Amnesty International has discredited itself by accusing Israel of genocide, a crime it has not committed during its just, unavoidable and necessary war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Amnesty’s 296-page report charged that “Israel committed and is committing genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza. It added that Israel’s “unlawful conduct throughout its military offensive resulted in unprecedented harm to Palestinians in Gaza that resulted in a massive scale of killings and serious injuries over an extremely short time.”
While it is tragic that tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians have been killed and injured during Israel’s operation, it bears repeating that Israel has not intentionally targeted civilians.
This is an extremely important point, one that is usually overlooked or ignored by Israel’s critics.
Under a United Nations convention adopted in 1948, genocide is defined clearly. It refers specifically to certain acts of violence undertaken with the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
Israel most certainly has not singled out civilians per se. Israel’s intent from the outset has been to kill Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters and destroy Hamas’ military and governing capabilities. That is the gist of it.
In a statement following the release of Amnesty’s report, the Israel Defence Forces said it “takes all feasible measures to mitigate harm to civilians” and provides “advance warnings to civilians in combat zones whenever feasible.” Allegations of intentional harm to civilians is “unfounded.”
Nor should it be forgotten that Hamas has cynically placed its facilities in residential neighborhoods, thereby exposing civilians to harm. In practice, this means that Hamas has used civilians as human shields from the very outset of this war, which was ignited by Hamas’ massacre of roughly 1,200 civilians and soldiers in the western Negev Desert on October 7, 2023.
During Israel’s legitimate war of self-defence, Hamas has deliberately sacrificed civilians to garner international sympathy and support and win the crucial public relations battle on a global scale.
In this respect, Hamas’ strategy has paid dividends. Israel has come under withering criticism on the world stage, and the International Court of Justice, at South Africa’s request, is currently reviewing claims that Israel committed genocide in Gaza.
This grave accusation, which Israel cannot afford to take lightly, rests on the flimsy and slanderous allegation that Israel purposely killed Palestinians, which is patently untrue.
Sebastian Fischer, a German Foreign Ministry official, tellingly repudiated Amnesty’s report. As he told reporters recently, “The question of genocide presupposes a clear intention to eradicate an ethnic group. I still do not recognize any such clear intention and therefore I cannot share the conclusions of the report.”
Fischer’s comment should be regarded seriously, given the fact that the Holocaust, a genocide of monumental proportions that led to the deaths of six million Jews, was conceived and implemented by Germans and their collaborators.
It should also be noted that Amnesty’s partner, Amnesty Israel, has distanced itself from the report. Amnesty Israel has announced that it “does not accept the claim that genocide has been proven to be taking place in the Gaza Strip and does not accept the operative findings of the report.”
Although Amnesty Israel has acknowledged that “the scale of the killing and destruction carried out by Israel in Gaza has reached horrific proportions and must be stopped immediately,” it rejects the notion that these events “meet the definition of genocide as strictly laid out in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.”
As Amnesty Israel has correctly noted, this convention requires proof that the Israeli armed forces carried out their operations with the “specific intent” to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza “in whole or in part.”
“Based on our analysis, put together in consultation with external experts, many of us have doubts regarding the possibility of proving unequivocally, and beyond any reasonable alternative explanation, the element of intent,” Amnesty Israel stated.
Furthermore, some members of Amnesty Israel have accused the authors of the report of reaching a “predetermined conclusion.”
Amnesty Israel, however, believes that some of Israel’s actions “may amount to crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.”
Moshe Ya’alon, Israel’s former defence minister and chief of staff of the armed forces, said recently that certain far-right ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government are leading Israel toward existential peril.
“The path we are being dragged down is one of occupation, annexation and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip,” he said.
Ya’alon was referring to voices within the Israeli cabinet, such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who call for the “voluntary migration” of civilians from Gaza and the reestablishment of Jewish settlements there.
He was not making the case that Israel is targeting Gaza’s Palestinian civilians population in a genocidal manner, but rather pointing out that some of the policies espoused by two Israeli ministers are downright foolhardy and dangerous.
Let us be absolutely clear. Israel is fighting in Gaza with the express purpose of eradicating Hamas and its sister organizations and removing a dire threat to its well-being.
Contrary to Amnesty International’s far-fetched claim, Israel is not bent on annihilating the Palestinians as a people. Israel is not guilty of genocide.
One strongly suspects that Israel and Israelis will be very pleased to coexist with the Palestinians of Gaza once the Hamas cancer has been thoroughly excised.