Amnesty International

Peddling lies of imaginary genocides

Amnesty International today released their report into allegations of genocide in Gaza. To no-one’s surprise, they found the case conclusively proved. Their opening sentence gives a sense of the report: “On 7 October 2023, Israel embarked on a military offensive on the occupied Gaza Strip (Gaza) of unprecedented magnitude, scale and duration.”

I beg your pardon? That’s the key event of 7 October as far as this report is concerned? This opening exposes one of many, many flaws in this report: the eradication of Hamas. It is astonishing how Hamas has managed to absent itself from the international stage of this war in every military respect. Notwithstanding that their videos of them striking IDF troops have dried up as their defeat has been increasingly inflicted. Their only normal appearance in the international narrative is as an unspecified negotiation partner in hostage release deals, or as the Ministry of Health reporting death statistics. Otherwise, their role in this war has been almost totally erased, and they barely feature in this report.

Middle East Buka put this phenomenon into pictorial form with a word cloud:

https://x.com/MiddleEastBuka/status/1864691222750642448

The scale to which Hamas is minimised in this report is startling, but unsurprising. When one acknowledges and understands Hamas’s strategy of using civilian infrastructure, fighting from tunnels and using Gaza’s population as human sacrifices, it becomes rather harder to suggest any other military options the IDF could have taken.

Let us remind ourselves of truth and facts. The definition of genocide is: “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

And the component parts:

1A, the mental element of the crime: the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such";

2A, the physical element, which includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively:

- Killing members of the group

- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group

- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

Firstly, to deal with the intent element of the crime - the dolus specialis. Nowhere, anywhere, has anyone shown evidence of a clear plan to destroy all Gazans. South Africa’s joke of an ICJ case cites a variety of punchy statements from Israeli politicians and soldiers as evidence of intent, as does the Amnesty report. Most quotes are taken out of context, almost all of them with subsequent clarification removed. Most of these statements were from people nowhere near policy making and - critically - armies do not take orders from press conferences.

A good example of the out of context quote is the old crowd favourite: “Amalek”. PM Netanyahu referenced a biblical verse, saying, “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible,” a phrase inscribed on the Holocaust memorial in The Hague and a clear reference to the Holocaust-echoing horrors of 7 October.

But also look at what Netanyahu went on to say in that speech: “In their name and on their behalf, we have gone to war, the purpose of which is to destroy the brutal and murderous Hamas-ISIS enemy, bring back our hostages and restore the security to our country, our citizens and our children.”

It’s obvious what he meant.

Factor in the horror of the events of 7 October, and, frankly, you cannot blame Israeli politicians for sounding pissed off, or the utility of threatening an enemy with aggressive rhetoric in wartime. Amnesty even quote from a President Herzog presentation where he went on to say: “The IDF uses all the means at its disposal in order to reduce harm to the population.” There is no intent demonstrated in any of this cherry-picked selective quoting.

Intent aside, the other half of the equation is action on the ground. We can dismiss preventing births and forcible transfer of children. Even Israel’s critics don’t accuse them of that. (And the population in Gaza is currently higher than at the start of the war, due to the birth rate exceeding the rate of those dying).

So the other three: of course, people have been killed. Of course, bodily and mental harm will have been caused. This is a war. The key question is how and why?

Hamas fighters are legitimate targets. Israel has killed ~20k Hamas fighters, with many more wounded. Hamas omits this in their weekly fatality figures (which, of course, don’t stand up to the merest statistical scrutiny - my report on the fatality lists and their numerous flaws will hopefully be out in the next two weeks).

We can safely take Hamas’ reported “44k dead civilians” and bring that total down to 20k-ish at most. Still many people; still a tragedy. But is it legal?

Well, that depends on Israeli targeting. Were those civilians legally collateral damage? I don’t know and you don’t know. Will some of those targets have been struck in error? Almost certainly. War is ugly, confusing and clumsy, and intelligence is never perfect, no matter how much people seem to think it is like Call of Duty.

However: we also have well-documented and unquestionable Israeli attempts to remove civilians from the areas they are attacking (no matter how much their opposition frames that as “ethnic cleansing”). For example, they delayed the assault on Gaza City until a million people had fled South. Ditto, they delayed the Rafah assault for four months so that the humanitarian repercussions could be addressed.

The IDF and COGAT have facilitated over a million tonnes of aid into Gaza. Yes, a lot of it is stolen by Hamas; and yes, distributing aid in a war zone is always a challenge. None of that suggests a genocide is planned or is occurring. Provision of aid and evacuation of civilians are not, I suggest, the actions of an armed force determined to “destroy in whole or in part”.

So, we turn to “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”.

Even Hamas’ 44k dead civilians, out of 2.4m, disprove this. It’s a tiny number for the amount of munitions fired. Either the IDF are the worst shots on the planet, or they are not trying to kill civilians deliberately.

We are a year in to this war, and it is every bit as dreadful as all wars are. The conditions, whilst clearly appalling for Gazan civilians, are demonstrably not bringing about physical destruction to any greater extent than one would expect in a war zone of this nature and even the most recent reports say there is no famine.

No intent; no action: no genocide.

So why produce a 296 page document saying there is? Well, of course, nobody is really going to read it (especially not to page 101, where they realise the evidence presented does not meet the definition of genocide, so they happily redefine it). The whole point of this document is headlines, donors, and ratcheting the international pressure on Israel—to end the war, and ultimately save Hamas.

What a shame Amnesty International felt the need to degrade the seriousness of the world’s worst crime with this stack of distortions. They should feel thoroughly ashamed. But I am sure they will not when the donations from antisemites and the gullible roll in.