Gaza’s ‘Shredded Children’
July 27—The 10-minute segment on “Children of Gaza” in CBS News’ July 21 “Sunday Morning” program, broadcast the Sunday before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu’s July 24 lying diatribe, delivered Hitler-like to the equivalent of a Nuremberg rally in the U.S. Congress, centered on an interview with Dr. Mark Perlmutter, a North Carolina orthopedic surgeon and President of the World Surgical Foundation, recounting what he had seen in his two-week medical mission in Gaza in May of this year. Every Congressman, Congresswoman, and Senator who stood and cheered Netanyahu’s speech should be required to hear Dr. Perlmutter’s testimony in person.
In all of his 40 mission trips, over 30 years, to disaster zones, combined, he said he had never seen “the level of carnage” against civilians that he witnessed in just his first week in Gaza. The casualties were almost entirely children: incinerated children, “shredded children,” children with wounds that were unmistakably from sniper bullets—some shot twice. What did he mean by “shredded children”? Children “missing body parts, being crushed by buildings (the greatest majority), or bomb explosions (the next greatest majority).”
CBS reporter Tracy Smith questioned Perlmutter’s report that children in Gaza are being shot by snipers. “Definitively,” he replied. “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.”
Netanyahu told the U.S. Congress that there is plenty of food in Gaza, and lied that there would have been even more, had it not been stolen by Hamas: "Now, just as malicious lies were levelled for centuries at the Jewish people, malicious lies are now being levelled at the Jewish state…. The outrageous slanders that paint Israel as racist and genocidal are meant to delegitimize Israel, to demonize the Jewish state and to demonize Jews everywhere….
“Here’s a case in point: The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has shamefully accused Israel of deliberately starving the people of Gaza. This is utter complete nonsense. It’s a complete fabrication. Israel has enabled more than 40,000 aid trucks to enter Gaza. That’s half a million tons of food, and that’s more than 3,000 calories for every man, woman and child in Gaza. If there are Palestinians in Gaza who aren’t getting enough food, it’s not because Israel is blocking it, it’s because Hamas is stealing it.”
Netanyahu’s reckless disregard for the slaughter of tens of thousands of women and children also extends to his reckless disregard of other facts. Media fact-checkers want to chastise Netanyahu for his attempt to smooth over the first several weeks of complete deprivation of food, water, and medicine; but they miss the elephant in the room. Netanyahu’s numbers translate to a full day of caloric intake for each Palestinian in Gaza about once in every seven weeks. That means that in 284 of the last 290 days, zero calories. One can play with calculation but—taking Netanyahu’s numbers at face value, counting 2.3 million Gazans, and estimating about 3,500 calories for each pound of food—that’s 35 billion calories delivered over 290 days, which for 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza amounts to about 52 calories/person/day. For comparison, Nazi concentration camp inmates were rationed 15-25 times that amount. Just to get to that concentration camp level, Netanyahu would have to be figuring on somewhere between 50,000-90,000 calories per pound of food.
When asked how many children in Gaza are in danger of starvation, Dr. Perlmutter replied: “All of them. Absolutely all of them.”
In an article published in Politico July 19, Dr. Perlmutter and Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a Californian trauma and critical care surgeon who also participated in the same mission to Gaza, described in greater detail the conditions that left them with nightmares on their return. They concluded with a call to action:
“We both believe—passionately—that Americans as a nation can stop what is happening. As a Jewish American, Mark has taken to telling everyone he can, that support for what Israel is doing in Gaza has nothing to do with supporting Judaism or Israeli society.
“The moment the United States cuts off military aid to Israel, the bombs will stop falling and the troops will withdraw. We must decide, once and for all: Are we for or against murdering children, doctors, and emergency medical personnel? Are we for or against demolishing an entire society? Are we for or against starvation? Are we for or against peace?”
Is Israel Conducting Bio-Warfare Against Gaza’s Children?
July 27—Various intelligence sources have reacted to the reports of the potential for a polio epidemic in Gaza, after the highly infectious virus was discovered in sewage samples, bringing into question the narrative that this is just another terrible consequence of the war that has destroyed the area’s basic infrastructure. Already, the Israel Defense Forces has announced plans to vaccinate its troops deployed to Gaza against the dreaded crippling disease, while the World Health Organization will be rushing vaccine to the region for Gazans, in a desperate attempt to prevent an outbreak and the possibility of an epidemic, which could lead to more deaths than war-related causes.
These sources report that polio, starting with the Salk vaccine in the mid 1950s and then later with the Sabin oral dose, is a disease that has mostly been wiped out, including in Southwest Asia. While the conditions of war could spread such a disease, they question whether those conditions could cause the presence of the virus in high concentration in populations not already carrying it.
“If polio is now present in Gaza, in high concentration,” a source stated, “Someone needs to investigate how it got there. The first assumption that should be investigated is whether it was introduced, deliberately, as a form of sophisticated biological warfare against the Palestinian people. Israel has bio-weapon capabilities, and it also has insane zealots who want to harm and destroy the Palestinian people, to limit their population and future population growth, so as to prevent Israel from being overwhelmed by the potentially much larger population of a Palestinian state, should one be forced on them. In fact, this is precisely the thinking of the Butcher of Gaza, [Prime Minister Benjamin] “Bibi” Netanyahu, who was cheered by the American Congress this week.
“Bibi’s war in Gaza is not a war against Hamas terrorists,” said the source. “Hamas, which was effectively built up and funded by Bibi because it opposed a Palestinian state, and its Oct. 7 murderous assault on mostly innocent Israelis, including women and children, was merely the excuse for Netanyahu to launch a campaign to exterminate Palestinians and drown the two-state solution in their blood. He has not destroyed Hamas, but he has devastated Gaza, creating conditions of starvation and deprivation that can spread disease.
“The best way to wage population warfare is to target child-bearing woman and children,” the source continued. “Polio is a disease that destroys children and prevents their future procreation. It is a terrible thing to consider, but Bibi Netanyahu is a true monster, with a messianic complex about saving the Jewish people from the Palestinian untermenschen. [A German word, meaning sub-human, used extensively by the Nazis to refer to people, such as Jews, they deemed inferior.]
“Therefore, we must seriously consider whether the now-established presence of the polio virus in Gaza is not an act of bio-warfare against the Palestinians, and especially children. How did a disease which has no presence in an area, suddenly appear? Where did it come from? These questions must be asked and answered. And should the answers be what I fear, this is a Nazi-like crime against humanity and all involved must be dealt with as were the Nazis who did such things to Jews and others.
“The people of Israel need to also ask these questions,” the source stated, “not merely for more proof of the Hitler-like character of its present leader and his cohorts, but because the presence of polio in Gaza threatens not only IDF soldiers, but all the people of Israel. If there is a major outbreak of polio in Gaza, it will cross the border, no matter how many barriers are out there, and will attack Israel and its children. ‘Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.’”