For the first time since the invasion of Gaza began in October 2023, two Israeli human rights organizations have accused their own state of genocide. B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) released damning reports on Monday, charging Israel with actions that meet the criteria for genocide. This marks a significant escalation in criticism against the Israeli offensive, which has resulted in nearly 60,000 deaths in Gaza, including approximately 18,000 children.
Israeli NGOs Accuse State of Genocide Amid Gaza Crisis
Two prominent Israeli human rights groups have issued groundbreaking reports accusing their nation of orchestrating a genocide in Gaza, detailing widespread destruction and mass starvation.
- Two Israeli NGOs, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), have accused Israel of genocide in Gaza.
- Reports detail widespread destruction, targeting of healthcare, and deliberate starvation tactics.
- B’Tselem’s 88-page report, titled “Our Genocide,” outlines systematic destruction of Palestinian society.
- PHR’s 45-page report focuses on the dismantling of Gaza’s healthcare system.
- Both organizations call for urgent international action to halt Israel’s actions.
B’Tselem’s extensive 88-page report, provocatively titled “Our Genocide,” details what it describes as the “terrifying evolution” of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, culminating in “annihilation.” The report includes harrowing testimonies, such as a mother witnessing her husband and two sons crushed by a tank, and others recounting relatives burned alive in Israeli bombings.
PHR’s 45-page document, “The Destruction of Living Conditions: A Health Analysis of Genocide in Gaza,” specifically targets the systematic destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system. It concludes that relentless attacks on hospitals are not incidental to war but part of a deliberate policy against Palestinians as a group.
The medical organization asserts that Israel’s Gaza offensive fulfills at least three core acts defined in Article II of the Genocide Convention: killing members of the group, causing serious physical or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to bring about its physical destruction.
How do these reports define genocide? The organizations cite killing, causing severe harm, and deliberately imposing conditions meant to destroy the group, aligning with international legal definitions.
These accusations are particularly striking coming from within Israel, a nation whose identity is deeply intertwined with its historical experience of the Holocaust. Until now, no Israeli human rights organization had leveled such a severe charge against its own government. They join a growing chorus of international jurists, activists, and humanitarian bodies that contend Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide.
B’Tselem, founded in 1989 during the first Palestinian Intifada, has long documented human rights violations in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. PHR, established a year earlier by Israeli doctors, advocated for health rights in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
B’Tselem’s report argues that an examination of Israel’s policies in Gaza, coupled with statements from Israeli political and military leaders, leads to the “unequivocal conclusion that Israel is undertaking a coordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip.”
PHR states that the “deliberate and progressive dismantling of Gaza’s healthcare system, and with it the survival capacity of its population, amounts to genocide.” The report highlights that at least 33 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals and clinics have been destroyed or rendered inoperable. Over 1,800 healthcare workers have been killed or arrested, leading to the collapse of the healthcare system and leaving the sick without treatment.
The reports underscore the devastating humanitarian impact. “Dozens of people are dying daily from malnutrition,” PHR states. “Ninety-two percent of children between six months and two years are not receiving sufficient food,” with at least 85 children already having died from starvation. Israel has displaced nine out of ten Gazans, destroyed or damaged 92% of homes, and left over half a million children without schools. Essential health services like dialysis, maternal care, cancer treatment, and diabetes control have also been eradicated.
77 Years of Violence
B’Tselem challenges the official Israeli narrative justifying its actions in Gaza. The current offensive, the group argues, is not merely a response to Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks but must be understood within the context of over 70 years of Israeli imposition of a violent and discriminatory regime on Palestinians, most acutely felt in Gaza.
Since Israel’s establishment in 1948, the regime of apartheid and occupation has systematically employed mechanisms of violent control, demographic engineering, discrimination, and fragmentation of the Palestinian collective.
This 77-year history, B’Tselem posits, created the conditions for launching a “genocidal attack” following the Hamas-led assault. The Oct. 7 attacks resulted in the deaths of 1,218 Israelis and foreigners, including 882 civilians, and the abduction of 252 people.
The report identifies three key foundations for this “genocidal attack”: Palestinians living under an apartheid regime of separation and ethnic cleansing; the systematic, institutionalized use of violence with impunity; and the institutionalized dehumanization of Palestinians as an existential threat to Israelis.
These conditions, combined with the “catalyst” of the Hamas attack, led to profound social and political changes within Israel, enabling “the system in power to carry out a genocide.”
Public Opinion in Israel A May poll reported that 82% of Jewish Israelis supported the expulsion of all Palestinians from Gaza, reflecting a concerning public sentiment.
B’Tselem states it has documented hundreds of incidents of extreme violence against Palestinian civilians, corroborated by testimonies from politicians and key military figures who have openly declared the policies being implemented.
One recounted incident involved a Gaza paramedic, Muin Abu Al Eish, who was forced to abandon bodies and a critically injured woman and baby after his ambulance was bombed. Upon returning the next day, he found stray dogs had scavenged the bodies, but the infant had miraculously survived.
The “innumerable” evidence of the consequences of these policies reflects a “terrifying transformation of the entire Israeli system in its treatment of Palestinians,” B’Tselem continues. The report warns of the danger that the “genocide may not be limited to Gaza” and that the underlying actions and mentality could extend to other areas, emphasizing that the assault on Gaza cannot be separated from the escalating violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and within Israel.
B’Tselem notes that even as the report was being written, Israel continued to intensify its “brutal and ruthless attack against Palestinians,” employing starvation as a weapon of war. The NGO highlights international complicity, stating that the systematic killings and destruction in Gaza, along with escalating violence and forced displacement in the West Bank, would not have been possible “without international inaction.”
Many world leaders, particularly in Europe and the United States, have not only failed to take effective measures to stop the violence but have allowed it to continue, even by supplying weapons and ammunition. The report calls for “urgent and unequivocal action from both Israeli society and the international community,” urging the use of all available means under international law to halt Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people.
