By Chris Menahan – Information Liberation
An American surgeon from North Carolina volunteering in Gaza told CBS News in a report aired Sunday that IDF snipers are deliberately killing children and toddlers with shots to the chest and head.
From CBS News, “Children of Gaza”:
Dr. Mark Perlmutter, an orthopedic surgeon from North Carolina, and vice president of the International College of Surgeons, volunteered in Gaza from the end of April through the first half of May. Asked to describe what he witnessed in Gaza, Dr. Perlmutter replied, “All of the disasters I’ve seen, combined – 40 mission trips, 30 years, Ground Zero, earthquakes, all of that combined – doesn’t equal the level of carnage that I saw against civilians in just my first week in Gaza.”
And the civilian casualties, he said, are almost exclusively children. “I’ve never seen that before,” he said. “I’ve seen more incinerated children than I’ve ever seen in my entire life, combined. I’ve seen more shredded children in just the first week … missing body parts, being crushed by buildings, the greatest majority, or bomb explosions, the next greatest majority. We’ve taken shrapnel as big as my thumb out of eight-year-olds. And then there’s sniper bullets. I have children that were shot twice.”
“You’re saying that children in Gaza are being shot by snipers?” asked Smith.
“Definitively,” said Dr. Perlmutter. “I have two children that I have photographs of that were shot so perfectly in the chest, I couldn’t put my stethoscope over their heart more accurately, and directly on the side of the head, in the same child. No toddler gets shot twice by mistake by the ‘world’s best sniper.’ And they’re dead-center shots.”
In fact, more than 20 doctors recently in Gaza also told “Sunday Morning” about gunshot wounds to children.
One American doctor told us he even reviewed CT scans to confirm what he saw because he “didn’t believe that this many children could be admitted to a single hospital with gunshot wounds to the head.” Some shootings have been captured on video.
The Israel Defense Forces declined our requests for an on-camera interview. But in an email, a spokesperson told CBS News, “The IDF has never, and will never, deliberately target children,” adding, “Remaining in an active combat zone has inherent risks.” And the IDF stressed that it calls for the evacuation of civilians from combat zones.
As I reported in December, Israel opened the war by killing Palestinian children at a rate 100 times that of Russia in Ukraine.
IDF troops at the start of the war were explicitly encouraged to kill Palestinian children and babies in the name of “wiping out Amalek” and “erasing the memory of [Palestinian Amalekites]”:
Israel’s top rabbi in Jaffa, Eliyahu Mali, in March issued a call to genocide all Palestinians in Gaza and said the Torah demands the killing of men, women, children and babies.
Israeli journalist David Sheen reported: “Israel’s top rabbi in Jaffa calls to genocide Gaza: ‘Don’t leave a soul alive … not only 14, 16-year-old lads … also the next generation. And those who create the future generation.’ Asked ‘Babies too?’ He responds ‘Same thing. You can’t outsmart the Torah.’ ”
Netanyahu put out the same orders less explicitly when he kicked off the war by labeling the Palestinians “Amalek.”
Other top Israeli officials issued similar calls for genocide:
Their troops got the message and carried out their orders.
The US in May defended Israel slaughtering civilians by saying “we” Americans “did the same thing.”