The Shooting of Children With Single Gun Shots to the Head

1a. What we saw in Gaza

Novara Media’s interview with Dr. Feroze Sidhwa (see ch.3 below)
I think that reaction of horror as well as the reaction by people who are perhaps in support of Isra-l trying to create a sort of noise or fog around your findings isn’t surprising because many of the findings are truly horrific.

One in particular is just the frequency with which doctors and nurses and other medical workers in Gaza were encountering children with single gunshot wounds to the head. What can you tell us about your experiences of those kinds of injuries?

Gaza Surgeon Dr. Feroze Sidhwa
Yeah, so at the beginning of the article I told a story that some people assumed was made up or… So again a strange response to these things.

But I told the story, so when I was there I kept a journal and the journal probably only captured about half of the cases I saw, maybe even less.

But when I came back a reporter at the Washington Post asked me to send them the journal. So I did it, so I just read through it before I did that and I realized that I had seen 13 children shot in the head in 14 days or that I had documented that I had seen this, so I may have seen more. The time there is definitely a blur.

And I had also gone to a conference, I think in Michigan somewhere, and I’d sat next to Thayer Ahmed, he’s an emergency medicine doctor in Chicago who’s also been to Gaza. And he told me that – when we sat next to each other – I just kind of casually mentioned, “Oh you were in Gaza, nice to meet you. One thing that just blew me away was how many kids I saw shot in the head.”

And his response was, “Oh yeah, me too. Every single day I saw kids shot in the head.” And that surprised me because I had assumed that there was just some either sadistic sniper or drone team or whatever around the European hospital where it was that was doing these things.

But when I spoke to him about it I realized maybe this is actually more widespread.

Now it’s important to remember the vast majority of children who are being injured and killed in Gaza are being injured in explosions. Air strikes, tank shellings, artillery shelling, drone attacks with missiles, whatever it might be.

But the reason that I focused on the shooting of children with single gun shots to the head is because it makes it kind of impossible to deny that they were targeted.

Certainly one kid that gets shot in the head, “Okay yeah, that could have been in a crossfire or an accident or something like that.” Two kids, “Okay fine [sic, this could happen in a crossfire…].”

But when throughout the Gaza Strip for a year in the catchment area of every hospital where an international [doctor] has been present, children are getting shot in the head on a regular – if not daily – basis, that’s not believable, that that’s an accident.

That’s clearly deliberate on the part of the people who are doing the shooting. And it seems quite obvious that it’s just being tolerated by the Isra-lic military.
They have no incentive to stop it and no reason to because the US law enforcement.

Novara Media
Yeah we had strikingly similar testimony last week in [the UK] parliament from a British surgeon called Nizam Mamode who described targeting of children by quadcopters in Gaza, really offering horrific details of the kind of injuries that they receive then.

1b. Other testimonies

The testimony by Dr. Nizam Mamode

Surgeon explains how IDF drones target children.

youtube.com

This Is the Prelude to the End of Humanity!

Palestinians Need Something Else Than Our Pity.

The testimony by Dr. Tanya Haj Hassan

Testimony by Dr. Ezzideen
Every day at the clinic, I am confronted with a heartbreaking truth that shakes me to my core. Many of the children who come for treatment are accompanied by adults -men or women- who look at me helplessly when I ask about the child’s medical history. Their answers are always the same, and they never get easier to hear:

“These children are not ours. They are the sons and daughters of siblings or relatives who are no longer here- because their parents were killed.”

The weight of this reality is unbearable, yet it is the daily life these children face. Each visit is a reminder of lives torn apart, families shattered, and childhoods forever stolen.

#SaveNorthGaza #GazaGenocide‌ @ezzingaza, Jan 7, 2025

2. Psychiatric and Psychological Distress

Novara Media
Another aspect of your report deals with the widespread psychiatric and psychological distress.

Feroze Sidhwa
So yeah, the psychological devastation is dramatic. There’s a woman named Arwa, something I forget her last name, unfortunately. She is a, I believe, Syrian and Palestinian descent, and she used to work for CNN. Now she runs an NGO that provides comfort to children in war zones in the Middle East.

Feroze Sidhwa
That’s- these are things that human beings, human beings have lived (through). They do. And the- what’s going on in Gaza is- even before October 7 was- well beyond that.

Novara Media
That story just told literally took my breath away while you were- while you were telling it.

3. Footnotes/ Related

Novara Media’s interview
– Gaza Surgeon Reveals Why The US Won’t Save Palestine, Novara Media

– Feroze Sidhwa, MD, MPH, FACS, FICS Trauma, acute care, critical care, and general surgeon Northern California Veterans Affairs general surgeon
Served at European Hospital, Khan Younis, March 25-April 8
Secretary/Treasurer, Chest Wall Injury Society
Associate Professor of Surgery, California
Northstate University College of Medicine
Prior humanitarian work in Haiti, West Bank, Ukraine (3 deployments since
2023), and Zimbabwe
Treated victims of the Boston Marathon Bombing French Camp, CA

Related pages
– US doctors say they witnessed ‘crimes beyond comprehension’ – Gaza
– Israel Is Killing Civilians In Gaza On Purpose, And It’s Not Even Debatable