E.G.

Bret Stephens says:

[T]here is a glaring dissonance to the charge that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. To wit: If the Israeli government’s intentions and actions are truly genocidal—if it is so malevolent that it is committed to the annihilation of Gazans—why hasn’t it been more methodical and vastly more deadly? Why not, say, hundreds of thousands of deaths, as opposed to the nearly 60,000 that Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatant and civilian deaths, has cited so far in nearly two years of war?

And:

[Israel] could have bombed without prior notice, instead of routinely warning Gazans to evacuate areas it intended to strike. It could have bombed without putting its own soldiers, hundreds of whom have died in combat, at risk.

The death count in Gaza is lower than it could have been, Stephens says, because

Israel is manifestly not committing genocide, a legally specific and morally freighted term that is defined by the United Nations convention on genocide as the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”

***

I suppose Stephens's reasoning can be represented like this:

The effectiveness defense of Israel against the charge of genocide
(1) Israel is committing genocide only if it intends to destroy the Palestinians as such. [From the UN definition of genocide.]
(2) The most effective way to destroy the Palestinians as such would be to kill as many Palestinians as possible, as quickly as possible. And Israel knows this. [This is supposed to be obvious, and it is.]
(3) Agents Act Effectively: In general, when any given agent intends to accomplish a goal G, if that agent knows that the most effective way to accomplish G is to φ, then that agent will φ.
(4) So, if Israel intended to destroy the Palestinians as such, then it would be killing as many Palestinians as possible, as quickly as possible. (From 2 & 3.)
(5) So, Israel is committing genocide only if it is killing as many Palestinians as possible, as quickly as possible. (From 1 & 4.)
(6) But Israel isn't killing as many Palestinians as possible, as quickly as possible. [This is supposed to be obvious, and it is.]
(7) So, Israel isn't committing genocide. (From 5 & 6.)

The main problem with the argument is its third premise: Agents Act Effectively. I'll mention two of the reasons why we should reject that premise.

***

Suppose you want to murder someone, and you can see only two ways to accomplish this goal. You can sneak poison into their coffee, or you can approach them on their way to work in the morning and shoot them in broad daylight. Let's say that the poison method has a relatively low chance of working (as your target has a strong constitution) whereas the shooting method is almost certain to work. So the shooting method is more effective than the poison method. And suppose you know all of this.

But suppose that killing this person is not your only goal. Suppose you also hope to be able to get away with it. And suppose you're more likely to get away with it if you use the poison method than if you use the shooting method. In this situation, you might then be expected to choose the poison method, even though you know it is less effective.

The point: When agents have multiple goals and priorities, they may choose less effective ways of pursuing some goals in order to more effectively pursue others.

***

Suppose that S has been found bludgeoned to death in their home. You are accused of committing the crime.

At your trial, you produce evidence from your cell phone's GPS tracker. The evidence from the tracker conclusively shows that you did visit S's home on the night they were bludgeoned to death. But you took a very inefficient route from your home to theirs. Specifically, the tracker shows that, in late evening, you began walking in the direction of S's house, and you got halfway there, but then you began walking back home again. Then you abruptly turned around again, and headed toward S's house. Then you walked past S's house and walked around the block a few times. And so on. You finally did reach S's house in the end, but only after a lot of wandering.

You argue that this GPS evidence shows that you had no intention of killing S on the night in question. You say that, if you did have such an intention, you would have gone straight to S's house. You would not have taken such a long and winding route.

This argument is not likely to be very persuasive. To explain the inefficient circuitousness of your route to S's house, the prosecution might propose that you seem to have been of two (or more) minds about killing S. Such internal conflict could straightforwardly explain why you did not go directly to S's house. And such an explanation is fully consistent with the hypothesis that you did intend to kill S, and that in the end you did carry out this intention.

***

The cases I've given here illustrate that agents do not always pursue their goals with maximum effectiveness. This can happen in cases where an agent is balancing multiple goals, and can also happen when an agent is experiencing internal conflict about their goals. There are many other sorts of cases, too, where agents behave intentionally but ineffectively.

None of this shows that Israel is committing genocide, but I think it does show that Stephens's defense of Israel against the charge of genocide is not very persuasive.

It could be that Israel, as a collective agent, is either balancing multiple goals, or is experiencing internal conflict about whether or how to pursue its goals. In either case, the fact that Israel is not committing genocide with maximum effectiveness might be consistent with the charge that Israel is nevertheless committing genocide.