Summary
The association whose volunteer physicians’ claims — that IDF snipers systematically murdered children, and that they never encountered Hamas operatives or infrastructure in hospitals — Debunking the Genocide Allegations sets out to refute in Chapter 3 (Debunking the Genocide Allegations: A Reexamination of the Israel-Hamas War from October 7, 2023 to June 1, 2025, PDF p.81-82).
Details
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The physicians’ claims of systematic murder of children by IDF snipers are said to be statistically improbable and to contradict injury-distribution studies; their claims never to have encountered Hamas operatives or infrastructure in hospitals are said to be contradicted by hostages, a kidnapped Yazidi woman, a Kurdish volunteer physician, many Palestinians and IDF forensic evidence (PDF p.11, p.81-82).
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The PAMA doctors are described as a self-selected activist group, which the authors say makes reliance on their unverified testimony especially problematic (PDF p.82).
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A forensic analysis of the PAMA allegations on children shot by IDF snipers is listed as Appendix 1 in the table of contents (PDF p.5).
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Chapter 3, section K (PDF p.96-101) gives the full treatment: the doctors claim each of them daily treated pre-teen children shot in the head or chest by (presumably sniper) fire, amounting to 99 daily cases at least, and that much of the shooting was carried out by drones armed with sniper rifles; the work answers with injury-distribution studies — Salqawi and Villar at Shuhada Al-Aqsa Hospital (82 percent of trauma injuries from explosions and structure collapse, 8 percent gunshot, 3 percent head wounds), Alasarr et al. on 500 cases at the same hospital, a May 2025 European Hospital study (no skull-trauma operations), and an MSF study of 22,637 consultations (gunshots 11.3 percent, bombs and shelling 83 percent) — and with the daily-injury arithmetic (an average of 130 injuries a day, February-April 2024, of which about 40.5 children).
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Mark Pearlmutter’s claim that 70-75 percent of those he operated on were elementary-school age or younger is set against GMOH’s own figures for his hospital: children were 16 percent of the injured (PDF p.98).
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The CT scans offered for bullets in children’s heads are said, on the authors’ forensic and neurosurgical consultations, to be most consistent, if authentic, with low-velocity bullets entering the skull apex after falling from a high trajectory (PDF p.98-99; Appendix 1).
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The signatories’ statement — “not once did any of us see any type of Palestinian militant activity in any of Gaza’s hospitals or other healthcare facilities” over a combined 254 weeks — is set against the Yazidi woman Fauzia’s testimony of daily armed presence at Shuhada Al-Aqsa Hospital, Dr. Baxtiyar Baram’s testimony that Hamas exploited Al-‘Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals as bases, hostages’ accounts of Shifa and Nasser hospitals, and Dr. Victoria Rose’s not seeing fighters at the European Hospital although the tunnel entrance where Mohammed Sinwar sheltered was metres from her emergency room (PDF p.99-100).
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The doctors’ collective assessment that 67,413 Palestinians had already died of hunger and disease as of September 2024 is said to be unsupported by GMOH reports during the January-March 2025 ceasefire and directly contradicted by the Spagat and Shikaki survey (PDF p.100).
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On sniper drones, the work reports it could find no model of armed drone with small arms in operational use in Gaza or anywhere else, the Elbit prototype having no published real trials and no documented operational use (PDF p.100-101).
Related pages
Debunking the Genocide Allegations: A Reexamination of the Israel-Hamas War from October 7, 2023 to June 1, 2025, Lee Mordechai, Shifa Hospital, Mark Pearlmutter