https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/magazine\/2025\/07\/29\/gaza-war-words-political-tools-00481466<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“Huge numbers of Palestinians need something to eat. Can Israel do more to get them some food?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s as if anything that doesn\u2019t qualify as famine isn\u2019t a problem,\u201d one humanitarian organization official told me. A second aid official said the Israelis in particular talk about such hunger crises as if \u201cit\u2019s a binary \u2014 on, off \u2014 rather than a sliding scale. It\u2019s a sliding scale.\u201d<\/p>\n
Words are among the many tools being weaponized by multiple sides in several ongoing global conflicts. \u201cFamine,\u201d \u201cgenocide,\u201d \u201cterrorism,\u201d \u201cantisemitism,\u201d \u201coccupation\u201d and \u201capartheid\u201d are just some of the terms whose definitions inspire public relations, legal and policy fights.<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 especially in a conflict such as Gaza \u2014 could hurt efforts to save lives or forge peace, including by hardening the positions of people accused of wrongdoing.<\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
Activists who push to use the term \u201cgenocide\u201d often seem to suggest that if any label short of that is used, it means that a group\u2019s suffering doesn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n
This is unfortunate, Malinowski and others say, because other legal terms that could apply, such as \u201cwar crimes\u201d or \u201ccrimes against humanity,\u201d are still very grave offenses whose perpetrators should be held accountable.<\/p>\n
A government\u2019s decision to accuse another country of genocide often comes down to politics.” <\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/magazine\/2025\/07\/29\/gaza-war-words-political-tools-00481466<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1416,1535,552,53,1302,194,992,391,389,108,115,158,1132],"class_list":["post-18968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-atrocity","tag-civilians","tag-conflict","tag-deaths","tag-gaza","tag-israel","tag-language","tag-middle-east","tag-palestine","tag-terrorism","tag-terrorists","tag-war","tag-war-crimes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18968"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18969,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18968\/revisions\/18969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}