On July 25, after a couple of months of debate, the Wikipedia entry “Allegations of genocide in the 2023 Israeli attack on Gaza” was changed to “Gaza genocide.” This was done despite the fact that the International Court of Justice in the Hague has not made an official ruling on the matter, in the wake of South Africa’s petition to the court alleging that Israel is committing or facilitating genocide in Gaza.
The Los Angeles-based Jewish Journal, which followed the Wikipedia discussion and vote, wrote that the editors who voted on this change claimed to be relying on an academic consensus based on statements of experts on genocide, human rights, human rights law and Holocaust historians.
i mean, we could also just not have started referring to it as a genocide, but uh, we jumped the gun there a little bit.
It’s always interesting to me how people will latch on to certain words so aggressively and refuse to cede even minor ground if it requires changing wording.
i mean even referring to it as “likely genocide” would make it like 10x more palatable.