Kazim AlamA large number of reputed organisations like the UN Human Rights Office, Jerusalem-based B’Tselem, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), and the now-sanctioned Al-Haq Palestinian Center for Human Rights, and Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, have pointed to mass killings, starvation, and inflammatory rhetoric from Israeli leaders as evidence of deliberately wiping out the Palestinian population from Gaza.
Yet Israel claims its critics have distorted the legal definition of genocide only to target the Jewish state, without providing any evidence.
Human rights organisations strongly disagree.
“The Israeli regime is committing genocide, and one of the tools that enables it to continue doing so is propaganda, denial of reality, and the deflection of any criticism directed against it,” Yair Dvir, spokesperson for B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the occupied territories, tells TRT World.
The 1948 UN Genocide Convention defines genocide as acts like killing or creating unlivable conditions with a specific intent to destroy a group.
Human rights organisations insist that they are applying the UN Genocide Convention’s framework rigorously, supported by documented actions and explicit statements by Israeli leaders.
Israel has killed more than 64,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in Gaza over the last two years.
Bombs weighing more than 85,000 tonnes – equal to six Hiroshima-level explosives – have destroyed infrastructure across the besieged enclave.
Human rights organisations have seized on these figures, accusing Israel of genocide under the UN Convention, which defines it as acts carried out with the specific intent – formally called dolus specialis – to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group “in whole or in part”.
B’Tselem says Israel is “systematically” attacking Gaza’s civilian population.
Echoing the words of Raphael Lemkin, the Jewish-Polish jurist who coined the term genocide, Dvir defines it as a “coordinated attack” on a group’s essential foundations.
“Genocide is the violent and intentional destruction of a group as such, or the attempt to do so, causing serious and irreparable harm,” he says.
This aligns closely with the UN Convention’s language, emphasising acts like killing or imposing conditions to destroy a group.
Israel is facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its war in Gaza.
Last November, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Genocidal intent or military necessity?
A recent report by B’Tselem’s titled Our Genocide cites the starvation of two million Gazans, forced displacement of entire communities, and bombings that “erase entire families” as evidence of genocidal acts, not military necessity.
Dvir dismisses Israeli accusations of distorting the definition, arguing that Israel uses propaganda and denial to evade accountability.
Similarly, MSF, known for its medical relief work in war zones around the world, has accused Israel of genocide as its military routinely bombs healthcare facilities and shoots medical workers in Gaza.
“Through deliberate actions – including forced displacement, annexation, and mass killings – Israel is systematically destroying the conditions necessary for Palestinian life,” MSF says.
Israel is waging a “campaign of ethnic cleansing” to wipe away Palestinian lives in Gaza, it adds.
MSF’s accusations align with the UN Genocide Convention’s definition, particularly the act of “deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction”.
The Israeli offensive not only displaces Palestinians on a massive scale but also seeks to deny them, and future generations, their right of safe return, effectively erasing entire communities from the map, the MSF says.
Palestinian organisations like Al-Haq and Al-Mezan have also accused Israel of genocide, citing mass killings, aid blockades, and dehumanising rhetoric – like former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant’s “human animals” remark – as evidence of intent to destroy Palestinians in part.
These groups, respected in international legal circles and cited by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), have not altered the definition of genocide. Instead, they have applied the original definition to Israel’s actions, and backed it by detailed documentation of civilian casualties and infrastructure destruction.
Israeli officials, however, argue that these organisations stretch the genocide definition to vilify Israel.
They argue that groups like B’Tselem rely on “circumstantial evidence”, such as the pattern of destruction, to infer intent, thus lowering the strict dolus specialis threshold.
Genocide scholar Maung Zarni forcefully rejects this claim.
“There is absolutely no need to make any inferences about Israel’s genocidal intent,” he tells TRT World.
“Hundreds of video-recorded, written, and oral utterances made by senior most cabinet members, president, prime minister, influential Israeli rabbis, as well as young Israeli children singing songs on Israeli national TV about how they want and will exterminate the Arabs”, provide direct evidence of the genocidal intent, he says.
Zarni studied genocide for his PhD under the supervision of Bob Koehl, a US Army Intelligence surveyor who interrogated the officers of the SS paramilitary force of Hitler’s Nazi Party in post-World War II Germany.
“This dismissal of virtually all human rights organisations, including the ones based in Israel and run by Israelis, is characteristic of the Israeli regime’s typical twisted behaviour: ‘The whole world hates us and we don’t care what the world thinks of us’,” he says.
The genocide position by human rights organisations hinges on explicit statements from Israeli leaders, Zarni says.
For instance, President Isaac Herzog’s claim that “there are no innocents” in Gaza, and Gallant’s statement about cutting off water, food, and power provide clear evidence of intent.
B’Tselem’s Dvir echoes Zarni’s view.
“We live here, we speak the language, and we hear every day, for already 22 months, explicit statements from Israeli decision-makers calling for indiscriminate harm to the population of Gaza,” he says.
These statements, paired with actions like the destruction of entire cities, form the backbone of the genocide claims.
Far from redefining the term, these human rights groups point to “textbook genocide,” as Zarni puts it, comparing Israel’s actions to the Nazis’ explicit intent to destroy Jews.
“The relentless genocidal statements, together with the systematic and repeated attacks on the civilian population for nearly two years, clearly demonstrate Israel’s intent,” Dvir says.
