If you are expecting to read my usual Left Coast column, I tell you now that you will be disappointed. I write, today, from a place of horror—about the massacre unleashed against civilians in Israel this past week, and about the morally cretinous bloodlust reaction some who fashion themselves as being on the “left” seem to have experienced in its aftermath, but also in despair at the ghastly collective punishments being unleashed from the air on Gaza residents by Netanyahu’s far-right government and the Israeli military.
Genocide doesn’t require the absolute eradication to the last molecule either; the destruction of a national group through mass killing is genocide.
Which is exactly what you describe: destroy Israel by first killing lots of settlers and then destroy the Israeli national identity by making everyone Palestinian.
… so this conversation has made me realize “genocide” is an imprecise word. Israel committing genocide means mass killing and then expulsion of all Palestinians to the last child. Hamas committing “genocide” means protracted warfare where a huge number of reservists and bystanders die and then a reconciliation process afterwards where Israel’s state is dismantled. Calling that “genocide” is technically correct and doesn’t really match what Israel wants to do at all, and I don’t know what to do about that.