Towards a ceasefire and accountability for genocide. Sent to 650 Members of Parliament in the UK. 348 Sources named in Testimony of an academic.
Hatred does not cease with Hatred.
Hatred Ceases with Non-Hatred.
This is an Everlasting Truth.
The Buddha. Dhammapada verse 5.
This Testimony is a horrifying, detailed analysis of the current consequences of the IDF (Israeli army) invasion of Gaza under the orders of the Israeli government to launch and sustain an ongoing systematic decimation of the people of Gaza and their homeland.
Thousands of Palestinians lie dead in the destruction. Thousands of others are dying slowly in agonising ways under the mountains of rubble from aerial bombing and shelling by tanks.
I regard this Testament as probably the most powerful overview available of the horror of the atrocities inflicted on Gaza.
A respected Israeli academic, Lee Mordechai has researched and written this document.
Here are just six extracts from the Testimony of the unprecedented degree in recent decades of terror and suffering and examples of it in his Testimony.
- A prominent scholar of famine and Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation stated that he had never seen the war crime of starvation perpetrated in such scale over the 40 years of his career.
- As of March 15, 168 UN staff members have been killed, 125 journalists and media workers have been killed, more than the entirety of journalists killed in World War II, and at a rate higher than any other conflict over the past century.
- An American doctor that returned from Gaza told the Los Angeles Times that during her time there “a handful of children” around 5-8 were brought to the emergency room, all of whom had single sniper shots to the head.
- A rabbi at the head of a yeshiva for pre-military age men stated that according to Jewish law, all Gazans must be killed, including babies.
- A detained Gazan had his hands zip-tied before driven over by an Israeli tank, potentially while he was still alive. An image of his mutilated corpse was shared on an Israeli telegram channel with a post stating that “You are going to love this!!!”
- A Gazan detainee said that IDF soldiers placed women detainees from Gaza into the men’s section while being completely naked and cut the hair of some of the women detainees.Lee Mordechai, a historian and Israeli citizen, has collated evidence in his 12,000-word Testimony from 348 sources. He is currently a senior Lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
His sources include the main media in Israel, plus main media reports in the USA, UK and Germany. The writer quotes eyewitnesses, statements of international bodies, Israeli government and members of the Israeli army in Gaza.
I have sent this post/blog with the link to the Testimony to all 650 Members of the Parliament in the UK. I requested a friend in Israel to send a copy of the link to all 120 members of the Knesset in Israel. All the Parliamentarians in Israel have received a copy.
There are readers of this blog/post in more than 50 countries. Please send onto your members of Parliament.
This is the link to the full Testimony.
You will read in his regularly updated report (current report: 15 March 2024) the evidence he provides of genocide.
This powerful and deeply disturbing document reveals the Israeli army’s wanton and deliberate destruction of life and habitat through intensive bombing, killing of citizens/demolition through power of tanks and shooting of men, women and children by Israeli troops.
Other forms of weaponry include starvation, leading to widespread famine, minimal access to aid, water, medicine, fuel, electricity and destruction of hospitals and so-called safe havens.
The more such messages go out from citizens to the same government the more impact it will have. You can often get the email addresses by googling for the list.
The Testimony falls into nine sections after the Introduction
Preface
The Massacre of Palestinians
Causing the Deaths of Civilian Population
Israeli discourse and de-humanization of Palestinians
Ethnic Cleansing
Hostages
The West Bank
The Media, Propaganda and the War (disclaimer
·Poem of Dylan Thomas
I have taken sentences or a paragraph from each section amounting to around 2200 words in total.
I urge you to read these extracts so you feel moved to act, to take steps, to bring an end to this genocide.
I appeal to Israeli citizens to mount a campaign to stop the daily bombardments and killings of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. There are citizens in Israel who are utterly disgusted with their government. They feel ashamed to be a Jewish Israeli. Find them. Join their initiatives. Put compassion before atrocities.
Caring Israelis can have more influence to bring about an unconditional ceasefire than citizens from other countries. Other countries have their own suffering to deal with.
As an Israeli citizen, the minimum you can do is to forward the link above or this post to your social media platforms, emails, daily conversations and more. You do not even have to write a comment on it.
Or do you want to remember yourself or be remembered as a person who said nothing and did nothing to stop your government from inflicting daily mass suffering on your neighbours?
Your actions to stop the daily slaughter will save many lives. You can support a new era with the potential for co-operation between Palestine and Israel.
I also appeal to readers in the US, German and UK to engage in a non-violent response since we live in the three primary countries providing the weapons for the Israeli army. Please send on the post/blog or link to others.
To ignore war on people and associated atrocities by one’s government is an indirect way of supporting the government.
USA gave $3.8 billion in aid largely used to fund the Israeli war machine. Since 2015, the UK has licensed at least £474 million worth of military exports to Israel. Germany has approved the export of close to $323 million) worth of military equipment to Israel.
International lawyers state that the provision of military equipment to Israel could make USA, UK and German government complicit in war crimes.
EXTRACTS FROM THE TESTIMONY OF LEE MORDECHAI ON ISRAEL’S WAR ON THE PEOPLE OF GAZA AND THEIR HABITAT
Personal Statement of Lee Mordechai
I, Lee Mordechai, a historian by profession and an Israeli citizen, testify in this document to the horrible current situation in Gaza as events are unfolding.
The enormous amount of evidence I have seen, much of it referenced later in this document, has been enough for me to believe that Israel is currently committing genocide against the Palestinian population in Gaza.
The current war is ostensibly the Israeli reaction to the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7, 2023, a war crime and crime against humanity.
Over the last five months, Israel has repeatedly massacred Palestinians in Gaza, resulting in the deaths of over 30,000 Palestinians – some 70% of whom are women and children – as of writing. Tens of thousands more have been injured. These numbers are probably an undercount considering Israel’s deliberate destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system, which is the single independent source of these numbers (which are also used by Israel, including its Prime Minister and the military).
Israel has actively attempted to cause the death of the civilian population of Gaza. This has been done through the destruction of institutions that support life – such as hospitals or aid agencies – as well as by strangling the Gaza Strip from its necessities: food, water and medicine.
As a result, people in Gaza (mainly children) have already begun to die from starvation and dehydration. Because of the lack of medicine, difficult medical procedures such as amputations and caesareans are conducted with no anaesthesia.
Israel has gone further in attempting to destroy the fabric of Palestinian society by deliberately targeting cultural institutions such as universities, libraries, archives, religious buildings and historical sites.
Israeli discourse has de-humanized Palestinians to such an extent that the vast majority of Israeli Jews supports the aforementioned measures. Countless videos from the Gaza Strip uploaded by soldiers in the Israeli military attest to widespread abuse of Palestinians (including cruel violence and dehumanization), ubiquitous and normalized looting, and wanton destruction of all kinds of property with little consequences…
All the evidence I have seen strongly suggests that Israel’s objective is to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip, whether in part or in total. Key members in Israel’s government have made statements confirming this intent at different points throughout the war…
All of the above has been made possible through the strong support of most mainstream media in Israel as well as the West, primarily in the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany
Preface
The best of my ability, I estimate that the vast majority of the information I have included is reliable, and I have repeatedly chosen not to include information from both sides I had doubts about. I include in this document many footnotes to the sources I have used, so that the interested reader would be able to evaluate my account themselves.
This document corresponds to an update and expansion of earlier versions of my understanding of the situation in early January, late January and mid-February 2024, following ideas and suggestions I have since received. The document’s main purpose is still to state my opinion publicly out of a sense of commitment I have to human rights ideals. A secondary purpose is to preserve at least some of the evidence I have come across as I have been reading about the war. I hope readers find it useful to better understand the circumstances over these difficult days in the present and the future.
The Massacre of Palestinians
So far, Israel has killed over 31,490 Gazans – about 1.5 percent of the total population of Gaza. This death toll is conservative and will almost certainly increase. Israeli officials accept the number. The number does not include about 7,000 missing people, many still buried under the rubble. It also does not include any individuals whose death was not reported to Gaza’s overwhelmed health ministry.
According to the available public data, including data in Israel, about three quarters (c. 73%) of the deaths in Gaza are of women and children.
As of mid-February, over 12,300 children had already been killed.22 73,439 people (about 3 percent of Gaza’s population) have been injured.
During the first six weeks of the war, Israel used 2,000-pound bombs in areas it designated safe for civilians in at least 208 occasions.
In October alone, the number of killed Gazan children was over 10 times more than the number of children killed in the entire first year of the Russia-Ukraine war.
A Gazan journalist wrote an open letter to Israeli society in which he narrated a case of a 6-year-old boy who lay down to sleep under a truck and turned blue from the cold. When a passer-by woke him up and asked him what he was doing, the boy responded that he wanted the truck to drive over him in the morning because his entire family had been killed. The boy died the same day from hypothermia.
As of March 15, 168 UN staff members have been killed, 125 journalists and media workers have been killed, more than the entirety of journalists killed in World War II, and at a rate higher than any other conflict over the past century.
More than 100 university professors, including several leading Palestinian academics have been killed.
IDF troops entered a family home and killed the two parents in sight of their children (aged 11, 9 and 5; the youngest, with cerebral palsy, lost his eye to a grenade the soldiers threw).
In a different case, the IDF sent a handcuffed prisoner to deliver a message to evacuate a hospital in Khan Younis, then shot him as he tried to walk outside the gate. The IDF subsequently bombed the hospital.
An American doctor that returned from Gaza told the Los Angeles Times that during her time there “a handful of children” around 5-8 were brought to the emergency room, all of whom had single sniper shots to the head.
A detained Gazan had his hands zip-tied before driven over by an Israeli tank,
potentially while he was still alive. An image of his mutilated corpse was shared on an Israeli telegram channel with a post stating that “You are going to love this!!!”
In a January poll, two thirds of Israelis preferred to continue the war in its current form of excessive bombardment and violence.
Causing the Deaths of Civilian Population
The High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy stated in front of the UN Security Council that “starvation is being used [by Israel] as a war arm.”
A prominent scholar of famine and Executive Director of the World Peace
Foundation stated that he had never seen the war crime of starvation perpetrated in such scale over the 40 years of his career.
Jewish activists have completely blocked the entrance of aid to Gaza on several occasions in recent months.
IDF soldiers recorded themselves destroying and burning food warehouses in Gaza.
On average, there is one shower in Gaza for every 4,500 people, and a toilet for every 220.
Important public voices in Israel – such as a former general and head of Israel’s National Security Council and official wartime advisor to Israel’s Defense Minister have spoken in favour of allowing diseases to decimate the civilian population in Gaza.
Israeli Discourse and de-Humanization of Palestinians
Israel’s President has stated that Israel did not distinguish between militants and civilians, “it’s an entire nation out there that is responsible”
In November, 90 Israeli doctors signed a letter calling to bomb hospitals in Gaza.
A popular singer used a long series of expletives against Gaza during a show for Israeli soldiers. In early January, a long list of rabbis, academics and ten MPs have called for the cessation of all humanitarian aid to Gaza.140
In February, a former senior Mossad figure and an important journalist agreed that children aged 5 and up in Gaza are not uninvolved in the conflict and therefore do not deserve humanitarian aid.
An Israeli media outlet has also noted with glee that the number of deaths of “Arabs” in Gaza in the current war is higher than all previous wars.
An Israeli Telegram channel with 127,000 followers shared the image of a Gazan child with cerebral palsy who starved to death as the sequel to the film
A rabbi at the head of a yeshiva for pre-military age men stated that according to Jewish law, all Gazans must be killed, including babies.
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.
A Gazan detainee said that IDF soldiers placed women detainees from Gaza into the men’s section while being completely naked, and cut the hair of some of the women detainees.
Looting has become normalized.
A soldier holding up a sign advertising a barber shop in Israel with corpses of dead Palestinians around him.
An UNRWA report based on over a hundred interviews with released detainees contained many gruesome details, such as a Gazan law student who was beaten so badly that his genitals turned blue and his urine continued to contain blood for weeks. He was forced to sleep naked in the open air, next to a fan blowing cold air, and played music so loudly that his ears bled.
A BBC investigative report in mid-March found that the IDF beat, humiliated and detained for days dozens of Gaza medical staff from Nasser hospital.
Ethnic cleansing
An Israeli government plan proposal to repopulate all Gazans to the Sinai Peninsula (part of Egypt) has been leaked. Israel has also attempted to get the US to pressure Egypt into accepting Gazan refugees and has attempted to convince several countries including Congo to accept Palestinian refugees.
All the evidence I have seen indicates that Israel is systematically destroying Gaza to make it unliveable in the future
Israel has destroyed not only buildings whose connection to Hamas militants is weak but also a long list of cultural institutions, historical and archaeological sites, dozens of governmental buildings including the parliament and the main courthouse) religious buildings (over 223 mosques and 3 churches), universities (most or all universities in Gaza have been destroyed according to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor), hospitals, public libraries….
Hostages
Within this context, the Israeli government has refrained from making serious moves to release the 134 Israeli hostages that remain in Gaza.
To date, three hostages of some 240 hostages taken on October 7 have been released by military operations. The military operation that released two of them also killed some 100 Gazans.
Three other Israeli hostages were killed by IDF forces within Gaza despite waving white flags and calling for help. Another was killed during an attempted rescue operation. Three others were supposedly killed by gas that the IDF flooded the tunnels.
In late February, an Israeli report found that at least 10 hostages were killed by the IDF’s actions, including a case where the IDF bombed a building that it suspected had an Israeli hostage.
There is additional evidence that families of the hostages fear that if they speak up too loudly their family members might be pushed to the end of the list of hostages to be released.
In mid-March, the chief of staff of the IDF unit responsible for the hostages resigned as he felt that Israel’s political leadership was not interested in moving towards a deal.
The West Bank
The West Bank has received less attention in media and public discourse. Nonetheless, the situation there has deteriorated quickly since the beginning of the war. At least 15 herding/Bedouin Palestinian settlements there have been abandoned after attacks by Israeli Jewish settlers (646 recorded since October 7).
About 4,000 Palestinians have been displaced in the West Bank in 2023. Jewish settlers have killed several Palestinians, and have wounded, terrorized and abused others. A total of 418 Palestinians has been killed so far.
In the first month of fighting, over 2,200 Palestinians were arrested. Over 2,000 Palestinians were held in administrative detention, without charge or trial. These have been subjected to torture and degrading treatment.
Many descriptions of released detainees refer to constant abuse by their prison staff.
One recently said that daily, since Oct. 7 their guards require them to crawl while draped in an Israeli flag and kiss the Israeli flag, beating them if they refuse to do so. Food was thrown to the floor and stepped on.288
The media, propaganda and the war (disclaimer)289
CNN, for example, has admitted that it runs all its Gaza coverage through its Jerusalem bureau, itself monitored by the censor.
At the same time, Israel also strongly limits the boundaries of acceptable public discourse. Israeli police have been repressing anti-war protests since the beginning of the war, often with excessive violence.
Israel has similarly obstructed external official investigations into the Oct. 7 atrocities, for example one led by the UN Human Rights Council.
Israeli discourse almost uniformly ignores Palestinian voices. There is almost no attention to the experiences of Gazans or the horrors of war.
Israeli media’s pro-war position is rationalized, justified and widely accepted.
The new CEO of Channel 13 told his employees in mid-March that they should unite the nation by entertainment and Israeli hasbara (i.e. public diplomacy/propaganda).
An important Israeli journalist has stated that he believes that journalism should be used to bolster Israeli morale during the war.
Accordingly, Israeli media amplifies pro-war voices – seen to support the state’s goals – while silencing others.
Israeli journalists avoided reporting on friendly fire casualties in the IDF.
Ha’aretz (considered to be leftist by Israeli standards), for example, waited for five months until it called for a ceasefire despite overwhelming evidence for the humanitarian costs of the war,
IDF accepted and claimed to have verified evidence of beheaded babies, later found out to be false.
Other stories such as putting a baby in the oven or cutting a baby out of his mother’s belly and stabbing it, were all promoted by the media and/or the IDF. Yet found out to be fake as well.
Other stories during the war, such as the Israeli claim that the central Hamas bunker is located under al-Shifa hospital, were found to be false.
The Treatment of UNRWA as a case of media misrepresentation.
One example of the actions of Israel’s media strategy is the treatment of UNRWA, the UN body responsible for the support of Palestinian refugees.
The same day after the ICJ found that it was plausible that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza (Jan. 26), Israel asserted that 12 UNRWA employees participated in the Oct. 7 attacks against Israel.
Almost immediately, 16 of UNRWA’s donors – western countries – declared they would suspend their funding of UNRWA.
Israeli officials have long stated that they want to shut UNRWA down.
344 Israel has recently stated again this aim, suggesting that it has been weaponizing its recent allegations for this purpose.
In the recent war Israel and Israeli media state or insinuate there is a connection between UNRWA and Hamas, but Israeli media fails to independently evaluate the claims by the IDF, or mention facts such as that UNRWA is very frequently audited within the UN,346 or notify its audience that all UNRWA employees had been approved by Israel, re-approved every year, and that UNRWA screens all its employees against the UN Security Council sanctions list twice a year.
UNRWA also fired several employees who were found to be linked to Hamas in the past.
Moreover, the closure of UNRWA would massively exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, while discussions in Israeli media include no clear plan for providing alternative aid to Gazans.
As I hope to have demonstrated through the evidence above, the situation in Gaza is a horrible catastrophe that continues to unfold daily in front of our eyes. The least I can do is to gather the evidence and speak up now.
Lee Mordechai concludes with a poem of Dylan Thomas (1914-1953).
Many regard the poem Do Not Go Gently Into The Good Night of Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas, as one of the finest poems in the English language in the 20th Century.
DO NOT GO GENTLY INTO THE GOOD NIGHT
Do not go gentle into that good night \ Dylan Thomas
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light
For My Readers:
12 Steps to Bring About a Ceasefire
1. Do not be afraid. Listen to your humanity. Speak up
2. Join demonstrations, attend vigils, public meetings
3. Attend small group meetings of local activists
4. Make full use of social media to exercise your compassion
5. Give donations to organisations supporting the Palestinians
6. Contact everyone you know about your concern of what takes place
7. Invite people to your home to share concerns
8. Hand leaflets out on the streets and stick leaflets on the walls
9. Contact political, religious, corporate, social, government institutions
10. Send a message to any authorities
11. Make use of the arts to increase public concern
12. Pray, meditate, reflect, research and act to uphold dignity and compassion.
MAY ALL BEINGS BE MINDFUL OF DEPTH AND EXPANSE OF SUFFERING
MAY ALL BEINGS COOPERATE TO RESOLVE SUFFERING
MAY ALL BEINGS LIVE IN PEACE AND HARMONY
Thank you for giving a Buddhist perspective. The cruelty and depravity of Israel is beyond human comprehension.