‘A Shocking Indictment’: Israeli Historian’s Report Cataloguing Israel’s War Crimes in Gaza Now Has Over 1,400 Footnotes

Israeli historian Lee Mordechai has published an updated version of “Bearing Witness,” his increasingly in-depth report on Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinians.

Haaretz, one of Israel’s oldest and most influential media outlets, calls it “the most methodical and detailed documentation in Hebrew… of the war crimes that Israel is perpetrating in Gaza… a shocking indictment…”

The English translation is 124 pages long and contains over 1,400 footnotes referencing thousands of sources — photos, videos, eyewitness accounts, investigative reports, and more.

“My role as a historian is to give voice to those who cannot sound their own voices, whether they were eunuchs in the 11th century or children in Gaza,” says Mordechai, a senior lecturer in history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

“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.”

You don’t need gas chambers

While he uses the (widely contested) word “war” to describe what’s going on in Gaza, including in the full title of his report, Mordechai has also explicitly called it a genocide since at least early 2024.

“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 [Genocide Convention],” he explains in the Haaretz piece, referencing the landmark human rights treaty first adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948.

“There don’t have to be death camps for it to be considered genocide.” (Ed. Note: Gaza is effectively one giant death camp.) “[It] all boils down to the commission of acts and the intent, and the existence of both has to be established.”

In an appendix to his report, Mordechai outlines why, based on his extensive research, he concludes that “both these conditions have been met.”

Growing consensus

South Africa argued the same thing earlier this year as part of their genocide case against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The court preliminarily determined that their genocide claim was “plausible,” and — in January of 2024 — issued an order that Israel must immediately “take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of” Article II of the Genocide Convention.

As documented by Mordechai and others, Israel has done no such thing, and thus far the international community has failed to enforce the order and bring Israel to heel.

Fourteen other countries have since joined South Africa’s ongoing case by filing intervention requests: Nicaragua, Belgium, Ireland, Colombia, Libya, Egypt, Cuba, Mexico, Palestine, Spain, Turkey, Chile, Maldives, and Bolivia.

Earlier this week, the human rights organization Amnesty International released a detailed report which likewise concluded that Israel’s actions constitute genocide. An investigation by a UN special committee reached a similar conclusion in last month.

On November 21, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes.

‘Allowing the evidence to speak for itself’

Here's just a small excerpt from Mordechai's voluminous work, taken from a section entitled “De-humanization in the IDF” (pp. 41-42):

The dehumanization of Palestinians is now normative, pervasive and obvious in many hundreds⁴¹³ of images and videos, almost all of which were uploaded by IDF soldiers to social media.⁴¹⁴ These videos and images present shooting civilians waving white flags,⁴¹⁵ abuse of individuals,⁴¹⁶ captives and corpses,⁴¹⁷ gleefully damaging or destroying houses⁴¹⁸, various structures and institutions,⁴¹⁹ religious sites⁴²⁰ and looting of personal belongings,⁴²¹ as well as randomly firing their weapons,⁴²² shooting local animals,⁴²³ destroying private property,⁴²⁴ burning books within libraries,⁴²⁵ defacing Palestinian⁴²⁶ and Islamic symbols⁴²⁷ (including burning Qurans⁴²⁸ and turning mosques into dining spaces⁴²⁹) and declaring a new Nakba.⁴³⁰ More videos are covered by The New York Times⁴³¹ and CNN.⁴³²

One video, for example, shows tens of Palestinian captives from Gaza sitting in a bus tied up and with their eyes covered. An Israeli solider then demands that they praise his family and state that they want to become slaves to his family “forever and ever”.⁴³³ Another testimony of a Gazan doctor states that the detained director of Al-Shifa medical complex was made to crawl like an animal, had a chain placed around his neck and was told to eat from a bowl like a dog.⁴³⁴ A Gazan detainee said that IDF soldiers placed women detainees from Gaza in the men’s section while being completely naked, and cut the hair of some of the women detainees.⁴³⁵ A detained Gazan woman recounted her story about the abuse and humiliation she suffered during her own detainment, during which she was separated from her little children and IDF soldiers beat her on multiple occasions as well as threatened to bury her alive.⁴³⁶ A Palestinian woman claimed that IDF soldiers carved a Star of David on her husband’s back during his time in detention.⁴³⁷ One soldier filmed a dog eating the corpse of a Gazan, exclaiming that it “took [the corpse of] the terrorist apart”, then moved his camera to discuss the beauty of the view and the sunset.⁴³⁸

The footnotes of that passage alone cite and link to about 148 separate sources, by our count. (Again, see pages 41-42 here.)

“This document was written out of a profound sense of responsibility and commitment to addressing the ongoing humanitarian and political crisis in Gaza,” Mordechi says in a statement on his website, adding that he wrote it by drawing on his “professional expertise and moral obligation to examine and document the unfolding events.”

“Based on my experience conducting rigorous research and critical analysis, I have undertaken this work as both a citizen compelled to respond to the actions of his government and an academic determined to uphold human rights and ethical principles,” he says. “The creation of this document stems from a belief that silence in the face of injustice is unacceptable.”

“Written in a measured and factual tone, the document avoids emotional language, instead allowing the evidence to speak for itself.”

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