Amnesty International on Wednesday said that it had gathered \u201csufficient evidence to believe\u201d that Israel\u2019s conduct during the war in Gaza amounts to genocide against the Palestinian people \u2013 a charge the Israeli government has vehemently denied. <\/p>\n
The 296-page report details evidence gathered over nine months, outlining numerous instances in which Amnesty says Israeli forces and government authorities have committed three of five acts prohibited under the United Nations\u2019 Genocide Convention \u2013 including the mass killing of Palestinian civilians, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life \u201ccalculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cMonth 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,\u201d Amnesty International Secretary General Agn\u00e8s Callamard said in a statement. <\/p>\n
Amnesty said that Israel is responsible for extensive and often indiscriminate aerial and ground attacks, widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure, the forced mass displacement of Palestinians across the besieged enclave, and the obstruction of humanitarian aid. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere is only one reasonable inference that can be drawn from the evidence presented: genocidal intent has been part and parcel of Israel\u2019s conduct in Gaza since 7 October 2023, including its military campaign,\u201d Amnesty\u2019s report states. <\/p>\n
Israel launched the war in Gaza after Hamas-led militants carried out an attack on southern Israel on October 7 last year, killing 1,200 people and taking another 251 hostage. In a little over a year, more than 44,000 people in Gaza have been killed and 104,000 injured as a result of Israel\u2019s ongoing military onslaught, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. <\/p>\n
Israeli government lawyers, speaking earlier this year at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, rejected what they called \u201cgrossly distorted\u201d accusations of genocide leveled against it by South Africa. The lawyers argued that the convention was adopted only to \u201caddress a malevolent crime of the most exceptional circumstances,\u201d and was \u201cnot designed to address the brutal impact of intensive hostilities\u201d on civilians during warfare. It called South Africa\u2019s accusation \u201ca concerted and cynical effort to pervert the meaning of the term \u2018genocide\u2019 itself.\u201d <\/p>\n
The report is the latest in a string of accusations over Israel\u2019s conduct in Gaza. Over the weekend, former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya\u2019lon \u2013 who served for three decades with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) \u2013 described the Israeli military\u2019s actions in northern Gaza as \u201cethnic cleansing.\u201d A United Nations Special Committee warned in November that Israel\u2019s conduct in Gaza was \u201cconsistent with the characteristics of genocide.\u201d And Human Rights Watch said last month that the forced mass displacement of Palestinians in Gaza amounted to a war crime and a crime against humanity. The military rejected those accusations and said its forces act within international law. <\/p>\n
The 1948 UN Genocide Convention, which Israel ratified in 1950, says that genocide has occurred when any of five prohibited acts are are carried out with the intent \u201cto destroy in whole, or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.\u201d <\/p>\n
The organization said it believes Israel\u2019s acts were committed with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza. As evidence for that, it cited calls by Israeli military and government officials for the targeting of Palestinians in Gaza using language that \u201cequated Palestinian civilians with the enemy to be destroyed.\u201d It also noted the use of indiscriminate weapons within densely populated areas, and actions taken by Israeli authorities to obstruct or prevent humanitarian aid from reaching the besieged enclave. <\/p>\n
The investigation \u2013 which focuses on Israel\u2019s actions between October 7, 2023, and July 2024 \u2013 examines the repeated and consistent targeting of residential buildings and civilian infrastructure in densely populated areas, including apartment buildings, religious sites, schools and markets. <\/p>\n
The Israeli military has said that it makes \u201csignificant efforts to mitigate harm to civilians,\u201d and that \u201cthroughout the conflict, Hamas cynically exploits the civilian environment.\u201d <\/p>\n
While Amnesty says that it recognizes that Hamas has put Palestinian civilians in danger by operating from, or in the vicinity of, densely populated residential areas, the organization asserts that this does did not relieve Israel from its own obligations under international humanitarian law to spare civilians and avoid indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks. <\/p>\n
The human rights organization also noted the use of explosive weapons with wide area effects, such as US-manufactured Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM), in some cases without warning or between the hours of 11pm and 4am, when residents would likely be sleeping. <\/p>\n
\u201cEven where Israeli forces targeted what could be considered military objectives, Israel\u2019s use of explosive weapons with wide area effects, especially aerial bombs of 250 pounds to 2,000 pounds, on residential buildings and in the proximity of hospitals in one of the world\u2019s most densely populated areas likely constitute indiscriminate and\/or disproportionate attacks,\u201d Amnesty said. <\/p>\n
In a detailed report verifying fatalities in Gaza in the first six months of the conflict, the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) said it \u201cfound close to 70 per cent to be children and women, indicating a systematic violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law\u201d on the part of the Israeli military. <\/p>\n
It added that of the confirmed deaths, 80% were killed in residential buildings or similar housing, of which 44% were children and 26% were women. <\/p>\n
In a series of case studies examined by Amnesty, the human rights organization highlighted a deadly Israeli strike on a residential building in Rafah in December 2023, which killed at least 30 civilians, including 11 children. Among the fatalities was three-month-old Ayla Nasman, who was killed alongside her mother, grandparents, and two siblings \u2013 aged just five and four. Ayla\u2019s father, Ahmad, survived the attack. He said it took him four days to retrieve Ayla\u2019s body from the rubble, and that he found his five-year-old daughter, Arwa, had been decapitated by the blast. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhile Amnesty International\u2019s investigation has focused only on a small fraction of Israel\u2019s aerial attacks, they are indicative of a pattern of repeated direct or indiscriminate attacks by the Israeli military in Gaza over the nine-month period under review,\u201d the organization said. <\/p>\n
The report also refers to the staggering number of injuries recorded over the course of the war, which Amnesty said meets the UN convention\u2019s criteria of causing serious bodily or mental harm. According to the UN\u2019s World Health Organization, approximately 22,500 people were estimated to have suffered life-changing injuries requiring long-term rehabilitation by late July, with more than 3,000 limb amputations reported. Recent data from the Palestinian Ministry of Health places the total number of injuries recorded at over 100,000. <\/p>\n
As the humanitarian situation in Gaza grows more desperate, Amnesty International says Israel has brought the Palestinian population within the enclave \u201cto the brink of collapse,\u201d noting the \u201cdisastrous conditions\u201d within the strip, caused by Israel\u2019s destruction of critical infrastructure. <\/p>\n
Evidence featured in the report explores the deepening hunger crisis civilians in Gaza are facing, with obstructions to vital humanitarian aid reaching the strip. According to the UN, the number of aid trucks entering Gaza was critically low in November, with the number of food trucks received last month equating to just 36% of the monthly average since 2023. <\/p>\n
Amnesty\u2019s report also examines the forced mass displacement of Palestinians in \u201cunsafe and inhumane conditions,\u201d with civilians repeatedly ordered by the Israeli military to evacuate to so-called \u201chumanitarian zones,\u201d which offer little in the way of shelter and have repeatedly been targeted by Israeli airstrikes. <\/p>\n
\u201cIsrael has forcibly displaced 90% of Gaza\u2019s 2.2 million inhabitants, many of them multiple times, into ever-shrinking, ever-changing pockets of land that lacked basic infrastructure, forcing people to live in conditions that exposed them to a slow and calculated death.\u201d <\/p>\n
In a statement on Wednesday, Callamard said the organization\u2019s damning findings \u201cmust serve as a wake-up call\u201d to the international community, warning that states who continue to transfer arms to Israel could be at risk of becoming complicit in genocide. <\/p>\n
\u201cAll 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\u2019s atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza to an immediate end,\u201d Callamard said. \u201cThis is genocide. It must stop now.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Amnesty International on Wednesday said that it had gathered \u201csufficient evidence to believe\u201d that Israel\u2019s conduct during the war in Gaza amounts to genocide against the Palestinian people \u2013 a charge the Israeli government has vehemently denied. The 296-page report details evidence gathered over nine months, outlining numerous instances in which Amnesty says Israeli forces […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6032,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}