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Pariah: How Gaza Broke Israel – front cover

The record of the world’s first livestreamed genocide

Pariah: How Gaza Broke Israel

A chronicle of witness, silence and reckoning by investigative journalist Richard Powell.

pariah: n. & adj. A state or person cast outside the circle of moral belonging.

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479 pages · eBook $5 · paperback & hardback · Videowire, 2026

The book

The narrative broke because the evidence was livestreamed.

For decades, Israel cultivated the image of a besieged democracy; Western-aligned and morally untouchable. But the Gaza genocide – the first mass atrocity ever documented in real time, by its victims – shattered that narrative.

As bombed neighbourhoods streamed live on phones, as entire families disappeared beneath rubble, and as Western and Arab leaders remained silent, something irreversible broke.

Pariah draws on more than 550 of Powell’s Gaza reports published since 2024, supplemented by eyewitness testimony, government records, leaked memos, court filings and the vast digital archive created by Palestinians themselves. Every claim is cross-referenced against multiple sources; every statistic is traced to its origin. The result is a forensic record of how the destruction of Gaza unfolded – and of the political, legal and media machinery that allowed it to continue in full view of the world.

From the prologue – The World Watched Gaza Burn

“Gaza became a black box; its only light, the flicker of its people’s phones.”

In October 2023, the world looked directly into Gaza and did not turn away. For the first time in history, a modern army’s destruction of a civilian population was recorded from inside the kill-zone by the people being killed. Palestinians filmed their final hours, broadcasting the end of their existence to billions; the genocide unfolded in real time, undeniable, unmissable.

No one would ever be able to claim they had not known.

The truth of the assault survived only because Palestinians recorded it until their batteries died or their lives were taken.

This is not advocacy disguised as journalism; it is journalism that refuses to sanitise what the evidence shows. The goal is neither to persuade nor to inflame, but to create a record that survives the fog of propaganda and the erosion of memory.

Read the full sample (PDF) Pariah, pp. 3–5

Inside the book

Five parts. A century of causes. Two years of evidence.

Opening

  • Prologue – The World Watched Gaza Burn

Part I – The Fire Before the Fire

  • 1 · The Architecture of Siege
  • 2 · A Century of Massacres

Part II – The Rupture and War for Reality

  • 3 · The Breach
  • 4 · Manufactured Myth: The Information War
  • 5 · The Collapse of Credibility: Media Complicity in Real Time

Part III – Accountability and Unravelling

  • 6 · The Legal Reckoning
  • 7 · The War Comes Home
  • Visual Record

Part IV – The World After Gaza

  • 8 · The New Global Alignment
  • 9 · The West’s Reckoning

Part V – Pariah

  • 10 · Pariah
  • 11 · The Erasure of the Future

Closing

  • Afterword
  • Reference Materials
  • Notes

From the book

The visual record

Twenty-one photographs and the maps of a century, captioned as they appear in the book – the evidence the world watched in real time.

Palestinians breach the Israeli security fence at Khan Yunis, 7 October 2023 A family shelters among destroyed buildings in Gaza Israeli demolition of buildings still standing in Gaza Enter the visual record
Timeline109 dated entries, 1948 to the 2026–27 partition plan In numbers99 figures, each with the source the book cites Inside the bookWhat each of the eleven chapters covers

Press

Press record

Review

Press releases, as carried

Syndicated articles

Press & interview enquiries: studio@videowire.co.uk · Launch press release
Press assets: front cover · back cover · author photo

The conversation

Removed from Reddit – preserved here

When Pariah was posted to r/IsraelPalestine with a link to the free download, the thread drew more than 200 comments in a day – argument, testimony, pushback, praise – before moderators removed it for linking to the torrent. The full discussion is archived on this site, unedited.

Read the archived thread

The author

Richard Powell

Richard Powell

Richard Powell is a British investigative journalist and foreign correspondent with more than two decades of conflict reporting – beginning in Kosovo as a journalism student, then Iraq, Sudan, Liberia and Beirut. He was on the Iraqi border before the first bomb fell in March 2003.

He is the founder of Presswire, the press release distribution service, and of greatreporter.com, a platform for emerging journalists. Since 2024, he has published more than 550 reports on Gaza; they form the evidentiary foundation of Pariah.

Byline archive – FeatureFix
greatreporter.com
Amazon author page

Reader response

What readers say

“The definitive historical record of the Gaza war and the failure of the Western world.” – greatreporter, published review
“I’m Jewish and Israeli and I think this book is important. The hasbara machine is real. We need accountability.” – u/leftyjew, archived Reddit discussion
“The book has a massive bibliography and links to source documents. Impressive.” – u/data_scientist, archived Reddit discussion
“Thank you for this. The world needs to know. … This book preserves it.” – u/free_palestine_now, archived Reddit discussion

Editions & where to get it

Every way to read it

FormatIdentifiersGet it
Paperback ISBN 979-8-27-763251-2 (Amazon print)
ISBN 978-969-9193-98-9 (Videowire edition · Ingram)
Amazon UK Waterstones Amazon US Barnes & Noble
Hardback ISBN 979-8-24-739518-8
Amazon UK Amazon US
eBook – $5 ISBN 978-969-9294-10-5 · ASIN B0GMLTN4Y2
Amazon UK Amazon US B&N NOOK
Free digital PDF · EPUB · torrent · magnet – no email, no payment
Download page

Prefer a bookshop? Any bookseller worldwide can order the Videowire paperback by quoting ISBN 978‑969‑9193‑98‑9 – distributed via Ingram.

Free access – no conditions

This record was written to be read.

If you can’t pay – or won’t buy from Amazon – download the full book free: direct PDF, torrent file or magnet link. No email address, no strings. If it matters to you afterwards, buy a copy or pass it on.

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Dispatches

When the record is updated

A second edition, updated through 2026, is in preparation – subscribers hear first. Occasional emails only: new editions, major coverage, and Richard’s continuing reporting. No noise.

Unsubscribe any time. Your address is never shared.

Questions

Frequently asked

Is Pariah available to read for free?

Yes. The full book is available free from the download page: direct PDF, torrent or magnet link, with no email address or payment required. Print and eBook editions are sold on Amazon, at Waterstones and at Barnes & Noble, and any bookshop can order the paperback by ISBN via Ingram.

What formats and ISBNs does it have?

Paperback – ISBN 979-8-27-763251-2 (Amazon print) and 978-969-9193-98-9 (Videowire edition). Hardback – ISBN 979-8-24-739518-8. eBook – ISBN 978-969-9294-10-5 (ASIN B0GMLTN4Y2). 479 pages, published by Videowire Limited, 2026.

Who is Richard Powell?

A British investigative journalist and foreign correspondent with more than two decades of conflict reporting, from Kosovo to Iraq, Sudan, Liberia and Beirut. He is the founder of Presswire and greatreporter.com. Pariah draws on more than 550 of his Gaza reports published since 2024.

What does the book cover?

Five parts: the architecture of siege and a century of massacres before October 2023; the breach and the information war that followed; the legal reckoning and its domestic fallout; the new global alignment after Gaza; and Israel’s arrival at pariah status. A visual record and full reference materials are included.

Press, interviews and review copies?

Email studio@videowire.co.uk. High-resolution cover images and an author photo are in the press section, and the launch press release is here.