‘This Is Genocide’: Amnesty Publishes Landmark Report on Gaza

Amnesty International published on Thursday a landmark report concluding that Israel’s assault on Gaza constitutes genocide, in a move that may normalise the term within political and media arenas.

The 290-page document, based mostly on research conducted between October 2023 and July 2024, concludes that Israel has committed genocidal acts in Gaza, and has done so intentionally. Among several recommendations, the report calls on the UN to sanction Israel.

Intent is a key component of the UN’s 1948 genocide convention and one of the most contested in relation to Gaza. Much of Israel’s ongoing genocide trial at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has hinged on the question of intent. Amnesty’s report goes some way towards settling it.

“There is only one reasonable inference that can be drawn from the evidence presented,” the report concludes. “Genocidal intent has been part and parcel of Israel’s conduct in Gaza since 7 October 2023, including its military campaign.” 

The report refutes several justifications offered by Israel and its supporters for its actions in Gaza. One is that the large number of civilian casualties in Gaza is not intentional, but reckless. “It strains belief that these [casualties] could be anything other than intentional after so many months of recurring attacks, in defiance of legally binding orders by the ICJ, multiple resolutions of the UN Security Council and numerous warnings,” the report says.

It also dismisses Israel’s argument that its military end justifies its brutal means. “Israel has repeatedly argued that its actions in Gaza are lawful and can be justified by its military goal to eradicate Hamas. But genocidal intent can co-exist alongside military goals and does not need to be Israel’s sole intent,” the report says.

In addition to interviews with 212 people – including Palestinian witnesses and survivors of Israeli airstrikes, Gazan local authority officials, Palestinian medics and NGO and UN agency workers – the report analyses 102 statements from senior Israeli governmental and military officials. Of these, the report finds that 22 showed genocidal intent.

Among them is Israeli president Isaac Herzog’s claim: “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved.” Also included is national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s statement: “To be clear, when they say that Hamas needs to be eliminated, it also means those who sing, those who support and those who distribute sweets, all of these are terrorists. And they should be eliminated!”

The report also demonstrates that these statements by senior officials had material effects, examining 62 videos, audio recordings and photographs that suggest this genocidal language trickled down to the actions and rhetoric of Israeli soldiers in Gaza.

“A combined reading of Israeli officials’ and soldiers’ statements and rhetoric, which accompanied Israel’s military operations in Gaza following 7 October 2023, points to the existence of an intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, as such,” says the report.

Amnesty combined its interviews and discourse analysis with analysis of satellite imagery, videos and photographs; media, UN and humanitarian reports; and information provided by Palestinian and Israeli human rights groups.

Analysing 15 airstrikes on civilian buildings in Gaza, which together killed 334 civilians including 141 children, Amnesty found no evidence of military targets. It also found that explosions were designed to cause maximum fatalities and in at least five cases, were timed between 11pm and 4am when residents were likely to be sleeping. 

“The scale of the attacks, the number of civilian victims spread across ages and genders and within multigenerational families, the repetition of destructive acts, and the perpetration of other culpable acts systematically targeted at the same group are all factors that indicate genocidal intent when considered holistically with others,” the report says.

The report adds that even in cases where Israeli targeted potential military objectives, its “use of explosive weapons with wide area effects, especially aerial bombs of 250 pounds (110kg) to 2,000 pounds (900kg), on residential buildings and in the proximity of hospitals in one of the world’s most densely populated areas likely constitute indiscriminate and/or disproportionate attacks.”

The report also finds that Israel has not only committed genocide by killing Palestinian civilians directly but also by deliberately creating conditions designed to kill them over time, including by obstructing humanitarian aid, eliminating medical services and targeting agricultural infrastructure.

“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, Amnesty International’s secretary general, in a statement.

“Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now,” Callamard added. “All 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’s atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza to an immediate end.”

Amnesty’s report makes several concrete recommendations, including for the UN to sanction Israel, including imposing asset freezes. This represents a significant escalation of Amnesty’s previous call for an arms embargo on Israel. The report’s recommendations also include several for Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, including the release of hostages and the investigation into war crimes by armed Palestinian groups. The report indicates that a further report on Hamas’s actions on 7 October is forthcoming.

Though several genocide experts have since the earliest days of Israel’s assault agreed that its actions constitute “a textbook case of genocide”, a conclusion echoed by the UN rapporteur on occupied Palestine in March, western leaders have largely resisted it. “What’s happening is not genocide. We reject that,” US president Joe Biden has said. Following the US, Keir Starmer claims to have “never described what is going on in Gaza as genocide”, while his foreign secretary David Lammy recently told parliament that to use the term in reference to Gaza “undermines [its] seriousness”. 

This political anxiety has been reflected in the media, where even progressive outlets have censored the term genocide in their Gaza coverage. The New York Times explicitly bans the term, while the Guardian permits it only when heavily caveated (pieces using the term are subject to extra scrutiny).

The Amnesty report notes that “this resistance [to using the term genocide] has impeded justice and accountability with respect to past conflicts around the world and should be avoided in the future.”

Though rhetorically conservative in their descriptions of Gaza, several states have sanctioned Israel over its alleged war crimes in Gaza, though the UK and US have proven the most reluctant to do so. In September, the UK suspended 30 of its roughly 350 arms export licenses to Israel in what appeared to be a downgrade from his reported intention to suspend sales altogether.

The foreign secretary, a member of Labour Friends of Israel, has flip-flopped considerably on the question of Israel and Palestine since 7 October. As shadow foreign secretary, he (unsuccessfully) called on his counterpart David Cameron to publish Foreign Office guidance on arms exports, though when Labour entered government he declined to do the same.

The UK is one of a dwindling number of states that have stood by the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC). A Number 10 spokesperson said the government would consider “various issues including immunity” should Netanyahu travel to the UK. France, Germany and Italy have  similarly prevaricated in their response to the ICC warrants, which Biden has called “outrageous”.

Amnesty was founded in London in 1961 to campaign for the release of political prisoners. It established an Israel office three years later with the support of Israel’s foreign ministry (its current Tel Aviv office does not take funding from the Israeli government). Amnesty’s first report from the territory, on Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, was published in 1969.

The NGO has in recent years taken increasingly strident positions on Israel and Palestine as the situation in the region has worsened. Its 280-page report on Israeli apartheid, published in 2022 following four years of research, was widely seen as forcing the term into the mainstream, though it was also critiqued for making no reference to settler colonialism. “This is the world’s biggest human rights organisation,” said the Guardian in an editorial. “Its conclusion shows the discussion is becoming embedded in international forums.”

Amnesty’s apartheid report, and its coverage of the Gaza genocide, have made it a key target of pro-Israel lobby groups such as Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor and UK Lawyers for Israel, which reported Amnesty to the Charity Commission (with no result). Amnesty’s apartheid report also drew the ire of Israeli politicians, including then-foreign minister Yair Lapid, who accused the organisation of antisemitism. The Israeli foreign ministry made a similar accusation in relation to what it called Amnesty’s “deplorable”, “fanatical” and “fabricated” genocide report: “These are the exact components from which modern antisemitism is made.” Definitely not rattled, then.

Amnesty says it has shared its findings with the relevant Israeli authorities but has received no substantive response. Israeli officials did not respond to Novara Media’s request for comment.