In December of 2024, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch issued groundbreaking reports declaring Israel was committing acts of genocide in Gaza. Three months later, after a frail ceasefire agreement and the Trump administration sustaining U.S. support to Israel, the major human rights organizations' findings remain critical.
On Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2024, after 14 months of unrelenting violence, Amnesty International published a 296-page report declaring that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Agnes Callamard, Amnesty’s secretary-general, presented the report “You Feel Like You Are Subhuman,” in a press conference at the Hague on Thursday, Dec. 5, stating Amnesty’s conclusion was unequivocal — “the state of Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” On X, Callamard emphasized that the report is a “wake up call to the international community: the genocide must stop.”
Israel's Foreign Ministry responded in a post on X (formerly Twitter), labeling Amnesty International “a deplorable and fanatical organization,” claiming they have “once again produced a fabricated report that is entirely false and based on lies.” The Foreign Ministry reiterated claims of Israel’s right to self-defense, which were anticipated and addressed by Amnesty throughout their report and accompanying statements.
“You Feel Like You Are Subhuman,” offers comprehensive analysis of research conducted by Amnesty International on Israeli violations over nine months from Oct. 7, 2023 to July 2024. Building upon Amnesty’s records of Israel’s crimes since the onslaught began, the report utilizes a critical, legal framework to establish an indisputable case according to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention). While the evidentiary threshold to prove genocide is very rarely met, Paul O’Brien, executive director of Amnesty International USA, explained to MSNBC that Amnesty has “found that all of those conditions are in place in Gaza.”
The report is framed around proving the two key requirements upheld by the Genocide Convention: the destruction of a protected population in whole or in part, and specific intent to do so.
Amnesty initiated the report by defining Palestinians as a protected group under the Genocide Convention, citing the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) findings in its preliminary order on Jan. 26, 2024, that Palestinians constitute a distinct national, ethnical, and racial group. The report then proceeds to prove that Israel intends to destroy Gaza as a substantial part of Palestinian society, fulfilling the first requirement of the Genocide Convention. To resolve the question of intent, Amnesty offers evidence on three of five prohibited acts defined in the Genocide Convention: “killing members of the group”; “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group”; and “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” (p.9). Amnesty’s analysis concludes that the patterns of violence committed against civilians in Gaza under these prohibited acts go beyond Israel’s allegation of military goals, constituting genocidal intent.
In his conversation with MSNBC, O'Brien reinforced that “under [Amnesty’s] investigation of the facts on the ground, there is no justification for the manner in which the Israeli military are targeting civilians at scale.” Also speaking to MSNBC, Callamard maintained that Amnesty has declared it “impossible to reach the conclusion that those…repeated acts, can be explained by the presence of Hamas.”
Alongside 212 interviews, fieldwork, examination of extensive digital and visual evidence, and analysis of court proceedings, Amnesty grounded the report in a greater 57-year-old context of Israeli occupation, referencing the ICJ’s advisory opinion issued in July 2024 which declared Israel’s occupation of Palestine unlawful. Amnesty did not extend contextualization to include the Nakba of 1948. Upon establishing these findings, Amnesty called for an immediate ceasefire in which Israel ends its siege on Gaza and withdraws entirely from the strip while facilitating aid, free movement, and rehabilitation to residents. Although a ceasefire has been called in January of 2025, the remainder of Amnesty’s demands have not been met.
Amnesty urged Israel’s allies to hold the occupation accountable to no avail. Western media and governments rejected the world's leading human-rights organization declaring genocide in Gaza.
Following a confession to only reading press on the report, Vedant Patel, the (now former) U.S. State Department's Principal Deputy Spokesperson, declared that the State Department disagrees with Amnesty’s findings, arguing “the allegations of genocide are unfounded.” Agnes Callamard has warned that the U.S. is confronting the serious risk of complicity, while openly calling upon UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer to revise his stance and admit to genocide in Gaza.
After publishing the report, Amnesty awarded Anas Al Sharif — Al Jazeera’s Gaza Correspondent — the 2024 Human Rights Defender Award.
On the 76th anniversary of the Genocide Convention, the international community remained disenchanted by the Palestine exception in international law. Marc Lamont Hill posted on X that the report “likely won’t change anyone’s minds,” 14 months into the genocide. Global spectators anticipated that the U.S. will remain complicit, validated by Trump’s collaboration with Netanyahu and recent sanctions against the ICC.
Following Amnesty International, on Wednesday, Dec. 18, Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a 179-page report, titled “Extermination and Acts of Genocide: Israel Deliberately Depriving Palestinians of Water in Gaza.” HRW documented the catastrophic effects of depriving two million people from the minimum amount of water required per person as determined by the World Health Organization. The report details how the Israeli authorities have restricted water and power, destroyed water and sanitation infrastructure, obstructed repairs, and killed water workers. HRW also interviewed 31 doctors and healthcare workers who described patients of all ages who have been killed from dehydration, malnutrition, and disease.
Like the Amnesty report, HRW's report also utilizes the legal framework outlined in the Genocide Convention, precedent set forth by the ICC and ICJ, international criminal law, and international humanitarian law.
As he did with the Amnesty report, Vedant Patel responded to journalists by stating that HRW’s declaration that Israel is committing the crime of genocide “is not a conclusion we agree with.” When pressed about the fact that multiple human rights organizations have now accused Israel of genocide, Patel claimed that “the legal standard for genocide is incredibly large.”
On Dec. 19, 2024, Claudio Francaville, Associate Director of EU Advocacy at Human Rights Watch, posted on X urging the U.S., EU, and UK to “stop arms, review political/trade ties, adopt sanctions, support [the] ICC” in light of the crimes outlined in the report. Francaville stated, “when crimes of this magnitude are happening, inaction is not an option, nor is complicity.”
