The children being shot in the head are not victims of accidental crossfire; they are being individually targeted for assassination. Most news sources that provide news about Gaza tend to focus on the ongoing genocide, and the mass starvation, without details about the children being intentionally head-shot. I only learned of this phenomenon from a podcast on This American Life. Herewith some excerpts from a transcript of their "Solving for Why" segment of the "Chaos Graph" podcast on April 25:
Chana Joffe-Walt:"One of the hardest places to see through chaos in the middle of a war-- fog of war, all that. This is especially true for the war in Gaza. There is very limited information moving in and out of Gaza. Israel has banned international press from entering the strip for nearly 18 months, except for a few brief trips, accompanied by and under the control of the Israeli military. One rare outside group has gotten a view on the ground of Gaza-- medical workers. Since the start of the war, over 100 American doctors and nurses have traveled to Gaza, treated patients there for weeks at a time, and come back out. Producer Ike Sriskandarajah talked to a dozen of them who volunteered there...Ike Sriskandarajah:"Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon from the US-- he's also volunteered as a doctor in the war in Ukraine and with Palestinians in the West Bank. He's closely studied the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, though his family is from a small ethnic minority in what is now Pakistan.Feroze Sidhwa:"The nurse that was showing us around didn't really speak English very well, and she just pointed at these two kids, and just pointed at her head, and said, shot, shot. There were four kids in the hospital with gunshot wounds to the head. I just thought that that was unbelievable. And I just assumed that she was just wrong. I didn't think she was lying, but she was just incorrect. That probably was a shrapnel injury or something like that. But then, I looked at these kids, and they didn't have any other evidence of an explosive injury. And then we pulled up their CT scans, and sure enough, it did look like they had been shot in the head. And then we went on and found two more kids also shot in the head in the other ICUs.Ike Sriskandarajah:"Feroze works at a hospital near Stockton, California, which has higher rates of violent crime than most of the country.Feroze Sidhwa:"But to see four kids with gunshot wounds to the head already admitted to the hospital when I get there, it certainly struck me as being very unusual...Feroze Sidhwa:And what I wrote down is that I was going through the ICU, and I found an eight-year-old girl shot in the head overnight. Her pupils are fixed and dilated. It's a transcranial gunshot wound, definitely non-survivable...Feroze Sidhwa:Yeah, the bullet didn't stop. And then, let's see, the next day. So the next day, the eight-year-old girl had died, and in the same bed is a 14-year-old boy shot in the right chest and the head.The next day, I said, I went through the ICU afterwards. The 14-year-old boy turns out to be 12 when his family arrived. So then, let's see, two days later, he's been replaced by a 13-year-old boy shot in the head. I wrote, he'll also die.So then on that same day, I wrote, I took care of a two-year-old girl who was brought to the ED after being shot in the head. She arrived with bilateral fixed and dilated pupils, also a non-survivable brain injury. We then had a mass casualty event a few minutes later...Ike Sriskandarajah:At the same time that Feroze was starting to document this, Mark, working with his patients-- he was seeing the same thing. He vividly remembered the day he saw two kids brought in who had both been shot in the head and the chest.Mark Perlmutter:One of the kids was there with a family member. I ripped up his shirt, and there was a bullet entry wound right over the heart. And then I picked up the dressings on his forehead, and a second bullet went in right in front of his left ear hole, in front of his ear and out of his neck.Ike Sriskandarajah:Oh, my god. What was the kid doing when this happened?Mark Perlmutter:Walking with their adult to get water.Ike Sriskandarajah:Was there a street battle happening?Mark Perlmutter:I didn't ask if there was a street battle going on, but it happened twice in the same day.Ike Sriskandarajah:Could you say the second time?Mark Perlmutter:Yeah, right next to that kid was another kid who got shot in the head and the chest. And that child had no adult with him, so I couldn't get a story. It's hard to see it.Ike Sriskandarajah:These weren't kids injured by collapsing buildings. They were kids who'd been shot-- direct gunshot wounds into 12-year-olds, eight-year-olds, even toddlers...Ike Sriskandarajah:13 children in 14 days. Even with all the other traumatic injuries and deaths they saw, the kids who were shot really stuck with Mark. It was haunting him.Mark Perlmutter:Early on, I thought it was just an isolated jerk carrying out, because every army has jerks. War changes people, and so you can absolutely have rogue people behaving inappropriately...Adam Hamawy:When I was in Iraq, there were civilians that were injured. There were children that were injured. And that's called incidental, collateral damage, all the terms that we use to cleanly justify what's happening. But the scale was, I mean, not even-- not even close to this.I mean, I probably took care of, like, five, six children the whole time I was in Iraq, and I wasn't there for three weeks. I was there for eight months. I mean, it didn't look-- it didn't appear that they were intentional targets. Those you could really say that they were wrong place, wrong time.I didn't see targeted gunshots to little kids that were five, six years old or 10, 15 years old. In fact, I mean, I'm thinking back. I mean, I don't think I saw a gunshot wound to a kid at all when I was there...Adam Hamawy:These are little children that are being shot, and these aren't stray bullets. These are aimed. They're precise. So a stray bullet will explain one or two of them. It's not going to explain the string of precise, targeted shootings that are being done on children since October.Ike Sriskandarajah:The medical worker I spoke with who spent the most time in Gaza also saw the most kids shot-- 50. She showed me a picture she took of a scan of a five or six-year-old's skull. There's a bullet in the middle of it. She was told this child was playing with their friends when an armed quadcopter drone came overhead and shot the child...Ike Sriskandarajah:Feroze reached out to as many American medical workers as he could-- doctors, nurses, paramedics. He created a survey to send out and compiled all the answers. The results stunned him.Feroze Sidhwa:Almost everybody had the exact same experience. Almost universally, they said the same thing, which I really was surprised by.Ike Sriskandarajah:Out of the 53 American medical workers surveyed who did emergency care for children in Gaza, 44 said they saw kids shot in the head or chest...Ike Sriskandarajah"Feroze published an op ed in the New York Times with the results of the survey. A group of the doctors wrote two letters to then President Biden outlining what they saw. Feroze thought that would mean two things-- they'd get a call from the White House and there'd be an investigation...Ike Sriskandarajah:I talked with three people who worked at the US State Department and reviewed allegations like this, including the person who, until recently, was the Ambassador at Large for Global Criminal Justice, a position that used to be called the War Crimes Ambassador. They all agreed the doctors' report sounded credible and significant enough to investigate.Each of them said the next step should be asking Israel for answers. One, who is involved in vetting US weapons transfers, told me if this had been another country other than Israel, this is what would have happened...So we asked the Israel Defense Forces how they explained the reports from American medical workers. They declined both my interview requests, but sent a statement, saying, "The IDF does not target minors and takes extensive measures to prevent harm to civilians, including children. The IDF is committed to mitigating civilian harm and operates in full compliance with international legal obligations. For security reasons, we cannot elaborate on operational policies."
What follows the above segment is an interview with an Israeli soldier about the possible whys and hows of the described events. I've already excerpted too much from This American Life, so I'll offer apologies to them and suggest that the very few readers who will be interested in more details should read the full transcript at this link, or even better listen to the full podcast (I had to stop twice and do other things while listening, because the information is so unsettling).
Here are several observations from medical personnel from the op-ed published in the New York Times.
“One night in the emergency department, over the course of four hours, I saw six children between the ages of 5 and 12, all with single gunshot wounds to the skull.”“Our team cared for about four or five children, ages 5 to 8 years old, that were all shot with single shots to the head. They all presented to the emergency room at the same time. They all died.”“One day, while in the E.R., I saw a 3-year-old and 5-year-old, each with a single bullet hole to their head. When asked what happened, their father and brother said they had been told that Israel was backing out of Khan Younis. So they returned to see if anything was left of their house. There was, they said, a sniper waiting who shot both children.”
Other related articles: Mother Jones interviews Sidwha, and a denial by The Times of Israel.
Most of the press coverage about Gaza is about the ongoing starvation and genocide. I hope to address that later. In the meantime I'm sending some additional $$ to the World Central Kitchen. I fully realize Israel has assassinated WCK workers delivering food to Gaza and have an ongoing blockade of food trucks at the border, but if I do nothing I will have no answer to the question "What did you do during the genocide in Gaza?."
"Thanks to your support, WCK has offloaded 49 trucks of essential food supplies at the Kerem Shalom crossing after more than 80 days of border closures. This milestone brings us closer to resuming meal production in Gaza, where our operations had been paused after serving over 130 million meals and 26 million loaves of bread. While awaiting approvals for additional deliveries, our field teams remain ready to restart operations, with trucks loaded, fuel secured, and kitchen systems prepped. In the meantime, we’ve distributed over 2 million liters of clean drinking water, reaching 170,000 liters in a single day, bringing hope and dignity to communities in need. Thank you for standing with us to help nourish those facing unimaginable hardship."
Posting this information is "doing something." Thank you.
ReplyDeleteAppalling.
ReplyDeletegotta make room for condos casinos and hotels
ReplyDeleteI'll say it: Israel is a fascist state
ReplyDeleteI read that Hitler's original foreign policy goals where to revise the Treaty of Versailles, unite all German-speaking people under one Reich and expand Eastward for Lebenraum, ie living space. Israel is claiming Judaism on a one to one basis so you can't criticise Israel without being accused of antisemitism, and they've been expanding their Lebenraum for decades. To be fair, they rarely talk about the Treaty of Versailles.
DeleteIf Israel is tolerating this, it is a pure evil.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I think it would be unfair to not also have the context. Hamas did even worse to Jewish young people that awful October day.
What they did was evil. It does not justify doing evil in return. What it does do is make it understandable to some degree.
If someone viciously kills another person's child, and that bereaved parent responds in an horrendous manner, it doesn't make it right...but, again, it makes it understandable.
Extending the context to October is understandable, but not sufficient. This conflict did not begin in October; it dates back several generations -
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba
- and based on the current events it will undoubtedly reverberate for another several generations. The immense anguish and hatred (on both sides) will not be eliminated by any type of ceasefire or compromise.
@ Aaron: Israel is not "tolerating" this behavior, it's promoting it. Continuously referring to acts of rebellion as a possible justification for apartheid and genocide is exactly what the State of Israel seeks. Since the Nakba, there have been all kinds of acts of rebellion and the Jewish state has responded with horrendously disproportionate violence against the Palestinian people. It is not outrageous to imagine that these acts of rebellion are welcome, given their utility in justifying the next slaughter, land grab, etc. Settling 500,000 Jews in the West Bank? Needed for security! Making Gaza an open air prison, decade after decade? Needed for security! Never is the original sin of the founding of this ethno-state acknowledged. It's considered antisemitic to mention it. Using the word "Nakba" is a slur. Talking about the Nakba will get you deported. Americans are willfully ignorant of the degree to which the Israeli populace is bent on the containment and eradication of the Palestinian people. Of course the history of the world is replete with examples of one people wiping-out another people. The question is whether we see it for what is and whether we support it. We don't see it for what it is and our government does support it.
DeleteHamas executed Israeli infants point blank and took hundreds of hostages, many of whom were raped and tortured, and many have not been released. How do you respond? With diplomacy? Good luck with that.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, I suggest you dig-in to other accounts of what happened on October 7, as opposed to the IDF official version. (I have, and the official version is, predictably, loaded with falsehoods.) Next, what did happen on October 7 was horrific. But what happened did not happen in a vacuum. Is there a context you're willing to entertain? The very long list of Israeli atrocities we seem to ignore--along with the obvious theft of land and perennial oppression. (I've yet to hear a justification for displacing/massacring 750,000 Palestinians at the founding, or the 500,000 Jews now "settled" on the tiny remnant of land we call the West Bank or...) Or did history begin on October 7? And even if it began on October 7, how how do we justify the response? The conservatively estimated 60,000 Palestinians burned, buried, shot. Then the hundred thousand with life altering injuries--missing limbs, blindness, etc. Genocide by starvation. The promises to ethnically cleanse Gaza, that mere scrap of land, inhabited by 2 million perennially and intentionally impoverished people. Israel is put in the best light by our politicians and mass media. But we're free to go behind the smokescreen and hear what the dominate voices in Israel are saying about the future of the Palestinian people: No future. I strongly suggest tuning-in Gabor Mate, Holocaust survivor and trauma specialist; many Youtube interviews. A place to begin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph9XF39yjgU&t=595s
DeleteThere is much propaganda and falsehood on both sides, and much cherry-picking of events. The title of the article was so incendiary that I felt the need to point out similar actions by the Palestinians, none of which were being mentioned because even-handedness was not the goal. Another favorite rhetorical tactic is to try and dictate the beginning date of events to be discussed. You say "... did history begin on October 7?" No, of course not, but neither did it begin in 1948 (the founding) which is as early as you go in your comment. But the real beginning of the modern return-to-Israel movement began long before that, in the 1800's, in response to centuries of persecution, expulsion and annihilation.
DeleteSo I was trying to balance the informational scales in a small way. And the point-bank execution of women, children and the elderly on October 7 is a documented fact that cannot be denied. Your own sources probably don't mention that the worst abuses took place in settlements around the border of Gaza where the people were among the most eager to work with and live in peace with the Gazans. And the peaceful were targeted much like the athletes in Munich that the PLO massacred.
Just to clarify the title, Joe. I intentionally avoided titling the piece "Israeli soldiers are shooting...," opting instead for the absolutely accurate "children are being shot..," thus leaving open the possibility of Israel's counterargument that Hamas is shooting their own children. The title was meant to be attention-grabbing, not biased. That the title is incendiary reflects the fact that the actions are incendiary because of their horrific nature.
DeleteThe context before 1947? European powers, for three centuries, carving-up the globe, unapologetically and brutally subjugating powerless brown people by the millions. Within this colonial culture it was entirely consistent to drive one people off their land and hand it to another people. In this case, mostly European Zionists who were granted the land of Palestinians in what amounts to colonially-driven ethnic cleansing; theft legitimized by the notion that he who has the gold makes the rules. After plundering the world, the Europeans had the gold.
DeleteAs to Hamas shooting Palestinian children: A) I doubt it and B) we should probably not let this distract us from the 99.99% of deaths caused by other means, none of which can reasonably be attributed to Hamas.
Thank you for this important truth-telling, for the sake of these sweet babies -- massacred by the very same Israeli military that refers to mass killing of Palestinians as "mowing the lawn" ---- beyond sadism, on every level
ReplyDeleteMost of these headshots are caused by new drone tecnhology confirmed by multiple witnesses in Gaza that feature mounted remote controlled firearms.
ReplyDeleteWhy don't you just come out and say it: Israel learned the lessons of ethnic exterminations, death camps, the Warsaw ghetto, etc., and using them for their own means.
ReplyDeleteThere's that, but it hardly covers the question of why I, as an American taxpayer, am funding the horror show.
DeleteI work for a medical organisation operating in Gaza and speak to the doctors returning from Gaza and while they're there. Every single one has been absolutely horrified by the high numbers of children they are treating with devastating trauma Injuries, so of bombings and gun shots due to Israeli military attacks. You can look up Tanya Haj Hassan, Nizam Mamode, Christos Georgalas, Morgan McMonagle, Rachael Moses...
ReplyDeleteWe have also seen direct attacks on operating hospitals full of patients and staff, children being treated for bombing injuries in buildings that are then being targeted, patients forced into the streets. There are now no functional hospitals in northern Gaza due to Israeli military attacks and forced displacement orders.
The constant killing, massacring, of children (and adults) in Gaza is beyond words, (not to even get onto the use of starvation as a weapon of war and blockade of aid entry) and the world should be doing everything in its power to stop it. You can read the UN humanitarian updates here for a catalogue of the horrors civilians are facing every day In Gaza - https://www.ochaopt.org/
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/01/world/middleeast/gaza-aid-distribution-site-attack.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20250601&instance_id=155671&nl=the-morning®i_id=99515454&segment_id=199068&user_id=afb7f80c771e33569b6ce6b178790f86
ReplyDeleteMaybe this is who is doing the shooting -
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/05/israel-accused-of-arming-palestinian-gang-who-allegedly-looted-aid-in-gaza