Coming from Christianity, where fundamentalists claim that the Bible must be taken as the literal word of God with no room for interpretation, it does occur to one that Judaism's Orthodox Fundamentalists might be taking the same approach to the Torah.
If they do, Yahweh's direct commands of "herem" i.e. the genocide of the inhabitants of the promised land in the books of Deuteronomy (20:16-18) and Joshua (6:21) and 1 Samuel (15:3) create the shocking possibility that conservative Israeli's might take such archaic commands literally. The genocidal conduct of the Israeli war on Gaza might suggest that conservative Israeli's are following this command from Yaweh in the Torah.
Rabbi Ishai Held in his powerful recent book, Judaism is about Love, very honestly examines the genocidal passages in the books of Deuteronomy (20:16-18) and Joshua (6:21) and admits that they create a problem for Jewish Torah scholarship because it would be unthinkable that Yaweh would have issued such blatant commands against life (p.291). Looking for an alternative explanation, Rabbi Held suggests the passages might be hyperbolic literary exaggeration (p.296) to warn the Israelites that Yaweh strongly condemned the widespread abhorrent practices of those conquered populations which included human sacrifice (it is interesting to note that the story of the command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac to Yaweh could be related to a time when Israel was beginning to oppose such practices).
In support of this hypothesis, Rabbi Held mentions that according to archeological and historical evidence, the "herem - curse of destruction" apparently was not generally implemented in the conquest of the promised land. Explicitly in the book of Joshua only Jericho, Ai, and Hazor suffered "herem" (pp.291-292). Rabbi Held admits that the "herem - curse of destruction" being such an extreme hyperbole, makes it difficult to argue against current strict literal interpretations. (PDF Chapter 13 The God of Judaism is a God of Love).
After the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas, Nir Avishai Cohen of the Israeli Army was called back to Israel to participate in the invasion of Gaza. He published an article in the New York Times giving his disagreement with the current ultra conservative government of Israel that created the conditions for such a crisis under the hidden intention of wiping out Palestinian territories (Nir Avishai Cohen, I.D.F.Brigade Operations Command Officer).
Thomas Friedman, published his overview of the current Gaza war on 6-18-2024 in an article in the New York Times (Thomas Friedman 6-18-2024 overview on the War in Gaza). In this article Friedman condemns the current policies of the conservative faction of the Israeli government that set up the opportunity for and then led the country into the current war path.