An internationally recognized Israeli historian has concluded that his country is committing genocide in Gaza after compiling a massive systematic report documenting a long list of war crimes committed since Israel began its invasion last year following Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023.

Historian Lee Mordechai, an associate professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who also holds a fellowship at Princeton University in the United States, has published a report titled “Witnessing the Israel-Gaza War,” which in its English translation is 124 pages long and contains more than 1,400 footnotes.

Using eyewitness reports, videos, articles, photos, eyewitness evidence, and more than a dozen investigative materials, much of it recorded by Israeli soldiers, the historian has produced what Haaretz called "the most systematic and detailed documentation in Hebrew (there is also an English translation) of Israel's war crimes in Gaza."

Some of the most shocking incidents Mordechai documented include a Palestinian woman holding a baby while waving a white flag, starving girls being crushed to death while standing in line for bread, a handcuffed 62-year-old Palestinian man being run over by an Israeli tank, and an airstrike targeting people trying to help a wounded boy.

The database includes thousands of videos, photos, testimonies, reports and investigations documenting the atrocities committed by Israeli forces in Gaza, where more than 44,500 Palestinians were killed during the war, most of them women and children.

Mordechai also includes a section on “Media, Propaganda and War,” noting that the current war “has been enabled and facilitated by massive media efforts to shape the discourse in Israel as well as in the West – in countries such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany.”

Corpses, murder and sunsets

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz published in its report on the Mordechai document, drawing attention to footnote No. 379, which refers to a video clip showing a large dog eating the body of a Palestinian.

“Woah, wow, the terrorist is gone, the terrorist is gone – literally gone,” says the Israeli soldier filming the dog eating the corpse. A few seconds later, the soldier steps away from the corpse to the scene around him. “But what a wonderful view, a wonderful sunset. A red sun setting over the Gaza Strip,” he says.

Mordechai's summary details the killing of children by Israeli soldiers, the murder of entire families, the starvation and shooting of civilians, the running over of prisoners and corpses by tanks, and much more.

Footnote 354 of the document shows footage of Palestinians being shot by Israeli forces as they waved a white flag. The video footage, first published by Middle East Eye, shows several people waving white flags as they appear to be evacuating their homes. “A woman with a young child is shot dead by an Israeli sniper, while the child manages to escape.

The historian first published the document in January, and has been publishing updated versions of it since then.

“I felt that I couldn’t continue living in my own bubble, that it was a matter of life and death, that what was happening was too big and contradicted the values I was raised on here,” he told Haaretz.

In his report, Mordechai confirms the accuracy of the death toll figures published by the Gaza Health Ministry. According to the historian, claims that these figures are exaggerated are unfounded, and even the Israeli government treats the Health Ministry’s data as accurate.

Among the tens of thousands of people killed in the war, Mordechai listed in the document the deaths of four premature babies after Israeli forces decided to evacuate the hospital they were in. A nurse caring for five babies was forced to choose the strongest, who was allowed to survive.

Other footage collected by the historian—often filmed by the Israeli military itself—shows a soldier forcing bound and blindfolded prisoners to send his regards to their families and say they want to be his slaves. Israeli soldiers are shown carrying piles of money looted from Palestinian homes in Gaza, and an Israeli army bulldozer is seen destroying a large pile of food parcels from a humanitarian aid agency. In another clip, an Israeli soldier sings, “Next year we’ll burn the school,” as a Gaza school blazes in the background. Several videos documented by Mordechai show Israeli soldiers displaying looted women’s underwear.

genocide

The links included in “Witnessing the Israel-Gaza War” also lead to shocking footage of bodies strewn across the streets of the populated Palestinian enclave, people crushed under rubble and pools of blood everywhere.

In some footage we hear the screams of people who lost their entire families in one moment. There is also documentary evidence of the killing of disabled people, sexual assault and humiliation, burning of homes, indiscriminate shooting, forced starvation, looting and more.

Mordechai shows that Israel's war reached its most brutal peak during the second incursion into Al-Shifa Hospital in March 2024, when the medical complex in Gaza City became the site of mass killings.

The Israeli military claimed that Hamas was using the hospital as a base, but did not provide sufficient evidence to support this claim.

Another brutal climax was the complete Israeli blockade and assault on northern Gaza since early October, which has been widely described as ethnic cleansing.

In an appendix to his report, Mordechai explains why he believes Israel's actions in Gaza constitute genocide.

“We need to separate the way we think about genocide as Israelis—the gas chambers, the death camps, World War II—from the model that emerges in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” he wrote.

“It is not necessary for there to be death camps for it to be considered genocide. It is all about the acts and the intent, and both must be proven.”

“In terms of committing acts, it is about killing, but not only – [there is] also wounding people, kidnapping children, and even just attempts to prevent births among a certain group of people. What all these acts have in common is the deliberate destruction of a group of people.”