The second anniversary of the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel is approaching, and the supposedly impartial Amnesty International is withholding a report on Hamas atrocities on that day because some in that group believe it would generate sympathy for Israel.
The report has already been delayed for more than a year. According to AEI fellow and The Free Press writer Charles Lane, it was commissioned in "early to mid 2024." Amnesty promised to release it at around the time it released its report accusing Israel of genocide.
Amnesty hired two consultants to gather the evidence, the bulk of which was submitted in August 2024. Emails that The Free Press obtained show a staff member telling the Israeli chapter of Amnesty that the report would be released by September 8 of that year.
The "genocide" report came out in December 2024. There has been no sign of the report of Hamas atrocities.
“Our concern is about timing and impact,” Usman Hamid, the section director for Amnesty in Indonesia, emailed the organization’s top officials on August 8. “The situation in Gaza is at a peak of humanitarian crisis, famine is unfolding, and the Israeli security cabinet has just approved plans for full occupation. In this climate, there is a real risk the report could be used to divert attention from the current crisis or justify ongoing genocide.”
Seydi Gassama, section director for Senegal, echoed those concerns. "We urge the [international secretariat] to reconsider the timing of the publication of the report as it may be used by Israel to justify its actions," he said in an email.
“You can see the bias when the organization only holds space for the suffering of one group of people in a conflict,” says a former Amnesty employee who requested anonymity because of the topic’s sensitivity.
The Israeli chapter of Amnesty objected to the December genocide report because one key element was missing, without which the International Criminal Court could not prosecute. The report came nowhere near proving "that Israel had specifically intended to destroy Palestinians, which is the definition of genocide under international law," Lane points out.
Leadership suspended the Israeli chapter of Amnesty for two years, saying it was guilty of “anti-Palestinian racism” and that “the actions of AI Israel against Amnesty research and positions are prejudicial to Amnesty’s values and to our human rights work overall,” according to a Jan. 6, 2025, internal email.
Just for challenging the main conclusion that Israel was guilty of "genocide," the Israeli chapter was suspended, and then, internal divisions caused the chapter to implode.
A 1,900-word letter circulated, complaining that Hamas's atrocities on October 7 were being used as justification for Israel defending itself.
“The violations perpetrated on the 7 October 2023 [sic] have been used by the Israeli government, its allies, and large parts of the Western media to manufacture consent for the Israeli genocide that followed immediately after this attack,” the letter says. “Publishing this report at this time would significantly contribute to entrenching this position at a time when the world public opinion is overwhelmingly against genocide and other states’ complicity in it.”
So please don't publish the report because the West is using it to "manufacture consent" that Israel has a right to defend itself. People who read it might change their minds about who to condemn, which would negatively affect world opinion.
Unbelievable. How very non-partisan and unbiased these people are.
The emails from Indonesia and Senegal went to every Amnesty section director in the world as well as three officials of Amnesty International USA. Yet only one person on the chain, Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty’s director for the UK, spoke in defense of what should be the organization’s overriding principle: “Amnesty should never suppress or delay the publication of evidence of violations of the human rights of any people, anywhere,” he wrote.
Amnesty’s spokesperson characterized the internal dispute as nothing unusual for high-profile subject matter, and insisted that any notion the report’s release has been intentionally slow-walked is “unfounded.” Responding to a request for comment, he wrote in an email, “The production timeline for the report into Hamas violations is typical of an Amnesty report focusing on a multitude of crimes under international law in challenging environments.”
Compare Amnesty's lack of action with that of Human Rights Watch, another major human rights organization. It may have a bias against Israel, but it unflinchingly accused Hamas of war crimes a year ago.
“This is what happens when you make human rights work more of a work about narrative,” says Yariv Mohar, former co-director of Amnesty’s now-shuttered Israel chapter.
The Hamas report's current release date is September 29. We'll see if Amnesty finds an excuse to delay it further.
