Words Matter, Especially in Gaza

According to the January 8 Guardian, the New York Times refused to publish an anti-war ad from the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) that referred to Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide.”

The Times followed outgoing President Joe Biden in refusing to accept the genocide label for Israel’s massive bombings in densely populated areas, the targeting of doctors and journalists, and the ethnic cleansing of Gazans through repeated evacuations, and starvation as a war weapon.

Meanwhile, Israel has increasingly justified its scorched earth devastation of the Gaza Strip as a fight against terrorists and terrorism.  On college campuses. pro-Palestinian protestors have faced calls of antisemitism.

Those three oft-used words (genocide, terrorism and antisemitism) warrant examination in the context of Gaza and the U.S. What do those words mean and how are they being used?

Genocide. According to the Genocide Convention of 1948, “genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national. ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. . .”

The major humanitarian aid organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Doctors Without Borders, have in their December 2024 reports strongly accused Israel of genocide. Yet viewers of Democracy Now and readers of the print media would already have discerned ample evidence of genocide from Israel’s stated intent to starve the Palestinians in Gaza, its repeated forced evacuations, and its indiscriminate bombing of civilians.

What we see every day on Democracy Now and in other media are relentless efforts by the IDF to kill or forcibly evacuate the Palestinian population. AFSC is right to call Israel’s war on Gaza genocide. If Joe Biden disagrees, maybe it’s because he could be held complicit in Genocide under the 1948 Convention.

Terrorism.  Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (Eleventh Edition) calls terrorism “violent or destructive acts committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands.” The October 7 Hamas attacks on civilians clearly fall within that wording.  So do the indiscriminate bombing and missile attacks on civilians in Gaza by the Israeli military. Like Hamas terror, state terrorism is also terrorism.  It is even more dangerous because it has the state’s greater military force behind it.

To date, Israeli state terrorism has claimed the lives of almost 46,000 Gazans (mostly women and children), not including those buried in the rubble of ruined buildings, and those who have died from imposed starvation and related disease and cold weather.  Israel’s “right to defend itself” cannot justify the mass killing and vast destruction it has inflicted on innocent civilians. It should not excuse war crimes and acts of terrorism.

Antisemitism. The pro-Israel lobby and some members of Congress have attacked what they call antisemitism in the pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses. Indeed, they have often labeled calls for an arms embargo and chants for a ceasefire “antisemitic.”  Moreover, any criticism of Israel or Zionism is deemed antisemitism by the Israel Lobby.  How far those broad terms stray from the simple dictionary definition!  According to Merriam-Webster’s, antisemitism is “Hostility toward or discrimination against Jews. . . .”  To expand such a definition to embrace larger politically motivated term degrades an established meaning.

One more word calls for definition: complicity. According to the same dictionary cited above, complicity is “Association or participation in or as if in a wrongful act.”  By repeatedly furnishing lethal arms of many types to the IDF, Biden and his associates Blinken and Austin became complicit with Netanyahu and Gallant in their genocidal war on Palestinians in Gaza.

As President Biden leaves office, it is important that his legacy include not only his many domestic achievements, but also his complicity in the Gaza genocide. His unconditional transfers of lethal arms enabled Netanyahu’s relentless and devastating attacks on Palestinians throughout the Gaza Strip. His repeated urgings that the IDF reduce civilian casualties were ignored. U.S. arms have continued to kill and maim.

Genocide, terrorism, antisemitism and complicity: those words matter today in Gaza.

L. Michael Hager is cofounder and former Director General, International Development Law Organization, Rome.