The 180k number people cite includes deaths from starvation, disease and other causes that can be attributed to secondary effects of the military campaign.
You do remember what event kicked off this military campaign just over a year ago, right? The blockade is part of the effort to press Hamas into releasing the remaining hostages. If the bulk of the deaths are due to starvation and disease stemming from the blockade, then the culpability of this "genocide" lies with Hamas.
Israel saying "we're going to kill and starve civilians until you give us what we want" does not make Hamas responsible for the civilian deaths any more than Hamas saying "we did October 7th and we'll do another unless you stop occupying us" makes Israel responsible for the murders perpetrated on that night.
If someone kidnaps people and holds them hostage in a building, it's totally within the realm of reasonable response for the police to surround and isolate the building. If one of the kidnappers does of dehydration during the standoff, the police did not kill him. His own stubbornness and refusal to surrender is what killed him.
Agreed. But if the police then go and bomb the kidnappers's family homes, it's the police who are responsible for all those dead families, not the kidnappers.
Ok, now imagine the kidnappers escape with the hostages, and hole up in their family homes. The family members will answer the phone and they insist they are totally 100% innocent: they haven’t seen their scumbag kidnapper uncle in years! The family sure doesn’t seem to be very cooperative in helping authorities apprehend their uncle though…
Are you suggesting that this then makes it ok to bomb the family home, killing women, children, unknowing neighbours, and the hostage together? And that it's entirely the kidnapper's fault when this happens?
If so, I certainly wouldn't want to meet the gods that approve of such a thing, if any existed.
then the culpability of this "genocide" lies with Hamas.
And that is a perfectly reasonable argument to make. There are lots of valid arguments for why Israel isn't committing genocide on the Palestinians. Irrelevant population graphs that don't cover the timespan in question are absolutely not one of them.
