Editor’s note: The following report contains images of violence that may be distressing to readers. Discretion is advised. This article was originally published on December 12.
(LifeSiteNews) — According to a thorough investigation of Israel’s current offensive against the occupied Gaza Strip, including its attacks of “unprecedented magnitude, scale and duration” along with a detailed analysis of the intent driving the nation’s leaders, Amnesty International has demonstrated and concluded that Israel is committing the abominable crime of genocide against the Palestinian people.
The comprehensive 296-page report titled ‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza, was released last Thursday and documents how since October 7 of last year, “Israel has unleashed hell and destruction on Palestinians in Gaza brazenly, continuously and with total impunity.”
“Amnesty International’s report demonstrates that Israel has carried out acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza,” said Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of the organization.
Drawing directly from the definition of the crime of genocide, as unanimously ratified in international law by the Genocide Convention of 1949, and adopted by Israel as well, the French human rights leader continued, “These acts include killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.”
“Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them,” she said.
“Our research reveals that, for months, Israel has persisted in committing genocidal acts, fully aware of the irreparable harm it was inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza. It continued to do so in defiance of countless warnings about the catastrophic humanitarian situation and of legally binding decisions from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordering Israel to take immediate measures to enable the provision of humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza,” said Callamard.
READ: UN’s top court rules genocide charge against Israel is ‘plausible’
“Israel has repeatedly argued that its actions in Gaza are lawful and can be justified by its military goal to eradicate Hamas. But genocidal intent can co-exist alongside military goals and does not need to be Israel’s sole intent,” she rejoined.
The report makes clear that according to the Genocide convention, and international jurisprudence, the perpetrating nation need not be yet fully successful at destroying the protected group for the war crime of genocide to have been committed. “The commission of prohibited acts with the intent to destroy the group, as such, is sufficient” for demonstrating that genocide has occurred.
Following the deadly October 7, 2023 Hamas break-out attack on areas just outside the Israeli border fence enclosing the occupied people of Gaza, the Israelis “have brought Gaza’s population to the brink of collapse,” with reliable reports revealing the killing of at least 44,758 people, including 13,319 children, 7,216 women and not including an additional estimated 10,000 more civilians who remain under the rubble of bombed buildings (including an estimated 4,580 women and children). Furthermore, Palestinian injuries are at least 106,134 in Gaza including over 10,000 children who have lost at least one leg.
READ: The West cannot hide’: Compelling documentary presents Israel’s ‘live stream genocide’ in Gaza
Amnesty found that many of these killed and injured were victims of Israel’s “direct or deliberately indiscriminate attacks, often wiping out entire multigenerational families.”
These “relentless aerial and ground attacks” caused “unprecedented destruction, which experts say occurred at a level and speed not seen in any other conflict in the 21st century, levelling entire cities and destroying critical infrastructure, agricultural land and cultural and religious sites. It thereby rendered large swathes of Gaza uninhabitable.”
Israel’s obstruction of humanitarian aid causing catastrophic starvation, spread of disease
Israel further imposed conditions upon the 2.3 million people of Gaza that “created a deadly mixture of malnutrition, hunger and diseases,” exposing the Palestinian people “to a slow, calculated death.”
These conditions included a total siege on Gaza cutting-off food, water, electricity and fuel while persistently refusing to facilitate any meaningful humanitarian aid to be accessed by their Palestinian victims, while also proactively obstructing the import of any such life-saving goods. These actions combined with the mass displacement of the population, the extensive damage to Gaza’s homes, hospitals, water and sanitation facilities, and agricultural lands, compounded catastrophic levels of hunger, and the rapid spread of disease.
Distressing footage of Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza which has been completely destroyed by Israeli forces with bombs and weapons provided by the US and Europe.
All of Gaza’s health infrastructure has been deliberately destroyed by Israel.
This is terrorism.pic.twitter.com/YYjeljKbVo
— Fiona Edwards (@Fio_edwards) April 1, 2024
Taking such factors into consideration, a July report in the Lancet provided a rationale for estimating total deaths, including indirect fatalities due to causes like starvation, lack of medicine or proper medical care. Multiplying the reported direct deaths above (44,758) by five, it is possible to reach a conservative estimate of over 223,790 total deaths in Gaza since October 7, 2023. And with a recent UN Human Rights Office report identifying fatalities in Gaza comprising of approximately 44% children, it is reasonable to estimate 98,468 total deaths of children.
Additionally, Amnesty documented evidence for Israel also subjecting “hundreds of Palestinians from Gaza to incommunicado detention, torture and other ill-treatment.”
READ: Israel sodomizes and kills Palestinian detainees, Candace Owens calls out silent Christians
Some of these various abuses investigated by the human rights group “constitute serious violations of international humanitarian law or international human rights law,” they reported.
Genocidal intent demonstrated by explicit public statements, patterns of action
But looking at the broader picture of Israel’s military assault upon the densely populated Strip, including the nation’s policies, acts in the field, and their cumulative effect, Amnesty said, “genocidal intent is the only reasonable conclusion.”
‘It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. This rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it’s absolutely not true.’ Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Oct. 13, 2023
In establishing this specific intent to physically destroy the Palestinian people in Gaza, Amnesty provided a detailed analysis of the overall pattern of Israel’s actions in the Strip along with a corresponding assortment of “dehumanizing and genocidal statements by Israeli government and military officials,” which provide “direct evidence of genocidal intent” (examples here and here).
Furthermore, verified evidence revealed this language was frequently repeated by Israeli soldiers in the field who made calls to “erase” Gaza, make it uninhabitable, all while celebrating the destruction of Palestinian homes, schools, universities and mosques.
READ: Israeli soldiers celebrate the ‘torturing, humiliating, and mocking’ of Palestinians on social media
Amnesty also conducted a thorough investigation of 15 airstrikes which killed at least a combined 334 civilians, including 141 children, and wounded hundreds of others. They “found no evidence that any of these strikes were directed at a military objective.”
Though this analysis represents only “a fraction of Israel’s aerial attacks,” they are sufficient to indicate “a broader pattern of repeated direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects or deliberately indiscriminate attacks. The attacks were also conducted in ways designed to cause a very high number of fatalities and injuries among the civilian population.”
And with Israel’s further infliction of “conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction” of the Palestinian people in Gaza, including the recurring tempest of endless forced displacement orders “into ever-shrinking, unsafe pockets of land under inhumane conditions,” along with the denial of essential humanitarian aid, and the destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure, their repeated refusals to remedy this crisis when it was fully in their power to do so reveal their actions to bring about this outcome “were deliberate.”
U.S. largest weapons supplier to Israel, risks charges of complicity with genocide
“Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now,” demanded Callamard.
“States that continue to transfer arms to Israel at this time must know they are violating their obligation to prevent genocide and are at risk of becoming complicit in genocide. All states with influence over Israel, particularly key arms suppliers like the USA and Germany, but also other EU member states, the UK and others, must act now to bring Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza to an immediate end,” she said.
The United States is far and away the largest arms supplier to Israel, as a March report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute revealed that from 2019-2023 the “USA accounted for 69% and Germany for 30% of Israeli arms imports.”
In responding to the extensive Amnesty study last Thursday, U.S. State Department spokesman Vedant Patel dismissed the conclusion that Israel’s current assault on the Strip fulfills the criteria for the international crime of genocide even though two U.S. government agencies concluded earlier this year that Israel has deliberately blocked humanitarian aid from reaching the people of Gaza.
“We disagree with the conclusions of such a report,” he said, without providing a challenge of any specific content of the document. “We have said previously and continue to find that the allegations of genocide are unfounded.”
Genocide of Gaza ‘part of a long-term intentional, systematic, State-organized forced displacement’
Last January, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivered a preliminary ruling finding the charge of genocide against Israel to be “plausible” and refusing to dismiss the case as Israel has demanded.
Having initiated the litigation at the ICJ, South Africa filed its original 84-page “Application Instituting Proceedings” which laid out extensive and detailed evidence from the first three months of the attack charging Israel and its leaders with supporting an active policy which satisfies the definition of genocide.
The ICJ ruling was welcomed by many nations, including those in the Arab world, South America, Southeast Asia, and western nations such as France.
In March, UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation in Palestine, Francesca Alabanese, concluded that the actions of the state of Israel “meet the threshold for the definition of genocide.” Her detailed report at the time – “Anatomy of a Genocide” – was followed by her call in November to suspend Israel from the United Nations.
Her latest update on the alleged genocide was published in October, and states, “The violence that Israel has unleashed against the Palestinians post-7 October is not happening in a vacuum, but is part of a long-term intentional, systematic, State-organized forced displacement and replacement of the Palestinians.”
READ: Expelling the Palestinian people has always been a goal of Zionism
In November, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli defense chief Yoav Gallant “for crimes against humanity and war crimes” including “starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.”
How do we allow this to happen? How do we allow the evil instinct to violate our humanity?!
Are we still human and feel for the oppressed in the world?
Enough is enough #IsraelTerroristState#GazaGenocidepic.twitter.com/WrDzWYZPNc— ENG. H.K.Z 🇺🇲 (@The___Leader_) December 3, 2024
With complicity in genocide being a punishable crime under the Genocide Convention, similar arrest warrants could potentially be issued against officials of nations who have provided material cooperation with the genocide itself. In November Alabanese suggested such ICC prosecution could include “genocide deniers” such as U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy.
Israelis ‘favor the policy’ of genocide, they just ‘object to the word’
Back in the United States, as early as March reports indicated that a majority of Democratic voters recognized that Israel was committing genocide, including scores of protestors across the country particularly on college campuses. These were joined by opinion influencers who appeal to the political right such as Alex Jones, Candace Owens and Joe Rogan along with many Jewish individuals and groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace on the political left and Neturei Karta on the right.
Additionally, former Israeli defense minister and political insider Moshe Yaalon recently decried Israeli “war crimes” in Gaza including ethnic cleansing, stating the ICC warrant for Netanyahu and Gallant should be extended to charge additional ministers who have been a driving force for the unprecedented attack in the region.
In responding to the Amnesty release last week, the Israeli Foreign Ministry claimed it was “a fabricated report that is entirely false and based on lies” without countering any specifics of the extensive report itself. They also called the international human rights group “a deplorable and fanatical organization.”
Observing a broad view of the conflict during a December 3 interview with Judge Andrew Napolitano, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense Chas Freeman said “I think the startling thing is that so many Israelis seem to favor genocide. While they object to the word, they favor the policy.”
‘You must’ contact your government officials, demand they end weapons transfers ‘that are murdering children in the thousands’
In an accompanying video presenting the findings of the report, Callamard lamented the “overwhelming trauma and pain” being endured by the Palestinians in Gaza, demanding that this genocide be put to an end by government officials around the world. She challenged viewers imploring, “You must ask that they stop transferring weapons that are murdering children in the thousands and decimating entire Palestinian families.”
“What has your government done to prevent this genocide? What have your political leaders done? What are they doing now?” she asked. “You must demand that justice be delivered, that all those responsible for the genocide be held to account.”
“Perpetrators benefit from the inaction and the complicity of too many of our political leaders. No war criminals should ever be allowed to walk free, undisturbed, fearless. Let’s put all our instruments into action: national tribunals, universal jurisdiction, international criminal court. Governments must do everything in their power to end Israel’s genocide,” she concluded.
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