Professional and ethical statement (including trigger warning)
Last updated:1 November 29, 2024
The following document represents my understanding of the war in Gaza. It was compiled by me alone, except for a subsection on healthcare (marked below) which I wrote together with a colleague, Liat Kozma. I have not received any payment for writing this document and I have written it out of a sense of commitment to human rights, my profession, and my country. The vast majority of this document is written in dry unemotional language to avoid trying to sway readers’ opinion based on emotion, a known bias. I attempted to stick to the facts as I understand them. I describe my methodology in an appendix. The document includes much difficult material, particularly with regards to violence, cruelty, dehumanization and starvation. This document does not include images. Graphic descriptions are rare and brief. There is far more explicit content in the links available through the footnotes below, many of which are graphic and difficult to watch.
Throughout the document I have refrained from using loaded but difficult to define terms such as Zionism, antisemitism, terror/terrorism and brutality.2 These are all boundary objects (a technical term used to describe terms that mean different things to different people, which are still used as shorthands in communication),3 that are often weaponized in discourse by different speakers as a way to legitimize or delegitimize people, institutions or actions. I do not believe the inclusion of these terms would make this document more readable or its analysis better. Antisemitism is the partial exception to this rule, but it is used primarily in discussions others had about it.
This is a working document. Although new details and facts will undoubtedly emerge in the future, since I have started compiling information in this format (a year as of writing) much more information has accumulated while any previous mistakes have been minimal. Interested readers can access all previous versions of this document.
The document changed its purpose over time. Originally, I used it to state my opinion publicly as a form of bearing witness to events. My motive was my commitment to human rights ideals. After the fourth version of this document in mid-March 2024 went viral on Twitter, the public support I received from readers encouraged me to rethink this goal. I now write for many others worldwide and in Israel who want to understand the circumstances over these difficult days in the present and the future. A secondary purpose is to concentrate and preserve at least some of the evidence I have come across as I have been reading about the war, making it accessible for others interested in these events. I have better organized the document over its successive versions, and I now supply footnotes to further references that could inform or be useful to readers. I hope you, the reader, find this document useful – whether to understand what happened during these days through the document or to reach more information through its footnotes.
My position is based on many pieces of evidence that I have collected particularly since late December 2023. In my analysis, which is described in detail in the methodology appendix, I gave precedence to evidence provided by reputable institutions such as the United Nations and its different offices, as well as reports by several humanitarian aid and human rights organizations. These institutions are at least ostensibly independent and therefore less prone to bias. They are also equipped for evidence-based inquiry, which they have employed in many issues unrelated to Israel/Palestine. I have also made use of mainstream media outlets, both in cases of factual reporting (e.g. someone saying something) and in case of investigative reporting. I have complemented these with evidence I have collected from social media from both sides. As the war has continued, policies towards Gaza and conditions within the Gaza Strip change over time. To acknowledge this reality and facilitate a better understanding of the situation, I often note the month and year regarding specific claims and datapoints in relevant sections such as the ones on famine or the US involvement in the war.
I estimate that since the beginning of the war, I have read thousands of articles – academic, those written by academics or journalists, and others. In addition, I have watched thousands of videos and images, mostly by Israelis from the Gaza Strip. Many of these include deeply disturbing content – violence, cruelty, de-humanization and their results, and I included them in the document’s footnotes to convey and clarify the scale of this event and the frequency of the horrors that I describe. To the best of my ability, I estimate that the vast majority of the information I have included is reliable. In cases where I encountered information that seemed doubtful I chose not to include it. I include in this document many footnotes to cite the sources I have used, so that the interested reader would be able to evaluate my account themselves. I welcome thoughtful critique and corrections, and thank everyone who read this document and commented on it in private or in public.4
A few words about myself and my expertise. I grew up in Israel and am a member of Israeli civil society. I have been trained as a professional historian with degrees from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (BA) and Princeton University (PhD), and currently have a faculty position at a leading Israeli university. My relevant professional skills include conducting thorough research, evaluating written sources and their reliability, critical thinking, and synthesizing much material into a coherent narrative. My work on this document is very similar in nature to the professional work I conduct daily. Although the present war began as a new topic for me, I have invested in it far more work than I invest in an average scholarly article. My professional publications appear on my academia.edu and Google Scholar pages. The updated version of this document, alongside links to my other Gaza-related publications, can be found on a dedicated website I opened in November 2024, https://witnessing-the-gaza-war.com/.