On December 12, 2023, the Paris-based international NGO, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), announced a resolution headlined, “Israel’s unfolding crime of genocide and other crimes in Gaza and against the Palestinian People.” It had been written and adopted during a meeting of FIDH’s international board in November 2023.

The resolution packages several false accusations related to the current war (“Israel’s use of starvation as a tool of warfare” and “forced displacement”), alongside recurrent themes of antisemitic NGO demonization (“apartheid,” “systematic domination and oppression over the Palestinian people for over 75 years”), to disingenuously conclude that “Israel’s actions against the Palestinian people constitute an unfolding genocide.”

This resolution – which was clearly influenced by Al-Haq, an FIDH member and represented¹ on FIDH’s international board – is part of a campaign of atrocity inversion, aimed at portraying Israel as the worst violator of human rights in the world. NGOs accuse the Jewish State of genocide in order to distract from the  October 7 Hamas pogrom, the world’s deadliest one-day massacre in more than 20 years (see NGO Monitor’s report: “NGO Atrocity Inversion: False Accusations of Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing to Distract from Hamas Massacre”).

FIDH’s recommendations reflect an anti-Israel agenda and the erasure of Hamas, including calls for “an immediate and permanent ceasefire”; “entry of unrestricted humanitarian aid”; intervention by the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice; “economic sanctions, arms embargo, and other countermeasures”; and criminal arrests and prosecutions.

The eight-page resolution devotes one short paragraph to the October 7 “attack by Palestinian armed groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.” FIDH ignores the horrific murder, torture, rape, and desecration of bodies perpetrated against Israelis, and refrains from defining Hamas as a terror group.

FIDH also fails to include the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) on its list of “Palestinian armed groups,” even though the terror group bragged that its members participated in the October 7 massacre. Notably, three of four Palestinian members of FIDH – Al-Haq, Al Mezan, and Palestinian Center for Human Rights – have links to the PFLP.

Israeli members of FIDH are Adalah, B’Tselem, and Public Committee Against Torture in Israel.

Excerpts from and analysis of FIDH’s resolution:

• FIDH denies Israel’s right to exist, referring to “the broader context of Israel’s settler colonial apartheid regime, illegal occupation and policies of an institutionalised regime of systematic domination and oppression over the Palestinian people for over 75 years.” For FIDH, “this is by far possibly the worst killing campaign carried out against the Palestinian people since the Nakba in 1948” (emphases added).

“…against the backdrop of Israel’s illegal prolonged closure and blockade and institutionalised racial discrimination against Palestinians, including in Gaza. These violations have been committed against an identifiable racial, ethnic, and national group; the Palestinian People in Gaza, a conduct that amounts to the crime against humanity of persecution. Notably, Israel has long perpetrated the crime of persecution and the crime of apartheid – both crimes against humanity – against the Palestinian people as a whole” (emphasis added).

“While Israel leaves no place safe in Gaza, it subjects the protected 2.3 million population in Gaza to mass murder and mass assassination and inflicts conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction, and causing serious bodily and mental harm; amounting to acts of genocide, and an ongoing Nakba against the Palestinian People” (emphasis added).

“In this current military attack, Israel has committed a number of war crimes and crimes against humanity, many of which are taking place in the context of an ongoing 75-year settler colonisalism and apartheid and 56-year of illegal belligerent occupation of the Palestinian territory.”

• FIDH’s resolution includes multiple blatantly false accusations, including alleging “Israel’s use of starvation as a tool of warfare.”

“Israeli government and military officials publicly declared that the total siege means no food, fuel, electricity or water are allowed to enter for the 2.3 million people in Gaza since October 9th, in addition to the blocking of medical supplies and equipment. Israel has deliberately denied the Palestinian population in Gaza all the basic necessities for human survival. Israel’s pattern of attacks and measures against the Palestinian population in Gaza since October 7th, collective publishment, forced displacement, combined with Israel’s use of starvation as a tool of warfare, the cutting of water, electricity and fuel, coupled with the public and repeated statements of senior Israeli government and military officials, are evidence to Israel’s genocidal intent and acts in its current aggression” (emphasis added).

“Israel’s evacuation orders, large-scale destruction of homes and basic infrastructure, and relentless attacks have forcibly displaced over 1.7 million Palestinian, constituting grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and amounting to war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide” (emphasis added).

• FIDH ignores the use by Hamas of civilian facilities and accuses Israel of “indiscriminately targeted civilians and civilian objects.”

“During the past weeks in Gaza, the Israeli military has directly attacked civilians, civilian buildings, mosques, churches, hospitals, ambulances, commercial centers, journalists, medical personnel, civilians fleeing, and family homes, among others, thus violating the fundamental principles of distinction, proportionality, necessity and other fundamental principles of international humanitarian law” (emphasis added).