Melanie Lidman
AP / July 17, 2024
TEL AVIV, Israel – Hamas-led armed groups committed numerous war crimes during the Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel that precipitated the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, according to a global human rights group report released Wednesday.
Human Rights Watch said the acts of the Palestinian fighters, who killed around 1,200 people and kidnapped more than 250 during the attack, met the international legal definition for crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The group’s report found that five different Palestinian armed groups, led by Hamas’ Qassam Brigades, engaged in war crimes and violated international law by killing, torturing, taking hostages, looting and committing crimes involving sexual and gender-based violence. The New York-based rights group said its researchers were unable to independently verify claims of sexual violence and rape but that they relied on a separate report by a special U.N. envoy who found “reasonable grounds” to believe Hamas fighters committed sexual violence during the attack.
The 230-page HRW report focuses only on the Oct. 7 attacks and does not examine the actions taken by Hamas or Israel during the subsequent war in Gaza. More than 38,400 people have been killed in Israeli ground offensives and bombardments in Gaza since the war began, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. The ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.
The militants committed a crime against humanity because they launched a “widespread attack directed against a civilian population,” said Belkis Wille, an associate director at HRW who arrived in Israel days after Oct. 7 and spent a month researching the attack with local staff. The researchers examined Palestinian attacks on 26 civilian sites in southern Israel, including kibbutzim, cities, two music festivals and a beach party, and they spoke with nearly 100 survivors, and 50 experts and first responders.
“The killing of civilians and taking of hostages were all central aims of the planned attack, and not actions that occurred as an afterthought or as a plan gone awry, or as isolated acts, for example, perpetrated by unaffiliated Palestinians from Gaza,” Wille said.
After reviewing hundreds of photos and videos, the researchers determined that the majority of the Palestinians who took part in the attack were affiliated with armed groups and were not random civilians who took advantage of the open fence.
“That was a claim that was made very early on, it was made by Hamas in order to distance its own fighters from the abuses, and it was made by Israel to justify attacks on civilians in Gaza,” she said.
HRW observed footage of fighters, including those in civilian clothes with no military insignias, communicating with walkie-talkies and taking orders from commanders, leading them to conclude that the fighters who carried out the worst abuses, especially in the early hours of the attack, belonged to armed factions.
In a nine-page response to the HRW report, Hamas said the Qassam Brigades planned and led the Oct. 7 attack, not the Hamas political movement, and that fighters were instructed not to target civilians. HRW said they found the Hamas response “false” and that “the intentional killing and hostage-taking of civilians was planned and highly coordinated.”
The organization called on Hamas to immediately release the approximately 120 hostages and bodies of hostages still being held in Gaza, and for all sides to adhere to international law and agree to a cease-fire as soon as possible.
Human Rights Watch has a strained relationship with Israel, which it has accused of violating international law in multiple cases. In April, an HRW investigation found that an Israeli strike in October in central Gaza that killed 106 Palestinians constituted a war crime because there was no apparent military target. Israel says it tries to avoid harming civilians and blames the deaths on Hamas because the militants operate in dense, residential areas. The group also accused Israel of violating international law by striking residential buildings in Lebanon with white phosphorus, a chemical munition. The Israeli military said it upholds international law regarding munitions and that it used white phosphorus as a smokescreen, not to target civilians.
Melanie Lidman is an Associated Press reporter based in Tel Aviv, Israel
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Hamas rejects HRW accusation of war crimes in October 7 attack
Al-Jazeera / July 17, 2024
Rights group says in new report Palestinian armed groups committed crimes against humanity in last year’s assault in Israel.
Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups committed numerous crimes against humanity, including summary killings and sexual violence, during their attacks on Israel on October 7, a report issued by Human Rights Watch (HRW) says.
The surprise attack on Israel aimed to kill civilians and take the maximum number of captives, according to the report, released on Wednesday. Hamas slammed the publication, saying it is full of “lies and blatant bias”.
Based on interviews with 144 witnesses and extensive photo and video documentation, the report said Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, and at least four other Palestinian armed groups identified as taking part in the attacks “committed numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity against civilians”.
“It’s impossible for us to put a number on the specific instances,” HRW associate director Belkis Wille said, but “there were obviously hundreds on that day.”
The crimes noted include “deliberate and indiscriminate attacks against civilians and civilian objects; wilful killing of persons in custody; cruel and other inhumane treatment; sexual and gender-based violence; hostage taking; mutilation and despoiling (robbing) of bodies; use of human shields; and pillage and looting”.
“Human Rights Watch research found that the Hamas-led assault on October 7 was designed to kill civilians and take as many people as possible hostage,” HRW crisis and conflict director Ida Sawyer said. “The October 7 atrocities should spur a global call to action for an end to all abuses against civilians in Israel and Palestine.”
The death toll in Israel from the Hamas-led attacks is estimated at about 1,140. Some 240 people were also taken captive during the attack, with dozens still held in Gaza.
In response, Israel launched a war on Gaza that has killed at least 38,794 Palestinians and wounded 89,364, according to the enclave’s Ministry of Health, and has now entered its 10th month.
Hamas charges ‘blatant bias’
Hamas flatly denied the findings presented by the human rights group and demanded that HRW retract the report and apologize.
“We reject the lies and blatant bias towards the occupation and the lack of professionalism and credibility in the Human Rights Watch report,” Hamas said in a statement on Wednesday.
Hamas also said the report should have taken note of the response of Israel, which has faced accusations of war crimes of its own, including genocidal acts.
HRW has issued several reports condemning Israeli war crimes in Gaza and accusing it of restricting the flow of aid to the enclave’s 2.3 million people.
“Atrocities do not justify atrocities,” Sawyer said. “To stop the endless cycle of abuses in Israel and Palestine, it’s critical to address root causes and hold violators of grave crimes to account. That’s in the interests of both Palestinians and Israelis.”
‘Coordinated assault’
The HRW report singles out Hamas as the orchestrator of the October 7 attacks but also lists other armed groups as perpetrators, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
It said the worst abuses were not carried out by civilians, a claim it said Hamas has made “to distance itself from the events” and Israel has echoed to “justify its retaliation operation”.
Wille pointed to the “incredibly organized and coordinated nature” of Hamas’s assault on Israeli cities, kibbutz communities and military bases, saying fighters shot directly at civilians “as they tried to flee”.
The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor has asked for arrest warrants against Hamas leaders, including political chief Ismail Haniyeh and Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The prosecutor has also sought warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of crimes against humanity ranging from “starvation of civilians” to “extermination and/or murder”.
SOURCE: AL-JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
