Human rights organization Amnesty International has concluded that Israel’s war on Gaza meets the legal threshold of genocide in a damning new report.
The report released Thursday, titled ‘You Feel Like Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza, is the culmination of months of research by Amnesty, including in-depth interviews with witnesses, analysis of “visual and digital evidence”, including satellite data. images and statements made by senior officials in the Israeli government and military.
Amnesty said the Israeli military committed at least three of the five acts prohibited by the 1948 Genocide Convention, including indiscriminate killings of civilians, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and “deliberately imposing on Palestinians in Gaza living conditions calculated to cause their death.” physical destruction.
“Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intention to physically destroy them,” said Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International.
“Our research reveals that, for months, Israel has persisted in committing acts of genocide, fully aware of the irreparable harm it is inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza,” Callamard said.
“It has continued to do so in defiance of countless warnings about the catastrophic humanitarian situation and legally binding decisions by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordering Israel to take immediate steps to enable the provision of humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza,” she said. said.
“Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. This must stop now,” she added.
Callamard said that, given the “pre-existing context of dispossession, apartheid and illegal military occupation” in which the Israeli army’s crimes against the civilian population of Gaza were committed, “we cannot find that only one reasonable conclusion: Israel’s intention is the physical destruction of the Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel on Thursday rejected Amnesty International’s report as “completely false.”
“The deplorable and fanatical organization Amnesty International has once again produced a fabricated report that is completely false and based on lies,” the Israeli Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
“A seismic and shameful failure”
The Israeli military’s argument that it is legally targeting Hamas and other fighters among Gaza’s civilian population – and that it is not deliberately targeting the Palestinian people – does not stand up to scrutiny, said Amnesty.
“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 statement said. human rights organization.
“Regardless of whether Israel views the destruction of the Palestinians as an instrument of the destruction of Hamas or as an acceptable by-product of that goal, this view of the Palestinians as disposable and unworthy of consideration is itself evidence of genocidal intent.” , he 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 Gaza’s civilian population. this war-torn territory.
Israeli officials have consistently rejected allegations of genocide in Gaza, saying they were acting in self-defense following attacks by Hamas on October 7 and that criticizing their war was anti-Semitic.
The Amnesty report, however, also states that documented crimes in Gaza were often “preceded by officials urging their implementation.”
More than 100 statements by Israeli military and government officials were examined in the report, according to which “dehumanized Palestinians, called for or justified acts of genocide or other crimes against them.”
Of these statements, 22 were made by senior officials responsible for managing the war on Gaza and “appear to call for or justify genocidal acts, providing direct evidence of genocidal intent.”
“This language was frequently repeated, including by Israeli soldiers on the ground” who called for “wiping out” Gaza and celebrated “the destruction of Palestinian homes, mosques, schools and universities,” Amnesty said.
Amnesty’s Callamard said the international community was also guilty of a “seismic and shameful failure” in Gaza by failing to pressure Israel to end its atrocities.
By delaying calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and continuing to send weapons to Israel, the international community’s failure “will remain a stain on our collective conscience,” Callamard said.
“Governments must stop pretending they are powerless to end this genocide, made possible by decades of impunity for Israel’s violations of international law,” she said.
“States must go beyond simple expressions of regret or dismay and take strong and sustained international action, however uncomfortable the observation of genocide may be for some of Israel’s allies. »