. It’s playing in Toronto, as well in scores of theaters opening right now.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Yeah.

POH SI TENG: Yeah.

DR. THAER AHMAD: And so, we hope people will actually support. I think the idea is we want to keep the conversation going. And this film is a way that we can continue to keep it going, because CNN and MSNBC and Fox News have stopped talking about Palestine, and people are still suffering immensely. So, I hope this is a signal that people are still interested.

POH SI TENG: And if there was any hesitance, you know, if — hesitance of not wanting to speak up, then here’s a film. And there are three — there are three paths for you. You can be like Thaer: strategic and politic. You can be like Mark, who has taught me a lot: speak your mind, do not mince words. Or you can be like Feroze, who is — you know, does the homework and is able to convince even the most difficult audiences because of his patience. Now, none of them are perfect, and all of them are different. But yet, at the same time, you know, they’re able to advance something. And they are able to work together, even though they’re so different. So, what — that has taught me a lot, and I’m hoping it can teach audiences in America that, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to leave it there, but folks can go see this film. Dr. Thaer Ahmad, I want to thank you for being with us, Dr. Feroze Sidhwa and Poh Si Teng, the director of the new documentary American Doctor. It’s opening in theaters around the United States now. To see Part 1 of our discussion, go to democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.