I, Lee Mordechai, a historian and an Israeli citizen, testify in this document, as events are unfolding, to the horrible situation in the Gaza Strip. I write my personal opinion out of a sense of double responsibility: as a citizen whose country is committing what I consider as grave crimes, and as an academic, who believes that after having dedicated my career to research I am obliged to speak up against injustice, especially when it is so close. I write also because of the disappointing general silence on this issue among many international and Israeli academic institutions, especially those that are well-positioned to comment on it. The relatively few of my colleagues who have bravely spoken out have been an inspiration.1 I do not believe this document will convince many others to change their minds. Rather, I write this publicly to testify that during the war there were and remain Israeli voices who strongly dissented from Israel’s actions.
The newest version of this document can be found on my academia.edu and Twitter pages, which also have an English version. Older versions appear on my Twitter page. I plan to continue to revise this document every few weeks. I include in this document a large number of references, especially of videos from Gaza, to convey and clarify the scale of this event and the frequency of the horrors that I describe.