Summary
The professor of neurosurgery and former combat neurosurgeon whose November 19, 2025 forensic assessment of the New York Times X-ray images is reproduced in full in Appendix 1 of Debunking the Genocide Allegations: the images are not adequate to reach a conclusion, within a reasonable degree of medical certainty, about the injuries they purport to document or the bullets involved (Debunking the Genocide Allegations: A Reexamination of the Israel-Hamas War from October 7, 2023 to June 1, 2025, PDF p.191-193).
Details
- Dagi is identified in the work as Deputy Chair of the Surgical Specialty Board in Neurological Surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh; his letter states he has taken care of scores of penetrating missile and shrapnel injuries, had special operations training that included sniper skills, and edited one of the US editions of the NATO Handbook of War Surgery and a textbook on penetrating missile injuries (PDF p.189, p.191).
- High-velocity missile injuries, the category into which military bullet wounds including sniper injuries generally fall, often perforate the skull and are characterised by small entrance and large exit wounds when they do; military ammunition will generally perforate the skull at urban-warfare distances; the only wounds that penetrate without perforation tend to be relatively low-energy shrapnel wounds, ricochets, or bullets that have expended much of their energy (PDF p.191-192).
- On one lateral scout image showing a bullet pointing downward without visible deformity: assuming the bullet is really in the cranium and the CT authentic, the most likely explanation is a small entrance wound at the crown of the skull, a wound explicable by a bullet that struck with low velocity and low energy without deformation, as with a round fired in the air and falling to earth (PDF p.192).
- The limited image set the New York Times produced was insufficient to diagnose the bullet’s location, and a bullet outside the skull may appear, or be made to appear, as if inside it; confirming authenticity requires the full admission image set, an unbroken chain of custody, forensic examination of the imaging metadata and physical examination of the bullet itself; a shooter’s intent and identity cannot in any case be surmised from imaging studies alone (PDF p.192-193).
Related pages
Debunking the Genocide Allegations: A Reexamination of the Israel-Hamas War from October 7, 2023 to June 1, 2025, Palestinian American Medical Association