{"id":302814,"date":"2025-09-15T12:00:48","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T11:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=302814"},"modified":"2025-09-16T03:34:40","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T02:34:40","slug":"denial-in-plain-sight-rights-groups-show-evidence-of-gaza-genocide-israel-continues-to-reject-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/09\/denial-in-plain-sight-rights-groups-show-evidence-of-gaza-genocide-israel-continues-to-reject-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Denial in Plain Sight: Rights Groups Show Evidence of Gaza Genocide, Israel Continues to Reject It"},"content":{"rendered":"

After killing more than 64,000 Palestinians over the past two years, Tel Aviv argues the legal definition of genocide has been distorted by rights groups to target and vilify Israel.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

8 Sep 2025\u00a0<\/em>– A large number of reputed organisations like the UN Human Rights Office, Jerusalem-based B\u2019Tselem, 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.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Yet Israel claims its critics have distorted the legal definition of genocide only to target the Jewish state, without providing any evidence.<\/p>\n

Human rights organisations strongly disagree.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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,\u201d Yair Dvir, spokesperson for B\u2019Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the occupied territories, tells TRT World<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The 1948 UN Genocide Convention<\/u><\/a> defines genocide as acts like killing or creating unlivable conditions with a specific intent to destroy a group.<\/p>\n

Human rights organisations insist that they are applying the UN Genocide Convention\u2019s framework rigorously, supported by documented actions and explicit statements by Israeli leaders.<\/p>\n

Israel has killed<\/u><\/a> more than 64,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in Gaza over the last two years.<\/p>\n

Bombs weighing more than 85,000 tonnes \u2013 equal to six Hiroshima-level explosives<\/u><\/a> \u2013 have destroyed infrastructure across the besieged enclave.<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 formally called dolus specialis<\/u><\/a> \u2013 to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group \u201cin whole or in part\u201d.<\/p>\n

B\u2019Tselem says Israel is \u201csystematically\u201d attacking Gaza\u2019s civilian population.<\/p>\n

Echoing the words of Raphael Lemkin, the Jewish-Polish jurist who coined the term genocide, Dvir defines it as a \u201ccoordinated attack\u201d on a group\u2019s essential foundations.<\/p>\n

\u201cGenocide is the violent and intentional destruction of a group as such, or the attempt to do so, causing serious and irreparable harm,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

This aligns closely with the UN Convention\u2019s language, emphasising acts like killing or imposing conditions to destroy a group.<\/p>\n

Israel is facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its war in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Last November, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued<\/u><\/a> arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Genocidal intent or military necessity?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A recent report by B\u2019Tselem\u2019s titled Our Genocide<\/u><\/a> cites the starvation of two million Gazans, forced displacement of entire communities, and bombings that \u201cerase entire families\u201d as evidence of genocidal acts, not military necessity.<\/p>\n

Dvir dismisses Israeli accusations of distorting the definition, arguing that Israel uses propaganda and denial to evade accountability.<\/p>\n

Similarly, MSF, known for its medical relief work in war zones around the world, has accused<\/u><\/a> Israel of genocide as its military routinely bombs healthcare facilities and shoots medical workers in Gaza.<\/p>\n

\u201cThrough deliberate actions \u2013 including forced displacement, annexation, and mass killings \u2013 Israel is systematically destroying the conditions necessary for Palestinian life,\u201d MSF says<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Israel is waging a \u201ccampaign of ethnic cleansing\u201d to wipe away Palestinian lives in Gaza, it adds.<\/p>\n

MSF\u2019s accusations align with the UN Genocide Convention\u2019s definition, particularly the act of \u201cdeliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction\u201d.<\/p>\n

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<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Palestinian organisations like Al-Haq and Al-Mezan have also accused<\/u><\/a> Israel of genocide, citing mass killings, aid blockades, and dehumanising rhetoric \u2013 like former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant\u2019s \u201chuman animals\u201d remark<\/u><\/a> \u2013 as evidence of intent to destroy Palestinians in part.<\/p>\n

These groups, respected in international legal circles and cited<\/u><\/a> by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), have not altered the definition of genocide. Instead, they have applied the original definition to Israel\u2019s actions, and backed it by detailed documentation of civilian casualties and infrastructure destruction.<\/p>\n

Israeli officials, however, argue that these organisations stretch the genocide definition to vilify Israel.<\/p>\n

They argue that groups like B\u2019Tselem rely on \u201ccircumstantial evidence\u201d, such as the pattern of destruction, to infer intent, thus lowering the strict dolus specialis<\/em> threshold.<\/p>\n

Genocide scholar Maung Zarni forcefully rejects this claim.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is absolutely no need to make any inferences about Israel\u2019s genocidal intent,\u201d he tells TRT World<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cHundreds 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\u201d, provide direct evidence of the genocidal intent, he says.<\/p>\n

Zarni studied Myanmar’s military junta under the supervision of Bob Koehl, a US Army Intelligence surveyor who interrogated the officers of the SS paramilitary force of Hitler\u2019s Nazi Party in post-World War II Germany.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis dismissal of virtually all human rights organisations, including the ones based in Israel and run by Israelis, is characteristic of the Israeli regime\u2019s typical twisted behaviour: \u2018The whole world hates us and we don\u2019t care what the world thinks of us\u2019,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The genocide position by human rights organisations hinges on explicit statements from Israeli leaders, Zarni says.<\/p>\n

For instance, President Isaac Herzog\u2019s claim<\/u><\/a> that \u201cthere are no innocents\u201d in Gaza, and Gallant\u2019s statement<\/u><\/a> about cutting off water, food, and power provide clear evidence of intent.<\/p>\n

B\u2019Tselem\u2019s Dvir echoes Zarni\u2019s view.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe 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,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

These statements, paired with actions like the destruction of entire cities, form the backbone of the genocide claims.<\/p>\n

Far from redefining the term, these human rights groups point to \u201ctextbook genocide,\u201d as Zarni puts it, comparing Israel\u2019s actions to the Nazis\u2019 explicit intent to destroy Jews.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe relentless genocidal statements, together with the systematic and repeated attacks on the civilian population for nearly two years, clearly demonstrate Israel\u2019s intent,\u201d Dvir says.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n