Germany joins US in rejecting Amnesty’s ‘genocide’ accusation against Israel
German foreign ministry spokesman says Israel acting defensively, notes that Hamas started war; still repeats call for Israel to ‘adjust’ its operations to protect civilians better
The German government on Friday rejected Amnesty International’s recent accusation that Israel is committing “genocide” against Palestinians in its military campaign against the Hamas terror group in Gaza.
In doing so, Germany joined both the US and Israel’s branch of Amnesty International in rejecting the attribution of genocidal intent to Israel’s offensive.
The campaign, which has been ongoing for some fourteen months, began in response to Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, when the group killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages, 100 of whom it continues to hold captive.
Asked for a response to Amnesty’s report, German foreign ministry spokesman Sebastian Fischer told reporters: “The question of genocide presupposes a clear intention to eradicate an ethnic group. I still do not recognize any such clear intention and therefore I cannot share the conclusions of the report.”
“We take the accusations in the report very seriously and are currently analyzing them,” he said.
“We have repeatedly urged the Israeli government to adjust its military operations in Gaza and better fulfill its obligations to protect civilians,” Fischer said.
“However it is still our opinion that Israel is acting in defense against Hamas which sparked this conflict with its terror attacks,” he said.
On Thursday the London-based human rights group published a 300-page report on Israel’s campaign in Gaza, saying its findings were based on satellite images documenting devastation, fieldwork and ground reports from Gazans, as well as “dehumanising and genocidal statements by Israeli government and military officials.”
Israel dismissed the findings as “entirely false.” The Israeli branch of Amnesty International also rejected the report’s conclusion, while noting that a minority of its membership endorsed it.
The United States also rejected the characterization of the war as genocide, State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said during a press briefing Thursday.
“We disagree with the conclusions of such a report. We have said previously and continue to find the allegations of genocide to be unfounded,” Patel said.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry claims that some 44,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Strip since the war began — figures that cannot be verified and that don’t differentiate between civilians and members of terror groups — while Israel estimates that it has killed 18,000 combatants.
The death and destruction has led accusations of genocide against Israel in the International Court of Justice and to the International Criminal Court issuing arrest warrants for its leaders for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. Jerusalem rejects these charges, saying it only attacks military targets and that civilian casualties are largely the result of Hamas embedding its military installations and personnel deep within Gaza’s civilian infrastructure.
