After a special United Nations committee a few days ago, it is now Amnesty International’s turn to accuse Israel of “committing genocide” against the Palestinians since the start of its offensive launched on the Gaza Strip, in October 2023, according to a new report from the organization which will be made public on Thursday. The response followed the massacre in October 2023 of 1,200 people, including more than 800 civilians, and the kidnapping of 251 people on Israeli territory by the Hamas terrorist group.
“Israel committed acts prohibited by the Genocide Convention, with the specific intention of destroying the Palestinian population of Gaza,” Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, summarized earlier Wednesday during a press conference. broadcast online and held from The Hague, Netherlands, seat of the International Criminal Court. “ [Israël] was notably guilty of murder, serious attacks on the physical or mental integrity of people and deliberate subjection of Palestinians in Gaza to living conditions intended to bring about their physical destruction. Month after month, Israel has treated the Palestinian population of Gaza as a subhuman group undeserving of respect for their basic rights and dignity, and has demonstrated its intent to physically destroy them,” she added.
These accusations were immediately rejected out of hand and described as “shameful” by the Israeli government, which affirms that “there is no proof that Israel committed genocide”, summarized in a written statement sent to the Duty Paul Hirschson, consul general of Israel in Montreal. “Gaza’s population increased by 2% in 2024, while historically genocide results in a population reduction of 25% or more. With a rate of approximately 1.35 civilian casualties for every terrorist killed, Israel, under extremely difficult conditions of underground and urban combat, has limited civilian casualties more than any other Western democracy in modern military history,” he said. he added.
The most recent demographic estimates from the United Nations confirm a growth in the Palestinian population in general of 1.5% over the past year, and more specifically of 2.88% in the Gaza Strip, an addition of 22,500 people in this only Palestinian enclave, between 2023 and 2024.
« Destruction »
Following interviews with 212 people, victims and witnesses of the conflict, members of the Gazan local authorities and health professionals, but also after the analysis of visual evidence on the ground, satellite images and statements from the authorities Israeli governmental and military authorities, Amnesty International nevertheless believes that “Israel deliberately imposed living conditions on the Palestinian population of Gaza intended to ultimately lead to their destruction,” we read in its report.
The organization speaks, among other things, of around fifteen military strikes, carried out between October 2023 and April 2024, leading to the death of 334 civilians, including 141 children, for which there is no evidence that a military objective was targeted. It also speaks of a strategy targeting “vital infrastructure and other assets essential to the survival of the civilian population”, the repeated use of mass “evacuation” orders to forcibly relocate almost the entire population. population of Gaza and the banning or obstruction of the delivery of essential services, humanitarian aid and other vital goods to the Gaza Strip as a means of bringing this genocide to fruition.
“During the nine months studied for this report, Israel maintained a suffocating and illegal blockade, severely controlled access to energy sources, and did nothing to facilitate humanitarian access worthy of the name within the Strip. from Gaza, we can read. Israel has imposed living conditions on Gaza resulting in a deadly mix of malnutrition, starvation and disease, and exposed the Palestinian population to a slow and calculated death. »
At least 30 people have been killed in the past 24 hours in the Gaza Strip, bringing the death toll in the Palestinian territory since the war with Israel began more than a year ago to 44,532. , the Hamas government’s Ministry of Health announced on Wednesday. More than 13,300 of these deaths are children. This war also left 105,538 injured, according to the latest report.
Calls for “genocidal acts”
The murder of members of a group, serious attacks on their physical and mental integrity, intentional submission to conditions of existence seeking its total or partial physical destruction and measures aimed at preventing births within the group, all with the specific intent to destroy a community, may constitute the crime of genocide, according to Article II of the Genocide Convention, which Israel ratified in 1950.
Amnesty International says it found traces of this intention in no less than “102 statements made public by Israeli government and military authorities” which, between October 7, 2023 and June 30, 2024, “dehumanized Palestinians” and “called for genocidal acts.”
Twenty-two came from senior officials in the offensive and “appeared to request or justify genocidal acts,” the report continued. Videos verified by the organization showed soldiers echoing these statements and calling for the Gaza Strip to be “annihilated,” making it uninhabitable, and “celebrating the destruction of Palestinian homes, mosques, schools and universities.” , specifies the NGO versed in the defense of human rights.
“Our damning conclusions must sound like an alarm signal to the international community: this is a genocide, which must stop immediately,” insisted Agnès Callamard at a press conference. States that currently continue to transfer weapons to Israel must know that they are violating their obligation to prevent the crime of genocide and risk becoming complicit in this crime. »
In 2023, the value of exports of Canadian military goods and technology to Israel peaked at more than $30 million, an increase of 40% from the previous year, according to data from Global Affairs Canada.
Last November, a report by the United Nations Special Committee charged with investigating Israeli practices also established that Israel’s war in Gaza was “consistent with the characteristics of genocide.” An accusation which had preceded by a few days the launch of two arrest warrants, against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court ( ICC).
Last week, on the Israeli channel DemocraTV, former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon went even further by accusing Israel of carrying out “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians in northern Gaza and accusing his country of losing its identity as a liberal democracy to become a “messianic, fascist and corrupt state”.
“We cry for all the victims of this horrible conflict, Jewish and Palestinian, and we pray for the return of the hostages as soon as possible so that this conflict ends,” said the Duty Julien Corona, spokesperson for the Advisory Center for Jewish and Israeli Relations, while deeming these new accusations of genocide against Israel “unfounded”.
“Israel is fighting an Islamist terrorist group with real genocidal intentions against Jews around the globe. However, by wanting to demonize the only Jewish state in the world, we are targeting all Jews at the cost of a blood libel which fuels anti-Semitism,” he concludes.
