Amnesty International accuses Israel of genocide; An Israeli official called the claim “absolutely false and based on lies”

The rights organization Amnesty International accused Israel of killing Palestinians in Gaza and asked the United Nations International Criminal Court “to immediately consider adding genocide to the list of crimes it investigates and that all states use all legal means to bring them to justice.”

Israel has also rejected allegations of genocide in Gaza, insisting it has the right to defend itself after the Palestinian Authority’s rulers Hamas carried out a brutal attack on October 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. Since the start of the war in Gaza, at least 44,580 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli military attacks, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, and most of its citizens have been internally displaced.

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

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

“Amnesty International’s report shows that Israel has committed acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, with the aim of destroying the Palestinian people in Gaza,” said Agnès Callamard, the group’s secretary general in a statement. “These actions include murder, serious physical or mental harm and intentional harm to the Palestinian people in Gaza living conditions calculated to bring about their physical destruction. Month after month, Israel treats the Palestinian people in Gaza as a subhuman group that does not deserve human rights and dignity. , showing its intention to destroy them physically. Our devastating findings should serve as a warning to the international community: this is killing stop now.”

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

Amnesty said countries like these “must act now to end Israel’s brutality against the Palestinian people in Gaza.”

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

The branch of Amnesty International that is inside Israel said that it does not accept the important findings of this report that accuses the country of killing people, but it wants the war to be ended immediately and to be investigated for serious violations of international laws and crimes against humanity.

This report comes two weeks after the International Criminal Court issued it arrest warrants of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister, as well as the leader of Hamas whom Israel claims was killed in an airstrike over the summer.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Israel hit the tent camp where many homeless people living in southern Gaza killed at least 21 people and injured 28, said the director of the Nasser Hospital in the nearby town of Khan Younis, Atif al-Hout, said the director of the Nasser Hospital in the nearby town of Khan Younis.

The Israeli military said it had struck senior Hamas fighters “involved in terrorist activities” in the area, the Associated Press reported. Previously, Israeli strikes in Gaza killed eight people, four of whom were children, AP reported.