For most of the past year, human rights watchdogs have characterized Israel's deeds in Gaza as collective punishment, war crimes, violations of human rights, but not necessarily "genocide" — defined as intentionally destroying a people as a whole, and carrying more weight than perhaps any other crime. Now, a 179-page Human Rights Watch report is accusing Israel of doing just that, echoing a recent Amnesty International report in explicitly describing the Israeli campaign as a genocide against Palestinians.
While the report detailed a litany of alleged offenses that would qualify as acts of genocide, including the mass killing of 45,000 civilians with weapons of war, HRW singled out the cutting off of water to Gaza. That action, the report said, was further evidence that "Israeli authorities have deliberately inflicted conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of part of the population in Gaza" and caused "thousands of deaths."
