Israel committing genocide in Gaza, Amnesty report finds

Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza, a landmark report from Amnesty International published Thursday concluded, the organization’s first such determination during an active armed conflict.

The report, which analyzed interviews with 212 people, alongside satellite imagery, visual evidence and statements by Israeli officials, found Israel’s actions in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks are prohibited under the Genocide Convention and conducted with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza.

Israel forcefully rejected the report’s claims, with a spokesperson dismissing it as “entirely false” and “based on lies,” adding that Amnesty is a “deplorable and fanatical organization.”

Amnesty said it shared its findings with Israeli authorities but received “no substantive response” by the time of publication.

The report warned that countries supplying arms to Israel, including the United States and Germany, are failing in their obligation to prevent genocide. In the first year of its war in Gaza, Israel has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, including over 13,300 children, and injured over 97,000 more, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Amnesty says the real figures could be even higher.

“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 Agnès Callamard, secretary-general of Amnesty International.  

In October, a United Nations Independent Commission presented a report to the U.N. General Assembly on human rights abuses in Israel and the Palestinian territories, concluded that Israeli security forces have deliberately killed, wounded, arrested, detained, mistreated and tortured health workers, alleging war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination. 

The International Criminal Court has filed arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. The ICC also filed a warrant for the arrest of Hamas Commander Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, who Israel says it killed in July.