The most disturbing aspect is the total impunity given to Israel by the international community – Israel’s Western allies in particular – for the genocide in Gaza and ongoing attacks in the occupied West Bank, he added.
“What they’re lacking is the political will to act and the moral courage to act, and that’s really shameful,” said Parnes.
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“We are witnessing the total abandonment of Palestinian lives. Israel has already shown it is capable of far greater violence, as we are seeing in the Gaza Strip. The situation in the West Bank is deteriorating by the day and will only worsen, because there is no internal or external mechanism to restrain Israel or stop its ongoing policy of ethnic cleansing. The international community must put an end to Israel’s impunity and hold those responsible for crimes against the Palestinian people to account” said Yuli Novak, B‘Tselem executive director
Since October 2023, alongside the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the Israeli military has been enforcing an increasingly permissive and reckless open-fire policy in the West Bank, including the use of airstrikes in populated areas. The military has also armed and mobilized thousands of settlers into regional defense battalions and rapid-response teams within settlements.
Under this blanket impunity, armed settlers attack Palestinians on a daily basis, burning homes, farmland and crops, looting property and killing residents. Although dozens of such attacks occur every day, and many are captured on video and well documented, Israeli law-enforcement authorities rarely open investigations.
In the 21 cases where settlers have killed Palestinians, not a single perpetrator has been convicted.
(October 4, 2025)
There are currently some 3,613 Palestinians under administrative detention in Israeli prisons, according to the July 2025 CDA report, and more than ten thousand Palestinians in Israeli custody (not including those held in military camps) in total. Even Israel’s own military intelligence only identifies a quarter of its detainees from Gaza as “fighters,” while human rights groups and Israeli soldiers have reported even fewer — roughly 15 percent — as Hamas members.
The CDA reports that Tazaz’a was the seventy-sixth identified Palestinian to die in Israeli custody since October 7, 2023.
“Welcome to Hell” is a report on the abuse and inhuman treatment of Palestinians held in Israeli custody since 7 October 2023. B’Tselem collected testimonies from 55 Palestinians held during that time and released, almost all with no charges. Their testimonies reveal the outcomes of the rushed transformation of more than a dozen Israeli prison facilities, military and civilian, into a network of camps dedicated to the abuse of inmates as a matter of policy. Facilities in which every inmate is deliberately subjected to harsh, relentless pain and suffering operate as de-facto torture camps.
Hamas, a terrorist organization, began this war with its brutal attack on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 innocent people and took 250 hostages. Israel, as any other country, had a right to defend itself from Hamas.
But, over the last two years, Israel has not simply defended itself against Hamas. Instead, it has waged an all-out war against the entire Palestinian people. Many legal experts have now concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The International Association of Genocide Scholars concluded that “Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide.” The Israeli human rights groups B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel have reached the same conclusion, as have international groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
Just yesterday, an independent commission of experts appointed by the United Nations echoed this finding. These experts concluded that: “It is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention.”
I agree.
After 22 months of war, starvation, and systematic destruction, two of Israel’s leading human rights organizations have concluded that Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip constitute genocide.
This finding, issued Monday in two separate reports by Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHRI) and B’Tselem, marks a rupture within Israeli civil society. Until now, Israeli human rights organizations had largely stopped short of using the term “genocide,” even as Palestinian groups, Israeli genocide and Holocaust scholars, and international bodies like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Médecins Sans Frontières adopted it months ago.
Since October 2023, Israel has fundamentally changed its policy toward the Palestinians. Following the Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023, Israel launched an intensive military campaign in the Gaza Strip, which is still underway more than 20 months later. Israel‘s onslaught on Gaza includes mass killing, both in direct attacks and through creating catastrophic living conditions that continue to raise the massive death toll; serious bodily or mental harm to the entire population of the Strip; large-scale destruction of infrastructure; destruction of the social fabric, including educational institutions and Palestinian cultural sites; mass arrests and abuse of detainees in Israeli prisons, which have effectively become torture camps for thousands of Palestinians held without trial; mass forced displacement, including attempts at ethnic cleansing and making the latter an official war goal; and an assault on Palestinian identity through the deliberate destruction of refugee camps and attempts to undermine the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). The outcome of this comprehensive assault on the Gaza Strip is severe, and at least in part, irreparable, harm to more than 2 million people living in the Gaza Strip, as part of the Palestinian people.
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 to the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip. In other words: Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Two prominent rights groups in Israel have issued reports saying Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
(July 9, 2025)
According to conversations PHRI staff held with doctors in the Strip, as well as information published by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), doctors report a severe shortage of painkillers, which has led to amputations being performed without anesthesia, including in children. Doctors have also reported performing amputations in unsanitary conditions, without proper surgical equipment, and in some cases even outside of hospital buildings. In situations where basic medications such as antibiotics were unavailable, doctors had to amputate limbs to save lives – even in cases where amputation could have been avoided under normal circumstances.
According to the WHO report, about 4,370 adults and children who lost limbs during the current war are still waiting to receive assistive devices such as crutches or prosthetics. Additionally, 83% of people currently living with a disability in the Gaza Strip lost their assistive devices and other essential equipment during displacement.
דברים אלה אינם נכתבים מתוך ניכור, ואני באמת מלאת הערכה למארגני הוועידה ולמשתתפיה הרבים. אין בי צל של ספק באשר לכוונות הטובות שלהם, ולרצון הכן לפעול למען שינוי המציאות הארורה הזו. אבל בשעה שאנשים מורעבים למוות במחנה ההשמדה שישראל יצרה בעזה, השמאל הישראלי חייב לצאת מאזור הנוחות שלו.
סדנאות של דיאלוג, דיונים על קדושתה של ירושלים, תפילות בין-דתיות ופאנלים על פתרונות מדיניים בימים של השמדה הם אנכרוניזם תלוש. פעילות מכוח האינרציה היא פריבילגיה שאנחנו לא יכולים להרשות לעצמנו מול המראות מעזה. בשביל לשנות את המציאות, צריך קודם כל להכיר בה כהווייתה ולכנות אותה בשמה המפורש. אם בכל הוועידה הזו אין אפילו פאנל אחד שעוסק בג‘נוסייד המתחולל ברגעים אלה ממש, לא כל שכן קריאה מפורשת לסירוב לקחת בו חלק, ספק אם היא תקדם אותנו אפילו בצעד לקראת השינוי שהיא מבקשת לקדם.
To be clear, these words are not written out of cynicism; I truly hold deep appreciation for the organizers of the conference and its many participants. I have no doubt of their good intentions and sincere commitment to changing our horrific reality. Yet as Israel systematically starves people in Gaza’s extermination camp, the Israeli left can no longer remain in its comfort zone.
What good are dialogue workshops, discussions about the sanctity of Jerusalem, interfaith prayers, or panels on political solutions while a genocide rages? These are privileged distractions we can no longer afford. To transform reality, we must first stare directly at its horrors and name them without flinching. If this conference cannot even convene a single panel on Gaza’s genocide, much less demand an end to complicity in it, how can it hope to drive the change it claims to pursue?
For a year now, since the war began, the international community has shown utter impotence to stop the indiscriminate attack on civilians in the Gaza Strip. Now, when it is clearer than ever that Israel intends to forcibly displace northern Gaza’s residents by committing some of the gravest crimes under the laws of war, the world’s nations must take action.
Without immediate, decisive action from the international community, without using every tool available – political, legal, economic – the mass killings in the northern Gaza Strip will continue and the suffering of its besieged civilians will grow. All international bodies and institutions must act now to compel Israel to stop the war and end the carnage.
(October 14, 2024)
Human rights NGOs based in Israel today called on the international community to take action now to prevent Israel from forcibly transferring hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have remained in the Northern Gaza Strip outside of the area, including by denying entry of essential humanitarian aid and fuel. The Israeli ceasefire coalition, the groups Gisha, B’Tselem, PHR-I and Yesh Din, said that there are alarming signs that the Israeli military is beginning to quietly implement the Generals’ Plan, also referred to as the Eiland Plan, which calls for complete forcible transfer of the civilians of the northern Gaza Strip through tightening the siege on the area and starving the population.
On Sunday, we woke up to the news that six Israeli hostages were executed by Hamas, just before soldiers reached them in a tunnel in Gaza. Another six, added to tens of thousands of people in this land who should not have died over the past year. During this week, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets. They feel angry, desperate and betrayed by their government. They have understood, perhaps for the first time, that the Israeli government does not want to return the hostages in a deal, but to continue the war indefinitely. They see that the occupation and the settlements matter more than human life – and not only of Palestinians, said B‘Tselem Executive Director Yuli Novak, who addressed the UN Security Council last night (Wednesday) . B’Tselem – the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories was invited by the Slovenian President of the Security Council to provide an expert review of the state of human rights in Israel/Palestine following the war.
The Israeli Likud Party Knesset Member Revital Gotliv requested the death sentence or life imprisonment for Yuli Novak, the executive director of the Israeli rights group B’Tselem, for what she labeled as “the suspected serious crime of assistance to the enemy in war,” the Anadolu news agency reported.
Gotliv reportedly made her request in a letter addressed to the Israeli Chief Police Commissioner Daniel Levy, in which she demanded the detention and interrogation of Novak.
The move followed a speech delivered by Novak on September 4 at the United Nations Security Council.
We, the undersigned Israel-based civil society and human rights organizations, call for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and demand the immediate release of hostages held in the Gaza Strip. An immediate ceasefire will prevent further loss of civilian lives and facilitate access to vital aid for Gaza to address the unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe there.
Among the civil society and human rights organizations who signed the statement: Akevot – Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research, Amnesty International Israel, Bimkom – Planners for Planning Rights, Breaking the Silence, B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, Combatants for Peace, Emek Shaveh, Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, Green Olive Collective, HaMoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual, Haqel – In Defense of Human Rights, Ir Amim, Isha L’isha Haifa Feminist Center, Jordan Valley Activists, Looking the Occupation in the Eye, Machsom Watch, Mothers Against Violence, New Profile – The Movement to Demilitarize Israeli Society, Parents Against Child Detention, Peace Now. Physicians for Human Rights PsychoActive – Mental Health Professionals for Human Rights, Rabbis for Human Rights, Rea’cha Kamocha, Social Workers for Peace and Welfare, Standing Together, This Is Not an Ulpan, Torat Tzedek, Yesh Din, Yesh Gvul and Zazim – Community Action.
Israelis were left stunned and speechless when three hostages held by Hamas were killed by Israeli forces in the middle of an active war zone after they waved a white flag and screamed out in Hebrew to show they did not pose a threat.
For some, the incident was a shocking example of the ugliness of war, where a complex and dangerous battlefield is safe for no one. But for critics, the incident underscores what they say is the excessively violent conduct of Israel’s security apparatus against Palestinians.
(12.12.2023)
Dear President Biden,
The war in the Gaza Strip has been underway for more than nine weeks, ever since Hamas carried out its horrific and criminal attack on Israeli civilians, which included killing more than 1,200 people and kidnapping some 250 to Gaza – among them Israeli civilians, foreign nationals and children. Immediately after the attack, and in a speech you later gave in Israel, you made it clear that Israel has the right to defend itself, while emphasizing it must do so only in accordance with the provisions of international law, and particularly the rules of war.
We, Israeli human rights organizations and civil society groups, must at this stage state with a heavy heart that our government has chosen to ignore your advice and similar statements by US officials. This letter does not address the grave suspicions of Israeli violations of international humanitarian law during the war, but centers on the extreme humanitarian crisis developing in Gaza and the urgent need to change Israel’s policy on this issue.
(13.12.2023)
Among the signatories: Academia for Equality, Akevot – Institute for Israeli Palestinian Conflict Research, B’Tselem, Bimkom, Breaking the Silence, Combatants for Peace, Gisha, HaMoked – Center for the Defense of the Individual, Jordan Valley Activists, Looking the Occupation in the Eye, Machsom Watch, Parents Against Child Detentions, Psychoative, Rabbis for Human Rights, Social Workers for Peace and Welfare, Yesh Din and Zazim -Community Action.
All of this under unprecedented and relentless Israeli bombings. The situation is deteriorating and aid organizations are almost incapable of helping. This isn’t the war’s biproduct, it’s the deliberate outcome of Israel’s policy – a manufactured humanitarian catastrophe. >
Our analysis of the policy over the past two months:
https://www.btselem.org/gaza_strip/20231207_humanitarian_catastrophe_as_policy
(November 1, 2023)
And also just to be very clear, everything that I’ve been describing, all of these various mechanisms that the state has been using, are backed by Israeli courts, and backed by the Israeli legal system. This is not some random phenomena that is happening uniquely to a single unlucky community far from the eyes of the state. On the contrary, this is part of an ongoing Israeli state project of trying to push, to cleanse, as many Palestinians out of Area C, using all available state mechanisms in order to accomplish this goal. (…)
There are checkpoints. There are threats. And all this goes on for years. And yet somehow you managed to stay on the land and make a living and try to raise a family under these conditions. And that in and of itself is horrific and criminal and appalling, and also happens in broad daylight. Everything I’ve been talking about now and describing has been documented for years already by Palestinian, Israeli, and international human-rights organizations. But Israel never relented and never stopped because, as I said, it’s part of the state’s goal to accomplish that. What has escalated in recent weeks is that you have repeated reports of masked men showing up in the middle of the night. Armed, masked men.
Maybe they are settlers, maybe they’re soldiers, maybe they’re a mix. And they openly threaten the people in the community and tell them that they have twenty-four hours to leave, and if you say otherwise we would wipe you out.
(2 hours ago)
Residents of the Gaza Strip live in a humanitarian disaster zone. This entirely man-made disaster is a direct result of a policy employed by Israel, which, to this day, continues to dictate what daily life in Gaza looks like. This callous, unjustifiable policy sentences the nearly two million residents of the Gaza Strip to a life of abject poverty in near inhuman conditions no longer seen in the Western world. In testimonies collected by B‘Tselem‘s field researchers, residents of the Gaza Strip describe their lives, the dreams they will not get to realize, the medical conditions they have no way of treating, the ongoing separation from family members and friends outside the Strip, and the unbearable suffering caused by their confinement to the Strip, with no hope for change.
12 October 2023
We, members of the undersigned human rights organizations in Israel, are shocked and horrified in these dreadful days.
Hamas’ horrific crimes against innocent civilians – including children, women, and the elderly – have shaken us all, and we are struggling to recover from the unbearable sights and sounds. Some of us were in the Israeli communities on the Gaza border during the assault; many of us have family, friends, and colleagues who endured and are still in the midst of the harrowing events; and we all know people who were murdered, injured, or abducted. It will take time to fully understand the implications and consequences of Hamas’ heinous attack, for which there can be no justification.
(13.10.2023)
We call for the immediate release of all hostages and an end to the bombardment of civilians in Israel and in Gaza. Humanitarian aid must be allowed to reach civilian populations, medical facilities and places of refuge must not be harmed, and vital resources such as water and electricity must not be cut off. The killing of additional civilians will not bring back those who were lost. Indiscriminate destruction and a siege harming innocents will not bring relief, justice, or calm.
(15.10.2023)
As individuals working to promote human rights and who believe in the sanctity of life, we urgently call for an end to all indiscriminate harming of civilian lives and infrastructure. We call for negotiations and all possible action to be taken to bring about the release of the hostages – while prioritizing the civilians held by Hamas. It is the only humane and rational thing to do, and it must be done now.
(15.10.2023)
Most of our teams include Israelis and Palestinians; therefore, some of us have relatives and colleagues in Gaza currently living under the ongoing assault of the Israeli military. Children, women, and the elderly are being indiscriminately attacked with nowhere to hide.
Even now – especially now – we must maintain our moral and humane position and refuse to give in to despair or the urge for vengeance. Keeping our faith in the human spirit and its inherent goodness is more vital than ever. One thing is clear: We will never surrender our belief in humanity – even now, when doing so is more challenging than ever.