Chapo Trap House - UNLOCKED: 1068 - American Doctor feat. Mark Perlmutter and Thaer Ahmad (9/3/26)

Episode Date: September 8, 2026

Mark Perlmutter and Thaer Ahmad from the documentary American Doctor join us this week to discuss their time working as doctors in Gaza. They discuss what they witnessed in Gaza during the genocide, their attempts to persuade politicians on Capitol Hill, the medical industry’s willfull blindness to Palestinian suffering, and what needs to happen to cure the cancerous ideology of Zionism. Find all things about the film including where to see it here: https://americandoctorfilm.com/

Hello, everybody. It's Thursday, September 3rd, and we've got some chopo for you. Joining us on today's show are two American doctors featured in the new documentary, American Doctor. Ther Ahmed and Mark Pohlmutter. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you for having us. No, obviously, like, this is a new documentary that is about the experiences of being a volunteer in the Gaza Strip under unimaginable conditions. And Dr. Pormutter, I would like to start with you. because I saw a recent interview with you, and you said something in it that really struck me.

And this is a question asked in the context of, like, are you a doctor or an activist? Or like, why not just focus on being a doctor? Why engage in a controversial political debate right now? And you said something that I had never considered before, and you said that part of being, the work of being a doctor is that you're routinely, not routinely, but doctors are often called to testify in murder trials.

Can you talk about your work in this film, and particularly your efforts to talk about it in America or to the media. What you saw as an eyewitness, really. Sure. I mean, this is a pretty simple answer that your question provides a segue for. Whether I'm dealing with a single patient with a gunshot wound, it's my job to advocate for that patient, right? My job is to tell the truth, report what I observe.

And if I have to share that with authorities for the defense or prosecution of that patient, that's what's necessary. Truth telling is mandatory. Directly reporting what I see is mandatory. We do that in our practice 100% of the time in the United States. If it requires testifying court, we do it. And probably all of us have done it. When you go to a global trauma and you take care of one patient, that obligation doesn't change. When you have thousands of patients that are experiencing this same exact trauma, that obligation doesn't change. When the guilty party isn't one perpetrator, then you have to identify the disease. If you have somebody in the United States who shoots somebody else that we know the source of the disease. It's a, you know,

it's a nine millimeter slug that was fired by this person's gun. I can testify if there's powder burns close to the skin which dictates range. I can testify what's fractured and what organs were penetrated and what surgery was required to fix it. When that pattern repeats on the scale of, in God's sake, tens of thousands of people, we don't lose that responsibility. When society is the cause of the disease, then our responsibilities to report that. And so when you report that to a government agency

or a police agency in the United States, nobody says you're an activist. But when you report it to CNN to deaf ears, you know, then all of a sudden we're activists. And that's the first part. The second part is we had to assume that role. It would have been nice to have a reporter handy to say, hey, look what we found.

It would have been nice to have somebody who had maintained their journal holistic integrity and say to the world, hey, listen, there's a ton of doctors that are saying and reporting and writing to the New York Times that we saw children shot in the chest and or head on the daily, not even including the reports of kids buried alive, not even including the kids that were shredded by bombs, not even the kids that had head trauma, not the 100% incidence of psychological trauma that has yet to be treated in anybody, all in an impressively innocent population that it chews love and companionship and friendship and you know period it's just a

loving giving population that's being inappropriately targeted because 0.02% of the Gaza population 0.02% of the population are Hamas operatives yet they feel like they have to bomb all 200, I'm sorry, 2.5 million of them. So. Thayer, same question to you. Like, as not just a, I feel like we're all witnesses to this, but like you guys, you are both eyewitnesses. Because you talk about like the same duty that you feel both of your professional ethics, but also you are a Palestinian American to not just be an eyewitness to what could be the greatest crime of the 21st century. Mark, you described it as the largest pediatric homicide of our lifetimes, but like. Definitively.

Yeah. But Thayer, like what motivates your sense of professional ethics and also like personal. identity in taking this on. Well, yeah, I mean, I think for myself, there's a lot of the mixing, right? I mean, I grew up in the Palestinian diaspora very much was what was ingrained in us, is how can you support the struggle for freedom for Palestinians, the right to movement, the right to health? That was from a very early age, something that was drilled in us in terms of what our values

needed to be as we enjoyed the privileges of living in the United States, enjoyed having access to all of the luxuries that we do. And, you know, just kind of growing up through the first intifold, the second intifolda, going back during these times, seeing some of the violence that was being inflicted, watching the apartheid wall be constructed, visiting Gaza after many of the Israeli military operations. This, you know, for us, in the Palestinian diaspora, at least, after October 7th and we saw the way the Israelis were essentially committing genocide, there was a desperate sense amongst the entire community, what can we do? You know, I mean, it's important, I think, for people to know, and you guys know this,

but the Israelis totally cut off Gaza on October 8th in a way that we'd never seen before, a place that was already under blockade for multiple decades. And they had decided that they were basically going to cut off any source of oxygen to the people, literally and figuratively. You know, they shut down the borders, they cut off the electricity, they stopped, they destroyed the water infrastructure,

the only two power plants in Gaza, they bombed. And so right away, I think everybody was watching what was taking place, and they were like, they've just completely hermetically sealed Gaza off from the entire world in the most severe way, and there's no access, no way for any of us to sort of get in.

So when the opportunity came up to be able to enter with the World Health Organization, and the NGOs that were taking doctors in, I didn't even get a choice in the matter. I didn't even have a say in it. It was, okay, you have a chance to go now as one of us from the community, you've got to go. It was as if, you know, everybody was packing my bags for me.

So, you know, that was sort of the disposition. And then on top of that, and Mark is additionally also a global health provider. I mean, this is something that is a part of our professional identities. We participate in global health. We believe that every single person on the planet has a right to health, safety, security, and certain protections that they deserve. And so for us, you know, any zone is something that we want to go and stand in solidarity with the local healthcare workers.

And in Gaza particularly, we saw very early on that our colleagues, the people that share our professor and the fraternity of doctors and nurses and first responders, they were being targeted. They were being killed. And so, you know, for me, that was, I mean, that was devastating to watch and it was more of a there was a duty and I think every health care person should be feeling this and if they don't they should really look back at you know some of the oaths that they've taken and the profession that we that we serve in but you've got colleagues

who are being targeted who are being shot who are being abducted it's your job it's your responsibility the bare minimum is to express some degree of solidarity whether that's standing beside them in hospitals or bringing it back here to the United States well what you mentioned about like an unprecedented level of blockade on Gaza. I mean, you know, we have obviously seen like horrible blockades, both in the region and outside. I always think about the Saudi and Emirati intervention in the Yemeni Civil War. Yeah, as an example of like, you know, just a horrific blockade that the world has,

unfortunately did not pay very much attention to at the time. But just, you know, sort of by virtue of either Saudi cowardice or just their employment of Colombian mercenaries instead of their own foot soldiers, there wasn't, I mean, this is a pretty grim way to put a grim thing, but not quite that personal touch. They obviously did these triple tap strikes where they would take out aid workers and doctors. But early on in the movie, you guys talk about how, you know, you notice the incredibly high voluble. of children you treated that had gunshot wounds to the head and how you this just this doesn't happen by accident. I was wondering if that was obviously you guys were aware of the types of things that Israel does. But what was sort of was that sort of like the first thing you noticed where you went obviously this is an atrocity, but this is unlike anything we've ever seen. I think so. I mean one point to make also, Felix, about what you mentioned with respect to Yemen and even Syria at the time

and as well as Sudan very recently. One thing that also really, really makes Gaza different is in many of those places, there was still a path to sort of to exit. So in Yemen, people would cross the Red Sea. They'd go to Djibouti. They'd go to, you know, sort of East African nations. And by no means was that easy at all because there were some really horrifying things and people took advantage of many of the people who were seeking refuge. In Syria, they'd cross over into Turkey, Lebanon, and then in Sudan, eight million people flew, you know, went to Egypt. And the problem with Gaza was,

even though the plan is ethnic cleansing by the Israeli military, they were still blocking them in through the Navy on the Mediterranean side, through the Rafah border, which is between Egypt and Gaza, and then, of course, every other sort of aspect of the airspace and the land crossings were completely controlled by the Israeli military. And so it was a very bizarre thing where it's like they want to ethnically cleanse the land, but part of how they'll do that is by incinerating Palestinians as they're trying to flee. You know, it was a very disturbing thing that we saw.

And to your point, the way that the Israelis have never been particularly discriminant in the way that they've decided to attack Gaza. I mean, if you go back as early as 2009 in Operation Caslet, a third of the people that they killed were children. And I think what concerned many people and what we saw was there was a sort of an effort. Like when you say genocide, it was it was materializing in a very real way on the ground. And you just saw that despite there was these announcements of here's an evacuation area, go to this part or go to go to this area. This is a safe zone.

You would still see kids being shot by snipers, drones. you know, tank shells, or, you know, just get, or a fighter jet is dropping a two-ton bomb. So it was an incredible amount of violence that was being inflicted on the Palestinians, and it was very sophisticated, you know, all of the weaponry possible, all of the might of the U.S. and Israeli military was being unleashed on them. For me, I'd never seen anything like that. I would add to that with a little counterpoint. I think that much of what they've done historically, and particularly since October 7th,

was very discriminant. Although they didn't discriminately drop a 2,000-pound bomb, which is enough to level a city block in New York's in New York. And they've dropped 100,000 of them. And that's just the 2,000-pound bombs, not including the JBMs or whatever they're called, the 500-pound bombs, not the missiles. Just the 2,000-pound bombs were enough to incinerate all of Manhattan

and all of Chicago and half of Philadelphia. to cinders. But I think that's the indiscriminate part. The discriminative part is journalists and kids were specifically targeted. Doctors were specifically targeted. They were in Yemen. They were in Gaza. And they had been.

Even back during the March of the White Flags, they had competitions that how many kneecaps they could shoot. It was kneecap day. And how many, even in people that had one leg that were in wheelchairs, their kneecaps were targeted. So it's sport to them. On some days, they shot girls in their feet on some boys in their groin. Younger boys, little older boys got assassinated because they felt they were tomorrow's Hamas fighters.

It's part of a game in addition to the fact that the indiscriminate part was really horrible. The software program that would follow kids home from their playground, little boys' home in particular, knowing that they would go to their fathers and they blow up the whole apartment building hoping that that father was a two and a half million chance of being a Hamas fighter they would blow up the whole apartment building that's indiscriminate

but the specific assassination where you put a child's chest in your rifle scope that's deliberate yeah it's a really stultifying mixture of just you know, widespread terror bombing and then just, you know, a lot of hay has been made about the propaganda around, you know, quote unquote precision weapons. But there are weapons that are, they have an incredibly small, uh, CEM, which I don't want to get into too deep how, you know,

that describes a weapons accuracy. But they have these things called small diameter bombs, which are, they're not as large as some of the... These weren't, though. These weren't small diameter of bombs. I have a photograph of a building that had, that housed women and children, and two days later, there's a 20-foot hole in the ground by 50 meters wide. Oh, yeah, no, yeah. Right. I mean, they, yeah, these are like GPU.

Israel was outlawed for using titanium fledgets, little darts that would shoot out and kill in discrimony. They literally were looked like darts that you could throw at a dartboard. and they were small and they were pointy and they were titanium and they would fly through the air at all directions, deliberately designed to fly 100 yards and kill anybody within that 100 yards, identical to the prism that the United States just dropped in Iran and killed 11 children two days ago. That explodes high above your head and puts titanium and magnesium pellets down onto the, very indiscriminately, to the population below that. bomb, killing people within 200 yards. And they have used those weapons again in Gaza, outlawed weapons in Gaza. I've seen patients with phosphorus burns, an outlawed weapon in the world. But I had one patient with 75 burns on his body.

A physician ended up dying from those phosphorus burns. One little piece of hot phosphorus went all the way through his body. Yeah, I mean, just the Israeli use of, you know, white phosphorus, they've unfortunately, I think I first read about that during Grapes of Raff back in 2009. But I was going to bring up the example of this was, I think, about 18 months into this, where they had done what you guys have described, where they tell people, okay, go to this refugee camp. We won't hit you here. We're not. You're safe here. And they use these weapons called small diameter bombs,

which are among the most accurate glide bombs you can use. They're the single most accurate kits that you're going to fix to small bombs that have ever existed. They have an incredibly small CEM. And they targeted individual tents filled with families with these, you know, 64, or 250-pound bombs. In some cases, they were incendiary, but it just, there is this horrifying mix of just, yeah, these completely indiscriminate attacks

where, like you said, they're dropping these 2,000-pound bombs on entire buildings, and then targeting individual tents and shooting children in the head, we did see them first try. that in 2021 during the peaceful protests. But it just, I don't think we've ever seen it all come together like this in such a, like all at once in such a horrifying way.

Yeah, I think you're right because I think the Israelis, what they saw was this was a singular opportunity in their history to be able to unleash everything that they've got. And they've, they had the bandwidth internationally. And they, quite frankly, even though there's growing amounts of pressure, they still have that space to be able to operate in this way. But they saw that they saw this opportunity to be able to go all out, whether that's AI applications, all types of the weaponry that they were using full, full, like, ground invasion using all of their troops calling up all of the reserves that they could. And I mean, you know, they did not want to, they did not want to

miss any opportunity to just go all out in Gaza. And one last thing I'll say because maybe, but I was listening to an interview where I was reading about an interview, David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker was in Israel. And he was interviewing with Haritz. And he said something like, he felt that the Netanyahu government, they didn't listen to Joe Biden's advice in the couple of days after October 7th. Joe Biden had said, don't make the same mistake the Americans made, referring to 9-11, Afghanistan and Iraq.

And he said, don't make that same mistake of operating with rage. And then David Remnick says, well, but then he didn't heed Joe Biden's advice. And they did operate with rage. And I disagree with that. I don't think it was a rage that was motivating the Israeli military or the decisions that were made. I think this was very clearly and strategically developed, very thoughtfully implemented by the Israelis, right? It was 100% orchestrated. All the weapons that Hamas had were given to them by Netanyahu. Egypt gave them warnings.

They dropped the overflight of the predator drones over the, for lack of a better term, demilitarized zone that surrounded the two walls that's in campus, Gaza and create the open air prison. This was perfectly orchestrated. This is part of their mowing of the lawn so they can acquire Gaza.

They want to sell their drilling rights off the ocean. They've already, last week, offered it to Britain. There's $2 trillion of natural gas. And if you look at Netanyahu's map of Greater Israel that he presented to the UN, it goes from the Nile River, from

the west bank of the Nile River all the way over to the Red Sea where they can have deep water ports and water supplies. That's why they want the Nile. That's why they want the Jordan River. That's why they want the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. So this is a geopolitical money grab. And it's going to continue. That's why they get northern Syria. That's why they're in Lebanon. And that's why they want their biggest competition, Turkaya, out of the game. Mark, in terms of what you're talking about, in terms of like this very deliberate and very discriminate strategy of killing and killing tons of people

as well, but like specific individuals and doctors and health care workers specifically. Can you talk about just like if one were to say, if one wants to argue that this isn't a genocide, how would that possibly account for the very deliberate targeting of so far

that we know of, 1700 healthcare workers in Gaza had been killed since October 7th by the Israeli military? Statistically, you're asking me to assume the null hypothesis, which I think is bullshit. Their invasion on October 7th was not defensive. If you ignore my previous thoughts that it was orchestrated, it was still an overkill. If they wanted Hamas, let me hit a rewind button. I think it was the Olympics were in Munich or Berlin, I forget. And Hamas or some other

militant group had taken over an LL airline. And they were able to, go into this aluminum tube with closed and doors that seal from the inside with no windows that a human can climb through and they got into the plane and without losing a single passenger

they killed the this is the Mossad or the special forces of Israel killed the assailants and so they were telling me that they can't go into Gaza and kill 36,000 selective or just the people who run Hamas

and decapitate the management of them. They chose and said the wholesale bomb, the whole population, with enough TNT equivalent to be greater than the bombs that fell on Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined. And Gaza is smaller than Nagasaki, the smaller of those two cities.

It didn't take that much TNT to destroy Hamas, which, especially if they're proclaiming that they lived underground. You know, they're very adept. the tunnel warfare. We had a prolonged war in Vietnam where we went into tunnels. They could have done that if that's what they chose to do. But instead, let's kill every one of their family members instead.

So even if you don't believe that it was orchestrated, even if you don't believe that most of the hostages were killed on their way into Gaza by their narrative to kill their own people, it was still an immense overkill. And then when you combine with that, you know, images of children that are shot in the heart exactly where I would put my stethoscope or in the side of the temple perfectly. And then that child comes in time after time after time all over Gaza, over the entire span that American doctors were allowed in there in every single hospital at all times of the day. It's hard to imagine that Ben Gavir didn't order that, particularly when he's releasing videos

of him stating that they should continue with the deliberate assassination of Palestinians up to 40 a day. And if he's saying 40, he's meaning 400. And that's targeted assassinations. And so, and even those that committed no crime, just because they're Palestinian, because quoting him, they're not worthy of life. But in terms of that strategy, though, like when, in a situation like this, when you assassinate a doctor, like, you're not just killing them, but like the knock-on effect of, like, how many. dozens or hundreds of people will die. Oh, of course. Yeah.

There's no difference between a doctor and incinerating the sewage system or bombing a mosque, which provides care to orphans. There's no difference between imprisoning a doctor, you know, as, you know, as we speak, there's 400 health cares that are hostages in Israeli prisons. And I might point out to you that nobody asked what was going on in Gaza or Israel on October 6th, when there were still 400, you know, Israelis, 400 Palestinians that were in Israeli prisons on October 6th. So the imprisonment of health care workers and journalists and is just part of tearing apart the fabric, the supportive fabric of a society.

That's what happened in Yemen. That's what happened in Nazi Germany. That's what happened in Gaza. It's what's happening in the West Bank. Now, obviously, like, the three of you that are highlighted in this movie, like they're sort of the audience's entry point into Gaza. But like a large part of this movie too is about the people that you work with when you arrive in Gaza. I'm wondering if what could you tell us about your colleagues at Nasser Hospital,

like the medical students, nurses, surgeons, the people that can't leave Gaza essentially and are still doing this work every day. Absolutely. And I can summarize all of their attitudes, their work. their ability to self-sacrifice, by every measure that one would describe the ideal physician. They excelled that by definition and were phenomenal. We have people, I have medical students, Sama, who's in the film, who walked two miles

every day to and from her home to volunteer to help. And that's true for emergency room technicians, people who weren't getting paid, their families are starving. we would give them a charging battery and they would take it home because that was their only power supply for the tent at nighttime. They were far removed

all the way to the coast and they would still walk all the way to the eastern part of Gaza to help without pay leaving their families alone because their desire to help with the surgeries for their injured countrymen. I have doctors

that were imprisoned in Israeli jails. for 11 months. Their fingers crushed because they wouldn't tell them where the hidden Hamas players were in tunnels that didn't exist.

And they were shown pictures of their children playing and said, we will send this drone through your children's bedroom window if you don't tell us and they would show a picture of his house.

They would take a recently geotagged and timestamped picture of his wife from the day before because they have spies there and say, we will bring her to you and gang rape her in front of you. We'll have our dogs rape her if you don't tell us where the

Hamas fighters are underneath of the hospital. And we looked underneath the hospital. There's no place for anybody to hide. There's H-FAC piping in small little crawl spaces. There's no underground anything. And there is not in any hospital, especially Al-Shefa, which was built by Israel. So every single doctor,

every single nurse, every single tech, stepped over and above. We didn't see one that didn't eagerly volunteer. We didn't see one that didn't sacrifice themselves. And indeed, one doc in the movie stayed on his station, an anesthesia doctor, stayed on his station while his daughter was dying. Mark, there's a scene in the movie that's almost like a little throwaway moment, but it really struck me.

And it's a scene where you and your colleagues are preparing for a story. surgery. And you're talking to the Palestinian doctors and nurses that you're working with. And this guy's on his phone. And you're doing a bit of like the sort of playful banter and roasting that you would normally do among your colleagues. Or you say, oh, we got to get ready for surgery. Hey, your girlfriends can wait. I know you got a lot of girlfriends. And then the guy like immediately drops. And he said, goes, no, I'm texting my mother because my brother is in the north right now and he's trying to get out. And then like the other guy there starts talking about like his 10 month old infant was killed. And it's just like, to me, it's like that the normal reality of the way

we interact with people, like, it runs into this wall of like just the hellish reality of what everyone is living through day to day. Right. I, on my OR days, I'm wondering, you know, that they deliver lunch, you know, and they're worried about family members dying, their own children dying, whether their families survive the bombing that they just heard about, whether the cholera is spreading into their tents, whether, you know, five more families were moved into their tent. whether 2 million people who share 200,

2 million people who share 200 toilets, they're worried about the sanitary conditions. They're worried about whether they will have any power. They're worried about, you know, whether it will rain on them that night or in the wintertime, whether they'll freeze. They're worried about food. The amount of food insecurity is tremendous.

I'm wondering if I'll have time to, you know, for my third lunch between cases, and here they haven't had dinner the night before. And if you give some, that doctor in the movie that was upset that his 10-month-old got killed, I gave him a protein bar every day. And I saw him put it in his pocket.

And on the last day, he had five protein bars at his pocket because he was going to see his family that weekend. He was saving them to take to his family. A lot of the movie is about what it takes to get in Gaza. But like your sort of your story in the movie is very much about not getting into Gaza. Because you talk about like your efforts. Like I know you did at least one trip there.

In the movie, you're denied acts entry to Gaza as a doctor over and over again. Because you talk about like how you and because specifically because you're Palestinian are kept out of doing this kind of work. Yeah. I mean, I think that's a policy that is being implemented across. all of Palestine. So what you're seeing is Palestinians, even Palestinians within Palestine and also in the diaspora. There's being prevented from being connected with each other. So my family now lives in the West Bank. And most of my family members have never been to Gaza, even though it's

about an hour drive away. And we're originally from Gaza. My family is originally from Gaza. People in Gaza, most of them, I would say the majority of people in Gaza have never been able to visit the West Bank. People in Hebron have a very tough time being able to visit the people in the north in places like Janine, Tulkarim, and Nablis. And those people in Nablus and Tulkarim and Janine have never been able to go to Jerusalem. So there's this policy that the Israeli military is very specific about. And it's very insidious. And it's been at play for a very long time. In addition to the settlement expansion that you'll see sort of going through all of the different villages in the West Bank, they're also trying to cut off Palestinians from each other. And so

what you see is after the Israelis seize the border in May of 2024, the border between Palestine and Egypt, you see that the Israelis now take full control with their own troops about who's able to enter into Gaza. And what they do is they are essentially making you go to Jordan. And in Jordan, you get this approval within 24 hours about whether or not as a healthcare worker, you're able to volunteer in Gaza alongside your Palestinian colleagues. And so you really kind of see that on display about not just it's arbitrary to begin with. So plenty of internationals are being rejected very arbitrarily. But every Palestinian whose parents or grandparents were born in Palestine are being rejected from being able to go into Gaza.

It's not just like the denial of doctors being allowed into Gaza. It's like the ones they do allow in what they're allowed to bring with them into Gaza, including very basic medical supplies. Mark in the film, you're in your hotel room and you're like secreting antibiotics in your luggage in the hopes that whatever border guard like won't find it. Like, could you give us like some perspective on like the denial of like very basic medical necessities in Gaza? I can do that. But let me just hit a rewind button on to add something that my partner said.

There are over eight million Palestinians in the diaspora in the world, meaning ones that don't live in Palestine. When you eliminate that population from coming to their homeland to help, you are eliminating the number one resource of people who could help. There was no limitation 9,000 plus days ago for Americans who flocked into New York City to help with 9-11 that were coming up on. That was over 9,000 days ago. I went there and I was there at Ground Zero. There was no limitations in anybody to go to Hurricane Andrew and Katrina. And I was there both days that the hurricanes hit.

You know, we are needed at these traumas. I was an American serving America. Yet, you know, Thayer was denied entrance into his homeland. And as were the entire 8.1, 8.2 million Palestinians that live outside of Palestine. Of that 8.1 or 8.2 million, there's at least 100,000 to 200,000 medical professionals and they are not allowed in. There's more medical professionals that want to come in

in that are Palestinian heritage than are in Palestine on October 6th. And yet, so when Israel deliberately denies the diaspora from coming in and bringing in money and bringing in food and bringing in medical supplies, you are distinctly hurting the most likely source of relief, deliberately targeting the most likely resource of relief. leave and eliminating it. And that was a perfect and initial example of how to start the genocide.

You asked about medical supplies. On the first time I went there, I brought in 700 pounds of metal implants, orthopedic implants. We screw plates and things and put rods in broken bones. That 700 pounds was gone in the first week. It was spread amongst all the hospitals. They came and spread it out. It was all gone the first week. By the third week I was there, we're trying to call other hospitals to get more of the plates that I brought, but everybody had used them up, plates and screws and rods. I haven't put in 700 pounds of metal implants collectively in 30 years in Americans. That's how much was gone. So the amount of equipment that was used up right away was insane, which speaks to how many people were sitting around needing this material with broken bones.

The next thing is the second year I went, Israel confiscated my microsurgical instruments, $10,000 worth of instruments I used to sew nerves and tendons together. Again, we went there when the ceasefire was on, hoping that we can do the reconstructive surgery from the damage that was done for the year earlier. So when they take my microsurgical instruments, I mean really small instruments that have no military usage, they know what they're doing, they know they're blocking my ability. to repair a human being. They took my second jar of peanut butter.

They took every antibiotic that I brought, even ones on a bottle with my own name on it, that trying to make the antibiotics look like they were for me personally, which was supposed to be allowed. Virtually everything was confiscated. We weren't allowed to bring in a duplicate of any food source because for fear that we would give it to them. We weren't allowed to bring in any more than, I think,

$250, $2, $260,000, American, knowing that converting it to dinars and shekels were going to lose something in the transition and knowing that the cost of going from a Monjordan by bus getting visas, et cetera, and then getting back was going to cost $250. So they left us no room to take any cash in. They left us no room to bring medicine in or supplies. They left us no room to bring cash. Can I make a point here that just to kind of, there's a lot. like, I think a very clear-cut example of just how evil things have got at some point. I don't know what other word to use, to Mark's point, you know, when he gets his surgical equipment

confiscated. But during the height of the famine in the summertime, there is a doctor at Nassar hospital. His name is Dr. Ahmed al-Farra. He's in charge of the pediatrics there. And he put out a global call, but he also contacted everybody that was trying to volunteer. And he said, I've got eight premature babies here at Nassad Hospital in the NICU. And I need specialized formula for them because these babies were so premature, you cannot just give them regular formula. It has to be a special formulation. Otherwise, they could suffer some consequences. Quite frankly, they could die as a result of not being able to handle the regular formula.

So everybody who was entering into Gaza at that time period said we're going to try to procure as much of this premature baby formula as possible. And I remember when I got rejected one of the times I had a bunch of it in my luggage and it never made it inside of Gaza. But there were some people who got accepted to go in. And the Israeli troops at the border crossing between Jordan and the West Bank, Jericho, confiscated the infant formula. So there was a lot of conversations you'll hear from the Israelis. They'll try to explain it and say, we don't want any, they'll use the word diversion. We don't want aid diversion. We don't want the aid to get to the wrong people.

or we don't want any of these supplies to be used as a dual use item. Marks surgical instruments. Maybe somebody melts the metal and uses it. But there was never an explanation as to why you're not allowed to bring in baby formula. And the last thing I'll tell you, because I'm very involved in the aid delivery system right now, is I had a colleague. He's a plastic surgeon. So when he heard that the baby formula was literally being dumped at the border, he said, let me try this. Let me put some of the powder in some muscle milk, you know, the protein powder.

that people used to work out. He said, let me dump a bunch of the premature formula, the powder, into this and see if it works. He puts it into a huge muscle milk, whole big black thing. I mean, it's massive, if you guys have seen it like any of these vitamin stores. Goes in, they don't even check it. He's able to bring it in. I mean, that's a deliberate policy of starvation. And the problem, the final point I make, I'm sorry for going on too much about this.

But every single day that we deprived those kids in that Nicky, of that formula, we know as physicians and people should know this. Every single day that those kids were not getting the formula that they needed, and Dr. Ahmed al-Farrah was rationing it, and their parents were sitting outside just hoping that some delivery would come one of these days. Every single day, we were messing with their neurological development, their physical development, their ability to even, their IQ scores. We were literally playing with it.

Every single day we were at their immune systems. Yeah, and their immune, exactly, exactly. So, tell the story, my friend, of how when a hospital was approached and ordered to evacuate, that there were, I think, eight to 12 children in incubators. And that the Israeli commander said, no worries, we will take care of these children in the incubators because they were about to shut off the electrical supply to the hospital.

All the doctors and nurses were ordered out of the hospital. And the pediatric team, you know, under gunpoint, said, yeah, but look, let's take care of these kids and the incubators. Yeah. Yeah. Finish that story. That's, this is, this is something that was horrifying. Did not make it, by the way, into Western media when they surrounded this hospital. That hospital is called Nasir. Not Nasir. It's called the Nasir. And that is in North Gaza. And so we have a colleague who worked with us at Nasir.

He's a pediatrician. He would work in that pediatric ICU. The Israelis, this is what they did to the hospitals. They surrounded them. They would make everybody leave. Sometimes they shot them as they was leaving the hospital. they would leave these massive graves in these hospital courtyards. And they said they had these babies that were hooked up to the incubators who you need to have specialized transport. And they said, don't worry about it. We're coordinating with the Red Cross. They named the Red Cross. And they said, the Israeli military said, we're coordinating.

We'll get these kids. We've got. We'll handle it. You guys just have to leave. And so the health care staff left. Some of them in that moment were abducted, by the way, and taken to Israeli prison. But they left. And then after the Israeli military withdrew a few days, like about a week later,

some, and a couple of weeks later, actually, there were some local journalists that went into the hospital and they found those babies still in the incubators and their bodies decomposing. I mean, this is one of the most horrifying stories that emerged and they have the video of it. It's just never been shown here. Nor will it be by our legacy media.

Well, that is another big part of this movie, which is not just your experiences in Gaza. A lot of the movie is about your experience coming back to America and trying to tell what you saw an experience, there to an American or Western media that seems to be employed to like pretend that it's not happening. And I guess like my question to both of you is that like in 2026 after like nearly three years of this, leaving aside the general public. But like do you think that there's anyone

in the American government or media that doesn't know what's going on that like it's not a genocide? Like that they think that they're in good faith just simply believing what they're being told or is it just a fact that like they're too cowed to say otherwise? Or they're, they know exactly what's going on and they support it, but just can't say it out loud. Or they know who signs their paycheck, you know, like Van Jones, right? He's a black male. He's not as, maybe he's a Zionist, but he's not Jewish. You know, Dana Bash, who's a prostitute for Israel, is her parents, grandparents died at Auschwitz, I believe. You know, she's a Zionist. Jake Tapper's a Zionist.

most of the people in the Biden administration who freely went on their show to talk to them were Zionists. I think it's who signs their paycheck. I mean, look at the people who run the legacy media. They're Zionists. People are whores for their paycheck. And some of them have some religious zealessness about them. But I think a lot of people just do it for the pay. Look, Van Jones was showing a picture on a video arguing that,

a starving baby was CGI or because he had genetic defects and warning people under the pretense of warning people not to believe everything you see on social media, even though that baby died two months after that review by him, saying that it was phony. These people have no conscience. They're happy to support the Israeli agenda. They know very well because it's their job to know very well, what's going on in the world. You have to presume that there's students of the world, that they download the DW in Germany and France 24 and other, you know, governments, and Irish news and South African news. You'd have to believe that they, that they listen to Al Jazeera world. They listen to what's going on. But they never present the other side. They never present the other side.

And one thing I'll say, and I obviously will not go as far as Mark's very vivid descriptions of things or people. But there is a component of this, too, where there's dehumanization playing in the background. For decades and decades, there's been this very racist rhetoric towards Palestinians. And so we did encounter in Capitol Hill, for example, people who have absolutely adopted those racist beliefs, that sort of dehumanizing rhetoric about people in the Middle East about Palestinian. Can you give an example? Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, you know, one thing that you would commonly hear in terms of the justification for the blockade that was causing famine was, you know, this is because of the radical Muslims in Palestine and their, what was the, I forgot, but there's like, I forgot the term they used, but there is like an

unbridled and this very singular focus of them to kill all Jewish people. and that's just being said out loud and in a congressional office and they're like that is the problem with groups like Hamas with Islamic jihad, all of these groups in the Middle East and this is what they teach in the schools in Palestine, this is what the kids

grow up learning and this is why there are 14 or 15 year olds who even though they're technically under the age of 18 they join these groups I mean this is stuff that you would hear in congressional offices just absolutely like reductive language and reasoning as to why it's okay to then to starve the entire population

And where do you start with something like that? Like where do you, how do you re-educate somebody and say, well, you know, none of that, none of what you said is kind of what we're seeing here. We're seeing, yes, you're seeing, it's so much more, you know, deeper than that. Palestinians are deeper than that. You know, there's a civil society that's there. There's civil discourse. There are, you know, lively discussions.

There's many professionals. You're just saying that this group has a bunch of these slaves and then this is their singular focus in life. if that's the case, we'll never have a solution. So those were very early conversations we were having, particularly right-wing and right-wing offices that we were hoping would, we were trying to appeal like faith-based, even, to be honest with you. I mean, I'll just share kind of whatever our strategies would be.

If we saw somebody was, you know, really used religion and faith core to their values, and that's what they ran on, we try to appeal to that. And we try to say, like, you know, this is, you know, think about the children here, you know, think about the war on children, think about how they're starving them, the vulnerable populations, and that's what you're met with talk like that. You're met with, well, essentially, nobody ever said this explicitly.

But essentially, these are not humans like we're humans. Just in light of that, I think it's a little over halfway into the documentary where some of you guys, you go to Ted Cruz's office. And I've probably referenced this a million times on the show, but Ted Cruz, obviously anyone who follows this stuff knows that Ted Cruz is like just out and out insane neocon, Zionist,

et cetera, et cetera. One of the most illustrative things that Ted Cruz ever did as far as the Middle East policy is he spoke to a group of Middle Eastern Christians of Christians from Lebanon, Palestinian Christians, Iraqi Christians. And he just assumed that they would be like

evangelicals from Texas. And he, he just opened by going, hey, I'm just like you guys. I want to protect Israel's right to defend itself. And he just got booed off stage and just didn't think that like, he just assumed that like they have Hill Song in, you know, fucking Lebanon. But they show the before and after of you guys going into Cruz's office. And obviously, like, you guys didn't figure that like Cruz was going to have like this enormous change of heart. but you thought you could get some concession,

like just some material, something out of it, that you could save some lives. And after you exit, you say, well, they were, like they weren't,

you know, snarling at us and calling us Jew killers and all this, but they just, they just gave us the same, it basically sounded like you guys were talking

to chat bots. Yeah. Right. Just that fears. Yeah. And they have, they have a predetermined notion. And,

and the, predetermined emotion was again, and I don't use the word prostitute, by the way, you know, for any other means other than the fact that it defines somebody who sells their soul for money and is willing to do anything for money. And that's exactly what's going on with our Congress and our Senate. They get so much money from APAC. Hakeem Jeffries, $1.6 million. dollars. You know, the minority speaker of the Democratic, progressive minority speaker, takes APEC money. Chuck Schumer takes APEC money, the most prominent Jewish person in our government outside of Bernie Sanders. And Chuck Schumer, who refused to take my telephone call four times

when I called from Gaza after the World Central Kitchen vans were bombed. And we were destined to drive down that same road with the same clearance. And, um, and he was, wouldn't return my call or even let me know that he's going to do something to ensure our safety, safety of 20 Americans. And, you know, so these are people who know who butters their bread and who gives them this money that is only done so to re-insure their re-election. That's the only purpose of APEC money and other Israeli lobby monies. And so they sell their souls for this. we went into Conyers office

who after he lost his bid several months ago and that door was closed to me three other times that I knocked on it the second time we actually got in the lobby the first time we weren't allowed in

the third time his chief staffer invited us into his conference room and sat us down and not only gave us advice of which other senators to speak to but how to approach them and how to write the letter And I asked them, why you're changing heart on this?

You wouldn't speak to me a year ago, nine months ago. And he said, because we have our ear to the ground. We're actually hearing what our constituents are saying. And that meant that they always could have listened to what their constituents were saying, but they just, the volume of it is so significant now that it bears and demands to be listened to. So I think the public outcry is really substantial. And I think it's making, you know, conservative Republicans know that in order to get voted into office, you have to perhaps consider changing your stance unless you're in a super red district that,

where you have some modicum of protection. You know, I just like, if the term prostitute, like, to me, it really undersells it. Because it'd be one thing if you, like, sold your soul or your office for money and, like, your traditional sense of graft or selling out your consistent. or going back on something you campaign for. Oh, believe me. But like everything you're talking about. I'm modifying my verb is.

Yeah. What we're talking about here is like selling your soul for like the absolute desecration of humanity. Like the things you've described, the things you've seen are unspeakable. But they are a reality. Like this is the world we're living in now. And like people, people forever have all throughout history have always made choices to sacrifice some lives for their own prosperity.

You know, and that's what our government is doing. We, you know, our processes in place where we can eliminate it. We have to exercise those. That's coming up in November. They'll always be evil in this world. And just because they're elected officials like Kakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, just because they pretend and present themselves through their videos as being fighting for the common man and their constituent, that doesn't mean that they're not bought and sold for for the most salient issues in our society.

you know, that Israel doesn't give a hoot about the jobless rate in Hakeem's district. He doesn't give a hoot about Medicaid funding. They don't, as a country, Israel doesn't give a hoot about Medicaid funding. They care about funding for bombs. They care about funding for jet fuel. They care about a bargain rate on F-35 parts from England. You know, that's what they care about. They want an unending source of Patriot missiles.

They want funding for their software program. from MIT and Amazon. They want funding to continue the bombing of Iran, even though we said, no, don't do it. They dissociate themselves from that requirement. They will want our funding to attack Turkey next year. Well, there's obviously the American government and the American media, and we all feel about them.

But another institution in American life that has really followed a similar pattern is the American medical establishment. What can you say about their, just lack of concern or support for what's going on and the work that you guys do. You know, so the medical profession has never stood up to the plate, and they've always shown strong elements of fascism. In Germany and World War II, the number one profession, more than professors, more than college teachers, more than plumbers, more than chemists,

more than any other trained profession, physicians were the first to join the Nazi party and in the highest numbers, you know. So, uh, so us as a group kind of suck, uh, historically. And it, and it, and it shows, uh, in what's going on, uh, not only do we contact Chuck, Chuck Schumer, we also wrote letters to the editor from Gaza, uh, to the journal of American Medical Association, the largest publication in the world for medicine. And they wouldn't even respond to us, uh, four letters written, four unresponses, and eight letters written when I got back,

all of them unresponded to. And Thayer speaks to this quite elegantly. No academy, not the American Academy of Pediatrics, not trauma academies, not orthopedic academies, not, you know, psychiatry academies, trauma academies, general surgical academies, not one single academic academy spoke up against what's going on in Gaza. which is insane. And they duplicated that right after the Holocaust. It was a decade before they wrote about the Holocaust.

And maybe I can, I'm just going to quote the American Medical Association something that they said, just to give you guys an idea, because oftentimes we'll get told, well, they always try to avoid politics. And they always try to avoid these controversial subjects. They want to remain neutral and objective. This is from April 8, 2022, on their way. website. It's a statement by the past president, Dr. Gerald Harmon. And it says the title is, targeting civilians in health care and war is unconscionable. And then he goes on and says, it's impossible

to watch the heartbreaking images from Ukraine and not feel a deep sense of loss for the proud people defending their homeland from this unprovoked attack by the Russian military. And the longer the war that unfolds, the more dire becomes for civilians and for courageous physicians and health care workers. trying to save lives. I mean, not even a fraction of that has been said about our Palestinian colleagues in Gaza. Not even, not even a call for their protections or for the, or their preservation of hospitals without even having to say attack or aggression. So, I mean, there's a clear double standard. And I believe it's rooted in racism. Say the word. Say the word. I mean, I mean, I do.

I'll say the word. No, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I'm a Zionist pigs. No, they're fascists. No, but I, they've got, they've got people on their board that, that, that tell them, they, they, their lawyers are Zionists. The American Academy of Pediatrics, I think I'm referencing the right, the right academy. I could be wrong, but one of the academies, major academies, has a lawyer as their CEO, not even a physician. So, you know, they're Zionistic. They don't want to offend their a major source of money.

money, money rules, and it rules American medical academies as well. But there's an anti, there is a racism. There's an anti-Palestinian racism. There's, you know, and I think it's just, that's what bothers me. And I know it bothers Mark a lot because we worked alongside these doctors and nurses and the first responders. We have broken bread with them. We have worked on patients with them.

We have laughed with them. We have cried with them. And for them to just be censored and silenced in this way, to be left out of the equation, to allow the slander. to kind of persist against them, this idea that Dr. Hussam Abu Safia, an incredible pediatrician in his nighttime, can put on some sort of mask

and then he's this sort of armed, you know, warrior. I mean, come on. Some context here. He was the, one of the doctors who's currently being held in some dungeon in Jerusalem. There is quite a, quite a, without charge, quite a bit of evidence that he's been tortured

somewhat regularly. His son recently posted a video about it, but like he's been held without charge. There was the famous photo of him in the white coat walking towards a tank at the direction of the Israeli military before they absconded with him. Two-time New York Times op-ed contributor. I don't know if that makes a difference, but he's twice written in the New York Times about the saga in these hospitals. In Kamal-Adwin Hospital, the only northern pediatric hospital in all of the Gaza Strip. And so for the Israeli military to try to somehow tarnish and slander his name, so like, it's just so brazen.

It's just, it's so offensive. And you can only go back to the, the only reason that that space is allowed, that even it gets airtime, is because they've allowed the Israelis over years to dehumanize Palestinians. That's right. They're subhuman.

And I can tell you this. I've operated in almost 18 countries over 35 plus years, four continents. And I have never worked with, and I always focus on working with local medical, teams. Teach Amanda Fish is the philosophy with all global medicine. And I have never worked with medical teams more elegant, more enabled than my Palestinian colleagues. The pediatric orthopedic surgeon that I worked with, I actually send him copies of my cases that I'm doing to get his

a second opinion on. You know, most of the doctors I worked with could easily walk into any American hospital and become chairman of the departments, whatever hospital they walk into. They are that brilliant, that empowered, that skilled. Sophia himself can walk into any American pediatric hospital and become the chief of the department in a heartbeat. So we're not dealing with dummies. We're dealing with elegant, smart professionals that Israel's deliberately imprisoning because they want to rob the community of that skill set that took decades to mature. That was something that really stood out to me just all throughout the movie. I mean, you see it in the first five, ten minutes, but whether it is you guys and all the other doctors who are coming from America and just the

West in general, but also especially the Palestinian doctors you work with, I'm sure people remember a while ago when that horrific, much bragged about pager operation that Mossad pulled off where they, you know, blinded, countless children killed a similar amount just because, in their words, their parents were within, you know, 10 degrees of the confirmed Hezboa member. But just in general, there is, you don't see it as much as you did 10 years ago, thankfully, but there is this mythos around the American, but especially the Israeli state security apparatus and military. intelligence bodies, that they have this incredible cold professionalism, but it's for this greater good and just no one can think like them. They have pure ice running through their veins, but they're doing it, they're doing it for the greater good. And just watching any randomly selected 30 seconds of you guys working with these Palestinian doctors, it just, the opposite could

not be more true. I mean, like, obviously people who, you know, have not seen doctors in action or don't know them, they can be put off by how, not blazay, but just how, you know, business like doctors can be in these horrific situations. But, you know, it's obviously just, it's a necessity to do what you guys do. But that just, it really struck me that there's this whole mythos of the American and his, Israeli warriors as these incredibly cold calculated operators that nonetheless have this immense moral moral rectitude that that informs all their decisions. And meanwhile, the people that they are targeting, like we see all throughout this movie,

this is so much more true about them. And obviously, there's a billion reasons why doctors and especially Palestinian doctors and especially Palestinian doctors are targeted. It is this Israeli and American idea that if we break the resolve and break the hearts and kill the families of the people that are helping, then

maybe things will become even worse and they'll give up. But it just, it does almost seem like there is this special amount of spite from the Israeli side towards those Palestinian doctors because they are everything

that the Israelis pretend to be and proclaim they are on the global stage. And it's not just the doctors, if I might add. It's the journalists. It's the UN workers. The first thing they did was condemn UNRWA as a terrorist organization. Yes. There was a UN group there that had a safe house, which has the same protection as an embassy

in international law. And that safe house was attacked, was attacked by an Israeli tank with a laser-guided you know, 124 millimeter shell. And I amputated the leg of a, of a, one of three, uh,

U.N. workers. And, uh, in, they were bombed in their compound. Um, one was, had a close head injury,

was taken down the Nassar hospital, uh, where there still some neurosurgical capabilities. I believe he died. And another one lost their leg and, and arm. And I didn't take care of that person. Um,

horribly mangled people from, this one bomb explosion from a tank. Now, that was deliberately aimed at them. And that tank, while driving at 55 miles an hour, can put that shell through a donut hole. And so it was a very deliberate attack. And I think that's something that comes through as well in the movie, really, I mean, in the film,

it just comes in very powerfully when you see sort of Mark talking to some of the workers. And you see them also, you see the Palestinian healthcare workers sort of escorting furrows out of the hospital, waving goodbye to him as they close the door, thanking him from coming. That's something I'm so thankful is in the film because you don't have to explicitly say,

look at these people, they're good people. You just see it. You see it at play here. You see, you know, Mark's colleague try to, you know, explain about how the X-ray machine is broken and how they're going to figure out a way. It's so abundantly clear when you get to just

actually see them, you know, literally in their element. And I'm I wish that there are more, I wish there were more opportunities for them to be able to tell their stories. But the problem is, and Mark mentions this, is that anytime they get a higher profile, anytime their stories get out there, they end up either in an Israeli prison or killed. And there's too many examples of it. Mark, one of the things you say towards the end of the movie is that we need to treat this genocide as a disease. and that there is a medical diagnosis

for what's happening here and the disease is a political ideology and you know, I'll say it now that political ideology is Zionism and more broadly an ideology of colonialism and racial supremacy imperialism. Imperialism, yeah, like

I know this is a big question but like if we think of this from a medical perspective outside of just voting, like how do we begin to treat the ideology that like is capable of dehumanizing so much of the world and then just disposing of them. Because I think if we don't do this, the things you see on your phone, the things that you

have seen with your own eyes up close, are going to get closer and closer until it's not on your phone anymore if you live in America. It's going to be in people's backyards. Fascism has always been a threat throughout the world. And as soon as we equate fascism, whether it begins with an N in the 40s or a Z in the year, you know, 70 or 80 years later. doesn't make a difference. Fascism selectively picks on groups in society

that don't meet the criteria for viability. If you weren't Aryan, in Germany and Austria in the 1940s, you're subhuman. If you're not in Ashkenazi, you're in Israel, you're subhuman. Even other, you know, local Jewish heritage populations. do not carry the same respect as an Ashkenazi Jew within Israel. Because Zionism never affected them. They were born and raised there.

They have genetics that actually tracked down, you know, to Iraq and Syria and Iran and Palestine. They didn't come from Ukraine like Ben Gavir came from and Netanyahu's family. Their grandparents, including Goldemeyers, are all buried in the Ukraine. And you got that, you have to separate Zionism. from Judaism. They have nothing to do with each other. And for an American Jew to say, I don't associate myself with Israel and that Israel as a country, because they define themselves as a country, a Jewish country, inappropriately, but they define themselves as a Jewish country, for them not to separate themselves from that country, it's just crazy stupid. It's blind

allegiance. I cannot stand my government at any level. And yet I would give my kidney to any American that I just met. You know, I love my country, can't stand by government. Why can't an American Jews say the same thing? That's a baby boomer like me.

Younger Jews are turning against Israel by increasing numbers on the regular, but a baby boomer isn't. I've been disowned by many of my colleagues that are Jewish, in fact, almost all of them, because of my stance. What, like, what

do they say to you? Like when you say this is what I saw, like, this is what's happening? And like, what do they say to you and they say, I can't be your friend anymore? Well, they say more specifically in that. I'm ashamed to who have ever counted you as my friend. For 20 years, we were partners and colleagues. And now I'm ashamed to ever have spoken to you. I will never communicate with you again. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, it'd be hard for me to be friends with someone like that. So I guess someone like that was never truly my friend. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, the, I'd still give him a kidney to tell the truth. But the, because he's misguided.

He's not an evil person. But he's misguided. As were the 700 physicians that joined the Nazi party misguided. I'm sure they changed their mind once they were sent to, you know, to imprison camps. But the, you know, it's just human nature to want to protect your own. I get that. and you have a funnel put in your mouth as a baby and propaganda poured down it,

then you believe that Israel is your salvation. That if not for Israel, Judaism is going to die as a religion, when in fact the most dangerous place for a Jew to live in the world is in Israel, and the most leading cause of anti-Semitism, semitism in the world is what Israel as a country, as a government is doing to Palestinians and to Americans. They're not our ally.

They pulled us into countless wars. We've lost tens of thousands of Americans fighting their wars. Trillions of dollars, the amount, just trillions of dollars. The average American has paid over $1,000 out of their pocket to fight these Israeli wars. I have a lot of need for that $1,000. I've got a kid with cancer. I'd like to pay it off. There are people who can't fill their gas.

I mean, that feels a gas tank for a gas tank for a, a whole year for some people. It puts food in their children's mouth, but they're giving them money instead to Israel that has free education, free health care. This is sort of a bitch of a question, I realize, but I'm also Jewish. I grew up in one of the most non-religious families of all time, but, you know, I think we share a similar perspective on this, obviously, but this thing about like decoupling, uh, judo. and from Zionism, you know, which I, I broadly agree with. I just, I was curious your opinion on this, though, it does seem like the vast majority

of Jewish civic institutions in America. And I mean, I've never tried to quantify it exactly. But a lot of synagogues that people would consider mainstream, liberal in a lot of ways. they hold auctions of stolen land in the West Bank, and it does seem like, I mean, again, issue polling is not always reliable, but it does seem like, sadly, for the majority of Jews in America,

that they are in favor of this, in one way or the other. Maybe that they are not in favor of the full extent of the atrocities, but that they are in favor of this problem. And that there's just no way, there's no way to have a Jewish state where this doesn't happen. From your perspective, as someone who has, you know, seen way more of the consequences and dealt with way more of the consequences of this than any of us hosting the show ever will, I mean, do you see that as a possibility as something that can be decoupled? because I frankly am kind of pessimistic about it.

Well, I think what needs to make the decoupling happen is that baby boomers need to die off. I do. I think that my generation... Listen, most German soldiers who fought in World War II were honored to be buried in their uniforms and with their medals, you know, and their tombstones have a medal on them,

those who receive them, or an Iron Cross, So there's a lot of pride as well, and I respect that. And the propaganda has been so ingrained in older populations that I truly think that it's impossible to eliminate. I echo that part that I think it's going to be impossible. But when you look at meaningful polls, those that carry some significance to it, like the Washington Post poll of a half a year ago, I think it was, baby boomers like me had almost an exclusive opinion, as do most Israelis, that, that Israel hasn't gone far enough in Gaza. But when you look at Jews under 40,

it's an assessment of Jewish opinion, Jews under 40, the greatest majority not only think that they're doing something wrong, but they're committing, I think what 40% thought they were committing a genocide. Yeah, so I think there is a decoupling. I think a lot of it has to do with exposure to certain social medias,

I think, and the willingness to be exposed. My twin sister is a conservative Jew, and she went and saw the movie and came out crying saying, what can I do? And I've seen that at the end of every question and answer session. You know, one in Sundance asked me, I'm a conservative Jew. At one point, I call Israel when they bombed the hospital.

I called them chicken fuckers. And she came up to me at the end of the movie. She goes, I'm a Zionist. Am I a chicken fucker? And I go, absolutely. you know, and if you'd like to talk about that and my thinking and how to not be one, here's my cell phone number, you know, and she did call me. And we talked briefly.

And she goes, I'm not ready to change. And I said, you don't have to be ready to change. I'm like the brush salesman who put my foot in your door, right? You know, when you're ready to talk, talk to your, you know, talk to your rabbi, talk to your friends and realize that you may not be on the right side of either history or Judaism. I don't want to keep you guys for too much longer. But like I guess my final question for you here is, is the one that many people ask you,

I'm sure, at these Q&As. And I'm sure of our listeners who are, I'm sure overwhelmingly sympathetic with Palestine and with, you know, are horrified by what's been happening here? What can an individual do in America who's like not a medical professional? Like what do you recommend like? like in terms of raising awareness or donating money. Thayer, you talked, I saw an interview on Democracy Now with you, where you talked about how for Palestinians in America,

I mean, obviously, we hear a lot of the propaganda now that like, oh, everyone in the Gaza Strip, they just want to leave. It's just a question of where we're going to send them. But you said, for Palestinian Americans, there's not a single person who wouldn't give their, like, left foot to go to Gaza tomorrow to, like, clean up rubble or screwing a light bulb. It's this immense sort of, like, but you feel so disempowered because, like, realistically, you're sitting here in America, life seems pretty normal.

There's this brutal disjuncture, like, you know, a break with reality where you know this is happening and you want to help, but like your government won't do anything about it and everyone pretends like it's not happening. So, like, what would you recommend to our audience who feels this deeply and would like to do something, anything, even something small to alleviate this inhuman suffering that is being carried out right now on our dime and in our name? Yeah, man, I appreciate the question. I think there's, I categorize it into three sort of things that people can do and they can take action immediately. The first is the obvious in that there are midterm elections in this country.

There are definitely candidates out there that have decided that our policy in Palestine has been devastating and contributed to genocide and ethnic cleansing. And so there's opportunities for us to at least engage in whatever way we can, whether it's voting for these progressive candidates who are taking up this issue. you know, Abdul's race is pretty damn important in Michigan. I think it's a central and to focus on if there's a way to support him, to share his messaging, to build his platform. I think that's huge. But in general, I think being engaged in reaching out to your local Congress people is important.

If you are a constituent, they have to hear you out. They have to at least make some time for you. They, oh, you know, they work for you if you are a constituent. And so you have to push through sort of in being able to engage with offices. and I think it can go a long way. It's not something that happens overnight, but they need to know who you are. They should know what your name is.

They should know the policies that you want your representative to reflect. And the same can be said about the Senate offices. The second thing is contributing to organizations that are on the ground that are working on the relief work. There are, I would say, for people to look into organizations that were working in Gaza, that have Palestinian leadership before October 7th. That means they have the infrastructure, they have the capacity, and they know the area very well.

well, I'm a board member for the Palestinian American Medical Association, so I'll just throw that out there. But it's a group that works on like capacity building. So what do the local people in Gaza need from us as opposed to some other institution kind of coming in who may be based somewhere else? And then the last thing is solidarity efforts. And this is something that I think is particularly important and symbolic. And that's because there is an effort to destroy Palestinian institutions. a reason why UNRWA was attacked. The other UN agencies are a lot to continue to operate, but UNRWA that is in the, is being focused on, for what reason? It's because this idea

of the right of return that's in the UNRWA mandate, that their mandate is done once the Palestinian refugee crisis is solved and Palestinians have the right to return. But the same can be said about the Ministry of Health, the same can be said about the Palestinian education system. All of these institutions, there is an effort to destroy them. And so if there's a way for us to stand in solidarity with them, whether that is being a pen pal with a medical student or an engineering student or that is trying to continue to support visibility, you know, some sort of partnership. If you are a student or you work in academics, can there be some sort of sister relationship that exists there?

Can you promote some of their voices, elevate them, center them in the discussions that you have, in the social media posts that you are engaging in? All of these things, I think, are important. And so that's, I will say it's, you know, advocacy. you know, is a big one, supporting the relief efforts, and then, of course, solidarity. And I can add just one more thing to that,

and that go and see the film. Posey Tang and her amazing crew, her editing crew, her co-producers, they're extraordinarily impressive and how they molded and created and truly an art form that is truth-telling. Part of the problem that we've already talked about today was getting the message out,

through legacy media and social media has been filling that gap. But the more ways that you tell a story through truth-telling direct in-your-face social media, you know, where the goal is to get as many likes as possible, so there must be something to it if 2,000 people liked it.

You know, but social media cares with it a stigma of, you know, of being, you know, botted or something like that. But this is truly an art form. And art has always been a method to expose what's going on in society

and it's not as offensive it doesn't carry a political as art usually doesn't a political overtone it doesn't owe anybody it's not paid for by anybody and Picasso wrote that art

has a purpose and to wash the dust off of our souls and in this case pose and her teams amazing teams art is really designed to wash the filth off of our legislature's souls and to realize that the Palestinian is an amazing population of beautiful people and that the real fault of what's happening there are the fascists that take root in our Capitol Hill and enable the lion

to stay out of the cage in Israel. Dr.'s Mark Promoter and Thayer Ahmed. I really want to Thank you for your time today. The movie is American Doctor. And just on behalf of myself, and I think all of our listeners as well, I'd like to say thank you for your professionalism, bravery, and integrity, especially on this really nightmarish reality that we now all have to live in and that you guys are dealing with. So thank you for that.

Yeah, thank you guys so much. I appreciate you for everyone. You're welcome. Thank you. But the bravery goes to the Palestinian. They're journalists that are still there telling the truth and the doctors that are still targeted while they attempt to do their oath. the honor of their oath.

Amen. Thank you. Thank you. All right. We're going to leave it there for today, everybody. Until next time. Thank you, guys. Bye, bye, bye.

Appreciate you. Bye, bye.