No, Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza

It may seem harsh to say, but there is a glaring dissonance to the charge that Israel is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip.

- Bret Stephens

To wit: If the Israeli government's intentions and actions are truly genocidal if it is so malevolent that it is committed to the annihilation of Palestinians why hasn't it been more methodical and vastly more deadly? Why not, say, hundreds of thousands of deaths, as opposed to the nearly 60,000 that Gaza's Hamas-run Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatant and civilian deaths, has cited so far in nearly two years of war?

It's not that Israel lacks the capacity to have meted vastly greater destruction than what it has inflicted so far. It is the leading military power of its region, stronger now that it has decimated Hezbollah and humbled Iran. It could have bombed without prior notice, instead of routinely warning Palestinians to evacuate areas it intended to strike. It could have bombed without putting its own soldiers, hundreds of whom have died in combat, at risk.

It isn’t that Israel has been deterred from striking harder by the presence of its hostages in Gaza. Israeli intelligence is said to have a fairly good idea of where those hostages are being held, which is one reason, with tragic exceptions, relatively few have died from Israeli fire. And it knows that, as brutal as the hostages’ captivity has been, Hamas has an interest in keeping them alive.

Nor is it that Israel lacks diplomatic cover. US President Donald Trump has openly envis aged requiring all Palestinians to leave the territory, repeatedly warning that “all hell” would break out in Gaza if Hamas didn’t return the hostages. As for the threat of economic boycotts, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange has been the world’s best-performing major stock index since Oct 7, 2023. With due respect to the risk of Irish boycotts, Israel is not a country facing a fundamental economic threat. If anything, it's the boycotters who stand to suffer.

In short, the first question the anti-Israel genocide chorus needs to answer is: Why isn’t the death count higher?