Human rights organisation Amnesty International has accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
In a report released on Thursday, the organisation said Israel has “unleashed hell and destruction” , in which more than 1,200 people were killed, according to the Israeli government, and over 250 hostages taken.
Since the attack, Israel has carried out extensive aerial and ground attacks, which have killed more than 44,500 Palestinians, according to the health ministry in Gaza.
Amnesty International’s report, titled You Feel Like You Are Subhuman: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza, said Israel’s military offensive was “unprecedented” in magnitude, scale and duration.
Israel has consistently denied allegations of genocide, saying it has upheld international law and has the right to defend itself following the October 7 Hamas attack, which led to an escalation of conflict.
In a statement to SBS News, a spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said the “claims presented in this report are entirely baseless and fail to account for the operational realities faced by the IDF.”
“The report’s allegations of genocide and intentional harm are not only unfounded but also ignore Hamas’ violations of international law, including its use of civilians as human shields and its deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians,” the spokesperson said.
Responding to the accusations published in the report, a spokesperson for the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) told SBS News: “Australia’s longstanding position is that a determination on the question of whether the crime of genocide has been committed is a matter for the appropriate courts and tribunals.”
The spokesperson reiterated .
“Civilians must be protected, hostages must be released and aid must flow,” the spokesperson said.
‘This is genocide. It must stop now’
According to the report, Israel has forcibly displaced 90 per cent of Gaza’s inhabitants, deliberately obstructed or denied delivery of humanitarian aid, restricted power supplies, and subjected Palestinians from Gaza to incommunicado detention and “acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment”.
Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general, said Israel had 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 dignify, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them,” she said.
“Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now.”
Sarah Williams, a professor of international law at the University of New South Wales, told SBS News last November that genocide investigations focus on the dolus specialis — or “specific intent” — of the acts towards a group of a particular race, nationality, ethnicity or religious group.
“You have to both intend to do what you’re doing, and also intend to do it because it’s going to allow you to destroy a group,” she said.
“So if you’re doing any of those actions for other reasons, then it wouldn’t be genocide.”
Israel denies genocide accusations
The report noted Israel claimed its actions in Gaza were lawful and justified by the military goal of eradicating the military group Hamas.
Earlier this year, during hearings at the United Nations International Court of Justice, Israel faced genocide allegations brought by South Africa. In response, lawyers representing Israel denied the charge, arguing there was no genocidal intent or genocide in Israel’s conduct of the war, which has the stated objective of eliminating Hamas.
Israel has also rejected the International Criminal Court’s accusations that in Gaza.
But Amnesty International argued genocidal intent could co-exist alongside military goals and concluded Israel’s claims were not credible.
The organisation said it had examined Israel’s acts in Gaza “closely and in their totality”, considered the scale and severity of casualties and destruction, and analysed public statements by officials.
“Taking into account the pre-existing context of dispossession, apartheid and unlawful military occupation in which these acts have been committed, we could find only one reasonable conclusion: Israel’s intent is the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, whether in parallel with, or as a means to achieve, its military goal of destroying Hamas,” Callamard said.
“The atrocity of crimes committed on 7 October 2023 by Hamas and other armed groups against Israelis and victims of other nationalities, including deliberate mass killings and hostage-taking, can never justify Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”
The report examined Israel’s actions from 7 October 2023 to early July 2024.
The organisation interviewed 212 people, including Palestinian victims and witnesses, local authorities in Gaza, and healthcare workers, conducted fieldwork and analysed visual and digital evidence. It also analysed statements by senior Israeli government and military officials, as well as official Israeli bodies.
Amnesty International said it had shared its findings with Israeli authorities on multiple occasions but had received no substantive response at the time of publication.
SBS News has contacted Israel’s Australian embassy for comment.
What is genocide?
The term genocide was coined by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, partly in response to the Holocaust, as well as previous historical events.
He combined the Greek prefix ‘genos’, meaning race, and the Latin suffix ‘cide’, meaning killing.
According to the United Nations, genocide is the intentional destruction, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.
This includes the acts of killing members of the group, causing bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions that bring about destruction or prevent births and the forceful transfer of children.
In 1946, the UN General Assembly declared genocide a crime under international law.
Member states, which include Israel, have an obligation to enforce the convention by not committing the acts, but also recognising genocide and punishing the actor.
But with hundreds of events and circumstances that could fall within the definition of genocide, only a handful have achieved legal recognition.