Activists from Amnesty International during a rally outside the White House for Global Day of Action Against Sending Arms to Israel, in May.Credit: Kevin Wolf,AP

Amnesty International published a report this week accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. Amnesty International Israel, its local branch, quickly rejected the report, arguing that there was insufficient evidence of “special intent,” the legal component that classifies the most serious crime in international law.

Amnesty Israel said that despite “the many horrific atrocities made by Israel in Gaza,” the international convention dealing with genocide and the international law created as a result “require a ’special intent’ on behalf of the perpetrators to destroy a group as such, in whole or in part... but if there is reasonable alternative explanation to the component of genocidal intent, an accusation of genocide cannnot be established.”

In other words, if Israel committed genocide without the element of intent, then it’s not genocide. An investigation by Yuval Avraham, which the report cites, said that “collateral damage” of 15 to 20 civilians for each target of a Hamas operative and 100 or more for each senior Hamas operative was acceptable. Even assuming that all 37,000 targets were junior Hamas operatives, that would mean half a million Gazan civilians wounded, about a quarter of the population. Even if Amnesty International Israel does not want to classify this as genocide, how does it see harm to a quarter of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip?

This is not the first time Amnesty Israel has found itself on the wrong side of history. Amnesty Israel rejected the conclusion of the Amnesty International apartheid report, published in 2022, which said the Israeli government was committing apartheid-style crimes against humanity in the territories occupied in 1967, as well as its determination that there is a Jewish supremacist government in Israel. It justified its rejection with a need for a thorough dialogue into the findings of the report, which was necessary, and a fear of the boycott on anyone who knowingly issued a public call to boycott Israel. In short, cowards.

But not only cowards. In a recent article published in Haaretz’s Hebrew edition, a member of the Amnesty Israel board wrote that Amnesty had not bothered to mention the actions of Hamas. This is far from the truth. Since October 2023, it has published several sharp statements condemning Hamas’ crimes, calling for the release of the hostages and welcoming the investigation of Hamas leaders by the International Criminal Court.

There is no point in belaboring the fact that Amnesty Israel has never called for an arms embargo against Israel, which might be expected by a human rights organization that respects itself. What can be expected by the branch, some of whose members are soldiers or who have relatives who are? Amnesty Israel gets angry when it is forced to face difficult moral conclusions against Israel. It fears public fury and internal tensions that might arise. Maybe Amnesty Israel should realize one simple thing: if the job it assumed is too great, it’s always possible to become a public relations firm for the Foreign Ministry.

Hanin Majadli