Amnesty International accuses Israel of committing genocide in Gaza | News about the conflict between Israel and Palestine

Human rights group Amnesty International has concluded that Israel's war on Gaza meets the legal threshold for genocide in a damning new report.

The report published on Thursday, entitled 'You feel subhuman': Israel's genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, is the culmination of months of research by Amnesty, including extensive interviews with witnesses, analysis of “visual and digital evidence”, including satellite imagery, and statements, made by senior Israeli government and military officials.

Amnesty said the Israeli military committed at least three of the five acts prohibited by the 1948 Genocide Convention, including indiscriminate killing of civilians, causing serious bodily or mental harm and “deliberately imposing conditions of life intended to lead to their physical destruction”.

“Month after month, Israel treats the Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them,” said Agnes Callamard, Secretary-General of Amnesty International.

“Our research reveals that for months Israel persisted in carrying out genocidal acts, fully aware of the irreparable harm it was doing to the Palestinians in Gaza,” Callamard said.

“He continued to do so in defiance of countless warnings about the catastrophic humanitarian situation and the legally binding rulings of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordering Israel to take immediate measures to allow humanitarian aid to be delivered to civilians in Gaza,” she said. said.

“Our damning findings should serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It has to stop now,” she added.

Callamard said that given the “existing context of dispossession, apartheid and illegal military occupation” in which the Israeli army's crimes against the civilian population of Gaza took place, “we can only come to one reasonable conclusion: Israel's intent is physical destruction of the Palestinians in Gaza'.

“A seismic, shameful failure”

The Israeli army's argument that it is lawfully targeting Hamas and other militants who are among Gaza's civilian population – and that it is not deliberately targeting the Palestinian people – does not stand up to scrutiny, Amnesty said.

“The presence of Hamas fighters near or within a densely populated area does not relieve Israel of its obligations to take all possible precautions to spare civilians and avoid indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks,” the rights group said.

“Whether Israel sees the destruction of Palestinians as a means to destroy Hamas or as an acceptable by-product of that end, this view of Palestinians as disposable and unworthy of consideration is in itself evidence of genocidal intent,” it said. .

Amnesty also said it found “no evidence” that the reported diversion of humanitarian aid by armed groups in Gaza “could explain Israel's extreme and deliberate restrictions on life-saving humanitarian aid” to the civilian population of the war-torn territory.

Israeli authorities have yet to respond to Amnesty's report.

Officials in Israel have consistently rejected accusations of genocide in Gaza, saying they were acting in self-defense after Hamas-led attacks on October 7 and that criticizing their war was anti-Semitic.

However, the Amnesty report also stated that crimes documented in Gaza were often “preceded by officials demanding their execution”.

More than 100 statements by Israeli military and government officials were reviewed in the report that “dehumanized Palestinians, called for or justified genocidal acts or other crimes against them.”

Of these statements, 22 were made by senior officials responsible for managing the war in Gaza and “appear to call for or justify genocidal acts, providing direct evidence of genocidal intent.”

“This language was frequently reproduced, including by Israeli soldiers on the ground” who called for the “erasure” of Gaza and celebrated the “destruction of Palestinian homes, mosques, schools and universities,” Amnesty said.

Amnesty's Callamard said the international community was also to blame for a “seismic, shameful failure” in Gaza by failing to “pressure Israel to end its atrocities”.

By delaying calls for a cease-fire in Gaza and continuing to send weapons to Israel, the failure of the international community “will remain a stain on our collective conscience,” Callamard said.

“Governments must stop pretending they are powerless to end this genocide, which was made possible by decades of impunity for Israel's violations of international law,” she said.

“States must move beyond mere expressions of regret or horror and take strong and sustained international action, however uncomfortable a finding of genocide may be for some of Israel's allies.”