‘American Doctor’ Doc Distributor Condemns Gaza Hospital Bombing Death of Dr. Rizk Abu Shaaira

Watermelon Pictures has condemned the reported killing of Palestinian surgeon Dr. Rizk Abu Shaaira in a Gaza hospital strike on Wednesday after he was featured in director Poh Si Teng’s documentary American Doctor. “We are horrified and heartbroken by the killing of Dr. Rizk Abu Shaaira. This is yet another devastating example of the continued violence against Gaza’s medical community. Hospitals are places of healing, not targets of war. We condemn this attack in the strongest possible terms and call for accountability and an end to the destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system,” Hamza Ali, co-founder of Watermelon Pictures, the North American distributor of American Doctor, said in a statement. Director Si Teng’s documentary, which bowed at Sundance, followed a trio of doctors — Dr. Thaer Ahmad, Dr. Mark Perlmutter and Dr. Feroze Sidhwa — performing surgeries at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, Gaza, amid the war with Israel, risking their lives to save others. Reuters and other news services reported on the Israeli airstrike in southern Gaza. While claiming the life of Dr. Abu Shaaira, the bombing also led to severe injuries for Dr. Mohammed Odainy, another Palestinian surgeon featured in American Doctor. Both physicians worked at Nasser Medical Complex, saving lives amid wartime hardship and atrocities. “…What makes American Doctor stand out is how it eschews the bigger picture to focus primarily on the practical, and often hard-to-watch, reality of surgeons trying to save lives in the operating room. When children are brought into the ER after surviving a bombing, their suffering is unbearable to witness no matter what side of the Israel-Palestinian conflict you find yourself on,” THR film critic Jordan Mintzer said in his Sundance review. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon from California who featured in American Doctor and worked alongside Dr. Abu Shaaira, said performing surgeries with colleagues in a war zone produces close and memorable partnerships. “Dr. Rizk Abu Shaaira and I performed a complex surgery on a man with shrapnel injuries, while Dr. Mohammed Odainy and I operated on a teenager after an American-made bomb tore a hole in his abdominal aorta. Remarkably, the child lived. These two men were my friends, colleagues and an inspiration. Now Dr. Rizk is dead and Dr. Mohammed is fighting for his life. It was an unforgivable crime,” he said in his own statement.