HomeNewsIsrael’s war in Gaza...

Israel’s war in Gaza amounts to genocide, Amnesty International report finds

A report from Amnesty International alleges that Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip constitutes the crime of genocide under international law, the first such determination by a major human rights organisation in the 14-month-old conflict.

Israel's war in Gaza amounts to genocide, Amnesty International report finds | Israel-Gaza war | The Guardian

The 32-page report examining events in Gaza between October 2023 to July 2024, published on Thursday, found that Israel had “brazenly, continuously and with total impunity … unleashed hell” on the strip’s 2.3 million population, noting that the “atrocity crimes” against Israelis by Hamas on 7 October 2023, which triggered the war, “do not justify genocide”.

Israel 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.

It marks the first time Amnesty has alleged the crime of genocide during an ongoing conflict, and builds on a March report by the UN special rapporteur for Palestine that concluded “there are reasonable grounds to believe” Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians.

“Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call: this is genocide and it must stop now,” Agnès Callamard, the group’s secretary general, said in a news conference on Wednesday.

Amnesty cited the deliberate obstruction of aid and power supplies together 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” within the context of the occupation and blockade of Gaza.

Amnesty International's Israel branch distances itself from 'genocide' claim | Gaza | The Guardian

“We did not necessarily start out thinking we would come to this conclusion. We knew there was a risk of genocide, as the international court of justice said,” Budour Hassan, Amnesty’s Israel and occupied Palestinian territories researcher, told the Guardian. “When you join the dots together, the totality of the evidence, it is not just violations of international law. This is something deeper.”

The main allegations in the report are:

  • The unprecedented scale and magnitude of the military offensive, which has caused death and destruction at a speed and level unmatched in any other 21st-century conflict;
  • Intent to destroy, after considering and discounting arguments such as Israeli recklessness and callous disregard for civilian life in the pursuit of Hamas;
  • Killing and causing serious bodily or mental harm in repeated direct attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, or deliberately indiscriminate attacks; and
  • Inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction, such as destroying medical infrastructure, the obstruction of aid, and repeated use of arbitrary and sweeping “evacuation orders” for 90% of the population to unsuitable areas.

As an occupying power, Israel is legally obliged to provide for the needs of the occupied population, Kristine Beckerle, an adviser to Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa team, said on Wednesday. She described Israel’s May offensive on Rafah, until then the last place of relative safety in the strip, as a major turning point when it came to establishing intent.

“[Israel] had made Rafah the main aid point, and it knew civilians would go there. The ICJ ordered them to stop and they went ahead anyway,” she said. “Rafah was key.”

At least 47 people including four children were killed in air strikes across Gaza on Tuesday, according to health officials in the territory, including at least 21 who were sheltering in tent camp housing displaced people near the city of Khan Younis. The Israeli military said it had targeted Hamas militants.

Amnesty has called on the UN to enforce a ceasefire, impose targeted sanctions on Israeli and top Hamas officials, and for western governments such as the US, the UK and Germany to stop providing security assistance and selling arms to Israel.

The rights group has also urged the international criminal court, which last month issued arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the former defence minister Yoav Gallant, to add genocide to the list of war crimes it is investigating.

Finally, it called for the unconditional release of civilian hostages and for “Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups responsible for the crimes committed on 7 October to be held to account”.

Amnesty International Finds Israel Is Committing Genocide in Bombshell Report | Truthout

The report, You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza, is likely to be met with outrage in Israel and generate accusations of antisemitism. Several legal experts and genocide studies scholars contend that the 7 October attack was also genocidal.

The Holocaust led to the creation of the Jewish state and the Geneva conventions, which codified and outlawed genocide as a punishable crime. Both initiatives were the international community’s “never again” response to the horrors inflicted on European Jews by the Nazis in world war two.

 

In its conclusion, the report says that Amnesty “recognises that there is resistance and hesitancy among many in finding genocidal intent when it comes to Israel’s conduct in Gaza”, which has “impeded justice and accountability”.

“Amnesty International concedes that identifying genocide in armed conflict is complex and challenging, because of the multiple objectives that may exist simultaneously. Nonetheless, it is critical to recognise genocide, and to insist that war can never excuse it,” it states.

Amnesty said the report was based on fieldwork, interviews with 212 people, including victims, witnesses and healthcare workers in Gaza, analysis of extensive visual and digital evidence, and more than 100 statements from Israeli government and military actors it said amounted to “dehumanising discourse”. It also used video and photo evidence of soldiers committing or celebrating war crimes.

Israel’s acts in Gaza were examined “in their totality, taking into account their recurrence and simultaneous occurrence, and both their immediate impact and their cumulative and mutually reinforcing consequences”, it said. Findings were shared “extensively” on multiple occasions with Israeli authorities, the group added, but were not met with responses.

Thursday’s publication builds on the London-based rights group’s previous bold positions on Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories. In 2022, Amnesty joined Human Rights Watch and the respected Israeli NGO B’Tselem in issuing a major report accusing Israel of apartheid, as part of a growing movement to redefine the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a struggle for equal rights rather than a territorial dispute. Israeli politicians called for the report to be withdrawn, alleging antisemitism.

Cre: The Guardian

- A word from our sponsors -

spot_img

Most Popular

More from Author

Chanel Ties Paris Fashion Week Up With a Bow

Long before the “bow girl,” in all her coquettecore glory, became a fashion...

Miu Miu Was Cool-Girl Catnip

Miu Miu has a knack for bringing It girls not just...

Saint Laurent Solidifies the Season of the Big Shoulder

There was one big thing that united Saint Laurent’s winter 2025...

Reading Festival organisers quizzed over waste

The organisers of one of the UK's largest music festivals have...

- A word from our sponsors -

spot_img

Read Now

Chanel Ties Paris Fashion Week Up With a Bow

Long before the “bow girl,” in all her coquettecore glory, became a fashion archetype, there was Chanel. This morning at Paris Fashion Week, the French house wrapped the Grand Palais in a massive black ribbon to celebrate one of its most beloved motifs. (One which dates back to the...

Miu Miu Was Cool-Girl Catnip

Miu Miu has a knack for bringing It girls not just to the front row, but onto the runway. Today at Paris Fashion Week, the former group included Sydney Sweeney, Nara Smith, Alix Earle, and Renée Rapp. (And at least one It guy: A$AP Rocky.) At the Palais D’Iéna, the walls had...

Saint Laurent Solidifies the Season of the Big Shoulder

There was one big thing that united Saint Laurent’s winter 2025 collection: huge, powerful shoulders. Models paraded around the perimeter of a large oval onyx floor wearing every single version of the massive shoulder. They appeared on ’80s power-suit-style dresses in vibrant colors, oversized outerwear, and even...

Reading Festival organisers quizzed over waste

The organisers of one of the UK's largest music festivals have been grilled over the tonnes of waste and tents that are left behind each year. Reading Festival attracts tens of thousands of people to Little John's Farm in the Berkshire town on the August bank holiday weekend...

Ray Meade: ‘When they told me I had MS, I thought I was done’

Like most of us, guitarist Raymond Meade had a slow and quiet summer in 2021. The pandemic had put a stop to live touring with Ocean Colour Scene, with whom he had played since 2016. And without recording studios, he was unable to continue with his successful solo career. But...

Oasis sale ‘may have misled fans’ says watchdog

Ticketmaster "may have misled Oasis fans" with unclear pricing when it put their reunion tour on sale last year, the UK's competition watchdog has said. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said the company may have breached consumer protection law by selling "platinum" tickets for almost 2.5 times...

Window cleaner in quest to confirm priceless Shakespeare portrait

Window cleaner Steven Wadlow has spent more than a decade trying to prove he is in possession of a priceless, authentic Shakespeare portrait. His quest is now being told in a Netflix documentary. What is the story behind the find? Steven, who lives in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, said his...

What is the Signal messaging app and how secure is it?

The free messaging app Signal has made headlines after the White House confirmed it was used for a secret group chat between senior US officials. The editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, was inadvertently added to the group where plans for a strike against the Houthi group in...

Papua New Guinea blocks Facebook to ‘limit’ fake news and porn

Papua New Guinea has blocked access to Facebook in what authorities call a "test" to limit hate speech, misinformation and pornography. The sudden ban, which started on Monday, has drawn criticism from opposition MPs and political critics, who called it a violation of human rights. Defending the move, Police...

Bollywood actress vindicated over boyfriend’s death after media hounding

Bollywood actress Rhea Chakraborty was called "a gold digger" and "a murderer". She was slut-shamed and spent 27 days in prison after a hate-filled vicious media campaign in 2020 alleged she had been involved in the death of her actor boyfriend Sushant Singh Rajput. Now, India's federal investigators...

UK Detects First Case of Bird Flu in a Sheep, Stoking Fears of Spread

LONDON, March 24 (Reuters) - Bird flu has been detected in a sheep in northern England, the first known case of its kind in the world, Britain’s government said, adding to the growing list of mammals infected by the disease and fueling fears of a pandemic. Many different...

Half of family-run businesses cancel investments as tax grab looms

More than half of family-run businesses and farms have paused or ditched investments as they scramble to cut costs ahead of Rachel Reeves’s inheritance tax (IHT) raid, data shows. More than 55pc of businesses surveyed by Family Business UK and CBI Economics said they had cancelled investments or...