In a new 300-page report the human rights group joins a growing chorus of legal scholars and activists describing Israel’s assault on Palestinians as genocide. 

Jessica Washington, The Intercept, December 4 2024

ON THE MORNING of December 14, 2023, an Israeli airstrike killed three generations of Ahmad Nasman’s family in Gaza. In a single blow, his wife, three children, parents, and sister were gone. It would be days before Nasman would find the body of his 3-month-old daughter, Ayla, under the rubble. His eldest daughter, Arwa, only 5 years old, was decapitated in the blast.

“My body survived but my spirit died with my children,” said Nasman. “It was crushed under the rubble with them.” 

The airstrike, which hit a three-story building in Rafah, killed an estimated 31 Palestinians — most of whom had fled south from Gaza City in search of safety and shelter. In the months that followed, thousands of Palestinian parents would come to share Nasman’s grief, as the death toll surpassed 44,000.  

The December strike was one of 15 incidents researchers at Amnesty International thoroughly investigated over the last year, as part of a sprawling study of Israel’s war effort since October 2023. At nearly 300 pages, the report makes a definitive finding: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. 

“It is a repeated pattern across Gaza across the last 14 months.” 

“The conclusion could not be clearer,” said Nadia Daar, chief strategy and impact officer for Amnesty International USA, “that a genocide has been taking place in Gaza, and that a genocide is continuing in Gaza, and all states must do everything to prevent and to punish the genocide that is happening in Gaza.” 

“It’s not just one incident, it’s not just, you know, one family or one hospital. It is a repeated pattern across Gaza across the last 14 months,” Daar added. “It is chilling when you put the whole picture together as this report does, and it is a stain on humanity.” 

The report’s Wednesday release comes at a time of increased global scrutiny of Israel’s assault on Gaza. Two weeks ago, the International Criminal Court announced arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. President Joe Biden called the warrants “outrageous” and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., threatened sanctions against the ICC. 

Even ahead of the report’s official release, right-wing backers of Israel tore into Amnesty International, accusing it of a “history of antisemitism” and knocking the conclusion of genocide. The internationally renowned rights organizations faced a similar bevy of attacks in 2022, when it joined other human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, in calling Israel an “apartheid” state. Israeli officials swiftly condemned the report as “false, biased, and antisemitic.” Amnesty International “is just another radical organization which echoes propaganda, without seriously checking the facts,” said Yair Lapid, then Israeli foreign minister, at the time. 

Like Amnesty’s apartheid report, the finding of genocide comes long after scholars, activists, and Israel’s Palestinian victims had reached the same conclusion themselves. As far back as January, the International Court of Justice found that Israel was “plausibly” committing genocide. Still, advocates are hopeful that this report from a widely respected group like Amnesty International will help to move the needle forward in conversations about Gaza. Not only will it force people in the United States to grapple directly with the fact that the U.S. is complicit in a genocide, but it also gives people the authority to speak plainly and truthfully about what’s happening in Gaza. 

“It’s obvious to anyone you know who’s been even paying cursory attention here that it’s a genocide,” said Samer Araabi, a member of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, a Bay Area advocacy organization. “But you know, the way our systems work, we need that independently confirmed by experts.” 

He continued, “I feel quite confident that this will give other people … the perspective that they need, or, the sort of authoritative backing they may require to be able to call this what it is.” 

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The report includes 15 separate in-depth investigations and is based on interviews with over 200 people, including Palestinian survivors, local authorities in Gaza, and health care workers. The Amnesty researchers also conducted fieldwork in Gaza and analyzed an extensive range of visual and digital evidence, including satellite imagery, and analyzed statements made by senior Israeli officials. 

They did not reach the conclusion of genocide lightly, said Daar. “Doing a report to investigate the case of genocide is complex, but it’s not impossible,” she said. 

“We hope that people will understand this is not just a word, it’s not just a term, it is based on legal evidence,” she added. 

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The report notes that Israel had carried out “relentless” aerial and ground attacks flattening entire neighborhoods and critical infrastructure, including hospitals, killing tens of thousands of Palestinians, and in many cases wiping out entire multigenerational families. In addition to the devastating impacts of Israel’s military campaign, the report also found that Israel had deliberately obstructed or denied the import of humanitarian aid and other lifesaving supplies to a displaced and starving population. 

Mohammed Salama, director of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the Emirates Red Crescent hospital in Rafah, spoke to Amnesty’s researchers about the critical health care situation in the besieged enclave. “As other hospitals in the south went out of service, we became the only hospital equipped with incubators, and most of the Gaza Strip was displaced here [in Rafah],” he said. “At times, we had to place five newborns and young children in one incubator and following the spread of neonatal sepsis like wildfire, we had to ask mothers to cradle their babies on the floor.”

The researchers looked at not only the actions of Israeli officials, but also their intent. In addition to analyzing direct statements from Israeli officials, Daar said, the group also focused on patterns of behavior from the Israeli military in Gaza since October 7. 

“We saw repeated patterns of indiscriminate attacks against civilians. We saw repeated patterns of displacement into unsafe conditions. We saw repeated attacks on civilian infrastructure and infrastructure that is needed for survival, including hospitals, for example. We saw the repeated — over and over and over — repeated denial and blockage of aid into Gaza by Israeli officials,” she said. “So those patterns are really, really important here.” 

The widespread destruction in Gaza was another factor that helped establish intent. “That scale, that level and speed of damage,” said Daar, “we have not seen any other conflict in the 21st century.” 

Araabi, the Bay Area activist, hopes that the report will force people in the United States to grapple with this country’s role, given that the U.S. government has provided near-unconditional military, political, and diplomatic support to Israel.

“I think people have a hard time reconciling the idea of our complicity with a crime as serious as genocide. And, there’s a real desire to not look that in the face. But I think one of the good things about this report is it’s going to force us to do that and recognize the fact that we are, in fact, as taxpayers in this country, complicit in in a genocide,” said Araabi. “So I think it’s really important that we face the consequences of that, and we really sit with the discomfort of that.” 

As for attacks from Israeli officials and their allies on Amnesty International and other rights groups, Araabi said that proves that human rights advocates’ messages are breaking through to the public. “I think Israel and its apologists are in full on panic mode,” he said. “It’s hard to interpret it as anything but that. The repression and the attacks that anti-war movements are facing right now, I think, is a clear indication that the enablers of this genocide are seeing a real existential threat to their project.”

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Jessica Washington
jessica.washington@theintercept.com
@jessica_m_wash on X