Two Israeli human rights organisations – B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) – state in newly published reports that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

B’Tselem, also known as the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, states: “An examination of Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip and its horrific outcomes, together with statements by senior Israeli politicians and military commanders about the goals of the attack, leads to the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated, deliberate action to destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip.

“In other words: Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”

The PHRI states in its ‘position paper’: “This report documents the Israeli assault for what it is: a deliberate, cumulative, and ongoing dismantling of Gaza’s healthcare system – and of the population’s ability to survive. Its meaning: genocide.”

Speaking at a joint press conference, Dr Daphna Shochat from the PHRI said: “Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. This crime must stop immediately.”

Executive director of B’Tselem Yuli Novak said: “The international community has not only failed in its duty to stop the atrocities, but also shares responsibility by providing support that enables Israel’s acts of destruction.

“We call for urgent action from the international community, from Israeli society, and from every person who’s listening to us.”

Director of the PHRI Guy Shalev said: “We demand the immediate cessation of the attack on Gaza. Lift all restrictions blocking access to life-saving medical care, food, water, humanitarian aid. and essential health infrastructure.

“Stop the killing. Stop the starvation. Stop the genocide.”

Releasing its report, B’Tselem said: “Explicit statements by Israeli officials, combined with a consistent policy of destructive attacks and other practices of annihilation, prove beyond a doubt that Israel’s target is the entire population of Gaza.

“Entire cities razed to the ground; medical, educational, religious and cultural infrastructure systematically destroyed; two million Palestinians forcibly displaced with the aim of expelling them from Gaza; and, of course, mass starvation and killing – all this amounts to an explicit attempt to destroy the population of Gaza and impose living conditions so catastrophic that Palestinian society cannot continue to exist there. That is the exact definition of genocide.”

It added: “The report we are releasing today is a warning: the ideology driving the Israeli regime is not confined to Gaza. The same regime, the same army, the same leaders and the same commanders are implementing extremely violent practices against Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and within Israel.

“We are already witnessing the spillover of practices Israel is using in Gaza to other areas – on a different scale, but guided by the same logic.”

In the West Bank, B’Tselem says, this is taking the form of airstrikes, the demolition of refugee camps, mass evictions, and the deliberate destruction of the Palestinian economy and society.

“No Palestinian who lives under the genocidal Israeli regime is safe,” B’Tselem stated.

“There is no justification for genocide – not ‘self-defence’, not ‘security’, and not the heinous acts committed by Hamas on October 7, 2023, which triggered profound existential fear among Israelis.”

The leaders of the Western world, particularly the United States and Europe, share responsibility by providing support that enables Israel’s acts of destruction, B’Tselem added.

“It is the duty of the international community to stop the genocide Israel is carrying out in Gaza. On social media, we are seeing footage of people buried under bombed-out buildings, displaced persons’ camps on fire, children starving, people desperate for water, and hospitals left unable to treat the injured and the sick.”

B’Tselem states in its report that “the routine killing and destruction in the Gaza Strip and the forced displacement of tens of thousands in the West Bank would not have been possible without international inaction in the face of the unfathomable scale and severity of these crimes”.

Many state leaders, particularly in Europe and the United States, had not only refrained from effective action to stop the genocide but enabled it – through statements affirming Israel’s “right to self-defence” or active support, including the shipment of weapons and ammunition, the NGO says.

“Even after the International Court of Justice ruled there is plausible risk that Israel’s actions amount to genocidal acts, and even after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu and then-Defence Minister Gallant on suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity, the international community failed to bring these actions to an immediate halt and hold those responsible to account,” it adds.

“Killing tens of thousands of people; causing bodily or mental harm to hundreds of thousands more; destroying homes and civilian infrastructure on a massive scale; starvation, displacement, and denying humanitarian aid – all this is being perpetrated systematically, as part of a coordinated attack aimed at annihilating all facets of life in the Gaza Strip.

“Moreover, Israel’s decision to continue this assault despite countless warnings and ample evidence of its deadly consequences, combined with repeated public clarifications by Israeli policymakers that the target is the entire population of Gaza, demonstrate the intent of Israel’s political and military leadership to irreversibly destroy Palestinian life in the Gaza Strip.”

B’Tselem speaks of hundreds of thousands of people “torn from their lives, roaming dusty roads like human shadows, with what little they could take on their backs, searching for temporary shelter; adults and children jostling in endless lines for a little food, risking life and limb for the chance to feed their starving families; and above all, death looming everywhere”.

This, B’Tselem says, is “a human catastrophe being broadcast live from the inferno”.

The entire Israeli system – political, military, public, and legal – is structured to uphold Jewish supremacy, “relying on a false pretence of the rule of law while, in reality, the rights of the Palestinian subjects are left unprotected”, the NGO adds.

It says that, since October 2023, military attacks and settler and military violence in the West Bank have displaced Palestinian communities on a scale not seen since Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967.

Genocide, B’Tselem says, “goes beyond the horrific harm to its direct victims” and is an assault on humanity itself: “on the fundamental belief that every life is precious, and the core principle that every human being is entitled to basic rights affording protection from arbitrary violence”.

The PHRI report

In its report, the PHRI provides a detailed chronological account of the destruction of Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure.

After analysing Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since October 2023, the PHRI concludes that it constitutes genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention.

“The evidence shows a deliberate and systematic dismantling of Gaza’s health and life-sustaining systems – through targeted attacks on hospitals, obstruction of medical aid and evacuations, and the killing and detention of healthcare personnel,’ the organisation says in its report.

“Over a 22-month period, Israel’s actions have destroyed Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure in a manner that is both calculated and systematic. The chronology of attacks reveals a deliberate progression: beginning with the bombing and forced evacuation of hospitals in northern Gaza.”

The health system’s collapse extended southward as displaced populations overwhelmed remaining facilities, which were then subjected to further bombardment, siege, and resource deprivation, the PHRI says.

Israel’s assault on Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure included bombing 33 of 36 hospitals and clinics, cutting off fuel and water, and killing or detaining more than 1,800 medical staff, it reports.

The organisation concludes: “The destruction of life-sustaining systems, the cumulative patterns of destruction, the bodily and mental trauma inflicted, and the direct killing of civilians, when understood in light of the implemented policy and the public rhetoric, make clear that Israel’s campaign in Gaza constitutes genocide under international law.”

It urges the relevant international bodies “to initiate appropriate proceedings and investigations as mandated by international law” and calls upon states to act in accordance with their obligations under Article I of the Genocide Convention.

“While prevention may no longer be a real possibility, we remain concerned that the genocidal campaign is not over,” the PHRI states. “Alongside the need for accountability and punishment, third parties should realise their duty to terminate it.”

Gaza’s hospitals had been rendered non-functional, medical evacuations were blocked, and essential services like trauma care, surgery, dialysis, and maternal health had been eliminated, the PHRI says in its report.

“The killing and detention of over 1,800 healthcare workers, including many senior specialists, has decimated Gaza’s medical capacity and rendered recovery nearly impossible,” it states.

“Humanitarian relief has been deliberately restricted, forcing civilians to approach militarized distribution points that have often become sites of mass killings. This coordinated assault has produced a cascading failure of health and humanitarian infrastructure, compounded by policies leading to starvation, disease, and the breakdown of sanitation, housing, and education systems.”

Children face psychological trauma while women endure sharp increases in miscarriages, preterm births, and maternal mortality amid famine and lack of reproductive healthcare services, the organisation adds.

The PHRI says that Israel’s acts in Gaza “are not incidental to war, but rather part of a deliberate policy targeting Palestinians as a group”.

They fulfil at least three core acts defined in Article II of the Genocide Convention, the PHRI says: “(a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; and (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its destruction in whole or in part.”

B’Tselem says in its report: “In the immediate term, the recognition that the Israeli regime is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip, and the deep concern that it may expand to other areas where Palestinians live under Israeli rule, demand urgent and unequivocal action from both Israeli society and the international community.

“This is the time to act. This is the time to save those who have not yet been lost forever, and use every means available under international law to stop Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians.”

International organisations speak out about genocide

Numerous international organisations have concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. They include Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), and the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights.

In the report it presented to the United Nations General Assembly in September 2024, the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories concluded that Israel’s policies and practices in Gaza were “consistent with the characteristics of genocide”.

The committee stated in its report: “The targeting of Palestinians as a group; the life-threatening conditions imposed on Palestinians in Gaza through warfare and restrictions on humanitarian aid – resulting in physical destruction, increased miscarriages and stillbirths – and the killing of and serious bodily or mental harm caused to Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are violations under international law.”

It added: “Civilians have been indiscriminately and disproportionally killed en masse in Gaza, while in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Israeli colonial settlers, military and security personnel have continued to violate human rights and humanitarian law with impunity.”

The UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, recently published a report entitled ‘From economy of occupation to economy of genocide’.

More than 60,000 people have been killed in Israel’s assault on Gaza and more than 140,000 have been injured. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), which is a UN-backed initiative, has just issued an alert in which it states that “the worst-case scenario of famine” is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip.

Conflict and displacement had intensified, the IPC said, and access to food and other essential items and services had plummeted to unprecedented levels. Mounting evidence showed that widespread starvation, malnutrition, and disease were driving a rise in hunger-related deaths.

“Latest data indicates that famine thresholds have been reached for food consumption in most of the Gaza Strip and for acute malnutrition in Gaza City,” the IPC added.

“Malnutrition has been rising rapidly in the first half of July. Over 20,000 children have been admitted for treatment for acute malnutrition between April and mid-July, with more than 3,000 severely malnourished. Hospitals have reported a rapid increase in hunger-related deaths of children under five years of age, with at least 16 reported deaths since 17 July.

“Immediate action must be taken to end the hostilities and allow for unimpeded, large-scale, life-saving humanitarian response. This is the only path to stopping further deaths and catastrophic human suffering.”

Amnesty International’s secretary-general, Agnès Callamard, said that, with the publication of the two new reports, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel were the first two Israeli organisations to state it loud and clear, “based on meticulous documentation and research”, that Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

“This is another milestone in the human rights community’s efforts to hold Israeli authorities accountable for their crimes against Palestinians,” Callamard said.

She said that, amid ongoing efforts by the Israeli government to crack down on the work of Palestinian and Israeli human rights organisations, such publications demanded courage and unyielding commitment to justice and accountability.

“Their findings must be heeded by the international community and translated into action to stop Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, end its unlawful occupation of Palestinian territory, and dismantle its system of apartheid against all Palestinians whose rights Israel controls,” Callamard added.

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