palestinian people

Most documentaries urge you to not turn away from the horrors they chronicle, but few make that request as explicitly as “American Doctor.”

Near the start of her despondent film, director Poh Si Teng spends time with Mark Perlmutter, a North Carolina surgeon who, like Teng’s other subjects, volunteers in Gaza, treating the many who have been severely injured in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Furious at the attacks on innocent Palestinian children, Perlmutter shows Teng photos of dead bodies. She says she may need to blur them for the movie. Perlmutter becomes indignant: “You’re not doing them a service by not showing them,” he says. “You have the responsibility, as I do, to tell the truth.”

Teng does reveal those stark faces and much more — not just the terrible human toll of Israel’s shelling of the Palestinian territories but also the strain on the doctors fighting to save lives while spreading the word about the atrocities they’ve witnessed.

Perlmutter, who is Jewish, is one of three American physicians at the center of Teng’s documentary. The other two are Thaer Ahmad, a Palestinian, and Feroze Sidhwa, who is Zoroastrian. Each of them resides in the U.S. but is drawn to lending a hand at Gazan hospitals — that is, when they’re actually allowed entry into the region. (Because of Ahmad’s Palestinian heritage, he’s been barred by the Israeli government.) As part of their humanitarian efforts, Perlmutter and his colleagues go on Western media, such as CNN, to decry the conditions of the Palestinian people. They are often met with resistance, if not outright hostility. The casualties keep piling up, and nobody outside the walls of the hospital seems to care.

Teng, who produced the 2019 Oscar-nominated documentary short “St. Louis Superman,” a portrait of a local Black activist, once again ponders how much any one person can do to bring about change. She gracefully balances between a three-pronged character study and a larger examination of the unending war. We come to admire Ahmad, Perlmutter and Sidhwa, but Teng provides just enough shading so that subtle cultural tensions between the men start to emerge.

That strain is particularly evident during the bighearted but strident Perlmutter’s impolitic media appearances, in which he brandishes impassioned criticism of Zionism that angers the Palestinian Ahmad. “We’ll be guilty by association and we’ll just get crushed for it,” he worries. It’s a documentary with a paucity of inspirational moments. Teng and her subjects are embedded in a world of tough choices and grim conditions.

With Ahmad largely sidelined in the U.S., though still advocating for the Palestinian people, Sidhwa ultimately becomes “American Doctor’s” most striking figure. Armed with an eloquent, righteous fury, he speaks to journalists with a stirring moral authority. Teng mostly avoids on-camera interviews with her subjects, preferring to watch them interacting with patients or in the operating room. In the process, we come to know Sidhwa, who projects a calm confidence, even when he’s nearly killed by a missile.

But his self-assurance is intriguingly undercut during an unguarded exchange in which he acknowledges that no prospective romantic partner has been comfortable with his desire to keep returning to Gaza. “I think I’m just probably a hard person to get along with,” he admits, laughing. “I wish I could blame the fact that no woman can put up with me on the Israel-Palestine conflict, but I don’t think that’s the issue.”

There are myriad ways to document the violence in Gaza, and it’s telling that Teng includes only a very brief news clip of President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the phantom figures hovering far above the film’s unfolding tragedy, even though they are among its chief architects. Instead, “American Doctor” focuses on the micro, giving voice to the doctors and caregivers who traditionally have been spared during armed conflicts, as laid out by the Geneva Conventions. In defiance of such norms, though, Israel’s government seems to be targeting hospitals, creating psychic wounds alongside mass casualties.

A closing text card indicates that more than 1,700 healthcare workers have died in Gaza, laying culpability at the feet of Israel and the United States. But it’s a testament to the physicians featured in “American Doctor” that none of them would suggest that this is the greatest crime occurring in the region. We observe them lamenting how powerless they feel: Their medical skills can do some good, but not nearly enough. And when they reluctantly return to America, they agonize over their guilt at not being able to do more — and what of Gaza will remain when they eventually get back.

DEIR AL BALAH, Gaza Strip — An Israeli strike on Gaza just before the kickoff of the Egypt-Argentina World Cup match killed a top Palestinian aid official who helped organize public screenings of the game across the enclave, according to local health officials.

The blast turned what was supposed to be a moment of celebration — the live screening of a potential Argentina upset by an Arab team — into a reminder of how the near-daily Israeli strikes across Gaza are continuing to kill civilians despite a truce reached in October.

The bomb hit a car in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City at dusk Tuesday, killing passersby Mohamed al-Wahidi, an official at the Egyptian Committee in Gaza, 10-year-old boy Hamza al-Deri and his 8-year-old brother, Fari. Ahmed Daghmush, 33, the driver of the car, was also killed. That’s according to Dr. Mohamed Abu Selmiya, the director of Shifa Hospital, which received the four bodies.

The Israeli military said al-Wahidi, who helped organize the soccer screenings, was not a target of the strike. It said the strike was aiming for a Hamas militant, and it was checking if Daghmush was the target.

Daghmush is a taxi driver not known to be affiliated with any militant group, Abu Selmiya said.

An Israeli strike hit the same street half an hour earlier, causing no casualties.

The committee for which al-Wahidi worked is the relief arm of the Egyptian government, which provides food, shelters and other assistance to Palestinians in Gaza. The committee organized the initiative to put up screens across Gaza to watch soccer matches, it said.

Many in the Palestinian diaspora live across the border in Egypt, which was a key mediator of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire.

Team Egypt’s Gaza fanbase has only grown since the start of the tournament, as coach Hossam Hassan has spotlighted the plight of the Palestinian people in press briefings and on the pitch. He dedicated his team’s victory over Australia on Friday to both Egyptians and Palestinians and waved a Palestinian flag on the pitch.

In a Monday briefing before the match against Argentina, Hassan urged the world to do more for the Palestinian people.

“I urge you, I urge all media officers, all athletes worldwide, regardless of their identities, maybe we can convey a collective message that is as follows, let the Palestinian people be, let them exist, let them live a life of their own,” he said.

Israel’s military says its strikes target militants and it regrets harm to civilians. At least 1,084 people, including 258 children, have been killed since the truce took effect in October. Five Israeli soldiers have been killed in that time.

The Palestinian death toll from the Israel-Hamas war stands at 73,110, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which is part of the Hamas-led government and is staffed by medical professionals who maintain detailed records viewed as generally reliable by United Nations agencies and independent experts. It does not distinguish between civilians and militants but says women and children make up around half of all fatalities.

The war began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 others hostage.

Shurafa, Magdy and Frankel write for the Associated Press. Magdy reported from Cairo and Frankel from Jerusalem.