‘Predetermined conclusion’? Amnesty Int’l alleges Israel committing ‘genocide’ in Gaza, Israeli branch rejects report

The Israeli Foreign Ministry and the Israeli branch of Amnesty International sharply criticized the parent NGO for its recent report titled, “‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza.”

“Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them,” the human rights group’s Sec.-Gen. Agnès Callamard said in the accompanying press release.

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Oren Marmorstein slammed the report, stating, “The deplorable and fanatical organization Amnesty International has once again produced a fabricated report that is entirely false and based on lies.”

“The genocidal massacre on October 7, 2023, was carried out by the Hamas terrorist organization against Israeli citizens. Since then, Israeli citizens have been subjected to daily attacks from seven different fronts. Israel is defending itself against these attacks acting fully in accordance with international law,” Marmorstein added.

The local Israeli branch of Amnesty International also rejected the report’s conclusions, with some members accusing the authors of working toward a “predetermined conclusion.”

In a statement, the branch stressed it was not involved in research, funding or writing of the report and 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.”

While noting that “the scale of the killing and destruction carried out by Israel in Gaza has reached horrific proportions and must be stopped immediately,” the statement read that this doesn’t “meet the definition of genocide as strictly laid out in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.”

The report claimed that “genocidal intent is the only reasonable conclusion” in the face of what it described as an “unprecedented” level of destruction and death.

Amnesty International reported that, so far, approximately 42,000 Palestinians, including 13,300 children, have been killed and over 97,000 Palestinians have been injured during the war.

“Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now,” the group wrote.

As a consequence, Callamard called for an arms embargo against Israel.

“States that continue to transfer arms to Israel at this time must know they are violating their obligation to prevent genocide and are at risk of becoming complicit in genocide. All states with influence over Israel, particularly key arms suppliers like the USA and Germany, but also other EU member states, the UK and others, must act now to bring Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza to an immediate end,” she said.

“The international community’s seismic, shameful failure for over a year to press Israel to end its atrocities in Gaza, by first delaying calls for a ceasefire and then continuing arms transfers, is and will remain a stain on our collective conscience,” Callamard concluded.

The report drew intense condemnation and criticism from numerous sources. NGO Monitor said before the report’s publication that selective evidence was used to reach its conclusions, for example, classifying the humanitarian effort of issuing precise evacuation notices for Gaza civilians as “genocidal.”

The group also criticized the use of figures released by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, which doesn't distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Amnesty International “has devoted many years to the delegitimization of Israel regardless of policies, [and] is simply continuing its decades-long lawfare campaign,” said NGO Monitor.

.@amnesty international literally redefined the legal term of genocide to suit their accusation, stripping the term of its actual meaning in the process. The craziest part? They admit this in their report, correctly assuming that most people won't read all the way to p. 101: 🧵 https://t.co/lqJYrjkidU

— Mark Goldfeder (@MarkGoldfeder) December 5, 2024

Mark Goldfeder, director of the NGO National Jewish Advocacy Center, noted that the report changed the definition of genocide to reach its conclusion. “This is not just a failure of factual accuracy; it is a willful misrepresentation of international law,” he wrote on 𝕏.

“In Bosnia v. Serbia (2007), the ICJ held that genocidal intent must be the only plausible inference drawn from a pattern of conduct. The court reaffirmed this high bar in Croatia v. Serbia (2015), stating that such intent must be ‘fully conclusive.’ Under this standard, no reasonable observer could argue that Israel’s military actions – directed against Hamas, a terrorist organization explicitly dedicated to Israel’s destruction – constitute genocide,” Goldfeder wrote.

“How does Amnesty get around this inconvenient fact? THEY DON’T. Take a look at p. 101,” he added.

On page 101 of the report, Amnesty wrote that it “considers this an overly cramped interpretation of international jurisprudence and one that would effectively preclude a finding of genocide in the context of an armed conflict.”

“The organization considers that the Genocide Convention must be interpreted in a manner that ensures that genocide remains prohibited in both peacetime and in war and that ICJ jurisprudence should not be read to effectively preclude a finding of genocide during war,” Amnesty said in its statement.

Goldfeder concluded that Amnesty “tries to cover the lack of genocidal intent by cobbling together an assortment of cherrypicked, out-of-context, & flat-out imaginary statements allegedly made by Israeli politicians, claiming they are somehow dispositive of such intent despite the facts and the law.”