(AP) The largest professional organization of scholars studying genocide said Monday that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

The determination by the International Association of Genocide Scholars — which has around 500 members worldwide, including a number of Holocaust experts — could serve to further isolate Israel in global public opinion and adds to a growing chorus of organizations that have used the term for Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Israel rejects the accusation and called the resolution an “embarrassment to the legal profession.”

“Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide,” according to group’s resolution, which was supported by 86% of those who voted.

The organization did not release the specifics of the voting.

“People who are experts in the study of genocide can see this situation for what it is,” Melanie O’Brien, the organization’s president and a professor of international law at the University of Western Australia, told The Associated Press.

In the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that sparked the war, Hamas-led terrorists killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251. Forty-eight hostages remain in Gaza, around 20 of whom Israel believes are alive.

The scholars’ resolution accused Israel of crimes including “indiscriminate and deliberate attacks against the civilians and civilian infrastructure” in Gaza and called on Israel to “ immediately cease all acts that constitute genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in Gaza.”

It begins with an acknowledgment that Hamas’ attack “constitutes international crimes.”

Genocide was codified in a 1948 convention drawn up after the horrors of the Holocaust that defines it as acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

The U.N. and many Western countries have said only a court can rule on whether the crime has been committed. A case against Israel is before the U.N.’s highest court.

Israel — founded in part as a refuge in the wake of the Holocaust, when some 6 million European Jews were murdered — vehemently denied it is committing genocide.

“The IAGS has set a historic precedent — for the first time, ‘Genocide Scholars’ accuse the very victim of genocide — despite Hamas’s attempted genocide against the Jewish people,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “Disgraceful.”

Israel says Hamas is prolonging the war by not surrendering and releasing the hostages. In recent days, it began the initial stages of a new offensive and declared Gaza City a combat zone