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Amnesty International says Israel is committing genocide in Gaza

The human rights organisation has alleged that Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip constitutes the crime of genocide under international law.

This morning, December 5th, Amnesty International released a report titled, ‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza.

It contains months of research, extensive witness interviews, and in-depth analysis of both visual and digital evidence to constitute its claim – including satellite imagery and documentation of speeches by Israeli government and military officials.

It marks the first time Amnesty has alleged the crime of genocide during an ongoing conflict, and builds on a March report by the UN Special Rapporteur, which stated that there are ‘reasonable grounds to believe the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met’.

The Amnesty report states that the IDF has committed at least 3 of 5 acts banned by the 1948 Genocide Convention.

These acts include ‘indiscriminate killings of civilians, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.’

Israel has dismissed the Amnesty International report, calling it ‘entirely false’.

Picking apart Israel’s defense

Throughout the war, Israel has justified the deaths of Palestinian civilians in combat by arguing that the army’s ‘true target’, Hamas, is embedded within the fabric of Gaza’s society.

In response, Amnesty International writes, ‘the presence of Hamas fighters near or within a densely populated area does not absolve Israel from its obligations to take all feasible precautions to spare civilians and avoid indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks.’

The rights group also states that whether Israeli leaders see the death of Palestinians as a necessary or acceptable by-product of eradicating Hamas, each of these views frames the people of Gaza as ‘disposable and not worthy of consideration.’

These indiscriminate killings of Palestinians, the group says, proves Israel’s genocidal intent.

As an occupying power, Israel is legally obliged to provide for the needs of the occupied population. Despite this requirement, the number of aid trucks that reached Gaza fell to 50 in November of this year.

Amnesty found no reasonable justification for Israel’s continued restriction on deliveries of life-saving humanitarian aid – food, water, and medical supplies – to the Palestinian population.

Dissecting language used by Israel

Over 100 statements by Israeli military and government officials were reviewed and found to dehumanise Palestinians, call for or justify genocidal acts, or incite other crimes against them.

At least 22 of these statements we made by senior officials who were in charge of managing the war in Gaza. Each of these ‘appeared to call for, or justify, genocidal acts’ with many sentiments to ‘erase’ Gaza repeated by Israeli soldiers on the ground.

Amnesty International has called on the UN to enforce a permanent ceasefire. It also asked for sanctions to be placed on Israeli and Hamas officials, as well as for western governments (the US, UK, and Germany) to stop arming and offering security services to Israel.

‘Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call: this is genocide and it must stop now,’ said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general, on Wednesday.

Israeli politicians have called the report ‘antisemitic’ and requested for the report to be withdrawn.

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