The Manufacturing of an "American Doctor"
Before starring in American Doctor, Feroze Sidhwa spent twenty years nurturing the pro-Hamas movement that made his rise to fame possible — despite insisting he has no stake in the conflict.
Key Findings
“American Doctor,” opening in theaters August 14, presents Feroze Sidhwa as a neutral American physician with no personal stake in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That framing doesn’t survive contact with his own record:
Sidhwa has told MSNBC he has no connection to the conflict whatsoever, yet his own writing going back to 2007 describes decades of activism rooted in what he himself has called a Zoroastrian religious duty to oppose Israel, alongside years spent editing books and essays for Hamas-sympathizing academic Norman Finkelstein.
He has repeatedly and specifically denied ever seeing Hamas inside Gaza’s hospitals, telling the BBC that in his account no one who has ever set foot in Gaza has witnessed it. The record at every hospital where he has volunteered says otherwise.
At European Hospital, where Sidhwa insists he saw no trace of Hamas, the IDF says it found a Hamas tunnel running directly beneath the building, the same tunnel where senior Hamas leader Muhammad Sinwar was killed in a May 2025 strike, along with the bodies of other terrorists and a cache of weapons and intelligence material.
At Nasser Hospital, Sidhwa himself confirmed on Democracy Now that one of two people killed in a March 2025 strike on a recovery room was Ismail Barhoum, the man the IDF identifies as Hamas’s prime minister in Gaza, and argued the strike was illegal anyway. Freed Israeli hostages say they were held inside that same hospital, and Hamas’s own Interior Ministry ran policing operations out of it.
The personal website that now anchors Sidhwa’s media career, complete with a press kit, went live on the exact day his New York Times op-ed was published in October 2024, suggesting the “reluctant-witness” persona was a planned rollout rather than an accident of timing.
Dr. Sidhwa’s Rise to Celebrity
This August, Dr. Feroze Sidhwa arrives in American movie theaters. He is one of three physicians at the center of American Doctor, a documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and begins its U.S. theatrical run on August 14, opening in New York and Toronto before expanding to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and other cities through September.
Distributed by Watermelon Pictures and directed by Poh Si Teng, formerly a documentary commissioner for Qatar’s state-run Al Jazeera English, the film follows Sidhwa alongside Palestinian-American emergency physician Thaer Ahmad and Jewish orthopedic surgeon Mark Perlmutter as they volunteer in Gaza’s hospitals and then return home to lobby Congress and press their case against Israel in the American media.
The film’s title is also its thesis.
Men with ostensibly no ethnic, religious, or national stake in the conflict, moved to speak out by nothing more than what they witnessed in the operating room. “We do not have to accept that as Americans,” Sidhwa says in the trailer. “The United States could stop sending jet fuel, bombs, all sorts of weapons.” He’s simply an American, with no dog in the fight. It’s the same line he’s been retailing ever since his infamous New York Times op-ed came out in late 2024, in which he alleged—without any convincing evidence—that the IDF was wantonly gunning down Palestinian children in Gaza en masse.
It’s also untrue.
Far from a disinterested medic who wandered into a war zone, he is a lifelong anti-Israel activist with a deep religious conviction and a paper trail stretching back nearly two decades—someone who has spent years working alongside some of the most notorious figures in the movement to destroy Israel, before mounting a carefully orchestrated campaign to launder himself into the mainstream. The film is only the largest stage that campaign has reached so far.
To call him “uninvolved,” as he still insists he is, is about as far from the truth as one can get.
But first, let’s begin with the op-ed that put him on the map.
Dr. Feroze Sidhwa Is Far from “Uninvolved”
During an interview on MSNBC, Dr. Sidhwa stated that he has “no connection to the Israel–Palestine conflict. I’m not Jewish, I’m not Israeli, I’m not Palestinian, I’m not Arab, I’m not Muslim, and I’m not Christian. I have no connection to it whatsoever—other than the fact that I’m American.” This is a recurring theme in his advocacy, meant to persuade other “uninvolved” Americans to join his cause.
After conducting my own research, I found Dr. Sidhwa’s repeated claim of being an uninvolved party with no stake in the conflict to be wildly dishonest. In fact, he personally acknowledges a deep Zoroastrian religious connection to it.
Sidhwa grew up in a Farsi household in Flint, Michigan and decided to become a physician after being inspired by an Israeli doctor he met after college while visiting a hospital in the West Bank, according to the Mount Diablo Peace and Justice Center.
By his own admission, he has been studying the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since he was 18—well over half of his life. He claims to have read hundreds of books on the subject and volunteered in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza prior to the war.
In a 2007 article for Counterpunch, Dr. Sidhwa wrote that he “volunteered in Hebron, West Bank, at al-Ahli Hospital [in Hebron] and with the Palestinian Medical Relief Society….”
Similarly, in a 2007 entry by Dr. Sidhwa in the FEZANA Journal — published by the Federation of Zoroastrian Associations of North America — he writes that he “spent eight months in Israel and the West Bank, from October 2004 to May 2005.” Even then, Dr. Sidhwa’s disdain for Israel was evident:
“I also saw what this brutalization of a helpless people is doing to Israel. This previously functional, cohesive socialist society in which healthcare, education and other necessities were once guaranteed is now decaying, with a sharp rise in chronic drug abuse, drug trafficking, violent crime, human trafficking, spousal abuse, homelessness, unemployment, prostitution, forced labor and the like. Israel was born through Palestinian misery; if it stays the course, Israeli society will no doubt self-destruct.”
Dr. Sidhwa then proceeds to explain why Zoroastrians like himself should care about the conclifct, despite not having a direct stake in it:
“Zoroastrians have a unique historical link to the Jewish people. Cyrus the Great ended the Babylonian Captivity, repatriated the enslaved Jews to Jerusalem, and subsequently issued what came to be known as the First Charter of Human Rights. Cyrus is the only non-Jew named to the position of messiah in the Tanakh, and Koresh (‘Cyrus’ in Hebrew) is a common family and street name in Israel. We dishonor Cyrus’s legacy by sitting idly by and letting the self-declared ‘Jewish State’ run drunk with power. Furthermore, the United States bears primary responsibility for this human disaster. The US government funds and subsidizes Israel’s military to the tune of four to six billion dollars per year. Without this unprecedented level of funding, Israel would be forced to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza Strip immediately. Every relevant Arab and Palestinian group and government has stated that such a withdrawal would immediately end the armed conflict. American Zoroastrians, then, shoulder a heavy burden. We can continue funding Israel’s liquidation of Palestinian society and Israel’s own self-destruction, or we can carry forth the humane legacy of Cyrus and apply his Charter to all people.”
Most notable, in my opinion, is that Dr. Sidhwa has helped edit or fine-tune at least five books and essays by notorious Hamas-supporting academic Norman Finkelstein, with whom he has appeared at events during the Hamas-Israel War. The works edited by Sidhwa are:
Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel is Coming to an End (2012)
Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History (2008)
What Gandhi Says: About Nonviolence, Resistance, and Courage (2012)
This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion (2010)
Speaking of Finkelstein, the academic once posted a 2014 email exchange between Dr. Sidhwa and MIT professor Theodore Postol about the Iron Dome—an exchange that Dr. Sidhwa had sent to him. In the email, Dr. Sidhwa expresses frustration over Postol’s claim that Hamas intentionally puts civilians in harm’s way to provoke Israeli strikes and manipulate global opinion. Sidhwa takes offense at the implication that Hamas deliberately uses its own people as human shields. (Which, by the way, is true.)
Most recently, after the far-left Haaretz published a bogus article accusing Israeli soldiers of being ordered to shoot Palestinians gathering near aid sites administered by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, Dr. Sidhwa boosted his response as a paid ad on X — meaning Dr. Sidhwa used his own money, or perhaps funds from an undisclosed benefactor, to amplify the anti-Israel propaganda.
These are not the actions of someone without a deep attachment to the conflict.
Dr. Sidhwa’s Hamas Apologia
Dr. Sidhwa has consistently whitewashed, minimized, and downplayed Hamas’ crimes, as well as their use of civilians as human shields. For example, he has compared the Mossad having its headquarters in central Israel to Hamas operating out of densely populated civilian areas.
He has also claimed that “almost nobody who is actually part of Hamas lives in the West Bank” and that the group “barely exists” there. But having read hundreds of books on the subject, and having volunteered in the West Bank and Israel for eight months during the 2000’s, Dr. Sidhwa knows better. Hamas is deeply embedded in the West Bank—they maintain commanders for specific cities and towns, engage in combat with the IDF, and hold marches there on the regular.
Perhaps most striking is Dr. Sidhwa’s repeated assertion that he didn’t see any Hamas operatives in Gaza hospitals or anywhere else. In one BBC interview, he stated: “I didn’t witness it, and neither has literally anyone else who’s ever been to Gaza. Not a single person ever once, because it’s complete nonsense.”
This is an astonishing claim, considering the wealth of evidence showing Hamas terrorists inside Gaza’s hospitals — and the fact that Hamas runs the medical system in the Strip. Former Israeli hostages have attested to Hamas being present in Gaza’s hospitals; foreign volunteer doctors have attested to it; even Palestinians doctors themselves have attested to it. Yet Dr. Sidhwa denies it? How strange. It’s even more strange because in one X post, he ceded the point (and excused the fact) that Hamas took Israeli hostages into hospitals. So, which is it, Feroze?
Even in June 2025, well after mountains of proof has been published showing Hamas presence inside Gaza’s hospitals, Dr. Sidhwa STILL denied — in an interview with Hamas fan Hasan Piker, no less — seeing Hamas “militants” inside any hospital.
After the publication of his NYT op-ed, Dr. Sidhwa admitted that while Hamas does abuse civilians, he was “unaware of Hamas shooting anyone trying to access aid” — despite well-documented evidence to the contrary dating back to December 2023. He also insisted that it is “absolutely false” that Hamas seeks to maximize civilian casualties or uses human shields. This, despite overwhelming allegations to the contrary from the European Union and UN Secretary General (hardly friends of Israel), the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, the Biden White House, and even Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar himself.
Dr. Sidhwa has also excused Hamas’ unwillingness to allow the Red Cross to visit Israeli hostages, writing that “If Israel were to allow the ICRC into its prisons where thousands of Palestinian hostages [i.e. terrorists] are kept then Hamas would likely allow the ICRC access to the 101 Israeli hostages in Gaza.”
When a user on X posted a video of Palestinian children in a UN school calling in Arabic to kill Jews, Dr. Sidhwa responded by saying that “every Palestinian knows the difference between Jews and Israelis, even though they use the terms ‘Yisraeli’ and ‘Yehudi’ [Israeli and Jew, respectively] interchangeably in common speech.”
With opinions like that, it’s no wonder that Dr. Sidhwa was also interviewed by the Iranian government-run Press TV during one of his delegations to Gaza.
When an X user shared a post highlighting genocidal antisemitic statements by Hamas officials — including calls to “bring annihilation to the Jews,” “tear their hearts from their bodies,” “kill them all,” and “attack every Jew on the globe by way of slaughter and killing” — Dr. Sidhwa replied: “You can find the same and even worse from Israeli leaders, up to and including the Prime Minister of Israel.”
Some Israeli officials have indeed said reprehensible things. But none have made statements remotely comparable to those quoted above.
Dr. Sidhwa & European Hospital
In interviews, articles, and on social media, Dr. Sidhwa frequently cites his time volunteering at European Hospital—where, as he’s eager to remind us, he definitely didn’t see any Hamas members. Because, of course, Hamas has never, ever set foot in a hospital. Not once. Not anywhere. Not ever.
His certainty of the matter is interesting, in light of the substantial evidence that Hamas is indeed present in European Hospital.
For example, Dr. Saleh al-Hams, the nursing director of Gaza’s European Hospital — who is also referred to in the media as the facility’s deputy director — has repeatedly signaled strong ties to Hamas. As I previously discovered, in 2017 and 2018, he shared photos of himself wearing Hamas military attire, including a camouflage jacket and a hat bearing the Qassam Brigades logo. In 2020, he posted images of armed Hamas members and a child holding a rifle, captioned with a defiant statement about resistance and future confrontation. Following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 massacre, al-Hams celebrated the attack, calling it a “gift” and a moment of “pride and dignity.”
Did Dr. Sidhwa never cross paths with Dr. al-Hams? Or are they in fact acquainted—and Dr. Sidhwa is simply unaware, or unwilling to admit, that the hospital’s number two is Hamas himself?
Moreover, the IDF released footage showing a Hamas-built tunnel directly beneath the European Hospital in Khan Younis—the same tunnel where Hamas leader Muhammad Sinwar was killed in a May 13 strike.
According to the IDF and Shin Bet, troops recently accessed the underground facility, discovering the bodies of several Hamas operatives along with command rooms, weapons, and intelligence materials. The military emphasized that this tunnel is yet another example of Hamas using hospitals for terror activity and as safe havens for senior commanders. The May 13 strike also killed Muhammad Shabana, commander of Hamas’s Rafah Brigade, and Mahdi Quara, commander of the South Khan Younis Battalion.
In the days following the strike, Dr. Sidhwa condemned the IDF’s actions and dismissed the idea that a Hamas tunnel existed beneath the hospital—despite “factional sources” (i.e. Hamas) themselves confirming to Saudi media that a tunnel was indeed there.
And if all that weren’t enough, legendary researcher and Honest Reporting board member Salo Aizenberg has identified multiple Islamic Jihad terrorists who doubled as staff at European Hospital. This includes a nurse/Qassam Brigades terrorist, an administrator/Islamic Jihad group commander, a pediatric daycare unit worker/squad leader in a PIJ rocket unit, and another nurse/intelligence commander.
Dr. Sidhwa & Nasser Hospital
Sidhwa returned to Gaza for a second stint in 2025, volunteering at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis from March 3 to April 1—the same hospital where American Doctor is largely set. On March 23, an Israeli strike hit the hospital room where a patient he’d just operated on was recovering, killing two people. In Sidhwa’s own account on Democracy Now, he acknowledged that one of the two people killed was Ismail Barhoum, the figure the IDF has identified as Hamas’s prime minister in the Gaza Strip. Sidhwa’s response wasn’t to deny it, but to argue it was still illegal. (By any reasonable interpretation of the Geneva Conventions, it was absolutely legal, as damage to the hospital was minimal and only two people died — one of whom was the target.)
Two months later, in a May 23, 2025 interview with Israel’s Channel 13, Sidhwa was asked point-blank whether he’d seen tunnels or ammunition at Gaza’s hospitals. “No. And neither has anybody else,” he said. Later in the same answer, he turned to Nasser on his own: if Hamas really had tunnels under the complex, he asked, why was its prime minister killed inside the hospital instead of hiding in the tunnels underneath? It’s an odd piece of logic. It treats the presence of Hamas’s most senior Gaza-based leader inside the hospital as proof there was nothing to find, rather than as exactly the kind of senior Hamas presence Israel has alleged all along.
Nasser’s record, in fact, is among the most extensively documented cases of terrorist exploitation of any hospital in the war. Multiple freed Israeli hostages, including Sharon Aloni Cunio, have said they were held captive inside the complex. Hamas’s own Interior Ministry ran policing operations out of the hospital, at one point ordering a Gaza resident to appear for interrogation at a location stamped “Ministry of Interior, West Khan Younis Police, Investigations Dept., Nasser Hospital.”
And in April 2025, Islamic Jihad’s armed wing threatened Nasser’s own head of nursing after he tried to keep the group’s gunmen out of the wards, warning him in a note that he’d “crossed the line.”
The overlap between medical staff and terrorist operatives goes well beyond isolated threats. Islamic Jihad’s own obituaries have named operatives such as Salem Juma Ishaq Sharab as simultaneously serving as a Nasser Hospital nurse, treasurer of the Palestinian Nursing Association, and a commander in the group’s Military Ambulance Unit for the Khan Younis Brigade.
Aizenberg found that Islamic Jihad has confirmed several additional operatives held positions as medical staff at the facility.
Even Doctors Without Borders—hardly a friendly source for Israel’s version of events—announced in February 2026 that it was suspending non-critical operations at Nasser after its own staff and patients witnessed “armed men, some masked,” moving through the compound. As recently as last month, the IDF said it killed senior Islamic Jihad commander Zaki Abu Mustafa while he was using the hospital to train new operatives.
None of this squares with Sidhwa’s insistence that he and everyone else who worked in Gaza’s hospitals saw nothing.
Creating an Artificial Hamas Spokesman
The most revealing part of Dr. Sidhwa’s emergence as the medical field’s go-to Hamas apologist is that it appears to be part of a calculated media campaign to launder him into the mainstream.
Consider this: While most readers of the New York Times op-ed that launched his public profile were rightly outraged at its dishonesty, the article may not have been the end goal. It may have simply been a launchpad.
Since the op-ed’s publication, Dr. Sidhwa—once an unknown figure operating quietly in anti-Israel circles behind the scenes—has become a prolific commentator. The timing isn’t incidental. His personal website, which includes a press kit and sections highlighting his advocacy work, was registered and launched on October 9, 2024—the very day the op-ed was published.
This isn’t the behavior of a “neutral” observer. It’s the calculated move of someone who’s spent years preparing to become a full-time propagandist—driven by deep ideological and religious conviction, and armed with a clear strategy.
Dr. Feroze Sidhwa is not impartial. He is not a bystander. He is a deeply committed, ideologically motivated actor with a long track record of minimizing Hamas’ atrocities, distorting facts, and weaponizing his medical credentials to smuggle disinformation into the public square.
And the media, willingly or not, has played along.
And now the film industry has joined them. When American Doctor reaches theaters this month, it will give Sidhwa his largest audience yet—an acclaimed, award-winning documentary that presents him to the public exactly as he has always wished to be seen — the reluctant American healer, blameless and above the fray.
But audiences heading to theaters deserve to know who’s really doing the talking.