Thomas Wictor

Today I was looking up a different incident when I came across the story of a Palestinian teenager named Ussayed Qaddous, also spelled Osaid Kaddous. He and his cousin were reported killed by the Israeli Defense Forces on March 10, 2010, at the village of Iraq Burin, in the West Bank.

I stopped my search for information about the other case, because this one included something I’d never seen before, an x-ray of the victim.

The photo was taken by Salma aDeb’i of B’Tselem, the Israeli “human rights” organization that has a track record of nearly 100 percent fraudulence.

Before I go on, what do you think the odds are that this x-ray actually shows a dead Palestinian with an Israeli bullet in his head?

The dead teenager was either seventeen or nineteen, depending on the source. Here’s one version of events.

On March 20th, the 17th and 18th Palestinians were killed (since 2002) demonstrating against the Wall in the village of Iraq Burin. They were two teenage cousins. The first, 16 year old Muhammad Ibrahim Qaddous who was killed almost immediately by several shots. While his cousin, Ussayed Jamal Abd en-Nasser Qaddous, was attempting to drag him to safety, the cousin was also mortally wounded.

As Ussayed tried to drag his dead cousin Muhammed to safety(?), he was killed by the IDF for no reason.

This is another account.

Ussayed (19) and Mohammed (16) were cousins. Ussayed, a student at an-Najah University in Nablus, was shot first, and Mohammed was trying to carry him to safety when he, too was hit. Mohammed was pronounced dead on Saturday afternoon upon arrival at Rafidiyah hospital in Nablus.

Eyewitnesses swore to both narratives. So which was it? Was Ussayed killed first and then Muhammed, or did Muhammed succumb and then Ussayed?

It doesn’t matter. The “x-ray” tells us all we need to know. It shows Ussayed’s head pierced by what must be a 5.56 x 45 mm NATO round, because that’s the ammunition that the IDF uses. A few years ago, someone in my neighborhood fired an identical round into the air, and it came down on my front porch.

Ignore the two spots of blood on my palm. I cut myself doing yard work today and thought I’d washed my hands thoroughly. Dried blood is hard to clean off.

That’s the size of the bullet that was said to have killed Ussayed Qaddous. Here’s the same round next to a ruler.

It’s 7/8 of an inch long.

That’s 2.2 centimeters.

The X-ray that Rafidia Hospital allowed Salma aDeb’i of B’Tselem to photograph has a scale on it.

If the scale is in centimeters, the bullet is about the right size for an Israeli 5.56 x 45mm NATO round.

However, the shape is totally wrong.

The bullet in the “x-ray” is of a type called a “boat tail.”

It’s used in weapons meant to be fired over long ranges.

In fact, the projectile in the “x-ray” is shaped more like an artillery round than a bullet.

Also, the 5.56 x 45mm NATO round is designed to tumble and fragment when it hits the target. I assume that the bullet was supposed to have entered Ussayed Qaddous’s forehead, since there appears to be a hole.

There’s no fragmentation of the bullet whatsoever, and it isn’t deformed. If that were a real 5.56 x 45mm NATO round, it would look more like this after it entered someone’s head.

Punching through the heavy bone of the forehead would’ve demolished the round. It would’ve exploded like a small hand grenade. Also, the victim’s head would’ve looked like this clay.

Let’s go back to the scale on the x-ray.

When we apply it to Ussayed Qaddous’s head, the result proves that the image is fake.

If the scale is in centimeters, his head is 24 centimeters (9.5 inches) from front to back. The average adult male head in the world measures 22 centimeters (8.7 inches) from the tip of the nose to the back of the head.

In the Palestinian territories, the average height of an adult male is five feet, eight inches (173 cm). That’s also the average height for all adult males worldwide. What are the odds that Palestinians—men with an average height squarely in the 50th percentile—produced an individual whose head was 24 centimeters (9.5 inches) from front to back, when a measurement of 23.9 centimeters (9.4 inches) from the tip of the nose to the back of the head puts you in the 99th percentile of the entire human race?

Now, if the scale is in inches, it means that Ussayed Qaddous had a head 24 inches (61 centimeters) from the back to the tip of the nose. That’s 277 percent larger than the median of 8.7 inches (22 centimeters). His head would’ve been nearly three times the size of the average adult male worldwide.

Has anybody ever mentioned this before? Am I the only person on the entire planet who bothers to fact-check the claims made against Israel?

Also, the stories say that Ussayed Qaddous was taken to Rafidia Surgical Hospital, but the x-ray has the name of Nablus Speciality Hospital, which is a cardiac institution dedicated to open heart surgery, angiograms, and angioplasties. To further complicate the issue, the two scales on the x-ray don’t match. The vertical one on the right is longer than the horizontal one on the top.

Although there are photos of a funeral for Ussayed and Muhammed Qaddous, how am I supposed to believe that two Palestinian teenagers were killed by the IDF? Whenever I read that Palestinians were shot for no reason, I know that’s a lie, but now I put all Palestinian claims into the “Open” file.

And guess where they invariably go from there?

Into the “round file.”

I’ll bet you any amount of money that Ussayed Qaddous was killed by a rock. The covered forehead is the “tell.”

The IDF doesn’t kill people with rocks.

It’s entirely your fault, Palestinians, that I no longer believe anything you say. You and your Jew-hating supporters tell me that a guy with a giant head was wandering around the West Bank for seventeen or nineteen years. How come nobody took even one photo?

Not a single account coming out of the Palestinian territories can be taken at face value. You believe Palestinians at your own risk.