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Amnesty Finally Acknowledged Israeli Victims, and the Media Looked Away

Key Takeaways: More than two years after the atrocities of October 7, and after falsely accusing Israel of genocide, Amnesty International released a report on Hamas’ crimes of murder, hostage-taking, and sexual violence from that…

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Key Takeaways:

  • More than two years after the atrocities of October 7, and after falsely accusing Israel of genocide, Amnesty International released a report on Hamas’ crimes of murder, hostage-taking, and sexual violence from that day.
  • Amnesty International delayed the release of the report, fearing it would interfere with international opinion of Israel by acknowledging the crimes committed against Israelis.
  • Major media outlets that widely amplified Amnesty’s genocide accusation largely ignored this belated report on Israeli victims, exposing a pattern of selective coverage that distorts understanding of the war.

Two years. That is how long it took Amnesty International, one of the world’s supposedly leading human rights organizations, to formally acknowledge in a report that on October 7, 2023, Hamas committed horrific crimes against the Jewish people and the State of Israel.

These are facts Jews did not need Amnesty to discover. The mass murder, sexual violence, hostage-taking, and brutality were documented in real time. The evidence existed. The testimonies existed. The crimes were undeniable and should have been reported immediately by any organization claiming to defend human rights.

Instead, Amnesty chose a different path. From the outset, it framed Israel as the primary aggressor while sidelining, minimizing, or delaying acknowledgment of the atrocities committed against Israelis.

Worse still, just one year after the massacre, Amnesty released a report accusing Israel of committing genocide. To reach that conclusion, the organization stretched and distorted the definition of genocide, while conspicuously avoiding any serious accounting of how many Hamas terrorists were killed in the fighting. The result was not rigorous human rights reporting, but a document shaped to fit a predetermined narrative.

For Amnesty International, evidence mattered less than preserving a false genocide narrative. When irrefutable proof of crimes against humanity committed on October 7 surfaced, the organization chose silence. The reason is obvious: acknowledging those crimes would have disrupted the carefully constructed narrative designed to strip Israel of international sympathy.

 

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A report detailing Hamas’ crimes was originally scheduled for release in September 2025. Its publication was delayed after internal opposition within Amnesty International, with critics reportedly arguing that even a belated acknowledgment of Hamas’s atrocities might benefit Israel in the court of public opinion, particularly given its proximity to ongoing ceasefire negotiations.

Amnesty International presents itself as an impartial humanitarian organization committed to defending all victims of human rights abuses. Yet this episode reveals how internal politics were allowed to override that mandate. Israeli victims were acknowledged only when doing so could be carefully timed and controlled to avoid disrupting a preferred narrative. That selective moral calculus further erodes the organization’s already questionable credibility and claims of impartiality.

Even with the delay, the mere fact that a major human rights organization had finally documented the crimes committed against Israelis should have been newsworthy in its own right.

Instead, many of the same media outlets that rushed to amplify Amnesty’s deeply flawed genocide accusation against Israel have remained conspicuously silent about its report detailing the crimes against humanity Israelis suffered on October 7. The contrast is difficult to ignore – and speaks volumes about which victims are deemed worthy of attention, and which are not.

 

Major outlets, including CNN, the BBC, The Washington Post, and the Associated Press, remained silent on Amnesty International’s new report, despite immediately amplifying its genocide accusation just one year earlier. That disparity exposes how selectively these outlets engage with material from the same organization, elevating claims that fit a preferred narrative while ignoring those that complicate it.

Had the media outlets that so eagerly promoted Amnesty’s deeply flawed genocide report been committed to basic journalistic standards, they would have rigorously examined its distortions and misuse of the term genocide. At the very least, they would have also reported on Amnesty’s documentation of Israeli victims. Their refusal to do so tells a disturbing story: one in which editorial judgment determines not only which stories are told, but which victims are allowed to exist at all.

When human rights organizations and newsrooms decide whose suffering deserves recognition—and when that recognition is granted only if it is politically convenient—they do more than mishandle a single report. They corrode public trust, hollow out the principles they claim to defend, and turn the language of human rights into a tool of selective erasure.

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Image Credit: Noam Galai via Getty Images
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