Pay Attention to the War of the Words in Gaza

As aid groups and others warned in recent days that Palestinians in Gaza face widespread starvation, Israeli officials determined to downplay the crisis have fought back by focusing on labels.

As one Israeli spokesperson put it last week: "There is no famine in Gaza. There is a famine of the truth." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stirred global fury further Monday when he declared, “There is no starvation in Gaza, no policy of starvation in Gaza.”

Such commentary is enraging humanitarian workers. Yes, they say, international monitors have not yet classified the situation as a “famine,” though they appear close to declaring that complex technical definition has been met. They also acknowledge that Israel may not be deliberately trying to starve every Palestinian in Gaza.

But right now, the words are irrelevant. 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.

Another potential consequence: If certain terms are used too much, they lose their power.

"The more they're used, the more advocates for a particular cause demand that they be used to describe the injustice that they are opposed to, and the use of the word becomes a litmus test of whether you care about that problem," said Tom Malinowski, a former Democratic House member who served as assistant secretary of State for human rights during the Obama administration.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has seen an unusual number of battles over many of the words I mentioned above since Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, and sparking an Israeli retaliation that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.

That has had consequences for policymaking.

Under President Joe Biden, when the U.N. and partner agencies appeared close to declaring a famine had taken hold in Gaza, the U.S. officials who wanted to push Israel to limit its attacks and let in more humanitarian aid would get the edge in the debate, two former U.S. officials familiar with the conversations told me.

The new pressure on Israel would work, and more food would reach Palestinians. But it meant there was no famine declaration. That then gave the upper hand in the debate to more hawkish U.S. officials, who used the absence of the “famine” label to argue for going easier on the Israelis. The cycle would then repeat itself, the former officials said.

I granted anonymity to many of the people I spoke to so they could be candid about sensitive deliberations and because, in some cases, they need to keep good relations with various governments involved in conflicts.

The use of the word “genocide” in the Gaza conflict has been especially fraught.

Almost since the start of the war, pro-Palestinian activists have accused Israel of committing genocide against the people in Gaza. In the many months since, even some genocide scholars have come to the same conclusion. This week, two Israeli human rights groups made the same allegation.

“Genocide” is a legal concept defined by international agreements and, in some countries, national laws. It is generally considered the gravest offense humans can commit against other humans. The intent of an accused perpetrator is a critical factor taken into consideration when jurists try to determine if a genocide took place, and traditionally, the bar has been high for groups to be labeled as victims of genocide.

In recent years, however, many groups who have suffered atrocities have laid claim to that word. They include the victims of the Islamic State, the Uyghurs in China, and the Rohingya of Myanmar. Some Ukrainians have alleged Russia is pursuing genocide against them, while Russia counters that Kyiv has engaged in genocide against Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine.

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.

Israel has far broader, deeper support in Washington than countries such as Myanmar or China. It also bears the history of the genocide of the Holocaust, one reason Israeli leaders are infuriated at growing claims that they are waging genocide against the Palestinians.

Israeli leaders argue that Hamas’ desire to wipe out Israel is itself an attempt at genocide of the Jewish people. Israel also says it is not deliberately attacking the Palestinian people as a whole. But that becomes harder to argue when civilians are dying both from hunger and what critics say is excessive use of force.

Biden administration officials never seriously grappled in any formal sense with the question of whether Israel was committing genocide. Several told me, however, that the public debate over that word was counterproductive to their efforts to stop the war in Gaza.

Not only were the Israelis deeply offended by such allegations, but Hamas, too, was already latching onto far-lesser U.S. criticism of Israel as a reason to harden its position in ceasefire talks.

Many people who worked for the Biden administration grew deeply skeptical of activists who loosely used the term “genocide,” especially in the early days of the war.

“You have a large chunk of the American Jewish community who does not like what is happening in Gaza and wants it to end, but the second you call it genocide, they get their backs up, because they rightfully believe that comparisons to the Holocaust are unfair,” said Ilan Goldenberg, a former Biden official now with J Street, the left-leaning pro-Israel group.

Like many others I spoke to, Goldenberg agreed that perpetrators of atrocities must face justice. Still, he argued that “accountability needs to be a long-term process. The short-term process needs to be ending the horror.”

The latest horror in Gaza revolves around the severe shortage of food caused in part by Israeli restrictions on aid into the territory. After days of growing international outrage, Israel has begun easing some of those limits. Yet, it’s not clear how long it will take for the situation to stabilize, or whether Israel might change its mind.

In insisting that there is no “famine,” Israel has been technically correct. There’s been no formal declaration of famine in Gaza, although the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification — the leading international body that makes such a determination — released a statement Tuesday that suggested the conditions for a famine were being met and a declaration could come soon.

I’ve been surprised by how careful humanitarian officials recently have been about not deploying the word “famine,” using terms such as “mass starvation” instead. Still, starvation can be a charged word if the accusation is that it’s imposed deliberately. Using starvation as a method of war is prohibited by international law, and perhaps that’s why Netanyahu is waving away that term.

Overall, Israeli officials’ dismissal of the labels strikes many humanitarian leaders as an attempt to confuse the ordinary public who may not understand what it means to have a famine or how starvation is measured.

“Famine” is a technical term; one of the many data points that can lead to its declaration involves measuring the size and weight of children. Many aid leaders say it’s important to warn in advance of the potential of famine because by the time it is declared, the crisis is so grave that irreparable physical damage has been done to a population. Others worry that aid groups’ use of the word in recent years has had a downside because when famine is averted, people come to believe that the warnings were overblown.

“We don’t have a great vocabulary for characterizing things that are kind of one step short of that really awful situation,” the second aid official told me. “The hard thing for our community is you do want to be able to warn when a bad thing is about to happen.”

One of the former U.S. officials, looking back at the Biden administration’s approach, said the debate over “famine” was “surreal and a distraction.” “The reality was people were hungry and needed food now,” the former U.S. official said.

And that’s the ultimate point, the people I interviewed stressed.

Determining exactly what phase of a crisis you’re at or whether international law is being violated is important, but if you’re at the stage where that’s what you’re arguing about, maybe you should focus more on solutions to the urgent crisis right in front of you.