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Even though they're outlawed and abhorrent, reprisals are still a frequent though unfortunate part of war and occupation. They have happened in many cases without a significant genocidal or ethnic cleansing objective.
True, but they don’t help beat the allegations.
It would be much harder to accuse Israel of genocide if they studiously avoided anything that hit the general populace. Water, power, etc.
But of course that would come at some cost in Israeli lives. Understandably not popular in Israel.
It didn’t help them in previous wars. No matter what Israel did to avoid casualties, it either wasn’t enough, or it was considered evil. I think this is why they’ve been so gloves off this time. The gloves are pointless, as any sort of fighting back is demonized as apartheid or genocide. So, rather than risk their soldiers to prevent such war crimes, just go for it.
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I really don't think it would. I would describe their current conduct as studiously avoiding the general populace, but the nature of the place of combat means even an 'A' student is going to kill or injure a ton of "civilians" (a term I hesitate to use when the population has elected Hamas, and the only people who would have a chance if another election were held were people calling Hamas too soft on killing Jews).
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Sure, and then they couldn't hit Hamas. This is the same Hamas that builds command centers under hospitals, then accuses Israel of war crimes when said command center gets bombed. Anyway, the various violations Israel is accused of are typically either nonsense (that is, there's no such rule in international law) or they are violations of treaties Israel has not agreed to, such as Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Convention.
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I would say that Israel is not treated quite fairly here. Russia is way more indifferent to civilian casualties, they hammer the energy infrastructure of ukraine more, blew up a fucking dam and so on. And yet no one is seriously accusing them of being genocidal.
Israel decided instead of doing the fast, cheap and easy way - cover from end to end with napalm and throw a match, to actually put their men in street and urban fights. And also why no is accusing Egypt of starving Gaza when there is another border there. And in theory this is Egypt territory. And they didn't just throw some dry ice or lpg in the tunnels. Now probably not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because they care of PR and anyway they are paying the price of a genocide anyway.
I think "no one" is excluding a lot here: the governments of several NATO member states have made such claims, and the ICC (which admittedly isn't held in the highest esteem everywhere) has issued arrest warrants for Russian leaders on genocide or genocide-adjacent charges.
I'm not suggesting you have to agree with those descriptions, but I think it falls well short of "no one."
Probably I didn't phrase it well. Because those are performative pearl cluthing mostly. I don't believe that anyone smart and informed sincerely believes Putin wants or is committing genocide.
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Ukraine's population is 20x the size of the population of Gaza, but the civilian death toll in Ukraine is 3x lower.
So on a per capita basis, Gazan's are dying at a per capita rate of ~42x higher. My incredibly rough math has 1 civilian death per 3,158 Ukrainian citizens (using 2022 population) versus 1 death per 74 Gazans.
Couple of orders of magnitude there.
What’s the civilian death rate in Bakhmut/mariopol/etc? Ukraine’s land area is pretty big, and life in Gaza and life in bakhmut or chernihiv might be a one to one comparison but live in lviv definitely isn’t.
Also, as I understand it, the government of Ukraine doesn't make it a deliberate tactic to hope their own population gets killed so they can get PR wins which bring international pressure on their behalf.
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