Gaza: Doctors Under Attack review – this crucial film is the stuff of nightmares. But the world needs to see it

The biggest, and possibly only, failure of Gaza: Doctors Under Attack is that the circumstances of its broadcast threaten to overshadow its content.

A brief recap: this film was first commissioned by the BBC, only to be dropped when another documentary – Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone – sparked a furore over impartiality.

The abandonment drew uproar from within the corporation, scorn from the wider media and the inescapable sense that what started as a vital piece of film-making had devolved into yet another navel-gazing referendum on the purpose of the BBC.

Thanks to Channel 4 picking it up late in the day, Gaza: Doctors Under Attack now exists in the world, and it has never been more evident that this is a work that demands to be seen.

Doctors Under Attack bills itself as a “forensic investigation” into claims that the IDF has been systematically targeting Palestinian medics in all 36 of Gaza’s hospitals. The attacks, according to the United Nations, follow a set pattern. First, a hospital comes under bombardment, then it is besieged. After that, it is raided by tanks and bulldozers and its medical workers are detained. And then, once the hospital has essentially been rendered non-functional, the forces move on and repeat.

It’s a strategy designed to cripple Gaza for years to come, says one talking head. After all, when a building is destroyed, you can throw up another in its place. But medics require years of training. Rob Gaza of their expertise and you deny its chances of ever rebuilding. This is despite, as the film repeats time and time again, healthcare workers being protected under international law.

The power of Doctors Under Attack comes in the unhurried way it chooses to unfurl its thesis. There is no clear manipulation, no central villain. What there is, however, is an unceasing timeline of horrors.

We are shown doctors doing their best in overwhelmed hospitals with no water or electricity, racing to treat wounds that have already begun to rot. We are shown them coming under what seem like targeted attacks, being detained in black sites where they will be tortured and interrogated. There is footage of a gang rape by soldiers. We are shown children, injured and dead, in vast numbers.

The central part of the film, however, is stories of individual doctors. There is Dr Khaled Hamouda, discussing the direct attack on his home that killed 10 members of his family, and the drone strike that moments later hit the house the survivors escaped to. His wife and young daughter dead, he then took refuge in the grounds of his hospital, which was bombarded and raided. He was detained along with 70 other doctors, and beaten.

‘No water, no electricity’ … surgeons at work in Gaza: Doctors Under Attack. Photograph: Basement Films

And then there is Dr Adnan al-Bursh, who was detained, stripped, interrogated, disappeared and tortured. Unlike Hamouda, we do not get to hear his testimonial, because he died in prison. But we do get to hear the calls he made to his family before then, telling his children to look after their mother. To hear their stories is to be filled with utter hopelessness.

There have been several muscular documentaries about the Palestinian territories this year, either setting the table of the conflict or – as with the case of Louis Theroux’s film The Settlers – trying to understand the psychology behind those who choose to exacerbate it.

But Doctors Under Attack is by far the most unsparing. The discussion of what has happened to the detained doctors, verified by an anonymous Israeli whistleblower, is the stuff of nightmares. There are beatings. There is torture. Most unsettlingly of all, there are descriptions of mistreatment by Israeli doctors, who would perform procedures without anaesthetic and inform the prisoners that “You are a criminal and you have to die.”

Gaza: Doctors Under Attack is on Channel 4 now