Amnesty International says there is ‘sufficient evidence’ to accuse Israel of genocide in Gaza
Amnesty International on Wednesday said that it had gathered “sufficient evidence to believe” that Israel’s conduct during the war in Gaza amounts to genocide against the Palestinian people – a charge the Israeli government has vehemently denied.
The 296-page report details evidence gathered over nine months, outlining numerous instances in which Amnesty says Israeli forces and government authorities have committed three of five acts prohibited under the United Nations’ Genocide Convention – including the mass killing of Palestinian civilians, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life “calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part.”
“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,” Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard said in a statement.
Amnesty said that Israel is responsible for extensive and often indiscriminate aerial and ground attacks, widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure, the forced mass displacement of Palestinians across the besieged enclave, and the obstruction of humanitarian aid.
“There is only one reasonable inference that can be drawn from the evidence presented: genocidal intent has been part and parcel of Israel’s conduct in Gaza since 7 October 2023, including its military campaign,” Amnesty’s report states.
Israel launched the war in Gaza after Hamas-led militants carried out an attack on southern Israel on October 7 last year, killing 1,200 people and taking another 251 hostage. In a little over a year, more than 44,000 people in Gaza have been killed and 104,000 injured as a result of Israel’s ongoing military onslaught, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
Israel’s military called Amnesty’s report “entirely baseless” and said it failed to account for the both the operational realities faced by Israeli soldiers within Gaza.
“The report’s allegations of genocide and intentional harm are not only unfounded but also ignore Hamas’ violations of international law, including its use of civilians as human shields and its deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians,” the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said, adding that the military tries to mitigate harm to civilians.
While Amnesty says that it recognizes that Hamas has put Palestinian civilians in danger by operating from, or in the vicinity of, densely populated residential areas, the organization asserts that this does did not relieve Israel from its own obligations under international humanitarian law to spare civilians and avoid indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks.
Israeli government lawyers, speaking earlier this year at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, rejected what they called “grossly distorted” accusations of genocide leveled against it by South Africa. The lawyers argued that the convention was adopted only to “address a malevolent crime of the most exceptional circumstances,” and was “not designed to address the brutal impact of intensive hostilities” on civilians during warfare. It called South Africa’s accusation “a concerted and cynical effort to pervert the meaning of the term ‘genocide
“Many of us have doubts regarding the possibility of proving unequivocally, and beyond any reasonable alternative explanation, the element of intent,” the organization said in a statement, though it acknowledged that that was not a universal view among its staffers. It did say that there was “no dispute within the Israeli section” that Israel’s conduct in Gaza raises “suspicions of widespread violations of international law and may amount to crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.”
The 1948 UN Genocide Convention, which Israel ratified in 1950, says that genocide has occurred when any of five prohibited acts are are carried out with the intent “to destroy in whole, or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”
The organization said it believes Israel’s acts were committed with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza. As evidence for that, it cited calls by Israeli military and government officials for the targeting of Palestinians in Gaza using language that “equated Palestinian civilians with the enemy to be destroyed.” It also noted the use of indiscriminate weapons within densely populated areas, and actions taken by Israeli authorities to obstruct or prevent humanitarian aid from reaching the besieged enclave.
The investigation – which focuses on Israel’s actions between October 7, 2023, and July 2024 – examines the repeated and consistent targeting of residential buildings and civilian infrastructure in densely populated areas, including apartment buildings, religious sites, schools and markets.