Two major Israeli human rights groups released separate reports on Monday concluding that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, joining a growing number of international voices that have made similar accusations against the country that has been destroying the Palestinian territory over the last 22 months.
In their comprehensive reports, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights lay out how Israel, as an occupying power, has used its government and military to systematically obliterate Gaza in a way that both destroys the Palestinian people and renders the territory completely uninhabitable.
“We are seeing a combination of genocidal practices – meaning mass killing, starvation and destruction of civilian infrastructure, and you can add destruction of cultural institutions – and a policy whose aim or declared aim is ethnic cleansing, all combined with statements by many senior Israeli officials throughout the war that the goal is destruction of Gazan society as a group,” genocide researcher Shmuel Lederman said in a B’Tselem video announcing the group’s report, “Our Genocide.”
As with previous allegations of genocide, the Israel Defense Forces said Monday that the reports’ claims are “unfounded” and that the Israeli military is rooting out Hamas while “taking unprecedented measures to prevent harm to civilians.”