The things I cannot unsee

And the loneliness of bearing witness in an age of lies

It has been lonely, saying again and again that I have seen it. Lonely not because I wanted company in horror, but because so few people had seen the evidence, and because the world kept demanding instant certainty from those of us still trying to understand what had happened. In the storm of disinformation after 7 October, it often felt as though truth moved too slowly for our age. Falsehood had momentum, and denial had armies, but evidence had to be handled with care, and that takes time.

For months, when I wrote about what I had seen, I could only tag the few senior generals who had sat with me in the same room, seeing the same evidence, and who knew I was not exaggerating. They knew I was not being theatrical. They knew I was not confusing propaganda with evidence. There was a strange isolation in that, because the public conversation was moving at a pace that left almost no room for the burden of witness. People wanted conclusions before they had seen the facts. They wanted moral simplicity before they had faced the record. They wanted alternative facts to fit their biases, not conclusions based on facts.

Since 7 October, I have researched and written about the entire seven-front war. It has consumed my professional life. I have written papers, followed the military and political evolution of the conflict, and have just finished a book on it. I have written both positive and negative critiques of Israel’s conduct. Of course, I am a Zionist in the sense that I believe in the necessity of Israel’s existence, but I have not approached this war in my academic work as a slogan or a partisan reflex. I have tried, as much as possible, to understand it with discipline, seriousness and proportion. (X doesn’t count. That’s part bar brawl, part therapy.)

Yet in this context, all of that work feels almost secondary and insignificant. The most meaningful thing I have done since 7 October has not been analysis, or commentary, or strategy, or prediction, or critique. It has been to bear witness to the horrors committed that day and to relay them when denial tried to bury them. Back in 2024, with a visiting group of senior military officers, I was shown part of the sexual crime evidence discussed in the Civil Commission report released today; evidence far beyond the infamous 47-minute reel. It remains the most horrific thing I have ever seen in my life, which to this day causes my voice to hoarsen and the hair to stand up on my arms when I talk about it.

There are things that permanently alter your sense of what human beings can do to one another. There are images and details that do not fade, because they are not merely violent; they are desecrations. They are crimes against the body, against the dead, against the living, and against the idea that humanity has limits. Nothing Israel has done in Gaza comes anywhere near the horrors of 7 October. The war in Gaza and the atrocities of that day do not merit being treated as comparable entries in the same ledger. No comparison survives contact with the evidence.

I believe Hamas and its supporters understand this, which is why the rapes are what they are most desperate to deny. Every time I have written about what I have seen, the response has differed from the usual abuse. The bots arrive in far greater numbers. The replies are filled with smears, mockery, deflection and outright denial. The purpose is not persuasion. It is intimidation. It is to make bearing witness so exhausting, so poisonous, and so socially costly that people stop doing it.

From today, the evidence is out there for the whole world to read, not just for those of us unfortunate enough to see it. People can look away, and many will. People can deny, and many already have. Still, those of us who saw it know what we saw, and we know why it has to be said plainly. When Yoav Gallant said Israel was fighting human animals in Hamas, I understood exactly what he meant. I will not pretend otherwise to spare those who cannot face what was done.

You may read it for yourself, here. Silenced No More. I urge you to bear witness, too, if you can bear it.