Professor Nizam Mamode

A testimony full of assumptions and errors

This week, the UK media (and social media worldwide) was shocked by the testimony of Mr Nizam Mamode to the UK’s Parliament’s International Development committee. You can read his testimony online (including a link to watch the live recording).

Mr Nizam Mamode gives testimony

Before I continue, let us make certain facts perfectly clear. War is hell, and having seen the destruction in Gaza with my own eyes, I can support Professor Mamode’s testimony that the place contains an astonishing level of destruction. Where I differ from Professor Mamode is in my understanding that this is what happens when a terror government embed themselves into the population and civil infrastructure, then launch a rape and murder attack on their far more heavily-armed neighbours.

There is also no dispute from me that women and children die in war in unpleasant and bloody ways. This is an accepted feature of the law of armed conflict. From a cold, dry and heartless legal perspective, it matters not that they died; only that the manner of their deaths—the targeting and the strike itself—was legal. It is a common misconception in this war that the law of armed conflict is effects-based. It is not; it is intent-based. The effects of any given strike or round fired are irrelevant as long as the intent behind firing it was to conform to the law. That said, it is important that any credible war crimes are investigated properly.

It is also important to acknowledge the plight of innocent Gazan civilians living in tents and ramshackle shelters after IDF humanitarian evacuations. It must be unrelenting misery as the war rages around them. Our hearts must bleed for innocents caught in crossfire.

Our final acknowledgement must be that war crimes have certainly been committed in Gaza. There are testimonies of IDF soldiers firing at targets they should not—and a significant number of IDF soldiers (100-odd, last time I checked) being investigated for war crimes by the Military Advocate General’s group. IDF soldiers have themselves posted videos on social media that come close to and are potentially over the threshold of war crimes. Denying this helps nobody in this debate.

Of course, Hamas’ war crimes are legion (most obviously their entire strategy of hostage-taking, hiding amongst civilians, and misusing protected locations). There has never been a war in history where neither side has committed war crimes. In the case of Hamas, their entire strategy is a war crime—and frankly, they get a free pass internationally, from a combination of pro-Palestinians ignoring the fact; and pro-Israelis expecting nothing less from Hamas, to the extent that it is hardly worth mentioning. It nevertheless remains solid fact that the overwhelming majority of recorded war crimes in Gaza have been committed by Hamas and their allies.

So, to Mr Mamode. His biography was tricky to come by, but Wikipedia aside, I have found a podcast introduction, which (from my own experience) he has probably approved.

Mr Nizam Mamode is a Professor of Transplant Surgery with a special interest in antibody incompatible transplantation, living donors and robotic transplantation. His team have the largest programme in Europe, with around 50 paediatric transplants a year. He set up the only paediatric antibody incompatible transplantation programme and laparoscopic living donor programme, which has now carried out over 1,500 donor nephrectomies.

Prof. Mamode performed the UK’s first robotic transplant. He has published over 70 papers, one book and three book chapters on transplantation. Mr Mamode is on the editorial board for the journal ‘Transplantation’ as well as an expert reviewer for the Centre for Evidence in Transplantation and a reviewer for the American Journal of Transplantation, Transplant International and Nephrology, Dialysis and Transplantation.  

All very impressive. He is “from an ethnic minority with a Muslim background and went to Mosque as a child”. His Wikipedia entry suggests he is half-Mauritian, half-English, and has worked extensively in Africa. There is nothing to suggest that he has not had a glittering medical career with an extensive track record of helping others.

This makes his testimony to the International Development Committee all the more perplexing. It is riddled with unfounded assumptions, repetition of hearsay, and unevidenced assertions. Our first clue might be found in the organisation with whom he travelled to Gaza. Medical Aid For Palestinians (MAP) claims to be “non-political”, but a 2015 investigation by NGO Monitor found an alarming pattern of MAP promoting “a polarizing anti-Israel narrative under the guise of medical expertise and facts”. I recommend a read of the NGO Monitor report for more deals. We can safely state that the organisation who took Mr Mamode to Gaza has a vested political interest in anti-Israeli opinions.

To deal with the specifics of his testimony. The comment that drew the most attention also raises the most red flags:

The drones would come down and pick off civilians—children. We had description after description. This is not an occasional thing. This was day after day after day of operating on children who would say, “I was lying on the ground after a bomb had dropped, and this quadcopter came down and hovered over me and shot me.” That is clearly a deliberate and persistent act; there was persistent targeting of civilians day after day.

This is deeply implausible, and unsupported by any evidence other than the hearsay repeated by Mr Mamode. As he says later in his testimony, “Luckily, I was never anywhere near a drone firing, so I can only comment on what we saw when people came in.”

There are a number of issues with his suggestion. First of all, IDF conventional forces do not have the drone capability he suggests. I have checked with three independent sources at various levels in the IDF. Now, either the IDF are prepared to burn a trusted analyst by lying to me; or they are telling the truth. In addition, these are people I trust, who have given me reliable and solid insights that have, in the past, proven true.

Nobody is questioning that this drone capability exists; social media has become deeply excited with the idea of the Elbit Bird of Prey, capabilities from Duke Robotics, and the SMASH Dragon. However, the mere existence of a capability does not mean that the IDF has it. Remember, this is an army that has been raising funds for body armour and medical supplies. Whilst they have some very high end capabilities, some of their reservist units have struggled for equipment. We cannot assume that just because a capability is in existence, even if made by an Israeli firm, the IDF has it. The burden of proof is on the party making the allegations, and there is simply no evidence to support IDF conventional forces having this capability.

One possibility is that this kind of drone is in use with IDF Special Forces (SF). The IDF has a broad range of SF units, and some are perhaps better described as “Specialised Forces” rather than traditional SF in the NATO sense. Whilst they have equivalent units to the British SAS, or US Navy SEALs, they also have SF reconnaissance units within conventional brigades, tunnel-fighting commandos, counter-guerilla troops, specialist intelligence-gatherers, and a variety of other niche capabilities. It is not inconceivable that one of these SF units would have a drone of the kind Mr Mamode discusses, but these are small units, and would be very unlikely to have the scale of capability alleged: “This was day after day after day…”

Two other issues arise: firstly, given the predominant pro-Palestinian narrative of the IDF targeting civilians, and the preponderance of footage coming out of Gaza (either Pallywood or otherwise), it is inconceivable that there would not be footage of this had it happened.

Secondly, we are expected to believe, per Mr Mamode’s testimony, that after being caught in a bombing, a injured child would be pounced on by an IDF drone, shot repeatedly, and still survive? It is possible that Gazan children are exceptionally hardy, but there is a dichotomy here. The IDF are accused of being high-tech assassins of innocents, whilst simultaneously being the worst shots on the planet, unable on a daily basis to finish off a wounded child. It makes no sense.

He also alleges two very strange phenomena with these drones:

Luckily, I was never anywhere near a drone firing, so I can only comment on what we saw when people came in. We would see people with sometimes a single entry point, sometimes two or three. What we did see on one or two occasions was a very disturbing pattern where there would be three or four shots on each side of the chest, and again in the groin. That, we all thought, was prima facie evidence of an autonomous or semi-autonomous drone, because a human operator would not be able to fire with that degree of accuracy that quickly.

This also makes no sense. Bodies fall and move when hit by rounds. They do not stand there, get hit repeatedly and sequentially in three separate places, then fall over. The only way that wounding pattern described could happen is if someone were stationary on the floor. Not implausible, but to suggest it as “prima facie” evidence of drone usage is just plain silly—not to mention that there is no evidence of any army in the world currently fielding autonomous or semi-autonomous drones. This is simply a fictional capability.

In addition, he said, “The bullets that the drones fire are these small cuboid pellets. I fished a number of those out of the abdomens of small children.” I know of no small arms weapon that fires cuboid munitions. This is for a very obvious reason: cubes are not aerodynamic and would be therefore be extremely inaccurate: the opposite of the extreme robotic accuracy Mr Mamode alleges. Small arms rounds are conical, and rifled barrels make the round spin through the air, like a quarterback throwing a spiral pass. This is where the accuracy of small arms fire comes from. I suspect what Mr Mamode may be describing is shrapnel. It is possible that grenades may have been dropped from drones: they are designed to split into small parts on explosion. We cannot therefore discount the conclusion that grenades may have been thrown at or dropped on children from drones, but this does not align with the rest of his testimony. We may suggest at this point that Mr Mamode is stepping well outside of his expertise and straying into the realm of uninformed speculation.

Remember, he specifically said he had not witnessed the things he was told, and he is repeating hearsay. So someone in this reporting chain is lying. Is the good doctor lying? It is possible, but we have no evidence for that.

Have the wounded children been told to lie? Possible, but again, unlikely. It is highly possible, of course, that they were mistaken. The aftermath of explosions are terrible and confusing things. Shrapnel from a blast combined with a drone examining for battle damage is an entirely more plausible solution: still terrible, but not necessarily a war crime.

So if not the doctor and not the children, who is lying? We do not know if Mr Mamode is a fluent Arabic speaker. There’s no indication on his CV that he is fluent in Arabic, which means he must have used an interpreter. Given that what he describes is physically impossible, someone must be lying. My bet is on the interpreter. Child says one thing; interpreter gives the Hamas line to take; doctor repeats line to take to the British Parliament. And as for the wound patterns - it needs more investigation, but we can safely say it was not a drone.

He admits there is no evidence other than hearsay for the things he described. We are also asked to believe that the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, who are supposedly instantaneous and credible in the recording of deaths, keep no records of the patients who pass through their doors:

Alice Macdonald: In terms of the horrendous things you are describing—drone targeting and snipers, as you just mentioned—is there a way to bring that together? In the same way that you are sharing this evidence with us here now, was that shared back on the ground, in different ways, with different people?

Professor Mamode: Do you mean with people in Gaza?

Chair: You mean how it is documented?

Q15            Alice Macdonald: Yes—if it is possible to do that.

Professor Mamode: It is not really. The emergency department is chaos, most of the time. There are no medical notes any more. There would literally be little scraps of paper that people would write something on, saying “Had an amputation. Come back in a week, on discharge”. That was the extent of it. I think they documented the admissions, but collecting detailed statistics about causes of particular trauma is difficult.

As you probably know, there has been a letter from 32 doctors and nurses from the UK, who wrote to the Prime Minister back in September—they had all worked in Gaza, and some had overlapped with me—and also one from 99 in the US, who wrote to Biden in October, saying exactly the same things.

Concerningly for his credibility, he also cites the heavily-discredited New York Times letter alleging a pattern of head shots to Gazan children. This letter used as evidence a series of X-rays that are widely suspected to be faked. I can confirm this from my own experience. Firsthand, I have seen a child hit in the head by a 5.56mm rifle round. The damage looks nothing like that shown in the New York Times’ alleged X-rays.

His testimony provides us with further sweeping conclusions supported by nothing but anecdotal evidence. He stated: “medical aid was sitting at the border and not being allowed in.”

As Mark Zlochin points out on X, Mr Mamode’s personal experience about shortage of medical supplies may well be correct, and we have no reason or evidence to doubt it. However, his claim, that Israel is blocking the aid, is factually wrong. This can be easily disproved by interrogating the World Health Organisation’s Health Cluster dashboard.

Mr Mamode specifically mentions a shortage of surgical gloves and gauze swabs, However, the vast majority of surgical gloves ordered have been already delivered to Gaza. The remainder are simply stuck in the WHO’s logistical pipeline and have not been shipped yet. Similarly for surgical gauze swabs: there are two large orders stuck in the WHO’s pipeline waiting to be despatched, and most of those that have been shipped have already been delivered to Gaza.

Whatever shortages of medical supplies may be in Gaza, they are not caused by Israel blocking medical aid from entering Gaza. They are caused by the logistical failures of humanitarian organisations, either on the supply side, or with delivery of the medical aid that is already inside Gaza.

Mr Mamode goes on to give testimony that is both startling and easily disproved:

Q27            David Reed: Thank you for coming and speaking to us, and for having the strength to share your experiences. I know how difficult that must be. Going back to the point around targeting, was there a threat that the Israeli Defence Force was seeing? Was Hamas in the community? Could you see where it was?

Professor Mamode: I am laughing because this is a question I asked when I got there. I asked, “Is Hamas in the hospital? Have they been in the hospital?” They just laughed at me. They said, “There is no Hamas. There are a few fighters hiding in tunnels, but there is no Hamas; there never was any Hamas in the hospital”. Everybody hates Hamas, and we never saw any evidence in the street or in the hospital. I have been in conflict zones before, and normally, if fighters come in, they come in with guns, or with their friends with guns. We never saw any of that. We were allowed to go wherever we wanted in the hospital, and there might have been a tunnel underneath—who knows?—but if Hamas were coming and going in the hospital, it would have been fairly evident, and they probably would have been kicked out by the people who work there.

Hamas’ presence in hospitals has been proven time and again. I myself have interviewed a cancer surgeon who spoke about Hamas’ lurking presence in the hospitals where he worked. We have seen videos of Israeli hostages in hospitals and clear evidence of Hamas using al-Shifa as a headquarters. Indeed, the second Al-Shifa hospital operation was one of the biggest hauls of Hamas and their allies’ commanders in the whole war so far. The IDF has compiled an extensive list of Hamas involvement in hospitals; and if you do not believe the IDF, there are plenty of videos Hamas has posted themselves of them firing at the IDF from positions inside or around hospitals.

Mr Mamode’s testimony also raises concerns as he canters through the pro-Palestinian narrative’s greatest hits. He manages to fit in the widely-condemned letter to the Lancet from earlier this year (note: this was correspondence, not a peer-reviewed paper as he suggests).

A paper in The Lancet in July estimated—because of the casualties that have been counted, those who were likely to be under the rubble and all those who were dying from other diseases as a result of the war—conservatively 186,000 dead. Those were the figures up to June, so, to my mind, it is over 200,000 now.

Once again, there is a lurid desperation in the world’s media to extend the death toll vastly beyond even that claimed by Hamas (43,000-odd at the last count). There is a widely-available mechanism in Gaza to report missing people via an online form. The numbers reported missing have stood at 10,000 for months. There is simply no evidence whatsoever to suggest that hundreds of thousands are buried under the rubble. The mass humanitarian evacuations by the IDF (condemned as “ethnic cleansing”), acknowledged by Mr Mamode (“1.3 million, 1.4 million people in the green zone”), have avoided fatalities at the scale he alleges.

Use of the Lancet correspondence in the manner of Mr Mamode was also disavowed by one of the authors around the time of publication (and subsequently deleted, but the internet never forgets):

The next red flag in his testimony is what can only be described as “leading the witness”:

Chair: Do you regard what you saw as genocide?

Professor Mamode: I am not an international human rights lawyer, so I cannot talk about the absolute definitions, but it is difficult to find another word for it given what we have seen. I certainly think that the Palestinian people feel that that is what is happening to them, and there is a sense of resignation that they are all just waiting to die with no chance of escape. So, in a word, yes.

Mr Mamode has not witnessed any of the incidents he alleges, nor, as he admits, is he a lawyer. This answer is therefore firmly outside of the scope of his expertise, nor is it supported by any of the facts on the ground.

So where does all this leave us? We have speculation, assertions that are factually incorrect, conclusions that cannot possibly be true, and the sponsorship of a deeply suspect organisation in Medical Aid to Palestine. We also have Mr Mamode’s own X account, which is an endless repost stream of anti-Israel propaganda, suggesting that he is anything but an impartial witness.

Either way, Mr Mamode’s testimony is sufficiently full of holes that the most lurid accusations he makes may be taken with, if not a pinch of salt, extreme suspicion. Of course, that has not stopped the world’s media reporting it as fact.