“Huge numbers of Palestinians need something to eat. Can Israel do more to get them some food?
“It’s as if anything that doesn’t qualify as famine isn’t a problem,” one humanitarian organization official told me. A second aid official said the Israelis in particular talk about such hunger crises as if “it’s a binary — on, off — rather than a sliding scale. It’s a sliding scale.”
Words are among the many tools being weaponized by multiple sides in several ongoing global conflicts. “Famine,” “genocide,” “terrorism,” “antisemitism,” “occupation” and “apartheid” are just some of the terms whose definitions inspire public relations, legal and policy fights.
The war of words is increasingly exhausting and alarming to policymakers and others who deal with humanitarian issues. Several told me they worry the semantics — especially in a conflict such as Gaza — could hurt efforts to save lives or forge peace, including by hardening the positions of people accused of wrongdoing.
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Activists who push to use the term “genocide” often seem to suggest that if any label short of that is used, it means that a group’s suffering doesn’t matter.
This is unfortunate, Malinowski and others say, because other legal terms that could apply, such as “war crimes” or “crimes against humanity,” are still very grave offenses whose perpetrators should be held accountable.
A government’s decision to accuse another country of genocide often comes down to politics.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/07/29/gaza-war-words-political-tools-00481466