The Word <em>Genocide</em> Has An Actual Meaning
The present Gaza war, initiated by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, poses important questions about both the morality and laws of war and the language of conflict. People everywhere are having heated conversations involving concepts such as targeting civilians, terrorism, proportionality, and genocide. They deploy these concepts when arguing about broad questions, like whether Hamas’s attacks on civilians are justified resistance, and about narrower ones, like whether a specific Israeli bombing of a refugee camp is justified to kill Hamas leaders and destroy underground tunnels.
To a trained international lawyer, these terms have concrete definitions. At the same time, the terms are also moral concepts, and most people who aren’t trained lawyers use them colloquially rather than legally. The trouble is that the general rhetorical meanings of many of the words don’t match the legal meaning. That leads to the confusion of people talking (or yelling) past one another. It also obscures the primary moral message that underlies the law of armed conflict.
[Michael Ignatieff: Why Israel should obey Geneva even when its enemies do not]
The whole point of international humanitarian law is to establish a minimal morality that can apply even during the terrible and bloody business of war. The rules of conflict in war do not address the underlying question of which side is right. Instead they bracket that question, on the understanding that, in wartime, neither side is going to concede that the other’s cause is worthy. The terms, in other words, are designed to adjudicate what may and may not be done while fighting a war, not whether the war is just. The reason to do this is to protect human life and dignity under conditions of the deepest human disagreement. Using these terms in ways that either differ from or actually
