“My colleagues can no longer deny that this is genocide,” said Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan). “We must follow our own U.S. laws. We need an Arms Embargo now.”
On Thursday, Amnesty released a sprawling report determining that Israel’s assault of Gaza amounts to genocide, citing Israel’s relentless attacks, blocking of humanitarian aid, targeting of health and other basic infrastructure, forced displacement of 90 percent of Gaza’s population, and more.
Amnesty is the first major international humanitarian organization to outright label Israel’s actions as a genocide. The group was also one of the first major human rights organizations to label Israel’s violent occupation and oppression of Palestine as apartheid, back in 2022.
The human rights group, one of the largest in the world, specifically called out the U.S. as a major collaborator in the genocide due to the Biden administration’s policy of sending Israel weapons with zero red lines. Just last week, despite Israel’s clear, ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza, reports emerged of the Biden administration advancing yet another sale of weapons to Israel worth $680 million.
It does as much as Amnesty International is reputable, which is very. Just because the ICJ (not the ICC, those aren’t relevant unless you’re talking about Netanyahu specifically) hasn’t called it a genocide (optional yet) doesn’t mean it’s not in the same way you don’t need a court verdict to call a murder a murder. Amnesty did an independent investigation and published their conclusion according to the definition used in international law, which is not “when we call it a genocide”. By your logic all corrupt politicians and CEOs (including Trump before 2020) would be innocent simply because they haven’t been found guilty by a court of law. She’s appealing to logic, not to any particular enforcement mechanism of international law.