Amnesty International accuses Israel of genocide; Israeli official calls claim 'entirely false and based on lies'

Rights organization Amnesty International has accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and called on the United Nations International Criminal Court “to urgently consider adding genocide to the list of crimes on which it is investigating and for all States to use all legal means to bring the perpetrators to justice. »

Israel has repeatedly rejected accusations of genocide in Gaza, insisting it has the right to defend itself after Hamas leaders in the Palestinian territory carried out their brutal attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 others hostage. Since the start of the war in Gaza, at least 44,580 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli military offensive, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, and most of its residents have been displaced internally. territory.

In a report Published on Thursday, the London-based human rights group said it had found “sufficient grounds” to conclude that Israel had committed and continued to commit the crime of genocide in Gaza.

Genocide consists of “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group,” according to the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention.

“Amnesty International's report demonstrates that Israel committed acts prohibited by the Genocide Convention, with the specific intent of destroying Palestinians in Gaza,” Agnès Callamard, the group's secretary general, said in a statement. “These acts include murder, causing serious physical or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting living conditions on Palestinians in Gaza calculated to bring about their physical destruction. Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as an unworthy, subhuman group of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intention to physically destroy them. Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is a genocide that must stop. NOW. “

The human rights group said countries that supply weapons to Israel, including the United States, “must know that they are violating their obligation to prevent genocide and risk becoming complicit in genocide” .

Amnesty said these countries “must act now to immediately end Israel's atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza.”

“The deplorable and fanatical organization Amnesty International has once again produced a fabricated report that is completely false and based on lies,” Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein said on social media in response. to the report.

Amnesty International's own branch in Israel said it did not accept the main findings of the report accusing the country of genocide, but it called for an immediate end to the war and an investigation into serious violations of the law. international and crimes against humanity.

The report comes two weeks after the International Criminal Court published arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, as well as for a Hamas leader who Israel says was killed in an airstrike over the summer.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, an Israeli strike on tent camp where many displaced people live in southern Gaza, killed at least 21 people and injured 28, said the director of Nasser Hospital in the neighboring town of Khan Younis, Atif al-Hout.

The Israeli military said it struck Hamas militants “involved in terrorist activities” in the area, the Associated Press reported. Earlier Israeli strikes in Gaza killed eight people, including four children, the AP reported.