The Israeli-Palestinian human rights group B’Tselem has made a groundbreaking declaration, labeling Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide in its latest report titled “Our Genocide”. The report, released on Monday, strongly condemns Israel‘s war on Gaza, which has resulted in at least 59,733 deaths and 144,477 injuries.
According to B’Tselem, an examination of Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip and its devastating outcomes, combined with statements from senior Israeli politicians and military commanders about the goals of the attack, leads to the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip. “In other words: Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” the report reads.
The report delves into Israeli violations against Palestinians, dating back to the 1948 foundation of the Israeli state, which “had a clear objective from the outset: to cement the supremacy of the Jewish group across the entire territory under Israeli control”. This has resulted in “settler-colonial patterns, including widespread settlement involving displacement and dispossession, demographic engineering, ethnic cleansing and the imposition of military rule on Palestinians”.
B’Tselem’s report also highlights the intensified efforts since October 2024 to displace Palestinians in Gaza, with many experts describing Israel’s actions in northern Gaza as an attempt to carry out ethnic cleansing. By November 2024, approximately 100,000 people who had lived in northern Gaza had been displaced from their homes.
The report’s findings are supported by other experts and organizations, including Holocaust scholar Amos Goldberg, who described Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide in a New York Times op-ed. However, opposition to Israel’s war on Gaza remains widely controversial in Israeli society, with only around 16 percent of Jewish Israelis believing peaceful coexistence with Palestinians is possible.
Israeli government officials have continued to make violent calls against the people of Gaza, with Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu stating on Israeli radio last week, “The government is rushing to erase Gaza, and thank God we are erasing this evil. All of Gaza will be Jewish”.
The report’s release has drawn criticism and praise, with some welcoming the news despite its late arrival. “I welcome this news even though it comes very late into the genocide,” said Elia Ayoub, a writer, researcher, and founder of the podcast The Fire These Times. “Israeli society has normalised a genocide for nearly two years, and this speaks to a deep moral rot at the core of their political culture”.
This development comes after South Africa brought a case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in December 2023, accusing Israel of committing genocide against Gaza. Several other countries, including Brazil, Spain, Turkey, and the Republic of Ireland, have joined South Africa in its ICJ case.