B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel presented the findings at a news conference in Jerusalem
Two leading Israeli rights organisations have said Israel’s conduct in the war in Gaza constitutes genocide against the Palestinian population.
B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel released separate reports on Monday based on studies of the past 21 months of conflict.
The organisations, which have been active in Israel for decades, said in a joint statement that “in these dark times it is especially important to call things by their name”, while “calling on this crime to stop immediately”.
An Israeli government spokesman said it strongly rejected the accusations of genocide, which are the first to be made by human rights groups based in Israel.
“Our defence forces target terrorists and never civilians. Hamas is responsible for the suffering in Gaza,” David Mencer said.
At a news conference in Jerusalem on Monday, B’Tselem’s executive director Yuli Novak said her organisation’s report was “one that we never imagined we would have to write”.
The 88-page document 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 us to the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking co-ordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip.”
In its 65-page report, Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) said its health-focused legal analysis found that Israel had targeted Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure “in a manner that is both calculated and systematic”.
“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 report said.
Dr Guy Shalev, executive director of PHRI, said: “Silence in the face of genocide is not an option. We want to stress: confronting genocide is not only the responsibility of legal and political institutions. Confronting it demands urgent action from the global health community.”
The organisations found the “horrific and criminal Hamas attack” on Israel on 7 October 2023 was a triggering event that caused fear and collective trauma among Israelis.
However, in its response to the attack, they alleged, Israel’s government had pursued a campaign based on the “promotion of extremist ideologies and the dehumanisation of Palestinians in Gaza”.
They said this was a reference to language used from political and military leaders to soldiers fighting on the ground, which labelled all Palestinians in Gaza as being responsible.
PHRI concluded that the acts it identified were “not incidental to war but part of a deliberate policy targeting Palestinians as a group”, and in a manner that fulfilled at least three acts defined in Article II of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, to which Israel is a signatory.
Reuters
Only 18 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are still partially functional, according to the UN (file photo)
A number of international rights organisations, UN human rights experts, and scholars have accused Israel of committing a genocide in Gaza.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is also examining a case brought by South Africa alleging that Israeli forces are committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel has vehemently denied the allegation and has called the case “wholly unfounded” and based on “biased and false claims”.
Dr Shalev told the BBC that PHRI and B’Tselem were concerned that the organisations and their staff might be subjected to verbal or physical violence in Israel in response to their reports.
“But we are hoping that people will listen to what we are saying,” he added.
Yuli Novak of B’Tselem said the process at arriving at the conclusion that Israel was conducting a genocide had been fraught.
“To really understand that your country, your collective, is actually committing genocide, that is a very hard mental and personal process,” she said.
“It breaks something very basic in your understanding about who we are.”
Israel launched its war in Gaza in retaliation for Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack, which killed about 1,200 people and led to 251 others being taken hostage.
Israeli attacks have since killed more than 59,900 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. The ministry’s figures are quoted by the UN and others as the most reliable source of statistics available on casualties.
Donald Trump told Israel to allow “every ounce of food” into Gaza as he acknowledged for the first time that there is “real starvation” in the region.
During a visit to Britain, the US president contradicted Benjamin Netanyahu after the Israeli prime minister claimed it was a “bold-faced lie” to say Israel was causing hunger in Gaza.
Trump is under increasing pressure to intervene in the humanitarian crisis, with dozens of Palestinians having died of hunger in recent weeks in a crisis attributed by the UN and other humanitarian organisations to Israel’s blockade of almost all aid into the territory.
In meetings with Keir Starmer – including a rambling 70-minute press conference at Trump’s Turnberry golf resort in Scotland – the president also said he was losing patience with Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine and vowed to impose sanctions on Russia’s trading partners within 10-12 days if there was no ceasefire.
He heaped praise on Starmer, but in a domestic intervention that will not have been appreciated by the British prime minister, Trump urged him to cut taxes and tackle illegal immigration to win the next election.
Starmer privately pressed Trump on Gaza during the trip, government sources said.
The US president told reporters that Israel bore “a lot of responsibility” for the crisis in a rebuke to Netanyahu, who had claimed earlier on Monday that there was “no starvation in Gaza”.
Asked whether he agreed with this assessment, Trump said: “I don’t know. Based on television, I would say not particularly, because those children look very hungry.”
He later added: “We can save a lot of people, I mean some of those kids. That’s real starvation; I see it and you can’t fake that. So we’re going to be even more involved.”
Asked what he would ask Netanyahu for next time they spoke, Trump said: “We’re giving money and we’re giving food, but we’re over here … I want him to make sure they get the food. I want to make sure they get the food, every ounce of food.”
Trump criticised Hamas for not releasing the remaining hostages and said the militant group was “very difficult to deal with”, while suggesting he had asked the Israeli government to change its approach. “I told Israel, I told Bibi, that you have to now maybe do it a different way,” he said.
The president was speaking before a bilateral meeting with Starmer, who flew to Ayrshire to meet him on Monday. The two leaders were due to visit Trump’s second golf course in Aberdeenshire and have dinner together on Monday evening.
Trump said he was “very disappointed” with Putin and was “not so interested in talking to him any more” because of his decision to continue airstrikes against civilian targets in Ukraine.
“We thought we had that settled numerous times, and then President Putin goes out and starts launching rockets into some city like Kyiv and kills a lot of people in a nursing home or whatever,” Trump said. “You have bodies lying all over the street, and I say that’s not the way to do it.”
Trump said he would cut his 50-day deadline for a ceasefire to between 10 and 12 days before he imposed secondary sanctions on Russia’s trading partners.
He piled pressure on Starmer to cut taxes and immigration, calling the prime minister and Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, “good men”.
“I assume there’s a thing going on between you and Nigel and that’s OK,” Trump said. “But generally speaking, the one who cuts taxes the most, the one who gives you the lowest energy prices and the best kind of energy, the one that keeps you out of wars … I think the one that’s toughest and most competent on immigration is going to win the election.”
Speaking alongside Trump, Starmer told the press conference that the British public were “revolted” at the “absolute catastrophe” in Gaza and said there was an urgent need for a ceasefire.
Israel announced over the weekend that it would suspend fighting in three areas of Gaza for 10 hours a day and open secure routes for aid delivery, while the UK confirmed it was working with Jordan to carry out airdrops into the territory.
Starmer is due to convene an emergency cabinet meeting on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza this week. Ministers will be presented with a peace plan which the UK is working up alongside France and Germany.
The prime minister is under pressure from senior cabinet ministers and more than 220 MPs to immediately recognise Palestine as a state, after Emmanuel Macron announced that France would do so at the UN general assembly in September. Trump dismissed the idea on Monday but suggested he had no objection to the UK or other allies doing so.
Trump also said the US and its allies would set up “walk-in” food centres without barriers in the region, though he gave little detail about how these would operate.
On Monday afternoon, about 100 protesters gathered in Balmedie, the closest village to Trump’s Aberdeenshire golf course, waving Palestinian flags and chanting: “You are not welcome here.”
Kay Collin, a retired modern studies teacher, said she had made the trip from Edinburgh because “watching what is happening in Gaza, if it was happening to my grandchildren I would hope other people would stand up for them”.
While many people cited the starvation crisis in Gaza as the most urgent reason for their protest, Trump’s policies on immigration, transgender rights and cuts to international aid, and there were placards and chants accusing him of misogyny and bullying behaviour.
Jenna Harpin, a mother of four from Portsoy, said she was “disgusted” at how much money was being spent by the Scottish and UK governments on hosting Trump’s visit, especially at a time when local councils were making cuts to vital services.
The protesters marched through the village as the police presence swelled in anticipation of Trump’s arrival. Local access had been significantly restricted with lines of police officers blocking off the beach and snipers spotted on the dunes.
Donald Trump has said he believes there is a famine in Gaza and he has told Israel that “maybe they have to do it in a different way”.
Speaking outside his hotel in Turnberry, South Ayrshire, on Monday, the US president said people in Gaza needed “to get food and safety right now” and that he wanted to get ceasefire talks restarted.
Asked if he agreed with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who said earlier on Monday that there was no starvation in Gaza, Trump replied: “I don’t know. Based on television, I would say not particularly, because those children look very hungry. We’re giving a lot of money and a lot of food and other nations are now stepping up.”
Asked if Israel had done all it could to avoid civilian casualties, Trump said: “Nobody’s done anything great over there. The whole place is a mess … I told Israel maybe they have to do it a different way.”
Speaking alongside Trump, Keir Starmer said the events in Gaza were a “real humanitarian crisis” and “people in Britain are revolted at what they’re seeing on their screens”.
The US president said he did not believe Hamas would release the remaining Israeli hostages it was holding and that the US had “given a lot of money to Gaza for food and everything else, a lot of that money is stolen by Hamas and a lot of that food is stolen”.
Asked about the UK government’s commitment to recognising a Palestinian state, Trump said: “I’m not going to take a position, I don’t mind him [the prime minister] taking a position. I’m looking for getting people fed right now.”
Trump and Starmer were speaking outside the Trump Turnberry hotel and golf resort where they were due to hold a bilateral meeting on Monday.
The crisis in Gaza is top of the prime minister’s agenda in his talks with the US president. Downing Street indicated ahead of the meeting that Starmer would press Trump to take a tougher stance towards Israel and push for ceasefire talks to resume.
The prime minister will hold an emergency cabinet meeting later this week to discuss the crisis amid international horror at the images of starvation in Gaza.
Starmer is under pressure from senior members of his cabinet and over a third of his MPs to immediately recognise a Palestinian state. David Lammy, the foreign secretary, is expected to attend a UN conference in New York this week being held to discuss a pathway towards this.
Trump also suggested he would reduce the 50-day deadline for Russia to agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine before he imposed punishing tariffs, telling reporters he was “very disappointed” with Vladimir Putin.
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He said: “We thought we had that settled numerous times, and then President Putin goes out and starts launching rockets into some city like Kyiv and kills a lot of people in a nursing home or whatever.
“You have bodies lying all over the street, and I say that’s not the way to do it. So we’ll see what happens with that.”
He added: “We’re going to have to look and I’m going to reduce that 50 days that I gave him to a lesser number, because I think I already know the answer, what’s going to happen.”
Tom Fletcher, UN humanitarian chief, said most of the UN’s food lorries were looted by desperately hungry Palestinians after entering Gaza on Sunday
There is “real starvation” in Gaza, Donald Trump has said, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted there was no such thing.
Asked if he agreed with Netanyahu that it was a “bold-faced lie” to say Israel was fuelling hunger in Gaza, the US president replied: “I don’t know… those children look very hungry… that’s real starvation stuff.”
Speaking during a meeting with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Scotland, Trump said: “Nobody’s done anything great over there. The whole place is a mess… I told Israel maybe they have to do it a different way.”
His comments came after the UN’s humanitarian chief said “vast amounts” of food were needed to stave off starvation.
Donald Trump says there “is real starvation” in Gaza
Tom Fletcher told the BBC he welcomed Israel’s measures over the weekend to allow more aid into Gaza in the form of airdrops, and military pauses to allow food convoys to reach people.
But he said what had been delivered so far was just “a drop in the ocean” of what was required.
“It’s the beginning, but the next few days are really make or break. We need to deliver at a much, much greater scale. We need vast amounts of aid going in, much faster,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Israel said 120 lorry loads were collected from crossings on Sunday during the first daily 10-hour “tactical pause” in military operations, and that Jordan and the United Arab Emirates airdropped 28 packages of food.
Hours after Mr Fletcher spoke, the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry said another 14 people had died as a result of malnutrition over the past 24 hours.
That brought the total number of malnutrition-related deaths since the war begin in October 2023 to 147, including 88 children, according to the ministry.
Israel, which controls the entry of all supplies to Gaza, has denied there is starvation in Gaza and rejected accusations of being responsible for food shortages.
On Sunday, the Israeli military began actions that it said would improve the “humanitarian response” in Gaza and disprove “the false claim of deliberate starvation”.
Israel announced there would be a “local tactical pause” in three areas of Gaza for 10 hours a day, as well the establishment of “designated secure routes” for aid convoys.
The military also allowed aid drops carried out by foreign countries to resume, despite humanitarian agencies warning that the method was ineffective and dangerous.
Israeli military body Cogat, which co-ordinates the entry of aid into Gaza, said more than 120 lorry loads of aid were collected from crossings by the UN and other international organisations on Sunday, and that hundreds more lorry loads were awaiting collection.
Mr Fletcher said the UN had collected fewer than 100 lorry loads in that time, and noted that 600 to 700 loads had entered Gaza daily on average during the two-month ceasefire between Israel and Hamas at the start of this year.
Asked to respond to Israel’s criticism of UN agencies for not collecting aid from crossings, he said: “We’re not going to leave on pallets if we can. But to get to it our drivers face bureaucratic constraints, they face massive security constraints.”
He also said that most of the UN’s food lorries were looted after entering Gaza on Sunday.
“Most of those lorries… were hit by desperate individual civilians, starving. The flour was taken off those lorries and its very, very dangerous for our drivers.”
Mr Fletcher also warned that UN teams on the ground believed the Israeli military’s pauses would only last a week or so, which he said would be “clearly insufficient when before our eyes we’re seeing this 21st Century atrocity on the ground”.
“We need a sustained period of delivery – weeks, months – to build up, to stop that starvation and build up the supplies again. Ultimately, we need a ceasefire. Pauses are a good step in the right direction, but stopping the conflict is the key.”
On Sunday, the World Health Organization warned that malnutrition was “on a dangerous trajectory in the Gaza Strip, marked by a spike in deaths in July”.
Of the 74 malnutrition-related deaths in Gaza in 2025, 63 had occurred this month, including 24 children under five and one child over five, the UN agency said.
“Most of these people were declared dead on arrival at health facilities or died shortly after, their bodies showing clear signs of severe wasting,” it added.
The WHO said the crisis was “entirely preventable” and condemned what it called the “deliberate blocking and delay of large-scale food, health, and humanitarian aid”.
Hamas has denied stealing aid, and on Sunday the New York Times cited senior Israeli military officials as saying that the military had never found proof that the armed group had systematically stolen aid from the UN. Reuters news agency also reported last week that US government analysis found no evidence of systematic theft by Hamas of US-funded aid.
Netanyahu on Sunday savaged claims that Israel was deliberately starving civilians in Gaza, which would amount to a war crime.
“What a bold-faced lie. There is no policy of starvation in Gaza, and there is no starvation in Gaza.” he said.
“We enable humanitarian aid throughout the duration of the war to enter Gaza. Otherwise, there would be no Gazans. And what has interdicted the supply of humanitarian aid is one force, Hamas. Again, the reversal of truth,” he added.
Netanyahu said the Israeli military’s humanitarian pauses and corridors meant the UN had “no excuses left” not to collect and distribute all the aid from the crossings.
“Stop lying. Stop finding excuses. Do what you have to do.”
On Monday, local hospital sources said Israeli attacks across Gaza had killed more than 30 people, including aid seekers.
The Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.
At least 59,821 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Reuters
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