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Amnesty International says Israel is committing genocide in Gaza

An Amnesty International investigation has concluded that Israel has and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, during the military offensive it launched last October.

The watchdog group released a 296-page report today, detailing – among other crimes – Israel’s direct or indiscriminate attack on civilians, mass forced displacement, and the destruction and denial of aid. It concluded, crucially for a legal finding of genocide, that Israel carried out acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention “with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza”.

“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,” said Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, in a statement. “Israel has repeatedly argued that its actions in Gaza are lawful and can be justified by its military goal to eradicate Hamas. But genocidal intent can co-exist alongside military goals and does not need to be Israel’s sole intent,” she added.

Israel has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians in relentless attacks on Gaza that it says are targeting Hamas, and there have been repeated warnings of imminent famine in besieged North Gaza, where a reported 70,000 people have been trapped for months.

Callamard noted that Israel has “persisted in committing genocidal acts… in defiance of countless warnings about the catastrophic humanitarian situation and of legally binding decisions from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordering Israel to take immediate measures to enable the provision of humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza.

For more evidence of alleged Israeli war crimes, read our investigation detailing how Israel’s security forces destroyed a plan for UN agencies and local Palestinian leaders to distribute aid to northern Gaza with airstrikes and killings just months after the ICJ ordered it to allow aid in:

A collage showing: On the left, a young boy sitting on two stacked aid boxes, looking to the right of the image. In the lower-third, you can see an Israeli soldier standing guard near a humanitarian aid truck. In the top right corner we see a woman called Nozha Awad fleeing with her triplets in her arms. On the left of this image we see smoke rising at a distance following an Israeli strike while Palestinians are seen on a road fleeing north Gaza to move southward.

Targeted aid killings: How Israel starved a population and sowed chaos in northern Gaza

Experts say the series of Israeli attacks that violently dismantled a UN-backed humanitarian effort shows “a pattern of apparent war crimes”.

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