Amnesty Report: Israel Is Committing Genocide in Gaza

Amnesty’s report is the latest confirmation of what has been obvious for a long time.

Amnesty International concluded in a new report this week that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza:

The report, ‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza, documents how, during its military offensive launched in the wake of the deadly Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on 7 October 2023, 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. 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,” said Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International. 

Amnesty’s report is the latest confirmation of what has been obvious for a long time. The evidence that the Israeli government is waging a genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza has been overwhelming. That is why so many genocide scholars, including Omer Bartov, already reached the same conclusion months ago. The horrifying truth is that this genocide has unfolded in full view of the world with the active support of our government for more than a year. It has not stopped, and it will keep claiming more innocent lives every day that the war and siege are allowed to go on.

The U.S. could have halted all of this long ago, but the administration chose to continue arming and defending the perpetrators in violation of our own laws. Our government has failed in its duty to prevent and punish genocide in Gaza, and instead it has been an accomplice to the crime. The Israeli government could not have waged such a devastating campaign for so long without the constant flow of U.S.-made weapons. The U.S. has proven itself to be indispensable in facilitating a genocide.

The case against the Israeli government is very strong, and the report is based on extensive research. Amnesty’s findings are consistent with what U.N. experts, humanitarian aid agencies, and other human rights organizations have documented:

The report documents how Israel deliberately inflicted conditions of life on Palestinians in Gaza intended to lead, over time, to their destruction. These conditions were imposed through three simultaneous patterns that repeatedly compounded the effect of each other’s devastating impacts: damage to and destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure and other objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population; the repeated use of sweeping, arbitrary and confusing mass “evacuation” orders to forcibly displace almost all of Gaza’s population; and the denial and obstruction of the delivery of essential services, humanitarian assistance and other life-saving supplies into and within Gaza.

Unfortunately, none of this is news. Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon was obvious from the outset. It has been confirmed many times since then. The policy of collectively punishing everyone in Gaza was clear to anyone paying attention. The genocide hasn’t taken place in secret so that no one could now what had happened until later. It was done openly, and in many instances it has been filmed and published by the perpetrators. The genocide is ongoing, as is unconditional U.S. support for it.

The U.S. ought to halt all weapons transfers and demand an end to the war, but the Biden administration has proven that they won’t lift a finger to do any of that. They have enabled the genocide from the start, and Biden has no intention of changing course now. If there is going to be any international pressure on Israel to stop the slaughter and starvation, it is going to have to come from other states and the United Nations. If nothing is done to arrest the deepening humanitarian catastrophe, many more innocent people will die preventable deaths from hunger and disease over the winter.