Bald death tolls say nothing of whether or not something fits the statutory definition of genocide. People die in wars. Innocent people die in wars.

Hamas started a war on behalf of all these victims that they could not possibly win. The de facto government refuses to surrender or release hostages. They refuse to wear uniforms. They employ child soldiers. They build tunnels under dense population centers to use the population at large as human shields. They refuse to let their own families evacuate. They pay people to die as “martyrs.” That’s why there are 40,000 out of 5,000,000 Palestinians dead, 0.8%.

That death toll, in these circumstances, is not evidence of genocide, it is actually evidence that Israel is pretty careful and actually not trying to kill civilians. Any other Army in that region of the world would have murdered every man woman and child in Gaza after about the tenth suicide bombing, forty odd years ago. It’s 40,000 out of 5 million in the face of the fact that Israel could easily turn all of Gaza and all of the West Bank into a sheet of glass in three hours, and have not done so. They could have let no food or water into the country, no medicine into the country. But they have not done so. Rather, they have been consistently ramping up their capacity to inspect shipments going into Gaza since the war broke out. They could have not evacuated anyone. They could have not called anyone on the phone, they could have sent zero text messages, instead of the millions and millions of phone calls and texts that they’ve sent. These facts, obviously none of which are reported in the Qatari media you no doubt have been gorging on, fly in the face of your bullshit reasoning.