Amnesty International Finds Israel Is Committing Genocide in Gaza

Israeli and American denials ring hollow in the face of the overwhelming evidence Amnesty presents supporting the case for genocide charges

Dec 07, 2024

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At long last, Amnesty International has produced a report investigating the claim that genocide is being committed by Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza. They conclude that this crime is indeed being committed right now, as you read this.

Now that Amnesty has made the claim, what we need to do is assess it in light of the denials by Israel and the United States.

Israeli spokespeople have claimed that Amnesty altered the legal definition of genocide to fit the facts. That’s an outright lie.

The definition Amnesty presents is lifted verbatim directly from Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, to which both Israel and the United States are full parties. It reads:

“… genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

Parsing words and splitting hairs aside, there is no doubt that Israel has committed the first three acts listed in the definition, and a case to be made for the fourth. The question is whether these acts were committed with the intent to destroy, in part or whole, the Palestinian people of Gaza.

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Scale is not the issue

One of the classic mistakes people make in assessing genocide is counting the number of dead. But genocides have varied wildly in their scale. The classic example of genocide was, of course, the Holocaust where some 6 million European Jews were among some 11 million people of various political, ethnic, physical, sexual, religious, and other groups who were marked for extermination by the Nazis and were slaughtered in staggering numbers in death and concentration camps, in ghettos, streets, and in random fields.

But there are examples of much smaller events that fall under the definition of genocide. The Yazidi genocide, perpetrated by ISIL, for example, saw some 3-5,000 deaths. Yet that is considered a genocide, and rightly so. In Bosnia, somewhere between 30-60,000 people were killed, a number that is similar to what has been reported in Gaza. That, too, is recognized as genocide.

So when UK Foreign Minister David Lammy says that not enough death has happened in Gaza to qualify it as genocide, we know he is either lying or, less likely given his experience, is simply ignorant of the meaning of the word.

Being clear about the issue: Misunderstanding where the ICJ case stands

One point that is crucial before we continue is the rampant misinterpretation of the International Court of Justice’s preliminary ruling on the case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of genocide.

People have repeatedly stated that the ICJ “found that Israel was committing as plausible genocide in Gaza.” This implies that the ICJ has made a declaratory finding in the case. This is simply not true.

The only decision the ICJ arrived at in that case is that there is sufficient evidence in South Africa’s presentation for the Court to consider the charge of genocide. It’s an exceptionally low bar to meet, and it’s meant to weed out cases being brought frivolously, with little or no evidentiary basis.

People need to stop saying that the ICJ found that “Israel is committing a plausible genocide.” It’s not true, and it undermines the argument that Israel is committing a genocide. At some point the ICJ will issue its ruling on the case South Africa brought. It has already ruled that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is illegal, that it must end as soon as possible, and that other countries are legally obligated both to refrain from supporting the occupation and to actively work to end it.

But the genocide case is by no means decided. The preliminary ruling does not mean what some are saying it does.

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The slippery question of intent

Just as the number of innocents killed is not how we decide whether or not genocide has been committed, massive horrors, even war crimes and crimes against humanity are not necessarily genocide, regardless of how many innocents are killed. While there is an implicit connection between the mass slaughter of a civilian population and intent to commit genocide, the two may not necessarily both be there in a given case.

This is the argument, for example, that the United States and its allies would use in defending their actions at the end of World War II. The carpet bombing of Dresden and, even more to the point, the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not, they would argue, conducted to wipe out the German or Japanese people, but to achieve victory in the war.

That argument would not preclude these potentially being called war crimes or crimes against humanity, but it would, if we accept that claim, preclude a charge of genocide, despite the fact that the Dresden bombing killed around 25,000 civilians and the atom bombs in Japan killed well over 200,000, with many more deaths afterwards from the fallout.

So, did Israel intend to destroy the Palestinian people in Gaza? First we need to understand what this question means.

It does not, for example mean that we need to demonstrate that Israel intended to kill every Palestinian man, woman, and child in Gaza. Destroying a people in a given area “in part” is sufficient. Yet that doesn’t simplify intent.

The UN says this about genocidal intent: “The intent is the most difficult element to determine. To constitute genocide, there must be a proven intent on the part of perpetrators to physically destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Cultural destruction does not suffice, nor does an intention to simply disperse a group.”

This is important. Ethnic cleansing is not genocide, though it is a grave crime. Indiscriminate killing of civilians is a grave war crime as well, but it is not necessarily genocide. Many crimes are horrifying, and can, if widespread enough, lead to the extermination of a people. But without the intention to accomplish that, those crimes are not genocide. Genocide has an extremely high bar.

Amnesty spends more time on this aspect than any other. 82 pages of its 292 page report are specifically devoted to the question of Israel’s intent to commit genocide, along with various details of the question being dealt with in other sections.

The case Amnesty makes is persuasive, but complex. Every opportunity to exonerate Israel of genocide is given and examined. In the end, they all fail, not because of any bias on Amnesty’s part but because of the legal precedent, established norms of international law, and the definition of genocide.

Proving genocidal intent is difficult. For the most part, states and other actors who commit genocide don’t actually develop a clear plan as the Nazis did with their dastardly Final Solution. Most who commit genocide do not stand up and say, “We are going to wipe these people out,” and often when such statements are even hinted at, it is mere bluster and bombast. However ill-advised and horrific such bluster may be, if that’s all a statement is, it is not an element of genocide. The burden of proof to establish genocide is on the accuser, prosecutor, or Court; it is not on the accused.

This is why genocide is an exceedingly rare legal charge, even if activists, politicians, and advocates throw it around much more often in a variety of different situations.

Genocidal intent is more often divined from conditions and circumstances, and the actions taken within them. Much of Amnesty’s case for genocidal intent is derived in such a manner.

However, Israel’s, in its characteristic hubris, made this task unusually easy. Former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced almost immediately after the October 7 attacks against Israel that Israel would cut off all food, electricity, water, and medicine. He said, famously, “We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.”

Now, some argue that he was referring, in that last comment, only to Hamas. But that can’t be squared with his declaration of total closure on Gaza, which clearly targets the entire population.

Gallant’s words were bolstered by the so-called “moderate” Israeli President Isaac Herzog who said that, "The entire nation is responsible. This rhetoric of 'unaware, uninvolved civilians,' is not true. They could've resisted, they could've fought this evil regime that took over Gaza."

When those words were used to support a case for genocide at the International Criminal Court, Herzog said the Court had “twisted his words,” as most public figures do when they realize they’ve said something they can get in deep trouble for. Anyone who saw Herzog speak his initial words is fully aware that he meant them just as they sounded.

Those were two of the most prominent examples, but many Israeli soldiers and politicians made similar statements, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

All of this could be excused as bluster, except for the troublesome fact that they are reflected in Israel’s behavior in Gaza. They are reflected in the blatant targeting of civilians, including numerous cases where people were told to move south on a road that was subsequently shelled; or where they were directed to so-called “safe zones” which were then bombed repeatedly; the deliberate targeting by Israel of hospitals, mosques, schools, United Nations facilities and other expected safe havens; the blocking of international aid; the deprivation of electricity; the deliberate targeting of journalists, health care workers, and first responders; and many other war crimes a database of which has been compiled by an Israeli historian.

All of this is how we, and Amnesty, know that Israel is committing genocide. As early as December 2023, a statement from over 55 scholars of Holocaust and genocide studies asserted that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.

The question is not whether Amnesty’s accusation is based on a solid foundation of evidence. It very clearly is. The question is what is the rest of the world going to do about it?

Sadly, as was the case during the Holocaust, and in so many genocides throughout history, the answer seems to be nothing.

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Amnesty International Finds Israel Is Committing Genocide in Gaza

Israeli and American denials ring hollow in the face of the overwhelming evidence Amnesty presents supporting the case for genocide charges

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