MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Amnesty International, a global nonprofit focused on human rights, says it has seen enough evidence to call Israel's war in Gaza a genocide. The group is out with a nearly 300-page report. Israel calls it, quote, "entirely false and based on lies," unquote. NPR's Michele Kelemen tells us more.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: As she unveiled the report, Agnes Callamard, who heads Amnesty International, told the story of one man in Gaza named Mohammed. She quotes him as saying it's like an apocalypse, with no room to even pitch a tent.
AGNES CALLAMARD: There is no clean water, no toilet, all while the bombings never stop. You feel like you are subhuman here. This is genocide.
KELEMEN: Israel's foreign ministry denounced Amnesty as a, quote, "deplorable and fanatical organization that has produced a report that is based on lies." Johnny Harounoff is a spokesman for the Israeli ambassador to the U.N., Danny Danon.
JOHNNY HAROUNOFF: Ambassador Danon said the only group to have ever shown bloodthirsty genocidal intent in this war is Hamas.
KELEMEN: Who, he says, filmed themselves on October 7, executing, raping, pillaging and kidnapping their way through southern Israel. Amnesty's Callamard says she understands there are military objectives to defeat Hamas in Gaza, but that doesn't explain what she calls a pattern of Israeli strikes on civilian targets that have killed over 44,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials. She says military objectives can co-exist with genocidal intent.
CALLAMARD: It's not just one incident. It's incident repeated over and over and over again, in spite of the warnings, in spite of what many actors have said. They are repeated.
KELEMEN: Amnesty says it relied on field reports in Gaza to come to its conclusions. Researcher Kristine Beckerle says the Amnesty staff also poured over videos and pictures posted by Israeli soldiers in Gaza, as well as more than a hundred public comments by Israeli officials.
KRISTINE BECKERLE: In that review of statements, Amnesty identified more than 20 that called for justified genocidal acts. When we did that, we also said, OK, when they're making these statements, then did those things, in fact, happen in Gaza? And in multiple cases, they did, in fact, happen.
KELEMEN: Amnesty International is urging the U.S. to stop arming Israel. The Biden administration has been focused on ending the war in Gaza and getting the hostages home, including some Americans.
Michele Kelemen, NPR News, Tel Aviv.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
