Gaza is not just a warzone, it’s where hospitals have become battlegrounds and doctors are paying the price.
There are films and documentaries that make headlines, and then there are those that make history. Gaza: Doctors Under Attack is the latter – a gut-wrenching, urgent, and unflinching look into Gaza’s shattered healthcare system, and the doctors who dared to heal in a warzone. Originally commissioned by the BBC, this documentary was pulled at the last minute for “risking a perception of partiality.” But thankfully, it didn’t vanish. Enter Mehdi Hasan’s Zeteo, a rising media platform rooted in fearless journalism, which picked up the film and gave it the global release it deserves.
Directed and produced by award-winning filmmakers Ben de Pear, Karim Shah, and Ramita Navai, the documentary takes you straight into the chaos of Gaza’s hospitals – the darkness, the rubble, the blood. These are not symbolic wounds; they are real lives being lost, real doctors being detained, tortured, and in some cases, killed. Shot with haunting intimacy, the documentary weaves together frontline testimonies from medics working in bombed-out hospitals, showing us what it means to perform surgery without electricity, sterilizers, or even running water.
One of the most powerful voices in the film is that of Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, Gaza’s head of orthopaedics at al-Shifa Hospital, who was arrested by Israeli forces and later died in custody – his body still not returned to his family. Other doctors recall losing children, wives, entire families to airstrikes, only to return to work hours later, trying to save others in equally impossible conditions.
Zeteo, which Hasan launched in 2024 to reclaim editorial independence, stepped in. The platform’s acquisition of the documentary wasn’t just a media decision; it was a moral one.
“We owe everything to our Palestinian colleagues on the ground and the doctors and medics who trusted us with their stories.”
Zeteo wrote
Now streaming globally via Zeteo and airing on Channel 4 in the UK, this is a documentary that doesn’t flinch — even when it hurts. It’s not just a film about Gaza. It’s about truth, media accountability, and the cost of looking away.
Watch it. Talk about it. Remember it.
Sources: Middle East Eye, Forbes, Zeteo
