“Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community,” said Agnès Callamard, the group’s secretary-general. “It must stop now.”

By Jake Johnson

Dec 05, 2024

The leading human rights group Amnesty International said late Wednesday what United Nations experts, national leaders, and historians have been arguing for months: that Israel’s massive assault on Gaza amounts to the crime of genocide against the Palestinian population.

Amnesty, which had sharply criticized Israel’s U.S.-backed war but until Thursday stopped short of labeling it genocide, details its findings and conclusion in a sprawling new report titled “You Feel Like You Are Subhuman”: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza.

The 296-page document features interviews with survivors and witnesses of Israel’s large-scale campaign of bombing, displacement, arbitrary detention, and destruction of Gaza’s agricultural land and civilian infrastructure, interviews supplemented by an analysis of satellite imagery, video footage, and other visual evidence.

Israeli authorities, the group said, did not respond substantively to any of its inquiries between October 2023—when the assault on Gaza began in the wake of the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel—and October 2024. The report does, however, include quotes from Israeli officials and soldiers, including one who declared that “there is no innocence in Gaza.”

“Through its research findings and legal analysis,” the report states, “Amnesty International has found sufficient basis to conclude that Israel committed, during the nine-month period under review, prohibited acts under Articles II (a), (b), and (c) of the Genocide Convention, namely killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part.”

Amnesty said it also “found sufficient basis to conclude that these acts were committed with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, as such, who form a substantial part of the Palestinian population.”

The world has witnessed the government of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in occupied Gaza. Month after month, the government of Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its specific intent to… pic.twitter.com/BVKXdlnnpu

— Amnesty International USA (@amnestyusa) December 5, 2024

Agnès Callamard, Amnesty’s secretary-general, said in a statement that her organization’s report “demonstrates that Israel has carried out acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza.”

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

Amnesty published its findings more than a year into an Israeli assault that has killed more than 44,500 people in Gaza, displaced almost all of the enclave’s population, and left many at dire risk of starvation and disease. Nearly 70% of the deaths verified by the U.N. have been women and children.

“Governments must stop pretending they are powerless to end this genocide, which was enabled by decades of impunity for Israel’s violations of international law.”

The human rights group’s report comes less than a month after a special U.N. committee said that the Israeli military’s actions in the Gaza Strip—including the obstruction of humanitarian aid and targeted attacks on civilians—bear “the characteristics of genocide.”

Amnesty echoes that assessment, pointing to Israel’s mass destruction of cultural and religious sites in Gaza, detention and torture, use of dehumanizing language against Palestinians, and—in the case of many soldiers—the open celebration of Palestinian suffering.

“Amnesty International considers that the pattern of conduct which characterized Israel’s military operations, coupled with the statements of Israeli officials and soldiers made in a context of apartheid, an unlawful blockade, and an unlawful military occupation, provide sufficient evidence of Israel’s intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, as such,” the report states.

Callamard called on nations continuing to provide military support for Israel’s assault, including the United States, to cease arms transfers immediately, as they are “violating their obligation to prevent genocide and are at risk of becoming complicit in genocide.”

“The international community’s seismic, shameful failure for over a year to press Israel to end its atrocities in Gaza, by first delaying calls for a cease-fire and then continuing arms transfers, is and will remain a stain on our collective conscience,” said Callamard.

“Governments must stop pretending they are powerless to end this genocide, which was enabled by decades of impunity for Israel’s violations of international law,” she added. “States need to move beyond mere expressions of regret or dismay and take strong and sustained international action, however uncomfortable a finding of genocide may be for some of Israel’s allies.”