Montreal, December 5, 2024 — Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) commends the landmark report issued today by Amnesty International which finds that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. In its 300-page report, Amnesty arrived at the grave conclusion that Israel has committed multiple acts of genocide with the specific intent of destroying the Palestinian people in Gaza. CJPME urges the Canadian Government to publicly acknowledge that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza, and to do everything possible to bring it to an end, including a two-way arms embargo and sanctions on Israeli leaders.

“Amnesty’s new report provides definitive evidence that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. When the genocide is eventually over, the Canadian government will not be able to pretend that they didn’t know. Prime Minister Trudeau must finally acknowledge that genocide is occurring and exert maximum pressure to bring it to an end,” said Michael Bueckert, Vice President of CJPME.

Amnesty’s comprehensive report, titled ‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians In Gaza, finds that between October 2023 and July 2024, Israel committed “with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza” at least three prohibited acts under the Genocide Convention, including killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and “deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part.”

The report argues that all states, and especially those like Canada that have close ties to Israel, must “take urgent steps to bring an end to all Israeli conduct in Gaza which may amount to genocide.” Its recommendations for Canada include ending the transfer of military trade with Israel, supporting the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the investigation and prosecution of crimes committed in the OPT, pressuring Israel to allow UN and ICC investigators access to Gaza, and using “all economic, political and diplomatic tools at their disposal” to pressure Israel to stop the genocide.

UN experts initially warned of the risk of genocide in Gaza over a year ago, and UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese recently confirmed that genocide is underway and even risks expanding to the occupied West Bank. In January 2024, the ICJ ruled that Palestinians have a right to be protected from genocide and imposed provisional measures upon Israel to prevent and punish genocidal acts – with which Israel has failed to comply. More recently, in issuing its arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Gallant, the ICC echoed the language of the crime of genocide in finding reasonable grounds to believe that they knowingly and deliberately “created conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of part of the civilian population in Gaza.”