There is no Israeli Genocide in Gaza. There Just Isn’t.

How we use terms matters. Our use, over time, impacts the meaning of words and phrases. Years ago, when we saw the term “Breaking News” on our TV screens, we assume something monumental was happening. The President had been shot. They found missiles in Cuba. The Berlin Wall was falling.

Now, “Breaking News” is just as likely to mean that a truck filled with “peeps” is stalled on the Ohio Turnpike, or a professional basketball player is “considering” retirement. Or, my personal favorite, that the unemployment numbers released 3 days ago are indeed still the unemployment numbers that were released 3 days ago. Put simply, by using the term “Breaking News” for occurrences that are neither breaking nor news, we have cheapened the term so much as to render it meaningless.

The problem is that some terms are so weighty, so significant, so descriptive and consequential that it becomes critical that they retain their original meaning, as opposed to a watered-down version that could describe anything, and thus end up describing nothing.

Dilution of the language is a particular risk in the context of the current war in the Middle East. Those who are not on Israel’s side in their conflict with Hamas stretch hard to use the most impactful and ugly terms they can to depict Israel as a state or Israel’s conduct of…