There is a number. If the casualties were above 200,000 it would certainly make the case for a genocide much stronger. That's a high civilian to combatant casualty ratio. Hamas has an estimated 30-40K fighters. Numbers like that would mean a 10:1 civilian to combatant ratio which is high for a modern war. Higher than WWII[1], Vietnam, Iraq[2], etc. I'd at least have to admit Israel is prosecuting the war in a very cavalier way in regards to the lives of civilians.

The Iraq war, for example, had a roughly 3:1 ratio of civilians to combatants killed.[2]

If we take the Gazan Health Ministry numbers of 60k casualties of which Israel claims about 23K were Hamas fighters (neither number can be trusted at face value, but it gives us a starting point) then we see a ratio of 2:1. Which is pretty normal for war. Given how densely populated and urban Gaza is, how Hamas uses civilians as human shields, it's actually miraculously low. Not downplaying how horrible it is that so many people have died, but it could be much worse.

You could say the Hamas-run Gazan Health Ministry is understating the numbers, but it'd be hard to make a case for more than 80K[3]. You could say Israel has over stated how many Hamas fighters it has killed, but independant intelligence assessments estimate about 15K. If you take the absolute worst case estimate, it's 5:1, which is about the same as Myanamr, worse than Iraq, but better than Chechnya.

There's no way to twist that into a case for genocide. It doesn't fit. Lets look at what civilian to combatant ratio looks like in genocides:

Rwandan Genocide - 80 : 1

Armenian Genocide - 1000 : 1

Bosnian Genocide - 50 : 1

Yazidi Genocide by ISIS - 1000 : 1

Holocaust - 1000 : 1

It's clearly a war, not a genocide.

- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

- [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

- [3] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02009-8