> This kinda talking points get muddy when said militants (more like suspected militants) were target specifically when they arrived home with their families.

You're right. And absent further context, I'd consider that to be a war crime. However, there's very little evidence that that is happening - afaik it was one article, which quoted a couple of people in the intelligence units without a clear understanding of their exact position. For all we know, they are junior analysts who don't have the full context.

> Besides that, all the talking about Israel not targeting civilians, being interested in protecting civilians, and not deliberately holding back help all of these are Israel talking points; so conceding authority is crazy, not because we are talking about any specific country, but because we are taking at face value statements of an interested party.

This is kind of true. However, worth noting a few things:

1. Many of these points are backed up by the US. Not all - the US also criticizes some of Israel's actions (as do I). But this only gives it more credibility in the cases where it backs up Israel. Other countries do so as well, and as I pointed out elsewhere, IIRC multiple democracies denounced the ICJ case of genocide against Israel (with multiple autocracies backing it - I certainly know which conclusion I draw from this).

2. Israel is a democracy with a free press. Hence articles like the one about targeting militant's families. There are some very leftist organizations in Israel, and multiple leftist newspapers/journalists. Investigating in real time in a war zone is hard, but most information is eventually discovered and revealed, often by Israeli journalists themselves.

That's paradoxically why democracies sometimes "look worse" compared to autocracies, but also why I trust that many abuses/crimes do eventually get discovered.

3. Everything negative we know is also something we take at face value from an interested party - Hamas itself. This includes the total number of casualties, and some semblance of what is the split between civilians vs militants (though they don't actually provide the number of militants killed).

These numbers are far harder to verify, because Hamas can just make things up and no one really holds them accountable. Again, paradox of autocracies vs democracies.

(That's not to say I think everything is made up or anything - there are obviously tragedies as evidenced by many individual accounts of terrible deaths, including of many civilians!)

> You might be right, there might not be any ill intent from Israel, yet you cannot argue that the conclusion that a genocide is happening is baseless.

Even taking the Hamas death toll numbers totally at face value, and likewise taking Israel's estimates of militants killed also at face value, we can compare the rate of civilian deaths in Gaza vs. in other similar wars fought by the West. And the rates in Gaza are fairly in line with e.g. US war against ISIS in Urban combat. And the situation in Gaza is far harder, as attested by most military experts, because Hamas has had 20 years of rule to entrench themselves in the civilian population.

I think any honest look at the numbers shows that there isn't anything to actually justify calls of genocide, unless you also call the US actions in Iraq/Afghanistan, or the fight against ISIS, also genocide. If you do - ok, that's at least consistent, but I think that's actively misusing that word.

If we just look at the number of dead in most conflicts - they're orders of magnitude more than killed in Gaza. (Obvious tragic exmaple being the Syrian civil war, in which iirc 600k civilians were killed, but also again, Iraq/Afghanistan war in which 150k civilians were killed.)

(And let me caveat this - all human lives lost are tragedies. Even Hamas militants and IDF soldiers are tragic losses, mostly young people thrown into this situation by circumstance.

I only talk about this in terms of broad numbers because that's necessary for understanding this war compared to similar wars, which is the only valid yardstick for what is happening.)