For the First Time, Israeli Human Rights Groups Say Israel Is Committing Genocide in Gaza, Call for International Intervention - Israel News - Haaretz.com
Israeli human rights groups B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights – Israel published on Monday two reports concluding that Israel is committing the crime of genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, as defined by international law.
This marks the first time that Israeli human rights groups have officially determined that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The groups are now calling on the international community to take action against the Israeli government to stop these atrocities.
The B'Tselem report opens with a strong condemnation of Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel, noting that the group's assault included numerous war crimes and likely crimes against humanity.
The report also states that Israel's response was exceptionally brutal, resulting in widespread killing, destruction, displacement and starvation on a massive scale.
According to the B'Tselem report, Israel's attack caused "massive, indiscriminate bombardment of population centers" and the "starvation of more than two million people as a method of warfare" against the Palestinians.
It argues that Israel's attacks on Gaza caused "mass killing, both in direct attacks and through creating catastrophic living conditions that continue to raise the massive death toll; serious bodily or mental harm to the entire population of the Strip; large-scale destruction of infrastructure; and destruction of the social fabric, including educational institutions and Palestinian cultural sites."
According to the report, Israel has also implemented the methods of "mass arrests and abuse of detainees in Israeli prisons, which have effectively become torture camps for thousands of Palestinians held without trial," as well as "mass forced displacement, including attempts at ethnic cleansing and making the latter an official war goal; and an assault on Palestinian identity through the deliberate destruction of refugee camps and attempts to undermine the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees."
"Statements by senior Israeli decision-makers about the nature of the assault on Gaza have expressed genocidal intent throughout," it added.
Palestinians stand next to dead bodies in Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza City, last week.Credit: Mahmoud Issa/Reuters
The report cites former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant's remarks referring to the people in Gaza as "human animals," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's declaration from October 28, 2023, that this is a war against "Amalek" – a reference to the biblical story of God's command to the Israelites to annihilate the Amalekite people – as well as statements about genocide made by journalists and public figures.
The report concludes that the combination of the reality in Gaza and statements by senior Israeli officials led them to "the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip … and committing genocide against Palestinians."
The B'Tselem report is based on a series of interviews with Gaza residents, as well as reports from human rights organizations, UN agencies, media investigations and expert opinions from international specialists. Regarding casualty figures, the report relies on data from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.
The report's authors note that these figures "are widely considered reliable and have been adopted by numerous organizations and researchers. Moreover, they are generally regarded as conservative compared to the actual number of casualties resulting from [Israel's] assault."
The authors also cite a medical study published in February in the medical journal The Lancet, which found that life expectancy during the first year of the war in Gaza dropped by 51 percent for men and 38 percent for women, with the average age of death reaching 40 for men and 47 for women.
The report also includes extremely harrowing testimonies from Gazans, including that of a mother who saw her two children and husband run over by a tank, a father who witnessed his son burn to death and a paramedic who was forced to abandon several bodies – along with a dying woman and an infant – in an ambulance that was shelled.
When he returned the next day, the report says, the medic discovered that stray dogs had eaten parts of the corpses, but the infant had survived.
A Palestinian woman mourns over a dead body in Gaza City, Saturday.Credit: Mahmoud Issa/Reuters
The report also includes the testimony of Muhammad Ghrab, a Gaza City resident who had been displaced to Muwasi, east of Khan Yunis in the southern Strip. In his account to B'Tselem, Ghrab described an Israeli airstrike he witnessed on July 13, 2024.
The attack, which Israel said targeted two senior Hamas military operatives, including Muhammad Deif, consisted of two successive bombings and was the deadliest strike in al-Mawasi during that period, killing 90 Gazans and wounding 300 more.
"Suddenly, a ring of fire formed," Ghrab recounted. "The sky was completely covered in clouds, dust and dirt. People started running in all directions. [...] When we entered the tents that were still standing, we saw they were full of bodies, mostly of women and children."
"What we saw that day, at that hour, was like the embodiment of madness," he said. "Something incomprehensible. It felt like pieces of hell were falling onto the earth. It's impossible to truly describe. Language fails. It can't contain the horrors we witnessed. What I'm describing is only a small part of the horror that took place. [...] I've been afraid ever since that day. I keep expecting the tents to be bombed and for me and my family to die in a similar strike."
The report's authors also note that the high death toll in Gaza has created "the largest orphan crisis in modern history," pointing out that approximately 40,000 children have lost one or both parents, and that 41 percent of families are now caring for children who are not their own.
They further link what they describe as acts of genocide by Israel in Gaza to the rise in violence against Palestinians in the West Bank and even within Israel, expressing deep concern that the genocide could spread to other areas where Palestinians live.
"This is the time to save those who have not yet been lost forever, and use every means available under international law to stop Israel's genocide of the Palestinians," it concludes.
Another report released on Monday by Physicians for Human Rights –Israel presents a legal analysis of the health-related aspects of the Israeli assault on Gaza. This report concludes that Israel is committing the crime of genocide, as defined by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Israeli airstrikes on Gaza seen from the Israeli side of the border fence, Sunday.Credit: AFP/Menahem Kahana
"The evidence shows a deliberate and systematic dismantling of Gaza's health and life-sustaining systems through targeted attacks on hospitals, obstruction of medical aid and evacuations, and the killing and detention of healthcare personnel," PHRI's report says.
The report adds that Israel's acts "are not incidental to war but part of a deliberate policy targeting Palestinians as a group."
PHRI identifies three "core acts" that fulfill at least three core acts defined in the Genocide Convention: "killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting on them conditions of life calculated to bring about the group's destruction in whole or in part."
"Despite international legal rulings, Israel has not complied with its obligations, and global enforcement remains weak," the report determines, adding, "PHRI urges international bodies and states to fulfill their duty under Article I of the Genocide Convention to stop the genocide."
"The organization also calls on the global health and humanitarian communities to act, as the destruction of Gaza's health system is not only a legal violation but a humanitarian catastrophe demanding urgent global solidarity and response," it said.
To date, numerous organizations and legal experts have concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Among those reaching this determination are Amnesty International, the European Center for Human Rights, the International Federation for Human Rights and Doctors Without Borders.
Human Rights Watch has also said in a report that Israel is committing crimes of extermination that may amount to genocide.
Several Israeli legal scholars and genocide researchers have also arrived at this conclusion, including Holocaust and genocide experts Daniel Blatman, Omar Bartov, Shmuel Lederman, Amos Goldberg, Raz Segal, legal scholar Itamar Raz and historians Lee Mordechai and Adam Raz, among others.