Amnesty accuses Israel of 'live-streamed genocide' against Gazans

Gaza City, Palestinian Territories: Rights group Amnesty International on Tuesday, April 29, 2025, accused Israel of committing a "live-streamed genocide" against Palestinians in Gaza by forcibly displacing most of the population and deliberately creating a humanitarian catastrophe.

The UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, warned Israel's blockade on aid had become a "silent killer" in Gaza, with children and the sick suffering the most.

In its annual report, Amnesty said Israel was acting with "specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, thus committing genocide".

Israel has repeatedly denied such accusations from rights groups and some states.

Officials and the military did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the latest allegations.

Israel in response to Oct 7 attack by Hamas, launched a relentless bombardment of Gaza and a ground offensive that according to the Gazan health ministry has left at least 52,365 dead and hundeds of thousands wounded, mostly civilians.

The world has been made audience to a live-streamed genocide stated Amnesty's secretary general Agnes Callamard in the report.

"States watched on as if powerless, as Israel killed thousands upon thousands of Palestinians, wiping out entire multigenerational families, destroying homes, livelihoods, hospitals and schools."

'Children starving'

Gaza's civil defence agency reported Tuesday at least seven people killed in Israeli strikes, including four in a raid on tents housing displaced people near the Al-Iqleem area in southern Gaza.

"I just want to lay my head on a pillow and sleep. We don't want to be collecting remains (of body parts)," said Widad Fojo, who lost relatives in one strike.

Israel resumed its Gaza offensive on March 18, breaking a two-month ceasefire and insisting that military pressure was aimed at securing the release of hostages.

Amnesty said that throughout 2024 it had "documented multiple war crimes by Israel, including direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects, and indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks".

It said Israel's actions forcibly displaced 1.9 million Palestinians, around 90 percent of Gaza's population, and "deliberately engineered an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe".

Children and the sick are suffering the most.

"Children in Gaza are going to bed starving. The ill and the sick are not able to get medical care because of shortages in supplies in hospitals and clinics," UNRWA spokeswoman Juliette Touma said.

"Gaza has become a land of desperation... The siege on Gaza is a silent killer, a silent killer of children, of older people, of the most vulnerable in the community."

Collective failure

UNRWA also accused the Israeli military of abusing more than 50 of its staff when they were detained.

"Since the start of the war in October 2023, over 50 UNRWA staff among them teachers, doctors, social workers, have been detained and abused," UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini wrote on X.

"They have been treated in the most shocking & inhumane way. They reported being beaten and used as human shields."

Amnesty said it was a collective failure by the international community in responding to the war in Gaza.

Heba Morayef, Amnesty director for the Middle East and North Africa, denounced "the extreme levels of suffering that Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to endure on a daily basis over the past year" as well as "the world's complete inability or lack of political will to put a stop to it".

Meanwhile, the rights group also sounded alarm over Israeli actions in the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank, and repeated an accusation that Israel was employing a system of "apartheid".

"Israel's system of apartheid became increasingly violent in the occupied West Bank, marked by a sharp increase in unlawful killings and state-backed attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian civilians," it said.