Amnesty report accuses Israel of seeking genocide in Gaza; Jerusalem slams ‘lies’

CAIRO, Egypt — Amnesty International accused Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip during its war with Hamas in a new report Thursday, saying it has sought to deliberately destroy Palestinians by mounting deadly attacks, demolishing vital infrastructure and preventing the delivery of food, medicine and other aid.

The report was swiftly denounced by Israel as based on falsehoods.

The human rights group’s 296-page report claims Israel’s actions cannot be justified by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught in Israel, which ignited the war, or the presence of terror operatives in civilian areas.

Amnesty said the United States and other allies of Israel could be complicit in genocide, and called on them to halt arms shipments.

“Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now,” Amnesty International chief Agnès Callamard said in the report.

Israel, which was founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust, has adamantly rejected genocide allegations against it as an antisemitic “blood libel.”

It is challenging such allegations at the International Court of Justice, and it has rejected the International Criminal Court’s accusations that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant committed war crimes in Gaza.

“The deplorable and fanatical organization Amnesty International has once again produced a fabricated report that is entirely false and based on lies,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Israel accused Hamas, which has vowed to annihilate Israel, of carrying out a genocidal massacre in the attack that triggered the war, and said it is defending itself in accordance with international law.

The war in Gaza was sparked by the October 7, 2023, attack, which saw thousands of Hamas-led terrorists storm into southern Israel and rampage through communities, slaughtering some 1,200 people and taking 251 captive, while carrying out various atrocities aimed at civilians, such as rape and torture. Nearly 100 people kidnapped during the attack, including elderly men and small babies, remain hostage, many of them no longer alive.

While the report contains several pages of recommendations for the international community to pressure Israel, including immediately ending any security assistance to the country, Amnesty does not recommend that global actors pressure Hamas into releasing the hostages it kidnapped on October 7.

A statement from Amnesty accompanying the report urged the release of only civilian hostages kidnapped from Israel.

The Amnesty report joins a growing roster of accusations that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza — which would put it in the company of some of the deadliest conflicts of the past 80 years, including campaigns in Cambodia, Sudan and Rwanda that wiped out millions.

According to Hamas-controlled health authorities in the Strip, some 44,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since the war began, though the toll does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.

Israel, which maintains it takes pains to avoid harm to civilians in line with international law, says its military has killed some 18,000 combatants in battle as of November and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.

Neither toll can be verified independently.

The genocide accusations have largely come from human rights groups and allies of the Palestinians. But last month, Pope Francis called for an investigation to determine whether Israeli actions amounted to genocide, and Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who has signaled readiness to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, accused it of committing genocide.

Israel says it is at war with Hamas, not the people of Gaza. And key allies, including the US and Germany, have also pushed back against the genocide allegations.

But Amnesty accused Israel of violating the 1951 Genocide Convention through acts it says are intended to bring about the physical destruction of Gaza’s Palestinian population by exposing them to “a slow, calculated death.”

Amnesty said it analyzed the overall pattern of Israel’s conduct in Gaza between Oct. 7, 2023, and early July. It noted that there is no casualty threshold in proving the international crime of genocide, which is defined by the United Nations as acts intended to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

To establish intent, Amnesty said it reviewed over 100 statements by Israeli government and military officials and others since the start of the war that “dehumanized Palestinians, called for or justified genocidal acts or other crimes against them.”

Israeli officials have previously said that such statements were taken out of context or referred to their stated goal of destroying Hamas, not Palestinian civilians.

Israel says it goes to great lengths to protect civilians and comply with international law — including ordering civilians to evacuate areas ahead of airstrikes and ground offensives. It also says it has facilitated the deliveries of large quantities of food and humanitarian supplies — a claim that is disputed by the UN and aid organizations working inside Gaza.

Amnesty said it found that Israel “deliberately inflicted conditions of life on Palestinians in Gaza intended to lead, over time, to their destruction.” Those actions included the destruction of homes, farms, hospitals and water facilities; mass evacuation orders; and the restriction of humanitarian aid and other essential services.

It also analyzed 15 airstrikes from the start of the war until April that killed at least 334 civilians, including 141 children, and wounded hundreds of other people. It said it found no evidence that any of the strikes were directed at military objectives.

It said one of the strikes destroyed the Abdelal family home in the southern city of Rafah on April 20, killing three generations of Palestinians, including 16 children, while they were sleeping.

An Associated Press investigation identified at least 60 families in which at least 25 members had been killed.

Amnesty has previously angered Israel by joining other major rights groups in accusing it of the international crime of apartheid, saying that for decades it has systematically denied Palestinians basic rights in the territories under its control. Israel has also denied those allegations.

Responding to the report, pro-Israel watchdog NGO Monitor accused Amnesty of pursuing an antisemitic agenda seeking Israel’s annihilation.

“Amnesty’s report and recommendations… are not a credible, unbiased, carefully considered analysis of the complex circumstances inherent in the Gaza conflict,” the group said.

Israel says it only targets combatants and blames civilian deaths on Hamas because its operatives fight in dense, residential areas and have built tunnels and other military infrastructure near homes, schools and mosques.

It blames the lack of humanitarian aid on United Nations agencies, accusing them of not delivering hundreds of truckloads of aid that have been allowed in. The UN says it is often too dangerous to retrieve and deliver the aid. It blames Israel as the occupying power for the breakdown of law and order — which has enabled armed groups to steal aid convoys — while also accusing it of heavily restricting movement within the territory.

Israel says members of Hamas, the terror group that rules the Strip, have stolen much of the aid sent in for civilians. Israel pulled out all its military forces and civilians from Gaza in 2005.

The offensive against Hamas has left vast areas of the besieged coastal territory in ruins and displaced some 90 percent of the population of 2.3 million, often multiple times. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to cram into squalid tent camps with little in the way of food, water or toilets.

Israel says it must control Gaza’s borders to be able to inspect goods going into the enclave in order to ensure shipments do not contain arms or other banned materials that Hamas could use to rebuild its military with.

Aid groups say the restrictions put the population at risk of disease and malnutrition, especially as winter sets in. Experts have warned of famine in northern Gaza, which Israel has almost completely sealed off since launching a major military operation there in early October against Hamas operatives attempting to regroup.

The United States, which has provided crucial military aid to Israel and shielded it from international criticism, has repeatedly appealed to Israel to facilitate more aid, with limited results.

The Biden administration said in May that Israel’s use of US-provided weapons in Gaza at times likely violated international humanitarian law but that the evidence was incomplete.