Mark Perlmutter, a Jewish-American humanitarian surgeon who spent two weeks in the Gaza Strip, said that Palestinian children were being shot by Israeli snipers in Gaza.
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 as reported by Al Quds News Network.
In an interview with CBS News published on Sunday, Perlmutter was asked to describe what he witnessed in Gaza.
He 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 Tracy Smith, the interviewer.
“Definitively,” said 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.”
And what about the emotional wounds? “How can you measure that? I can’t measure my own,” Perlmutter said. “How do you be an orphan, watching your family, you know, melted in front of you and shredded in front of you – how do you fix that, ever fix that?”
Perlmutter also noted that he saw, for dozens of miles, 18-wheelers parked bumper-to-bumper, their engines off or idling, outside of Gaza. “Food or health care could not get in,” he said.
“How many kids are in danger of starvation in Gaza?” Perlmutter was asked.
“All of them,” he replied. “Absolutely all of them.”
CrossFireArabia
