[FlamesAddiction]

The 1948 Genocide Convention defines the crime of genocide as intending to destroy a group in whole or in part, because of their nationality, ethnicity, race or religion. I don't think there is any evidence on the surface that Israel is targeting Hamas in Gaza for those reasons. If they wanted to genocide Arabs or Muslims, they would have started with the 20-25% that make up Israel's current population. Israel wants to destroy Hamas, not because of their race, nationality, ethnicity or religion, but because of their actions for the past few decades.

Using the relatively recent cases of the 1990s Balkan wars, all three of the main belligerents filed genocide cases at the ICJ, and while all three had actors convicted of war crimes and massacres, several were also charged and acquitted because while high collateral damage and death are tragic and sad, they aren't always war crimes. Only one of the cases was declared a genocide by definition - the case of Serbs committing genocide against Bosniak Muslims at Srebenica. In that case, you had evidence of people on the ground physically separating people based on their religion, and you also had high up government officials like Alexander Vucic (the same guy who is currently the president of Serbia), saying right on live television, that for every Serb killed, they would kill 100 Muslims. I don't think Israeli officials have done or said anything like that. People can debate the proportionality of the response and whether the collateral damage is within acceptable parameters, and it is fair to debate that. Genocide is a different thing altogether and there is a high threshold to prove it based on the Genocide Convention definition. Then again, I don't expect Israel to get a fair shake at the ICJ.