‘Our genocide’: Israeli rights groups abandon their restraint on Gaza
B’Tselem and PHRI hold a press conference announcing their respective reports on the ongoing genocide in Gaza, Jerusalem, 27 July 2025
Shatha Yaish reports in +972 on 31 July 2025:
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.
Drawing on nearly two years of documentation, both groups argued that Israel’s actions in Gaza meet the definition of genocide as outlined in the 1948 Genocide Convention.
B’tselem’s report, titled “Our Genocide,” centers on Israel’s targeting of civilians and the systematic dismantling of Palestinian society in Gaza. PHRI’s report provides a health-based legal analysis of Israel’s deliberate destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system.
In a conversation with +972, B’Tselem Executive Director Yuli Novak described the decision to name genocide as the result of a long, painful process of internal reckoning. “Nothing prepares you for the realization that you are part of a society committing genocide,” she said. “This is a deeply painful moment for us.”
“What we see is intentional action — coordinated practices — aimed at destroying Palestinian society in Gaza. That is the exact definition of genocide: attacking civilians in order to destroy the group.”
When asked about the anticipated impact of B’tselem’s report, Novak admitted that it alone cannot bring an end to the genocide. “What we do hope is to raise our voices as the people who live here, Israelis and Palestinians,” she explained. “We have the ability to understand the situation deeply — both to bring the voices of the victims, which is our first and foremost moral obligation, but also to bring forth an analysis of how the genocidal system works. In order to fight against political systems, you have to understand them.
“We are hoping that people will hear our voices and decide to take action, and will understand it is not a local problem of Israelis and Palestinians,” Novak continued. “The Palestinians are no doubt the victims. But erasing humanity is something that is supposed to bother every human being.”
Unmaking a society
B’Tselem identifies four main pillars of Israel’s genocidal campaign: mass killings, violent population transfers, systematic destruction, and the dismantling of Palestinian society at every level.