Our Friday News Analysis | What the World Reads Now!

A Gazan woman cradling a child's body last week. Credit: Omar El Qattaa/AFP

By Nir Hasson
Haaretz Israel
5 December 2024 

• A woman with a child is shot while waving a white flag
• Starving girls are crushed to death in line for bread
• A cuffed 62-year-old man is run over, evidently by a tank
• An aerial strike targets people trying to help a wounded boy
• A database of thousands of videos, photos, testimonies, reports, and investigations documents the horrors committed by Israel in Gaza.

The report contains over 1,400 footnotes referencing thousands of sources. It details instances of Israeli troops shooting civilians, waving white flags, abusing individuals, captives, and corpses, randomly firing their weapons, gleefully destroying houses, burning books, and defacing Islamic symbols.

Footnote No. 379 of the carefully researched, wide-ranging document that historian Lee Mordechai has drawn up contains a link to a video clip. The footage shows a large dog gnawing something amid bushes. "Wai, wai, he took the terrorist, the terrorist is gone – gone in both senses," says the soldier who filmed the dog eating a corpse. After a few seconds, the soldier raises the camera and adds, "But what a gorgeous view, a gorgeous sunset. A red sun is setting over the Gaza Strip." A beautiful sunset.

Mordechai was on sabbatical in Princeton when the war broke out. When he woke up on October 7, it was already afternoon in Israel.

Within hours, he grasped that there was a disparity between what the public in Israel was seeing and reality.

This understanding stemmed from an alternative system for receiving information that he'd created for himself nine years earlier.

The report Dr. Mordechai has compiled online – "Bearing Witness to the Israel-Gaza War" – constitutes the most methodical and detailed documentation in Hebrew (there is also an English translation) of the war crimes that Israel is perpetrating in Gaza. It is a shocking indictment comprised of thousands of entries relating to the war, to the actions of the government, the media, the Israel Defense Forces, and Israeli society in general. The English translation of the seventh and, to date, latest version of the text is 124 pages long. It contains over 1,400 footnotes referencing thousands of sources, including eyewitness reports, video footage, investigatory materials, articles, and photographs.

For example, there are links to texts and other kinds of testimony describing acts attributed to IDF soldiers who were seen "shooting civilians waving white flags, abuse of individuals, captives and corpses, gleefully damaging or destroying houses, various structures and institutions, religious sites and looting personal belongings, as well as randomly firing their weapons, shooting local animals, destroying private property, burning books within libraries, defacing Palestinian and Islamic symbols (including burning Qurans and turning mosques into dining spaces)."

One link takes readers to a video of a soldier in Gaza waving a large sign taken from a barber shop in the town of Yehud, in central Israel, with bodies strewn around him. Other links are to footage of soldiers deployed in Gaza reading the Book of Esther, as is customary on the festival of Purim. Still, every time the name of the wicked Haman is uttered, instead of simply shaking traditional noisemakers, they fire a mortar shell. A soldier is seen forcing bound and blindfolded prisoners to send regards to his family and to say they want to be its slaves. Soldiers are photographed holding stacks of money they plundered from Gazan homes. An IDF bulldozer is seen destroying a large pile of food packages from a humanitarian aid agency. A soldier sings the children's ditty "Next year we'll burn the school" – while a school is in flames in the background. And there are plenty of clips of soldiers modeling women's underwear that they looted.

Footnote No. 379 appears in a subsection titled "De-humanization in the IDF" that's included in the chapter called "Israeli discourse and de-humanization of Palestinians." It contains hundreds of examples of the cruel behavior displayed by Israeli society and the state's institutions vis-à-vis Gaza's suffering inhabitants – from a prime minister who talks about Amalek to the figure of 18,000 calls by Israelis on social media to flatten the Strip to Israeli physicians who voice support of the bombing of Gazan hospitals, to the stand-up comic joking about the death of Palestinians, and includes a chorus of children sweetly singing, "Within a year, we will annihilate everyone and then we will return to plow our fields," set to the melody of the iconic War of Independence-era song, "Shir Hare'ut" (Song of Camaraderie).

…

The links in "Bearing Witness to the Israel-Gaza War" also lead to graphic footage of bodies strewn about, in every possible condition, of people crushed under rubble, of puddles of blood, and of the cries of people who lost their entire families in an instant. There are items attesting to the killing of disabled people, humiliation and sexual assaults, the torching of homes, forced starvation, random shooting, looting, abuse of corpses, and much more.

• Why there's no excuse for Israelis not knowing what's happening in Gaza
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• The chilling testimony of a U.S. neurosurgeon who went to Gaza to save lives

Even if not every one of the testimonies can be corroborated, the picture that arises from them is of an army that, in the best case, has lost control of many units, whose soldiers proceeded to do whatever struck their fancy, and in the worst case is allowing its personnel to commit the most atrocious war crimes imaginable.

Mordechai cites evidence of the horrific predicaments the war has forced upon Gazans. A physician amputates his niece's leg on a kitchen table without anesthesia using a kitchen knife. People eat horse flesh and grass or drink sea water to ameliorate hunger. Women are compelled to give birth in a classroom crowded with people. Doctors helplessly look on as wounded people die because there's no way to help them. Starving women were being pushed in a chaotic line outside a bakery; according to the report, two girls, 13 and 17, and a 50-year-old woman were crushed to death in the incident.

In the DP camps in the Strip in January, according to "Bearing Witness," there was an average of one toilet cubicle for every 220 people and one shower for every 4,500. A significant number of physicians and health organizations reported that infectious diseases and skin disorders were spreading among a substantial number of Gazans.

The Shujaiyeh neighborhood of Gaza City, on October 7, 2024. "There don't have to be death camps for it to be considered genocide." Credit: Omar El Qattaa/AFP

More and more children

Lee Mordechai, 42, a former IDF Combat Engineering Corps officer, is presently a senior lecturer in history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with expertise in human and natural disasters in the ancient and medieval eras. He has written about the Justinianic plague in the 6th century and the volcanic winter that struck the northern hemisphere in 536 C.E. He approached the subject of the Gaza disaster in an academic-historical way, with dry prose and few adjectives, availing himself of the most extraordinary possible diversity of primary sources; his writing is devoid of interpretation and open to review and revision. This is precisely why the faces reflected in his text are so utterly appalling.

"I felt that I couldn't go on living in my bubble, that we're talking about capital offenses, and that what's going on is just too large and contradicts the values I was raised on here," Mordechai says. "I'm not out to confront people or to argue. I wrote the document so it would be out there. So that in another half a year or year or five years or 10 or 100 – people will be able to go back and see that this is what was known, this is what it was possible to know, as early as this past January, or March, and that those among us who didn't know, chose not to know.

"My role as a historian," he continues, "is to give voice to those who cannot sound their voices, whether they were eunuchs in the 11th century or children in Gaza. I deliberately seek not to appeal to people's emotions and don't use words that may be controversial or unclear. I don't talk about terrorists, Zionism, or about antisemitism. I'm trying to use as cold and dry a language as possible and to stick to the facts as I understand them."

Mordechai was on sabbatical in Princeton when the war broke out. When he woke up on October 7, it was already afternoon in Israel. Within hours, he grasped that there was a disparity between what the public in Israel was seeing and reality. This understanding stemmed from an alternative system for receiving information that he'd created for himself nine years earlier.

"In 2024, during Operation Protective Edge [in Gaza], I returned from my doctoral studies in the United States and from conducting research in the Balkans. I felt then that there was no open discourse in Israel; everyone was saying the same thing. So I consciously tried to access alternative sources of information – [based on] foreign media, blogs, social media. It's also similar to my work as a historian, seeking out primary sources. So, I created a personal system to understand what was happening worldwide. On October 7, I activated the system and realized quite quickly that the public in Israel was experiencing a delay of hours – Ynet carried a bulletin about the possibility that hostages had been taken. Still, I'd already seen clips of abductions. It creates a dissonance between what's being said about the reality of the situation and the actual reality, and that feeling intensifies."

Indeed, the disparity between what Mordechai discovered and the information appearing in Israeli and foreign media has only grown. "The most prominent story at the beginning of the war was the one about 40 Israeli infants decapitated on October 7. That story generated a lot of headlines in the international media. Still, when you compare it with [National Insurance's official] list of those killed, you realize very quickly that it didn't happen."

Mordechai started to follow reports from Gaza on social media and international media. "From the start, I got a flood of images of destruction and suffering, and you grasp that there are two separate worlds that aren't talking to one another. It took me a few months to determine my role here. In December, South Africa submitted its formal claims of genocide against Israel in 84 detailed pages with multiple references to sources that could be cross-checked.

"I don't think everything has to be accepted as evidence," he adds, "but you have to grapple with it, see what it's based on, consider its implications. Early in the war, I wanted to return to Israel to volunteer for some civil society organization, but I couldn't for family reasons. I decided to use the free time I had during the sabbatical at Princeton to try to enlighten the public in Israel that consumes only local media."

He published the first version of "Bearing Witness," just eight pages long, on January 9. The number of those killed in the Strip, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, officially known as the Palestinian Ministry of Health – Gaza, stood at 23,210 then. "I do not believe anything written here will lead to a policy change or convince many people," he wrote at the beginning of that document. "Rather, I write this publicly as a historian and an Israeli citizen to state for the record my position regarding the horrible current situation in Gaza as events are unfolding. I am writing as an individual, partly because of the disappointing general silence regarding this subject by many local academic institutions, especially those well-positioned to comment on it, even as some of my colleagues have bravely spoken out."

Since then, Mordechai has spent hundreds of hours collecting information and writing and continuing to update the document that appears on the website he's created. Since embarking on this project, he has improved his work: meticulously compiling reports from different sources on an Excel spreadsheet, from which, after further examination, he selects the items that will be mentioned in the text. He uses various sources: footage shot by civilians, media articles, reports by the United Nations and other international organizations, social media, blogs, etc.

While he acknowledges that some sources are not committed to proper journalistic or other ethical standards, Mordechai stands by the credibility of his documentation. "It's not like I copy-paste everything that someone else comes up with. On the other hand, there is a gap between what exists and what we want to see: We would like every incident in the Strip to be appropriately examined by two independent and non-dependent international organizations, but that will not happen.

"So I examine who's reporting, whether they've been caught lying, and if some nonprofit or blogger conveyed information that I can prove is incorrect – and if so, I stop using them and delete them. I give greater weight to neutral sources, like human rights organizations and the UN, and do a sort of synthesis between sources to see whether it [the information] is consistent. I also work very openly and invite anyone who wants to check on me. I would be thrilled to see that I was wrong about my writing, but that's not the case. Until now, I've had to make very few corrections."

A perusal of Mordechai's report helps to disperse the fog that has blanketed Israelis since the war broke out. A case in point is the number of fatalities: The October 7 war is the first war in which Israel is not making any effort at all to tally the number of those killed on the other side. In the absence of any other source, many people around the world – foreign governments, media outlets, and international organizations – rely on the reports of the Palestinian Health Ministry – Gaza, which are believed to be entirely credible. Israel tries to make a point of denying the ministry's figures. Local media outlets usually note that the source of such data is "Hamas' Ministry of Health."

Palestinian children at a food distribution center in Deir al-Balah last week. Mordechai says more children have been killed in Gaza than all the children in all the wars in the world in the three years preceding Oct. 7. Credit: AFP/OMAR AL-QATTAA.

However, few Israelis know that not only do the IDF and the government of Israel not have their alternative figures regarding the number of fatalities, but that senior Israeli sources, lacking no other data, end up effectively confirming that published by the ministry in Gaza. How senior? Benjamin Netanyahu himself. On March 10, for example, the prime minister stated in an interview that Israel had killed 13,000 armed Hamas militants and estimated that for every one of them, 1.5 civilians had been killed. In other words, up to that point, between 26,000 and 32,500 people had been killed in the Strip. On that day, the Palestinian ministry issued a figure of 31,112 fatalities in Gaza, within the range cited by Netanyahu. At the end of that month, Netanyahu spoke of 28,000 dead – about 4,600 fewer than the official Palestinian figure. In late April, The Wall Street Journal quoted an estimate by high-ranking IDF officers that the number of dead was approximately 36,000 – more than the number published by the Palestinian ministry at the time.

Mordechai: "It seems as if, on the Israeli side, they're choosing not to deal with the figures, although Israel could ostensibly do it – the technology exists, and Israel controls the Palestinian Population Registry. The defense establishment also has facial images; they could cross-check them and see that someone who may have been reported dead has gone through a checkpoint. Come on, show me! Give me proof, and I will change my approach. It will complicate my life, but I will be much less upset.

"I think we must ask ourselves what 'bar' of evidence is required for us to change our views about the number of Palestinians who have been killed. That's a question that each of us needs to ask ourselves – maybe for you, the evidence I'm citing isn't sufficient – because there must be some realistic stage in accumulating evidence at which we will accept the numbers as reliable.

"For me," he explains, "that point arrived long ago. After one does the dirty work and understands the numbers a little better, the issue starts to be not one of how many Palestinians died but why and how the Israeli public continues to doubt these figures after more than a year of hostilities and contrary to all the evidence."

In his report, he quotes the Palestinian ministry's figures that cite – among those killed from the time the war broke out up until this past June – 273 employees of the UN and aid organizations, 100 professors, 243 athletes, 489 health workers (including 55 specialist physicians), 710 children under the age of one year and four preemies who died after the IDF forced the male nurse who was caring for them to leave the hospital. The nurse was caring for five preemies and decided to save the one who looked as if he would have the best chance to survive. The decaying bodies of the other four were found in incubators two weeks later.

The footnote in Mordechai's text dealing with those infants does not reference a tweet by a Gazan or a pro-Palestinian blog but an investigation by The Washington Post. Israelis who may question "Bearing Witness to the Israel-Gaza War" because it relies on social media or unverified reports must realize that it is also based on dozens of investigations by almost every self-respecting Western media outlet. Numerous outlets have examined incidents in Gaza using rigorous journalistic standards – and came up with evidence of atrocities. A CNN investigation corroborated the Palestinian claim about the "flour massacre," in which about 150 Palestinians who arrived to collect food from an aid convoy on March 1 were killed. The IDF declared that it was the crowding and stampeding of the Gazans themselves that killed them, not warning shots fired by soldiers in the area. Ultimately, CNN's investigation, based on careful analyses of documentation and 22 interviews with eyewitnesses, found that most of the fatal casualties indeed stemmed from the shooting.

Asked which image has had the most significant impact on him, Mordechai mentions a photo of the body of Jamal Hamdi Hassan Ashour, 62, who was reportedly run over by a tank, his body mangled beyond recognition.
The image was posted on an Israeli Telegram channel with the caption,
"You're going to love this!"

The New York Times, ABC, CNN, the BBC, international organizations, and the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem published the results of their investigations of incidents of torture, abuse, rape, and other atrocities perpetrated against Palestinian detainees in the IDF's Sde Teiman base in the Negev and other facilities. Amnesty International examined four incidents in which there was no military target or justification for the attack, in which IDF forces killed a total of 95 civilians.

An investigation in late March by Yaniv Kubovich in Haaretz showed that the IDF created "kill zones" in which many civilians were shot after crossing an imaginary line demarcated by a field commander; the victims were categorized as terrorists after their deaths. The BBC has cast doubt on the IDF's estimates of the number of terrorists its forces have killed in general; CNN reported extensively about one incident in which an entire family was wiped out; NBC investigated an attack on civilians in so-called humanitarian zones; The Wall Street Journal verified that the IDF was relying on reports of fatalities in Gaza that the Palestinian Health Ministry published; AP claimed in a detailed report that the IDF had presented only one reliable piece of evidence showing that Hamas was operating on the grounds of a hospital – the tunnel that was discovered in the yard of Shifa Hospital; The New Yorker and The Telegraph published the results of extensive investigations of cases involving children whose limbs had to be amputated, and there is much more – all of it mentioned in "Bearing Witness."

Not included is a report published just this week by the Palestinian Health Ministry – Gaza, stating that since October 7, 1,140 families have been wiped out of the local population registry – most likely victims of aerial bombings.

Mordechai cites numerous items relating to the IDF's lax rules of engagement in the Gaza Strip. One clip shows a clutch of refugees with a woman in the front, holding her son in one hand and a white flag in the other; she is seen being shot, probably by a sniper, and collapsing as the child drops her hand and flees for his life. Another incident, widely reported in late October, shows 13-year-old Mohammed Salem crying for help after being wounded in an Air Force attack; when people approach to offer aid, they are targeted by another such attack. Salem and another youngster were killed, and over 20 people were wounded.

Mordechai acknowledges that watching the visual testimony from the war has hardened his heart – today, he can view even the most awful scenes. "When the ISIS videos were posted [years ago], I didn't watch them. But here, I have felt that it's my obligation because this is being done in my name, so I must see it to convey what I've seen. The quantity is important; it's children and again children and once more children."

Mordechai. "I wrote this so that in another half-year or 100 years, people will go back and see that this is what it was possible to know, as early as January, and that those among us who didn't know chose not to know." Credit: Olivier Fitoussi

Asked which of the thousands of images, whether videos or stills, of dead, wounded, or suffering people have had the most significant impact on him, Mordechai thinks and mentions a photo of the body of a man who was later identified as Jamal Hamdi Hassan Ashour. Ashour, 62, was reportedly run over by a tank in March, his body mangled beyond recognition. A zip tie on one of his hands attested to the fact that he had been detained beforehand, Palestinian sources say. The image was posted on an Israeli Telegram channel with the caption, "You're going to love this!"

"I have never seen anything like that," Mordechai tells Haaretz. "But worse than that, the image was shared by soldiers in an Israeli Telegram group and got favorable reactions." Besides the information about Ashour, "Bearing Witness" provides links to images of several other bodies whose condition suggests that they were run over by armored vehicles. In one case, according to a Palestinian report, the victims were a mother and her son.

One case mentioned only in a footnote attests to issues relating to Mordechai's methods and to the dilemmas he has faced. At the end of March, Al Jazeera ran an interview with a woman who arrived at Gaza's Shifa Hospital and said that IDF soldiers had raped women. Shortly afterward, the woman's family denied her allegations, and Al Jazeera deleted the report, but many people had doubts.

"According to my methodology, after Al Jazeera's deletion, it's not credible, and it didn't happen," Mordechai says. "But I also ask myself: Maybe I'm participating in the silencing of that woman? And the silencing is not for honoring the truth but in the name of her and her family's honor. Is it perfect? It's not perfect, but in the end, I am human and have to make decisions. So, in a footnote, I explained that it was one woman's allegation, and I added [that it was] 'almost certainly false' to express my reservations.

"I don't guarantee that every testimony is completely reliable. No one knows exactly what is happening in Gaza – not the international media, certainly not the Israelis, and not even the IDF. In 'Bearing Witness,' I argue that the silencing of voices from Gaza – restriction of the information coming out of there – is part of the working method that is making the war possible. I stand behind the synthesis I am using and wish I were wrong. But from the Israeli side, there's nothing. I'm talking about proof – bring me proof!"

One case described in the document, even though many Israelis will have a hard time believing it, relates to the IDF's use of a drone that emitted sounds of an infant crying to determine where civilians were located and perhaps draw them out of their shelter. In the video referenced by Mordechai's link, crying is heard, and the drone's lights can be seen.

"We know there are drones with loudspeakers; maybe some bored soldier decides to do it as a joke, and it's perceived by the Palestinians to be horrific," he says. "But is it so far-fetched that some soldier, instead of being filmed with panties and bras or dedicating the detonation of a street to his wife, would do something like that? It might be made up but compatible with what I see." This week, Al Jazeera broadcast an investigative report about the so-called crying drones and claimed that their use had been confirmed by many eyewitnesses who all related the same story.

"We may still argue about anecdotal testimony of that kind, but it's harder to do so when faced with mountains of more substantiated testimony," Mordechai notes. "For example, dozens of American physicians who did volunteer work in Gaza reported that almost every day they saw children who had been shot in the head – how can that be explained? Are we even trying to explain or to cope with that?"

More children have been killed in Gaza than in all the wars in the world in the three years preceding October 7. In the first month of the war, the number of dead children was 10 times the number of those killed in the Ukraine war over a year.

One of the heights of Israeli military brutality in Gaza was evident during the second major raid on Shifa Hospital in mid-March, the historian adds; indeed, he devotes a separate chapter to it. The IDF claimed that the hospital was a hub of Hamas activity at the time and that there had been exchanges of fire during the raid, after which 90 Hamas personnel had been arrested, some of them high-ranking.

However, the IDF's Shifa occupation lasted about two weeks. In that period, according to Palestinian sources, the hospital became a zone of murder and torture. Two hundred forty patients and medical staff were locked into one of the buildings for a week without food access. Physicians on the premises reported that at least 22 patients died. Several eyewitnesses, including staffers, described executions. A video shot by a soldier shows bound and blindfolded detainees sitting in a corridor, facing a wall. According to the sources, after the IDF withdrew from the hospital, dozens of bodies were discovered in the yard. There are many clips documenting the collection of the bodies, some of them mutilated, others buried under rubble or lying in large pools of clotted blood. A rope was tied around the arm of one of the dead men, possibly showing that he was tied up before being killed.

Other heights of brutality have been reached during the past two months in the rolling military operation still underway in the northern part of the Strip. The operation began on October 5. The IDF cut off Jabalya, Beit Lahia, and Beit Hanoun from Gaza City, and inhabitants were ordered to leave. Many did, but many thousands have remained in the besieged zone.

At that stage, the army launched what former IDF chief of staff and defense minister Moshe Ya'alon this week called "ethnic cleansing" of the area: Aid groups were banned from entering the region, the last depot of flour was burned down, and the previous two bakeries shuttered, and even activity by civil defense teams who evacuated casualties was prohibited. The supply of water was disrupted, ambulances were disabled, and the hospitals were attacked.

But the army's main effort has centered around aerial raids. Almost every day, Palestinians reported dozens killed when residential buildings and schools, which had become DP camps, were bombed. Mordechai's report cites dozens of well-documented accounts concerning bombing campaigns – families collecting the bodies of loved ones among the ruins, funerals at substantial mass graves, wounded people covered in dust, adults and children in shock, people crying out with body parts strewn around them, and so on.

The aftermath of the IDF's two-week operation in Shifa Hospital in April. Credit: Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters

In a video clip from October 20, two children are seen being pulled out of the rubble. The first looks stunned, his eyes bulging and covered in blood and dust. Next to him, a lifeless body, apparently of a girl, is removed.

In the past two weeks, Haaretz, for its part, has sent queries to the IDF Spokesperson's Unit concerning some 30 incidents, most of them in Gaza, in which many civilians have been killed. The unit responded that it classified most of them as unusual events and that they had been referred to the general staff for further investigation.

Mordechai rejects out of hand the commonly heard claim by Israelis that what is happening in Gaza isn't so terrible when compared to other wars. "Bearing Witness" shows, for example, that more children have been killed in Gaza than all the children in all the wars in the world in the three years preceding the October 7 war. Already in the first month of the war, the number of dead children was 10 times greater than the number of those killed in the Ukraine war over a year.

More journalists have been killed in Gaza than in all of World War II. According to an investigation that Yuval Avraham published on the Sicha Mekomit (Local Call) website about the AI systems used in IDF bombing campaigns in Gaza, authorization was given to kill up to 300 civilians to assassinate high-ranking Hamas figures. By comparison, documents reveal that for America's armed forces, that figure stood at one-10th of that number – 30 civilians – in the case of a murderer on a larger scale than Yahya Sinwar: Osama Bin Laden.

“There don't have to be death camps for it to be considered genocide.
It all boils down to the commission of acts and the intent,
and the existence of both has to be established.”

Lee Mordechai

An investigative report by The Wall Street Journal states that Israel rained down more bombs on Gaza in the first three months of the war than were dropped by the United States in Iraq over six years. Forty-eight prisoners died in Israeli detention facilities in the past year, compared to nine in Guantanamo in its entire 20 years of existence. The figures are also telling when it comes to the data concerning fatalities in other countries' wars: Coalition forces in Iraq killed 11,516 civilians in five years, and 46,319 civilians were killed in the 20 years of the war in Afghanistan. According to the most lenient estimates, some 30,000 civilians have been killed in the Strip since October 7, 2023.

Mordechai's report reflects not only the horrors that are occurring in Gaza but also Israel's indifference to them. "At the start, there was an attempt to justify the invasion of Shifa Hospital; today, there isn't even that pretense – you attack hospitals, and there is no public discussion. We are not coping in any way with the implications of these operations. You open up social media, and the dehumanization floods you. What is this doing to us? I grew up in a society with a different ethos. There were always rotten apples, but look at the No. 300 bus case [an event in 1984 in which Shin Bet agents in the field executed two Arabs who had hijacked a bus] and see where we are now. I need to hold up a mirror; having these things out there is important. That's my form of resistance."

A dark secret

In the more recent versions of "Bearing Witness," Mordechai has added an appendix that explains why, in his opinion, Israel's actions in Gaza constitute genocide, a subject he expounds on in our conversation. "We need to disconnect the way we think of genocide as Israelis – gas chambers, death camps, and World War II – from the model that appears in the [1948] Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide," he explains. "There don't have to be death camps for it to be considered genocide. It all boils down to the commission of acts and the intent, and the existence of both has to be established. Regarding committing acts, it's killing, but not only – [there is] also wounding people, abduction of children, and even just attempts to prevent births among a particular group of people. All these acts have in common is the deliberate destruction of a group.

"People I speak to generally don't argue about the actions taken; they argue about the intent. They will say that there is no document showing that Netanyahu or [IDF Chief of Staff] Herzl Halevi ordered genocide. But there are declarations and testimonies—lots and lots of them. South Africa submitted a document of 120 pages containing many testimonies proving intent. The journalist Yunes Tirawi collected declarations about genocide and ethnic cleansing from social media of more than 100 people with connections to the IDF – apparently many reserve officers.

"What are we doing with all this? From my point of view, the facts speak. I see a direct line between those declarations, an absence of trying to grapple with those declarations, and the reality on the ground that corresponds to the declarations."

The English-language version of "Bearing Witness" refers to articles by six leading Israeli authorities who have already stated that, in their view, Israel is perpetrating genocide: Holocaust and genocide expert Omer Bartov; Holocaust researcher Daniel Blatman (who wrote that what Israel is doing in Gaza is somewhere between ethnic cleansing and genocide); historian Amos Goldberg; Holocaust scholar Raz Segal; international law expert Itamar Mann; and historian Adam Raz.

"The definition is less important," Mordechai says. "What's important is the actions. Let's say that the International Court of Justice in The Hague declares in another few years that it's not genocide but almost genocide – does that make it better? Does that attest to a moral victory by Israel? Do I want to live in a place that perpetrates 'almost genocide'? The debate over the term draws attention, but things happen one way or the other, whether they reach the bar or not. Ultimately, we must ask ourselves how we stopped this and how we will answer our children when they ask us what we did during the war. We must act."

But the definition is essential. You tell Israelis, "Look, you're living in Berlin 1941." What was the moral imperative for people who lived in Berlin then? What is a citizen supposed to do when his state commits genocide?

"A moral stance always carries a price. If there is no price, it's just an accepted, normative stance. The value of a thing for a person is expressed in the price they are willing to pay for it. On the other hand, I realize that people also have other considerations and needs – to bring food home and preserve family ties – everyone has to make their own decisions. From my point of view, what I do is talk and go on talking, whether people listen to me or not. This consumes endless time and mental strength, but I've concluded that it's the most useful thing I can do."

After we parted, Mordechai sent me a last link. This one was not related to the testimony of atrocities in Gaza but to a short story by the late American novelist Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas." The story is about the city of Omelas, where people are beautiful and happy, and their lives are interesting and joyful. But as adults, the citizens of Omelas gradually learn their city's dark secret: Their happiness depends on the suffering of a child who is compelled to remain in a filthy room underground, and they are not allowed to console or assist them. "It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence, that makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science. It is because of the child that they are so gentle with children," Le Guin writes.

Most Omelas' residents continue to live with this knowledge, but occasionally, one of them visits the child and does not return, but instead keeps walking and abandons the city. The story concludes: "They walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go toward is even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going."

The IDF Spokesman's Office responded that the IDF "operates only against military targets and takes a variety of precautions to avoid harm to noncombatants, including issuing warnings to the citizenry. Regarding arrests, any suspicion of violating orders or international law is investigated and addressed. In general, if there is a suspicion of untoward conduct on the part of a soldier of a possible criminal nature, an investigation is opened by the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division."

What is the Side of the Story that is Not Yet Decisive? Edited by Abraham A. van Kempen

HAARETZ TODAY | ISRAELIS HAVE LOST FAITH IN THEIR INSTITUTIONS. SO, WHO DO THEY TRUST?

The numbers in the latest annual year-end survey by the Israel Democracy Institute, the Israeli Democracy Index 2024, quantify what anyone who has lived in Israel over the past year can feel in their bones.

A bloodied Israeli flag at a protest calling for a hostage release deal Credit: Ricardo Moraes/REUTERS

By Allison Kaplan Sommer
Haaretz Today
18 December 2024

Fourteen months of war and tragedy have taken a toll on Israel that is measurable in all of the traditional ways: the civilian victims of October 7 and subsequent rocket and drone attacks; the hostages still held in Gaza; the soldiers who have fallen in battle; the Israelis displaced from their homes; the homes and buildings damaged and destroyed and the tremendous economic damage as businesses faltered and fell.

But these aren't the only numbers that point to something the nation was already losing before the war. The latest annual year-end survey by the Israel Democracy Institute, the Israeli Democracy Index 2024, points to a kind of damage that is harder to see and quantify. Already at a dismal low following five elections and a year of pitched battle over the government's judicial coup, Israelis' trust in their most important institutions and their country's future as a democracy continues to erode.

To be sure, over the 22 years that the IDI has been measuring Israeli faith in democracy, the numbers have never been particularly auspicious. But the last few years—notably the previous year—have seen them sink to even more excruciating lows.

In 2017, 29 percent of Israelis said they trusted the government. Today, it barely holds the faith of a quarter of those surveyed. More shockingly low numbers include just 16 percent of Israelis who trust their Knesset representatives, down ten percentage points in the past seven years.

Meanwhile, the relentless delegitimization of the Supreme Court has done its job: public faith in that institution dropped in the survey from 56 percent in 2017 to 40 percent today.

With the low numbers regarding trust in all of the individual institutions, it comes as little surprise that while in 2017, 45 percent believed that Israel's democratic system of government was in danger, today, a majority of 54 percent fear for its future.

That isn't comforting on its own, even more so when compared to other countries.

For example, this year's Gallup Poll found that Americans' confidence in the police increased eight percentage points from the previous year to 51 percent, a leap from 45 percent two years ago on the heels of highly publicized police beatings when the slogan "defund the police" was still in the air.

What was considered alarmingly low in the United States would be impressive in Israel, where only 37 percent of respondents said they had faith in their police. But a solid majority of Israelis – 77 percent of respondents – said they still believed in the Israeli Defense Forces, seemingly forgiving them for the failures of October 7 (for which their top commanders, unlike the country's politicians, took responsibility.)

The discrepancy highlights the survey's scraps of good news: while Israelis don't seem to trust their state institutions or politicians, they have not lost faith in one another or their nation as a whole.

The IDF, after all, is a people's army with universal conscription. Saying that it couldn't be trusted would be losing belief in one's fathers, brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters. That is reflected in another encouraging finding: 81 percent of the Jews surveyed, and 62 percent of the Arabs said their fellow Israelis can be relied upon in times of trouble, a giant leap from 68 percent and 39 percent, respectively, in 2022. A solid majority (64 percent) also believe civil society organizations serve Israeli society better than state institutions. In comparison, only 32 percent thought the state would aid them in times of trouble.

The numbers quantify what anyone who has lived in Israel over the past year can feel in their bones. While increasingly losing faith in their political leaders, government, and institutions, they still emphatically believe in themselves and each other.

Read more about the war

• 'We are trying to make Sagi visible in every way. We've been told that we're too nice.'
• Tens of thousands of Israeli students stage walkouts in call for hostage release
• What caused Israel's disastrous failure on October 7?
• Senior defense officials worry statements by MKs threaten the army's mission in Syria
• The Trump Effect: Progress made, but optimism over the Israel-Hamas hostage deal is premature
• As Israel's borders change, so does its character
• Deal or no deal, Israel has a new, Netanyahu-inspired ethos
• 'Our heart is held captive in Gaza. It's not something that anyone can ignore.'

Haaretz Today is our daily newsletter summing up the main events of the day in Israel and the region with a fresh perspective on the stories dominating headlines. Click here to sign up for the latest news from Haaretz's writers and editors from Israel, the Middle East, and the Jewish world.

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Photo Credit: Abraham A. van Kempen, our home away from home on the Dead Sea

By Abraham A. van Kempen
Senior Editor
Updated 19 January 2024

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