Summary
A historian specialising in the Byzantine period whose database and document Witnessing the Gaza War compile the genocide and war-crimes allegations that Debunking the Genocide Allegations reviews (Debunking the Genocide Allegations: A Reexamination of the Israel-Hamas War from October 7, 2023 to June 1, 2025, PDF p.18).
Details
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Mordechai argues, as the work presents him, that Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza by targeting civilians, disproportionate bombings and systematic starvation; his database compiles studies, reports and position papers from academics, UN agencies and human rights organisations (PDF p.18).
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The work cites his updated document for the claim that about 100-150 trucks entered daily against approximately 300 needed (PDF p.24, note 8), and quotes his May 2025 footnote attempting to reconcile the UN’s 500-truck explanations while itself giving 73 food trucks daily for 2022 (PDF p.29).
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In the database the authors studied, incidents with evidence or specific claims of deliberate killings account, on their count, for only 61 fatalities out of 50,021 GMOH-reported casualties (PDF p.11).
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Chapter 3 describes Mordechai as a historian who has collected an enormous array of accounts from Palestinian witnesses, UN agencies, human rights organizations, academic researchers, media outlets and international critics of Israel, to substantiate his claim that the IDF is responsible for serious and intentional war crimes (PDF p.81).
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Chapter 3 examines the March 2025 version of his database under his title “Massacres”: of his score of incidents totalling 61 killed, the authors sort 12 Palestinians and seven foreign civilians into incidents confirmed by forensic evidence, 40 more Palestinians and one foreign UN worker into unverified or questionable accounts, and the remainder into Hamas-affiliated sources’ claims lacking sufficient forensic evidence; contrary to his title, no act described is said to meet the common definition of a massacre except the Flour Massacre and the unverified EuroMed Monitor claims (PDF p.81-83).
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Mordechai is criticised throughout the completed Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 for omissions: adopting Hamas’s claim that Shifa Hospital served as an aid distribution center and that the IDF raid aimed to disrupt aid, without the senior Hamas figures arrested or killed inside it; and presenting the Flour Massacre as stemming from an Israeli attempt to secure convoys through a Gazan clan, without the Daghmesh clan heads’ subsequent murder by Hamas or the arrests and executions of Palestinian Authority officials who came to secure convoys (PDF p.61-62).
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Chapter 3, sections D-K (PDF p.88-101) complete his database’s sorting: the Hala evacuation shooting (perpetrator unclear; the work considers a vengeful Israeli sniper unlikely and a Hamas sniper possible), identified-victim cases on multiple Palestinian testimonies (the Mahatta family, Khan Younis; Najib at Al-Hayir Hospital; the shackled detainee sent to Nasser Hospital), single-or-unreliable-witness cases (up to 11 alleged victims, including EuroMed Monitor claims), drone cases where military justification is context-dependent (nine killed), less credible cases with possible justification (ten killed), and coordination-failure cases (two Palestinians and one UN worker); the tally given is 51 of 50,021 GMOH-reported killed by May 2025, and eight foreign casualties, plus the 15 of Tel al-Sultan.
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Chapter 4 answers his munitions comparison (about 29,000 Israeli air munitions to December 2023 against 3,678 US munitions in Iraq 2004-2010) with the invasion-period US figure of about 29,199, and his collateral-damage ratios (1:15 to 1:300 against the US 1:29 for the Saddam Hussein assassination attempt) with the argument that “permissible incidental harm” is a maximum threshold, not an expected or demanded number (PDF p.107, p.111-113).
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Chapter 4 also charges him with conflating distinction and proportionality with personal impressions, and with relying on Amnesty and Human Rights Watch strike reports whose resident-interview methodology cannot establish the absence of military targets (PDF p.102, p.116).
Related pages
Debunking the Genocide Allegations: A Reexamination of the Israel-Hamas War from October 7, 2023 to June 1, 2025, Genocide, Gaza Ministry of Health, EuroMed Monitor