Earlier this year, our small delegation of scholars and writers from 6 different countries, including UK, USA, Canada, S. Korea, Japan and Myanmar, met with Dr Lee Mordechai of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for a conversation about his country’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. Mordechai was the author of the 124-page Hebrew original report on Israel’s war crimes in Gaza entitled Bearing Witness to the Israel-Gaza War.
At our request to meet with, and hear from, some Israeli scholars who are principled and disturbed by what the State of Israel is doing to the Palestinians in Gaza since October 7, 2023.
Our Palestinian host organization Sabeel, the liberation theology centre, reached out to Mordechai, who, in turn, graciously agreed to share his reflections, both as a trained scholar and a Jewish Israeli.
From left to right: Professor Michimi Muranishi of Tokyo, Professor El Jones of Halifax, Canada, Professor Lee Mordechai of the Hebrew U. Of Jerusalem (with glasses) and Omar Haramy, director of Sabeel, at Sabeel, Jerusalem, January 2025 (photo by Zarni).
Like every Israeli, he had done his mandatory military service in the Israeli Defence Force before heading to the United States where he did his PhD specializing in in the ancient Eastern Mediterranean region.
According to him, within the Hebrew discourses (among the Israelis), for something to be called a genocide or holocaust there have to be “trains, death camps and gas chambers.”
“As a scholar, I am committed to truth”, stressed Mordechai before proceeding to say that he avoided the terms such as “terrorism” “Zionism” and opted for “neutral” and “descriptive” words to document what Israel is doing to the Palestinian population in Gaza.
He did offer his intimate understanding about the real intentions of powerful actors in Israeli state and society. Six months ago, Mordechai projected 3 things: 1) the IDF is not going to withdraw from Gaza; 2) there are plans to (forcibly) relocate Palestinians to 3rd countries and give them small sums of money; and 3) there are actors who are bent on settling the Jewish people in Gaza.
Our conversation preceded Donald Trump’s criminal pronouncement that USA will take over Gaza as a piece of prime real estate on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea while in effect ethnically cleansing the devastated narrow strip of Palestinian land.
Our conversationalist Professor Mordechai was focused on the immediate term scenarios, which he stressed is something most average Jewish Israeli tend to do.
But the Palestinians who keep alive their continuing history of dispossession, dislocation and destruction take a deeper and longer view of their oppression. On this, the renowned Palestinian Liberation theologian Rev. Dr Munther Issac of Bethlehem offered one of the most incisive and grounded observation about Israel and its expansionist trajectory insofar as the Jewish state’s land grab under various pretexts.
Our conversation with him offers the historically grounded view of Israel.
I’ll give him the last word: “Israel is a terrorist entity built on the Palestinian land by ethnic cleansing of the indigenous populations.”
Watch the interview below –
Maung Zarni
