Amnesty International accuses Israel of committing genocide in Gaza

Human rights group Amnesty International has concluded that Israel’s war on Gaza meets the legal threshold for genocide in a damning new report, Al Jazeera reported.

The report published on Thursday, titled, “You Feel Like You Are Subhuman”: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza, is the culmination of months of research by Amnesty, including extensive witness interviews, analysis of “visual and digital evidence”, including satellite imagery, and statements made by senior Israeli government and military officials.

Amnesty said the Israeli military has committed at least three of the five acts banned by the 1948 Genocide Convention, including 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”.

“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 Agnes Callamard, secretary-general of Amnesty International.

“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,” Callamard said.

Ever since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, “Palestinian citizens have been held in a nightmare day after day”, she said, the National reported.

Examples highlighted in the report include an air strike in April that destroyed a family’s house in eastern Rafah, killing three generations, including 16 children, while they were sleeping.

It also cited the decision to “cut off” electricity, water and fuel. “In the nine months reviewed for this report, Israel maintained a suffocating, unlawful blockade, tightly controlled access to energy sources, failed to facilitate meaningful humanitarian access within Gaza and obstructed the import and delivery of life saving goods and humanitarian aid, particularly to areas north of Wadi Gaza,” it said. “They thereby exacerbated an already existing humanitarian crisis.”