What most Israelis choose not to know
JVL Introduction
Israeli historian Lee Mordechai has compiled a massive archive of material called “Bearing Witness to the Israel-Gaza War” which Ha’aretz says “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.”
It is virtually impossible to read. In a lengthy interview with the newspaper Mordechai says compiling the archive has “hardened his heart.”
“When the ISIS videos were posted [years ago], I didn’t watch them,” he tells Ha’aretz. “But here I have felt that it’s my obligation, because this is being done in my name, so I must see it in order to convey what I’ve seen. What’s important is the quantity; it’s children and again children and once more children.”
Mordechai says: “I wrote this so that in another half-year or in 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.”
NWI
This article was originally published by Ha'aretz on Thu 5 Dec 2024. Read the original here.
A Massive Database of Evidence, Compiled by a Historian, Documents Israel's War Crimes in Gaza
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.
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This is undoubtedly an important historical documentation. But nothing unpredictable, from the mouths of those who declared what they were going to do, in official political releases, and how they were going to do it, leaving soldiers on the ground with instruction, through religious references and schooling to kill as the spirit moved them to realise the fulfillment of divine covenant, and the elevated morale of the army…. These too are components of genocidal intent..
But still, from reading of mordechai’s work here, I can draw some strength against the ubiquitous war propaganda of the idf. BBC etc narratives of expedient politics.
Thank you for distributing this important document, which the ICJ in Den Haag must take into account in deciding on the South African genocide case agaisnt Israel.
As the current Israeli action in Gaza has now lasted for more than a year, some of the dates imentioned n the text are potentially ambiguous. In these cases clarity could be improved by adding ‘2023’ or ‘2024’.
reading this ,it is beyond comprehension that any sort of civilised nation could do what is documented in considerable detail , to anybody. This is not collateral damage as western MSM keeps trying to tell us.It is as bad as anything that has happened since the Holocaust in which Jews were the main victim’s. It is just beyond anything I know to think that Israel would stoop to a level as low as that . In some ways it is even lower as the Israel population seem to be glorifying this horror ,or a high % of them are, including many young people. What sort of humanity is that ? How come that the education of these young people allows them to be happy regarding this slaughter.?
At the end of all of this there has to be a examination of how Israel was allowed by USA and the west to carry out what is mass slaughter at a level that is beyond belief . It is also the most documented and filmed slaughter that i have ever seen.
There has to be a time of reckoning for Israel as a nation. Israel has to be exposed before the civilised world for what it has done and is doing daily to fellow Human beings.
War crimes and all those who have supported this horror must be called to account by the civilised world otherwise civilisation and humanity is degraded beyond comprehension and humanity has entered a new dark age.
Yes, but it’s all just Israel defending itself… as our political masters keep telling us.
What we – and the world community are now called on to do is to re-establish the moral sense of a nation. It’s a task that’s far too big for us (even if we were much less faulty human beings and states than we are); even so, it must be ATTEMPTED. None of us are safe if Israel and other pariah states (eg Russia) stay as toxic and dangerous as they now are.
As with all communities, there are sparks of light (human decency, respect for truthfulness and a yearning for a better future) in Israel currently hidden by the prevailing darkness. The struggle ahead for people everywhere is how to grow those tiny sparks of light until they and we, working collectively, can help each other push back the dark.
Individual and organisational legal accountability for war crimes committed are important tools for lessening the dark forces at play. Legal accountability impacting in different ways thousands of personnel within Israel’s armed forces, prison service, universities and government is likely to be the most potent driver of the national transformation so desperately needed.
How much more must we read of the atrocities committed by the IDF and Netanyahu before the US stops feeding the Israeli war machine which enables this murderous campaign? Why will no government speak out and boycott all Israeli produce, stop selling them weapons, stop exporting to Israel, in short take action that will make them stop? How can our so-called leaders sleep at night, knowing what is being done in their name, as they continue to facilitate it?
Thank you for this powerful report/article on Dr Mordechai’s work. And also for Ian Kemp’s and other articulate adn wise comments.
For my entire life, everything emanating from Zionists has been saturated with the obsessive, obvious subtext: “We want rid of them”. Why so much of so called “civilised” humanity, most of whom have zero reasons for paranoia, literally zero historical trauma, have evaded calling them up on this for so long is now to me something so low, I’d rather not express how I see it here. Is it time to publicly call the noisy ones out for what they are, and let them smirk and make their phone calls?
As a subject of the British Crown, I am morally obliged to work for a non apartheid state in A United Palestine and Israel.