Aotearoa Health Care Workers for Palestine Presents: A State of Passion

Aotearoa Healthcare Workers for Palestine (AHW4P) presents A State of Passion, a feature-length documentary film by Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi depicting the genocide in Gaza through the eyes of a British Palestinian surgeon.

After 43 horrific days working round the clock under constant bombardment in the emergency rooms of Gaza’s Al Shifa and Al Ahli hospitals, British-Palestinian reconstructive surgeon, Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah, emerged to find himself as a face of Palestinian resistance.   

With news footage of him pale and shell-shocked reverberating around the world, he spoke of a catalogue of horrors from lacerated bodies, to amputations without anesthetics, orphaned children with no surviving family, and the deliberate targeting of medics and hospital facilities.  

This was Ghassan’s sixth and most horrific Gaza “war”. Why does he do it?  Where does he find the strength to face it again and again? How does it impact his family? How do they process the risks he takes? The answer lies simply in their shared passion: Palestine, a passion they articulate through their support of his perilous humanitarian work.  

Filmmakers Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi, close friends of the Abu Sittahs, share that same passion.  They were waiting anxiously for Ghassan to emerge from Gaza, following a long and terrifying journey through the night, to meet him in Amman.  Determined to capture his raw emotions they began filming him the moment he arrived through the door. Following him to Beirut, Amman, London, Kuwait and Dubai, they and he explore their common State of Passion.

All proceeds from ticket sales will go to Ghassan Abu Sittah Children’s Fund

About Aotearoa Healthcare Workers for Palestine: AHW4P is committed to the goals of protecting healthcare workers in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, advocating for the health and wellbeing of Palestinians everywhere and achieving a just and lasting peace for the Palestinian people. We endorse the BMJ Global Health editorial, “Violence in Palestine demands immediate resolution of its settler colonial root causes”. We acknowledge that we are speaking from the colonised land of Aotearoa New Zealand and that the thinking that drives colonial violence on both lands is connected, as is the need for Indigenous sovereignty in order to achieve a just and peaceful future. We invite healthcare workers in Aotearoa who agree with this statement to join us in campaigning for its goals.

This event is with support from Justice for Palestine and Falastin Tea Collective.