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Let’s take a moment to ‘set the table,’ for people who haven’t been following along. Yesterday, we published a piece called ‘Magic Bullets:’ Did the New York Times Publish Forged Evidence of Israeli Atrocities? That piece involved a ‘guest essay’ published in the New York Times alleging that children in Gaza were shot in the head or neck using 5.56 bullets, the same type that are used by Israeli military forces, the implication being that Israel was committing atrocities. You can read it here:

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And the issue we discussed was these alleged X-rays provided as alleged proof of their injuries:

We are going to ignore the cut off text for now. It is in our prior piece, and our focus is 100% on the images he is reproducing.

The question we asked was whether or not those X-rays are real, or forged. We presented multiple views from skeptics, and drew our own conclusion, writing:

Still, as a lay person, we lean toward these photos being fake. The bullets look too perfect. The video from @TizkoretZe and the testimony of this author’s veteran friend convinces us they wouldn’t have stopped inside these children’s bodies. They even seem to have never even been fired. And the Elder of Ziyon’s point about the bullets always being exactly sideways in the x-ray is salient, too. And the longer analysis we have cited, especially Cheryl’s, rings true to us as well. Take that for what it is worth.

Still, we remain open to the possibility that someone could provide real proof that those X-rays are genuine and they show what they purport to have shown.

That brings us to today’s news. The New York Times officially responded with this:

That links to a longer piece which reads as follows:

Response to Recent Criticisms on New York Times Opinion Essay

Attribution to Kathleen Kingsbury, Editor, New York Times Opinion.

A recent opinion essay gathered first-hand testimonies from 65 U.S.-based health professionals who worked in Gaza over the past year, who shared more than 160 photographs and videos with Times Opinion to corroborate their detailed accounts of treating preteen children who were shot in the head or chest. Following publication, some readers questioned the accuracy of the accounts and the authenticity of three CT images shown. Those criticisms are unfounded.

Times Opinion rigorously edited this guest essay before publication, verifying the accounts and imagery through supporting photographic and video evidence and file metadata. We also vetted the doctors and nurses’ credentials, including that they had traveled to and worked in Gaza as claimed. When questions arose about the veracity of images included in the essay, we did additional work to review our previous findings. We presented the scans to a new round of multiple, independent experts in gunshot wounds, radiology and pediatric trauma, who attested to the images’ credibility. In addition, we again examined the images’ digital metadata and compared the images to video footage of their corresponding CT scans as well as photographs of the wounds of the three young children.

While our editors have photographs to corroborate the CT scan images, because of their graphic nature, we decided these photos — of children with gunshot wounds to the head or neck — were too horrific for publication. We made a similar decision for the additional 40-plus photographs and videos supplied by the doctors and nurses surveyed that depicted young children with similar gunshot wounds.

We stand behind this essay and the research underpinning it. Any implication that its images are fabricated is simply false.

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Is this convincing to us?

Not exactly. First, we readily admit we are not experts in the relevant fields. As we said last time: ‘we are not exactly experts on guns, ballistics, or how a bullet wound would look on an X-ray and so on.’

But still, we have consulted with a veteran friend of ours. We are not going to identify him because this author has dealt with stalkers in the past but we will say he is a good friend whom this author would literally trust with his life. And he verified what many others said: A 5.56 round is unlikely to stop inside a person’s head.

(And if you doubt the word of our anonymous friend, that is fair. It’s good enough for us, but it might not be good enough for you, since you don’t know him or even know his name. So, we suggest that if you don’t have expertise with this caliber of bullet, find someone who does and ask them yourself. Replicate our ‘experiment,’ if you will.)

Additionally, each of these X-rays are perfectly sideways, and each of them show that the bullets are also perfectly sideways. That seems unlikely to be the case with a real bullet wound.

Third, with our untrained eyes, we see no signs of injuries in the X-rays. This is particularly hard to understand in light of the new information the New York Times shares because they write:

While our editors have photographs to corroborate the CT scan images, because of their graphic nature, we decided these photos — of children with gunshot wounds to the head or neck — were too horrific for publication.

That doesn’t seem logically possible. If the wounds are so horrific that they can’t be published, why does it look like there isn’t a single bone broken or shattered? And while they say they have photographs that allegedly corroborate the CT scans, who took those photos?

Certainly, they can and should release those photos. We get that they don’t want it to be in their print publication, but they can surely release the images with plenty of content warnings, on their website. Then we can determine whether or not they line up with their purported X-rays.

And not for nothing, but the guest essay states—even now—that these were X-rays, not CT scans as this new ‘Response’ states and those terms are not synonymous. At least one of the commenters we drew upon in our original piece noted that it was deeply unusual for X-rays to be used for this kind of injury. So, that would be the New York Times seemingly changing its story on that point.

Finally, we go to the pristine status of the bullets. How is it that these bullets apparently went through bone and had no deformation?

But that is just our lay opinion, and we readily admit we could be wrong. We would be very interested in what others have to say. Indeed, we very deliberately invited commenters to comment on the original piece and reading over the comments to that post, we felt many of the comments rang true and haven’t really been addressed by the New York Times’ response. To sample a few of them:

‘StrinaM’ wrote:

Never mind the exit wound. Where is the ENTRY wound? That kid’s skull is completely intact.

‘Flyboy53’ wrote, responding to StrinaM:

And no wound channel. The energy released would turn half the brain to mush. Total BS.

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We’ll have more on that in a minute. ‘VoteGeneric’ wrote:

Fake. Like the ‘pristine’ bullet in the Kennedy [assassination]. If you want to know what a high velocity rifle bullet does to someone’s head, look at the Zapruder film showing Kennedy hit, from the front, by a high powered rifle bullet. His head exploded and a piece of his skull landed on the trunk of the car.

VG is surely referring to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and while we won’t get into conspiracy theories about that death, his point about this being an example of what a bullet does to a human head is hard to deny.

‘Adobo,’ besides having excellent taste in food, wrote this:

Several problems with these X-rays. To localize the projectile, always, frontal and lateral X-rays are taken in the ER. Without the other aspect, X-rays can be faked having bullets in front or behind the anatomy. Second, bullets enter the body point first. How were these children supposedly shot? That bullet in the neck must have entered just below the frontal sinus, and that in the cranial cavity must have entered in the superior skull. Judging from the clarity of the X-ray, unusual not to see bone fragments past the presumed entry points. Anyway, both shots had to come very superior to the target. Considering the velocities associated with the 5.56s, surprised not to see the bullets undeformed and not go TnT, Deformation of 5.56 bullets usually happen past 6-7 inches of issue, breaking usually at the cannelure.

‘Nebraskared’ writes:

If the NYT staff actually believe the X-Rays are genuine the only thing it proves is that none of them have ever hunted and processed their game. There is no way that a bullet from a high powered long gun of that caliber would do so little damaged even if the bullet was nearly spent. Of course, no one expects the NYT to do due diligence in questioning this BS.

And on a similar note ‘Cowboysurfpunk’ wrote:

Ever cut up a deer that’s been neck shot?… bone fragments,.. everywhere,.. this is total BS.

‘SESummers’ writes:

I noticed the bullets were perpendicular to the x-rays immediately – extremely unlikely if the bullet entered the skull from a gun, and extremely unlikely to be any other way if they put the bullet between the head and the film for the x-ray. So no, there’s almost no chance these are real, just based on that. And given the source, I think ‘almost no chance’ is actually zero chance. The ‘palestinians’ don’t have a strong history of honesty.

There does seem to be an uncommon level of falsehoods coming from the pro-Palestinian side.

‘Anon-is4x’ wrote:

I have to agree. The bullets stopped stopped with exactly zero deformation, without which these bullets don’t just stop. These bullets were probably glued to the side of the head.

‘Anon-k8mk’ wrote: 

No way the 5.56 round stops as the x-rays shows, plus there is no tumbling of the round. The instant it hits skin and bone it would begin to tumble. Tiny .22LR rounds would penetrate, tumble and fragment, and maybe stop at the rear skull. But the X-Rays are not .22LR. I’d bet $1million that the x-rays are fake.

‘Ashram, the Black Knight’ wrote:

What I thought interesting were assertions that, if 5.56 NATO, that they must be IDF … and that hamass and hezbollah only use 7.62×39.

Nevermind that terrorists have had rifles that use 5.56 NATO, including M-16s and M-4s … and that one source has been the Taliban, thanks to Biden’s botched withdrawal.

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We appreciate that he spelled ‘Hamass’ correctly.

Joking aside, that’s a point several people made: We left behind exactly the kinds of rifles that use these kinds of bullets in Afghanistan, so even if these X-rays are genuine (which is a big if), it’s not like Hamass couldn’t get access to rifles that shoot those kinds of bullets.

‘Anon-l76e’ wrote:

Fake on all levels.

US Army medical texts are essentially the same. The video of the phantom (I & my colleagues used phantoms for measuring radiation absorption & effects) was particularly on point.

ballistics / not lead (Pb) – https://www.dote.osd.mil/Portals/97/pub/reports/FY2010/army/2010m855a1.pdf?ver=2019-08-22-112923-567

Effectiveness of penetration vs. distance, target soft/hard, etc. –

https://www.army.mil/article/48657/evolution_of_the_m855a1_enhanced_performance_round

‘Jim Dollar (no relation)’ wrote:

I once dealt with a 15-16 year old Somali who was shot in the throat with an American 5.56 round from ten or so yards away. The trauma was extensive –he bled to death in seconds — and the bullet lodged in a wall somewhere. No way does a baby’s neck stop one. I call BS.

NielsZoo

Former LEO here, imaging engineer and avid shooter. Cheryl’s analysis is spot on. The first murder autopsy I worked was a .22 LR head shot. I still remember the lateral radiograph where the entry hole was obscured, but the bone from that area created a cloud in the brain tissue and you could see exactly where it entered and most of its track. The bullet itself skipped/slid along the inside of the cranium and fragmented leaving a trail of lead bits and the largest portion came to rest about 270° from the entry track. A .22 LR has around 120~130 ft-lbs of energy at the muzzle. An M855, 5.56×45 NATO round, as used by the IDF, has 1200~1300 ft-lbs of energy at the muzzle. No way in Hades are the radiographs from actual cranial or neck wounds gonna look like what we see here.

I also note in the magenta looking image with the bullet ‘in’ the cranium that the aliasing (jagged edges) and pixelization of the bullet’s ogive is different than similar curved areas of the skull bone to the right of it, which are much smoother. Note you can see the shadow of the ear, but absolutely no wound track? No, that’s either a composited image or a bullet laying on or under a head when the image was taken.

Lastly, the AK-74 and its variants are also popular weapons with the terrorist crowd. It’s chambered in 5.45×39 and ballistically nearly identical to the 5.56×45. On a make believe radiograph, is anybody really going to notice a difference in diameter of about 0.11mm/0.004’ or just about the thickness of a piece of so-so heavy paper. Not gonna see it on a faked x-ray image.

Pure, unadulterated propaganda, courtesy of America’s Propaganda Paper of Record. If they had any shame…

‘Red White and Jew’ (heh) wrote this (with mild censorship):

Complete b—lls—t. A phenomenon known as hydrostatic shock would result in a skull struck by a 5.56 NATO round as no longer being a skull. It would be skull fragments.

He also linked to this YouTube video, showing the effect of this caliber on a simulated human head:

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Finally, ‘TonyLion’ wrote this:

Even Dan Rather’s national guard memos looked more real than these xrays.

We highlighted that last comment because we are very much working off of the Rathergate model in trying to deal with this. We remember that scandal very vividly and one of the things that stood out to us in how the scandal developed, is that the criticisms were very grassroots. It was just small time bloggers, random experts who don’t normally get much attention and commenters on blog posts discussing the evidence, dissecting it and so on, keeping the discussion going until eventually heads proverbially rolled So, while this author is always happy to share his lay opinion, he is much more interested in the larger discussion by people who have more knowledge.

And in that spirit, we share some of the reactions to this New York Times statement:

Seems like the answer is ‘no.’

We think that is one of the most devastating points. 

And just to be fair, we will always include any substantive responses defending the claims. And we don’t count the New York Times’s response as ‘substantive,’ but we do count this one as substantive:

We’d be very curious what others would say to that.

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We … understood some of those words.

As our late friend John Hoge would say, ‘embrace the power of ‘and.’’

And this thread showing how the Times has been snookered in the past is worth looking at:

Finally:

And that’s our big takeaway. The New York Times’ statement is a huge ‘trust us.’ They claim to have spoken to unnamed experts and have consulted unshown photographs. Those experts should come forward and explain to us why and how those x-rays could be real. And we should see the alleged photographs. Until they do, we remain unconvinced.

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Indeed, the only new piece of information they have provided—that they allegedly have collaborating photos but they are too graphic to publish—actually cuts against their credibility, because if they were too graphic to publish, we believe we would see more damage on the X-rays.

Exactly. It is possible to convince us this author that we have been mistaken, but this is not the way to convince anyone. 

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