At the same time, I just think we have this habit as a society of creating a charged label, and then using these charged labels to argue against our political opponents as a way to brand them as illegitimate, dangerous or beyond the bounds of acceptable debate.
Some examples of this is how the terrorism label became a charged label after 9/11 and was used to delegimatize all kinds or protest or political organizing, or how we have expanded the definition of racism beyond overt racism to systemic racism, which many democrats used to label every major republican a racist and casts arguments about policy as a form of personally being a bigot.
By recognizing that people we disagree with are not the second coming of hitler or bin Laden, we make space for constructive debate and real solutions instead of shutting down debate, viewing people we disagree with as pure evil and not addressing the root causes.
And, yes, I will absolutely give you that Israel had a right to respond to October 7. But they have gone beyond all proportionality and that's why people have gone from talking about this as a just war, to talking about it being a genocide.
When all the leading scholars of Genocide call it a Genocide, when the UN declares it's a Genocide, it's a Genocide.
And BTW, GAZA did not declare war on Israel. Hamas committed a terrorist act against Israel but Israel's response kills all Gazans indiscriminately. Which is collective punishment, also a war crime.
The wording "in part" was intended to capture situations where the group is attacked within the area where the perpetrator exercises power or control. For example, the Nazis couldn't exterminate Jews everywhere, but they targeted those within occupied Europe, where they exercised control.
Israel is specifically targeting Gaza in response to acts of war perpetrated by the Gazan government, Hamas. Hamas has refused to surrender, continued to fight, and the war continues. Palestinians who are citizens of Israel or part of the West Bank are not being targeted thus the war is clearly not targeting Palestinians because of their identity.
You can't start a war and then hide behind your identity and claim it's a genocide.