Dr. Aaron Lerner: The charge by Israel's enemies that it is committing a genocide against the Palestinian Arabs is false, malicious and a complete inversion of the truth. It relies on disinformation and invented legal standards to deny the Jewish state its right to self-defense following Hamas's genocidal attack on October 7, 2023. Nevertheless, it is being promoted by certain (disloyal?) Israelis, whose words are used as an authoritative validation of the bogus claim. One such Israeli- who serves as a hero to those who delight in vilifying Israel- is Lee Mordechai, whose false "genocide" charges against Israel provide fuel for the delegitimization of the Jewish state. The CAMERA website features an article by Yigal Carmon - a former Israeli intelligence officer, counterterrorism adviser, and founder of the Middle East Media Research Institute - debunking Mordechai's sanctimonious accusations. The first part of the article appears here. For the entire shocking, fact-filled article by Carmon, click the link below (footnotes are in the CAMERA article). https://www.camera.org/article/the-man-who-wasnt-there-an-account-of-a-fake- witness-to-the-gaza-war/ Introduction The website “Bearing Witness to the Israel-Gaza War,” run by Israeli historian Lee Mordechai, claims to be “both a public statement and an archive… [that] aims to make sense of a deeply complex and troubling situation” in Gaza. Mordechai states that his website/archive “compiles evidence from reliable sources, including humanitarian organizations, investigative reports, and firsthand accounts” of war crimes committed by Israel against the people of Gaza – which, according to Mordechai, meet the definition of “genocide” (in Mordechai’s words, “my definition of genocide”). This document will refute several major claims made by Mordechai on his website. A Note On Mordechai’s Website Mordechai’s website, Witnessing-the-gaza-war.com , appears to be inaccessible from an Israel-based server. It is unclear why this is so, and whether or not this is deliberate. “Witness” A Misleading Use Of The Term In The Name Of Mordechai’s Website The first and most basic element to be refuted in Mordechai’s project is his self-definition as “a witness.” Mordechai did not witness any of the alleged war crimes he cites in his report. The name of his website – “bearing witness to the Israel-Gaza war” – is misleading; what Mordechai does on his website is present a collection of information from a wide range of news websites and social media platforms, and reframe it as “evidence.” He has witnessed none of these firsthand. “I, Lee Mordechai, An Historian By Profession” Harnessing Irrelevant Expertise (History Of The Justinianic Plague) To Claim Authority Mordechai begins his statement of purpose with the words: “I, Lee Mordechai, an Historian by profession and an Israeli citizen…”. He harnesses his academic authority as “a historian by profession” to provide pseudo-academic basis to his claims of genocide. Mordechai’s field of expertise in academia is the Justinianic plague and global pandemics, which fall under the research category of Environmental History. Mordechai is not an expert or an academic authority on the topic of genocide. Before publishing this document, Mordechai never dealt with the subject. He uses his title of a Late Antiquity historian (AD 541–549) to muster authority and stature so as to appear knowledgeable in a field in which he has no expertise whatsoever. “My Definition Of Genocide” Mordechai vs. Prof. Yisrael Charny, A World-Renowned Expert On Genocide Research By his own admission, Mordechai’s definition of genocide is based on “my [i.e. his own] understanding of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.” Mordechai’s understanding stands in contradiction to the element of intent, which according to the 1948 Convention is essential to the definition of “genocide.” The Convention requires that in order to be considered genocide, an act must be “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Mordechai himself has clarified that he does not believe that an Israel policy to commit genocide against the Palestinian Arabs had been “meticulously planned or put in writing.” This in its own right is enough to undermine Mordechai’s claim that genocide has been taking place in Gaza, as no Israeli intent can be proven in the absence of written and/or planned policies. The factor of intent – crucial for the definition of genocide – is absent even by Mordechai’s own standards. In contrast to Mordechai, the late Prof. Israel Charny, who headed the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem and was editor of The Encyclopedia of Genocide ,12 determined that Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza. Before his death in December 2024, Prof. Charny wrote several articles refuting claims of Israeli genocide in Gaza. The October 7 attack on Israel, and the subsequent Israel-Hamas war, had prompted Charny to reexamine premises he had previously held regarding the definition of genocide. On June 19, 2024, Charny wrote on his institute’s website: “Professionally, I have always taken the position that the creation or allowance of any situation which results in masses of dead civilian bodies is genocide… I am now prepared to acknowledge that I was wrong – not in decrying all mass murder but in failing to keep a penetrating focus on intentional genocide.” The focal point, according to Charny’s revised definition, is not so much on the number of dead as on the intention – or absence thereof – behind the act of killing. Since “intent” is not scientifically quantifiable, it is hard to determine the level of intent is behind any human action. But in the case of the Israeli intent regarding the Gaza war, Charny offered a simple test question that proves that the accusation of genocide is unfounded: “If Hamas had not attacked Israel genocidally, in their horrific October 7 slaughter, would Israel have attacked Gaza? No.” In other words, had Israel wished to annihilate the Palestinians in Gaza, there was no need for it to wait for Hamas to attack first on October 7 in order to do so. Since Israel did not start an unprovoked war, it possessed no intent to commit genocide in Gaza. Applying the same logic to Hamas, on the other hand, proves that Hamas did commit first-degree genocide against Israel – a genocide Charny describes as a “massive orgy” of slaying of Israeli citizens. Charny, at that time, however, sums it all up by blaming Israel: “…It is and would be blatantly wrong to accuse Israel of intentional genocidal destruction of the Palestinians, but possibly correct to say that [Israel] has exacted an unduly severe human toll that, sadly, constitutes a crime against humanity.” In an article titled “Leading Genocide Scholar Israel Charny On Gaza War,” published March 27, 2024 by Genocidewatch.com, Charny separates opinion from fact, and again, frames the Gaza war within its true historical context: “The present war was initiated by a genocidal attack on October 7, 2023 that killed every Israeli in sight including babies, women, the elderly and infirm along with many unarmed non-combatant[s], party-going teenagers and young people. That attack included mass rape and frightful torture and mutilation, as well as kidnapping of hundreds of Israeli hostages. Yet Israeli popular culture did NOT call for extermination of the Palestinians… The official charter of Hamas seeks to exterminate Jews and destroy the nation of Israel. This is declared intent to commit genocide… Hamas has placed weapon systems in the homes of civilians and in civilian institutions such as schools and hospitals in total disregard of the consequences for its people”. In Charny’s revised opinion as an academic authority on the subject of genocide, in the circumstances under which a) the State of Israel is fighting against an enemy state that has committed genocide against Israeli citizens; b) this enemy state seeks the total destruction of the state of Israel as well as the total annihilation of the Jewish people, and explicitly declares this intention in its charter; and c) this enemy is all the while using its own citizens as human shields in a systematic and planned manner. Hence, Israel is fighting a war of self-defense, and self-defense does not include genocidal intent. This is all the more true when it was Hamas’ own policies that brought this extent of killing upon the people of Gaza. The fact that Hamas is using its own citizens as human shields as a pre-planned tactic will be proven without a doubt further in this document. Mordechai appears to be aware of this weakness in his argument. For this reason, when forced into a corner, he downplays the overall significance of defining genocide at all. In an interview with the pro-Palestinian British journalist Owen Jones, he said: “…Is the entire thing genocide? Or only a part of it [is] genocide? And again, I don’t want to take a position on this, because even if part of it [is] genocide, it’s bad enough, right? Or even if it is not genocide and only plausibly genocide that’s also bad enough, it’s also not a place where one should be happy to live, I think…I don’t know”. (Who is Owen Jones? Jones once claimed that the Israeli hostages brought into Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza by Hamas on October 7 were there “for medical treatment,’ and expressed doubt about the evidence of Hamas’s horrific acts of rape and sexual violence on October 7.) Absence Of Proper Disclosure Mordechai does not disclose that he is academically and financially involved with the Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies at Princeton University . The center is headed by Iranian-born Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, a vocal sympathizer of the Iranian regime and an active participant in anti-Israel campus protests. The center also hosts former Iranian official Dr. Seyed Hossein Mousavian as a researcher. Mousavian, a supporter of both Hamas and Hezbollah, endorsed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s fatwa to murder Salman Rushdie. By all academic standards, Mordechai should have disclosed the above information to his readers.
