Amnesty International has concluded in a new report that Israel's war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip constitutes the crime of genocide under international law, the first such assessment by a major human rights organization in the 14-month conflict.
The 32-page report, published on Thursday, examines events in Gaza from October 2023 to July 2024. It said Israel had "recklessly, continuously and with complete impunity... created hell" on a population of 2,3 million people, noting that "the crimes against Israelis by Hamas on October 7, 2023, which launched the war, do not they justify genocide," reports the Guardian.
The report states that Israel "committed acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, including killing, inflicting serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately creating living conditions designed to cause the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza" with the "specific intent to destroy Palestinians" in the area .
This is the first time Amnesty has charged genocide during the conflict, following a report by the UN special rapporteur on Palestine in March, which concluded that "there are reasonable grounds to believe" that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians.
The report highlights: the unprecedented scope and scale of the military offensive, which caused death and destruction at a rate and level unseen in other 21st-century conflicts; intent to destroy, after considering and rejecting arguments such as Israeli negligence and indifference to civilian lives in the fight against Hamas; killing and causing serious physical or mental harm through direct attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, or deliberately indiscriminate attacks; and creating living conditions designed to cause physical destruction, such as the destruction of medical infrastructure, the blocking of aid, and repeated arbitrary "evacuation orders" for 90 percent of the population to inappropriate locations.
Amnesty called on the UN to impose a cease-fire, impose targeted sanctions on Israeli and senior Hamas officials, and appealed to Western governments, such as the US, UK and Germany, to end security aid and arms sales to Israel.
Amnesty also called on the International Criminal Court to add genocide charges to the list of war crimes it is investigating, and demanded the unconditional release of civilian hostages and accountability for crimes committed by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups on 7 October.
Amnesty said the report was based on fieldwork, interviews with 212 people, including victims, witnesses and health workers in Gaza, analysis of extensive visual and digital evidence, and more than 100 statements by Israeli government and military actors, which it said contained "dehumanizing discourse". Video and photo evidence of soldiers who committed or celebrated war crimes were also used.
The findings were "extensively" shared with Israeli authorities on multiple occasions, the organization added, but received no responses.
The report is likely to spark outrage in Israel and accusations of anti-Semitism. Several legal experts and genocide researchers believe that the October 7 attack also had the characteristics of genocide.
The Holocaust led to the creation of the Jewish state and the Geneva Conventions, which codified and outlawed genocide as a punishable crime. Both of these endeavors were the international community's response to the horrors the Nazis committed against European Jews during World War II.
In the conclusion of the report, Amnesty states that it "recognizes the resistance and reluctance of many to recognize genocidal intent in connection with Israeli actions in Gaza," which "obstructed justice and accountability."
"Amnesty International recognizes that identifying genocide in armed conflicts is a complex and challenging process, due to the existence of multiple goals that can exist simultaneously. However, it is crucial to recognize genocide and insist that war can never be a justification for genocide," the report states. .
In 2022, Amnesty joined Human Rights Watch and the respected Israeli NGO B'Tselem in publishing a landmark report accusing Israel of apartheid. Israeli politicians then called for the report to be retracted, claiming it was anti-Semitic.
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