By now there should be little shocking about the murderous rampage of Israel through Gaza, Lebanon and over 70 years of raining terror on the heads of Palestinians.
But as the death toll in Gaza kept pushing closer to 43,000 people, mainly women and children, there was a still shocking revelation: Israeli Defense Forces soldiers are intentionally shooting Gaza’s children in the head.
The news surfaced in an op-ed published in the New York Times by a doctor who saw the carnage and depravity firsthand. The opinion piece included CT scans showing bullets embedded in the heads of children.
Dr. Feroze Sidhwa wrote the op-ed.
Democracy Now host Amy Goodman picked up the story Oct. 16. “I personally wish that Americans could see more of what it looks like when a child is shot in the head, when a child is flayed open by bombs,” Dr. Sidhwa told the progressive broadcaster.
“I think it would make us think a little bit more about what we do in the world.”
Dr. Sidhwa is a surgeon who volunteered at the European Hospital in Khan Younis and the op-ed was headlined, “65 Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza.”
“I worked as a trauma surgeon in Gaza from March 25 to April 8. I’ve volunteered in Ukraine and Haiti, and I grew up in Flint, Mich. I’ve seen violence and worked in conflict zones.
But of the many things that stood out about working in a hospital in Gaza, one got to me: Nearly every day I was there, I saw a new young child who had been shot in the head or the chest, virtually all of whom went on to die. Thirteen in total,” he wrote.
“At the time, I assumed this had to be the work of a particularly sadistic soldier located nearby. But after returning home, I met an emergency medicine physician who had worked in a different hospital in Gaza two months before me.
‘I couldn’t believe the number of kids I saw shot in the head,’ I told him. To my surprise, he responded: ‘Yeah, me, too. Every single day,’ ” he said.
Here are some accounts shared with Dr. Sidhwa by others who served in Gaza and were included in his op-ed. Dr. Mohamad Rassoul Abu-Nuwar, a general, bariatric and foregut surgeon, 36, from Pittsburgh, Pa.,
“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.”
Dr. Irfan Galaria, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, 48, Chantilly, Va., “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.”
Rania Afaneh, a 23-year-old paramedic, from Savannah, Ga., shared: “I saw a child who had been shot in the jaw. No other part of his body was affected. He was fully awake and aware of what was going on. He stared at me while he choked on his own blood as I tried to suction the blood out with a broken suction unit.”
“Everybody saw kids get shot in the head,” Dr. Sidhwa told Democracy Now.
Dr. Sidhwa also countered false charges that images showing the wounds were fake as did the Times.
“As physicians and nurses, we can’t say that this particular child or that particular child was shot on purpose or by Israel or somebody else. That’s not what we can possibly do. We’re not war crimes investigators.
“But I think it’s pretty clear that when there’s a pattern of, if in every catchment—in the catchment area of every hospital in Gaza, every time any international has been around, for an entire year, on a daily basis, a child has been shot in the head in a place of 2 million people, it seems unlikely to me that that’s an accident,” he added.
“The rate of killing of children in Gaza is hundreds of times higher than it is in Ukraine. So, it’s very hard for me to believe that this is just a byproduct of a war that’s being fought in otherwise just ways.”
Follow Naba’a Muhammad, award-winning Final Call editor, on X @RMfnalcall. You can also find him on Facebook. He can be reached via email at straightwords4@ gmail.com.
Shooting Gaza’s children in the head: Unthinkable acts perpetrated by Israel
