Amnesty International accuses Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians

Amnesty International said Thursday that it had found evidence that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in its war in Gaza.

The accusation by the human rights group is the latest in a growing list of organizations, including numerous United Nations agencies, that allege Israel's actions during the 14-month-old conflict are consistent with genocide. It also comes as another blow to Israel’s contention that its conduct has been justifiable.

The Amnesty International report adds to such claims against the government from inside and outside of Israel, including a former defense minister who said his country was committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, and the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces called the report's claims "entirely baseless."

Amnesty International said Israel had committed acts prohibited by the Genocide Convention, an international treaty that criminalizes genocide, citing “killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.”

The organization added that Israel has done so “with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians,” a group protected under the Genocide Convention.

The report cites direct or indiscriminate attacks on civilians, such as a strike on a market at the Jabalia refugee camp that killed at least 70 civilians on Oct. 9, 2023; the escalating dehumanization of Palestinians, such as then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s referring to Palestinians as “human animals” the same day; the controlled demolitions of a dozen mosques; and the long debate over whether Israel has been allowing enough humanitarian aid into Gaza.

“The true test of whether enough was being done by Israel … to address the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza is the extent to which Palestinians living in Gaza could access adequate food, water, medicine, health services and other essentials,” the report said. “They overwhelmingly could not.”

In researching the report, Amnesty interviewed 212 people, conducted fieldwork and analyzed statements from Israeli officials and what it called "an extensive range of visual and digital evidence, including satellite imagery."

The report was released the morning after a round of fresh Israeli airstrikes hit a tent camp for displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza late Wednesday, killing at least 21 people, the head of the nearby Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis told The Associated Press.

The Amnesty International report described the period from Oct. 7, 2023 — the day Hamas and other militant groups attacked Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking 250 hostage — and this July. According to officials in Gaza, more than 44,000 people have been killed in Israel’s war in the enclave.

In response to a request from NBC News, a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces said that “the claims presented in this report are entirely baseless and fail to account for the operational realities faced by the IDF” and that it is working to “dismantle Hamas’ military infrastructure.”

The spokesperson added that “the IDF takes all feasible measures to mitigate harm to civilians during operations” and that the report ignores “Hamas’ violations of international law, including its use of civilians as human shields and its deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians.”

While the report focuses on Israel's conduct, it notes that some of Hamas' actions "constituted war crimes under international law," and called upon Israel, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups, like Palestinian Islamic Jihad, to agree to an immediate ceasefire.

The strike on the al-Mawasi tent camp was one of several across Gaza on Wednesday that left scenes of burning chaos, with emergency workers recovering charred bodies, including those of women and children.

“The place was a hell,” one firefighter, Mohammed Alnajar, told NBC News. “It was a catastrophe everywhere: Shattered martyrs and propane tanks belonging to the displaced were exploding.”

In a statement, the IDF said the strike was conducted against “senior Hamas terrorists who were involved in terrorist activities in the humanitarian area in Khan Younis,” adding that secondary explosions suggested “the presence of weaponry in the area.”

While Amnesty International’s report ended in July, it goes on to say that the IDF’s human rights violations in Gaza have continued and suggested that Israel’s allies exert influence over the country and cease arms sales.

It also referred to the case South Africa brought against Israel in the U.N.'s International Court of Justice and recommended that Israel engage fully with “any international investigations into genocide,” as well as allow free movement within Gaza and the unhindered passage of humanitarian aid.

Israel has repeatedly been criticized for not allowing enough aid into Gaza, with the Biden administration — which spent almost $18 billion on military aid to Israel in the year after the Oct. 7 attack, according to Brown University’s Costs of War Project — at times threatening to slow or withhold the sales of certain weapons as a bargaining chip.

In a post Wednesday on X, COGAT, the Israeli defense ministry unit for civilian matters in Gaza, said that 161 humanitarian aid trucks had entered Gaza that day carrying food, flour and medical aid.

Before Israel launched its offensive in Gaza, around 500 trucks entered the enclave each day, according to the British Red Cross.

While “identifying genocide in armed conflict is complex and challenging, because of the multiple objectives that may exist simultaneously," Amnesty International said in Thursday's report, "it is critical to recognize genocide when it occurs in the context of armed conflict, and to insist that war can never excuse it.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com