Amnesty International joined a growing chorus of human rights experts who say Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza. The group called on states and arms suppliers of Israel to “bring Israel’s atrocities…to an immediate end.”
By Qassam Muaddi December 5, 2024
Leading international human rights organization Amnesty International has concluded, in a report it released on Wednesday, that Israel was responsible for acts of genocide against the Palestinian people in the Gaza strip.
The group said that it had been analyzing events and statements by Israeli officials for months, concluding that the legal threshold for the crime of genocide has been met. It is the first time that Amnesty has reached such a conclusion during an ongoing conflict.
Amnesty’s chief Agnes Callamard said in a statement on Wednesday that “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,” adding that “Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now.”
The report comes more than a year after Israel launched its assault on the Gaza Strip following the Hamas-led October 7 attacks. At the time of the report’s release, the death toll in Gaza had surpassed 44,500, including 60% women, children and elderly, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Amnesty’s report arrives also a year after South Africa filed its case against Israel before the International Court of Justice, for charges of breaching the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide. The ICJ ruled that Israel was “plausibly commiting genocide,” and ordered Israel to take measures to prevent it, though according to experts, no such measures have been taken, and Israel has in fact continued its genocidal attacks on Gaza for months after the ICJ ruling.
Amnesty’s own branch in Israel dissociated itself from the findings of its parent organization, clarifying in a long statement that it does not believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. However, it said that the killing and destruction in Gaza has reached “horrifying levels,” and called for investigation into possible crimes against humanity.
Israel, for its part, rejected the report. The spokesperson of the Israeli foreign minister, Oren Marmorstein called Amnesty “fanatical,” in a post on ‘X’, and called the report “fabricated” and “based on lies.”
The report comes a few days after former Israeli chief of staff and war minister, Moshe Yaalon sparked controversy in Israel after saying in a local TV interview that Israel is committing ethnic cleansing in Gaza, especially in the north of the strip, where since early October Israeli forces have killed and injured thousands, and forced tens of thousands more to leave south. Only 70,000 Palestinians remain in the north of Gaza, in comparison to more than 350,000 before October 7 of last year.*
Currently, around 1.8 million Palestinians, more than 98% of the population of the Gaza Strip, have been displaced multiple times during last year. The secretary general of the UN, Antonio Guterres described the situation in Gaza as “apocalyptic,” and has reiterated calls for an immediate ceasefire.
*In previous reports we indicated that the north of Gaza had 700,000 before October 7 of 2023. That number refers to all of the northern part of the strip including Gaza city, and not the area besieged since early October, which does not include Gaza City.
