On December 5, Amnesty International declared that Israel is committing the crime of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
Genocide is criminalised under the Genocide Convention, which Israel ratified in 1950, a year after it was recognised as a state by the United Nations.
“[T]here is sufficient evidence to believe that Israel’s conduct in Gaza following 7 October 2023 amounts to genocide,” Amnesty stated in its report.
Amnesty is not the first organisation to conclude Israel is committing genocide – here are other organisations who have made the same assessment.
What made Amnesty’s mind up?
Genocide, by definition, constitutes five specific acts. Amnesty International has found that Israel is committing three of them:
- Killing members of a group.
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to individuals from that group.
- Deliberately bringing about conditions of life that aim to physically destroy a group in whole or in part.
Amnesty has specifically condemned Israel for using starvation as a method of war – act 3 above.
As the occupying power, Israel has a legal obligation to supply the population in Gaza with all basic provisions and necessities.
But since Israel began its war on Gaza on October 7, 2023 – following a Hamas-led attack on Israel earlier that day – it has cut off water, fuel and nearly all humanitarian aid from reaching civilians in Gaza.
Palestinian civil society
In a damning statement one month after Israel began its offensive on Gaza, al-Haq, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights and Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights said Israel intended to wipe out the Palestinian people “in whole or in part”.
They sounded the alarm over the “clear risk of genocide” Palestinians faced in Gaza, focusing on the dehumanising rhetoric by Israeli officials.
These included the words of then-Defence Minister Yoav Gallant – wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity – who referred to Palestinians as “human animals”.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog also declared: “There are no innocent civilians in Gaza.”
Center for Constitutional Rights (US)
The CCR is a United States-based legal advocacy fighting for civil rights since 1966 that has also said Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
On October 18, 2023, CCR released a legal analysis on Israel’s violations of the Genocide Convention and also criticised the US administration.
The US government has supplied about 69 percent of the weapons Israel uses to assault Gaza – including large, non-precision bombs that inflict disproportionate suffering on civilians – fighter jets, and other artillery.
“[T]here is a plausible and credible case to be made that the United States’ actions to further the Israeli military operation, closure, and campaign against the Palestinian population in Gaza rise to the level of complicity,” the CCR said in a statement.
UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories
Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation in Palestine, has concluded that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
In her March report entitled, Anatomy of a Genocide, she also found Israel was committing three of the five acts of genocide.
She noted that beyond denying life-saving aid and food to Palestinians, Israel was also bringing about the destruction of the people through systematically destroying hospitals and farmland.
“Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza is an escalatory stage of a long-standing settler colonial process of erasure,” Albanese said.
International Court of Justice
The UN’s World Court ruled on January 26 that Palestinians were “at risk of” genocide.
This was a case South Africa raised against Israel for committing genocide and remains ongoing, as the former continues to raise requests with the court in an effort to get Israel to end its war on Gaza.
The hearings in January saw the court issue a binding order for Israel to stop acts of genocide by scaling up humanitarian aid.
Israel is obligated to report back to the court on a monthly basis to demonstrate how it has complied with the orders – an ongoing assessment which could take years.
Until now, Israel has defied the court’s orders and has instead killed relief workers and civil servants in Gaza who are indispensable in distributing humanitarian relief.
Israeli officials have attempted to smear the court as “anti-Semitic” and claimed South Africa was “providing legal cover for Hamas”.
What countries accuse Israel of genocide?
So far, 14 countries have joined or signalled their intention to join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel in the World Court.
They include Belgium, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Egypt, Ireland, Spain, Libya, Maldives, Mexico, Nicaragua and Turkiye.
In addition, Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani accused Israel of committing a “collective genocide” in Gaza.
