Bret Stephens: ‘No, Israel Is Not Committing Genocide in Gaza’

From Bret Stephens’s article in the New York Times:

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

Read the whole article here.