A hungry Palestinian child cries as she waits for food at a charity kitchen in Khan Younis in southern Gaza on November 29, 2024. Denial of life-saving goods and humanitarian aid was a key finding of an Amnesty International report that accuses Israel of genocide. File Photo by Anas Deeb/UPI | License Photo
Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, brazenly unleashing “hell and destruction” on Palestinians with “total impunity,” Amnesty International said Thursday following an investigation.
Amnesty documented Israel’s actions during its 14-month military offensive, looking at civilian killings, civilian infrastructure destruction, forcible displacement, obstruction or denial of life-saving goods and humanitarian aid and restricting electricity in a major 293-page report, the human rights charity said in a news release. Advertisement
Amnesty said the report, titled You Feel Like You Are Subhuman concludes Israel has, and continues to commit, genocide through analysis of its intent based on behavior patterns and more than 100 statements by senior figures in the Israeli leadership.
“Amnesty International’s report demonstrates that Israel has carried out acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza. These acts include killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction,” said Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard. Advertisement
“Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them.
“Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now,” Callamard said.
The investigation looked closely at Israel’s actions line by line and in totality, factoring the frequency and the impact, both immediate and cumulatively, as well as the number of people killed and injured and overall levels of destruction.
Prohibited actions were frequently preceded by announcements or exhortations from senior officials either in the war cabinet or otherwise steering the prosecution of the war with Hamas, according to Amnesty.
“Taking into account the pre-existing context of dispossession, apartheid and unlawful military occupation in which these acts have been committed, we could find only one reasonable conclusion: Israel’s intent is the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, whether in parallel with, or as a means to achieve, its military goal of destroying Hamas,” said Callamard.
Amnesty called for the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to urgently look at adding genocide to the crimes it is investigating and for all states to use every legal route to bring perpetrators to justice saying no one should be able to get away with genocide. Advertisement
The court issued war crimes arrest warrants last month for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former defense minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas commander Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, known as Deif.
Callamard criticized countries that are still providing weapons to Israel saying they must be aware that they are reneging on their responsibility to prevent genocide and warning they risk aiding genocide.
“All states with influence over Israel, particularly key arms suppliers like the United States and Germany, but also other EU member states, the U.K. and others, must act now to bring Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza to an immediate end,” she said.
The pro-Israel group NGO Monitor slammed the report as an anti-Semitic sham by an organization bent on the destruction of Israel.
“The allegation that Israel is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip is unfounded and the process of writing the report has been flawed,” the group said in a post on X.
“Even employees from Amnesty admit that the report’s ‘research’ is a sham, with conclusions fabricated in advance to push an anti-Israel agenda. This immoral attack is blatant genocide inversion that seeks to turn necessary defense against terror atrocities into a heinous international crime. Advertisement
“The NGO twists and invents legal standards, erases the monstrous Hamas war crimes of Oct. 7, and turns unverifiable accusations into ‘evidence’.”
The Amnesty report does condemn the Oct. 7 attacks in detail and demands the release of people abducted who remain hostage in Gaza and for those responsible to be brought to justice but says the deliberate mass killings and hostage-taking by Hamas and other armed groups “can never justify Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”
Callamard also attacked Israel’s consistent claim that the death and destruction it has wrought in Gaza is lawful collateral damage that is justified by its military objectives: namely decimating Hamas.
“Genocidal intent can co-exist alongside military goals and does not need to be Israel’s sole intent,” she said.
