Amnesty International finds Israel is committing genocide in Gaza
7th December 2024
Human rights organisation says Israel, “brazenly, continuously and with total impunity [...] unleashed hell” on enclave’s 2.3m population
AMNESTY International has published a damning report alleging Israel’s war in Gaza amounts to genocide under international law.
The UK-based human rights organisation’s 296-page report is the first such investigation by a major charity into the 14-month conflict, and found that Israel had, “brazenly, continuously and with total impunity [...] unleashed hell” on the strip’s 2.3 million population.
The group arrived at its conclusion after a detailed analysis of “dehumanising and genocidal statements” by Israeli officials, digital images, and 212 witness testimonies, and says it must serve as “a wake-up call” to the international community.
The report, entitled ‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza, was conducted over several months earlier this year. It asserts the atrocity crimes against Israelis by Hamas on 7 October 2023, which triggered the war, “do not justify genocide”.
Israel in its reprisal attacks has “committed prohibited acts under the Genocide Convention, namely killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction” with the “specific intent to destroy Palestinians” in the territory, the report said.
The 1948 Genocide Convention, enacted after the mass murder of Jews in in the Nazi Holocaust, defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.”
Amnesty cited the deliberate blocking of aid and power supplies along with “massive damage, destruction and displacement,” leading to the collapse of water, sanitation, food and healthcare systems, in what it called a “pattern of conduct” under the occupation and seige of Gaza.
The rights group has called on the UN to enforce a ceasefire, impose sanctions on Israeli and top Hamas officials, and for Western governments such as the US, the UK and Germany to stop selling arms to Israel.
Amnesty has also urged the international criminal court - which last month issued arrest warrants for both Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant - to add genocide to the list of war crimes it is investigating.
Agnes Callamard, Amnesty’s secretary general, said: “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.”
The report has sparked outrage and furious denials from the Israeli government.
Responding to Amnesty’s allegations, Israel’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Oren Marmorstein, described the human rights group as a “deplorable and fanatical organisation,” and said that the report was “entirely false and based on lies.”
He said: “The genocidal massacre on 7 October 2023, was carried out by the Hamas terrorist organisation against Israeli citizens,” adding that Israel was acting in self-defence and “fully in accordance with international law.”
The Israeli military said it was “actively working to dismantle Hamas’ military infrastructure” in Gaza and that it “takes all feasible measures to mitigate harm to civilians during operations.”
So far over 45,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in Gaza, more than 15,000 of them thought to be children, according to the Hamas-ran ministry of health, whose figures are considered reliable by the UN.
The war in Gaza was triggered by a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed and around 250 taken hostage.
