A long way of agreeing with your point, I suppose.
I don't think you could have raised a weaker point.
I actually don't agree with you that "legal definitions" are as hotly debated or that the existence of debate in general negates consensus on specific topics. And I do think one important point with genocide scholarship is regarding muddying the waters with tom-ay-to/to-mah-to approach to definitions. Treating definitions as inherently transient is an important instrument in normalizing cultural acceptance of genocides when they're unfolding in real time, which is why that tactic is targeted by so much scholarly criticism.
Anyway I have no comment on the specific claim being made here, I just really dislike it when discussion is stifled by saying “I’m right and no one can ever disagree”.
I think one strength of the liberal academic tradition is that whether it's philosophy, whether it's law, you get introduced to the "whose to say" archetype early on and get inoculated against it. It's not just that the concepts are well enough established that they're resilient against such skepticism, but even in cases of uncertainty, routine amounts of conceptual uncertainty are not a deal-breaker to investigating and understanding urgent moral issues.
A real argument in the negative would be along the lines of "here's how food truck inspection policies are tied to well-established norms that better explain the outcome of famine than intent to destroy". A not real argument is spontaneous, mid-debate discovery of the transience of linguistic meaning, discovered just in time to skirt the question of genocide.
The trouble with this form of skepticism is it can only ever be hypothesized, never actually consistently embodied by real people. Long before navigating to hacker News, you would look at your computer and be paralyzed by fundamental puzzles like "what is electricity", "what is information", "is there really an external world" and so on. It wouldn't have been discovered mid conversation about genocide.
Rape? Like age of consent being different across regions and time? No nuance? Like how half the planet laughs when a boy gets molested by his attractive teacher and the other half calls it rape?
But here we have UN and other twisting it to fit a situation that clearly weren't meant to be covered by it.
Because if the war in Gaza can be called a genocide so can almost every single other major war!
Also it is absolutely ridiculous to call a war that is started by one side, and one that only that side can end, a genocide against the same side that started it!
The boys that were transported by buses into the woods of Srebrenica and gunned down?
The millions that starved to death in Ukraine during Holodomor?
to use the same word for a war, ome that they can end tomorrow just by uttering a credible claim about wanting to release the hostages?
Because if Gaza is a genocide, then we must also talk about the genocide of the Germans in 1944 and 1945. But for some reason we don't call it a genocide when somebody forces someone else to stop them.
Except when that someone else is Israel.
This fits a broader pattern BTW:
Hamas executes possible the worst sexual terrorism since the rape of Nanking in 1937: not a word about war crimes.
Israel hit a legitimate target hidden in civilian hotspot: waRcRiem!
Surrounding countries have various apartheid laws: nothing to see.
Israel being a democracy where every citizen can vote, be in the government, be a judge in the Supreme Court: apArthEid!
When will people stop and look at the evidence?
What are you talking about? The ICC issued an arrest warrant for war crimes for the Hamas leadership
The world isn't against you, it's against what Israel is doing to Palestine. You don't have to dig your heels in.
Heck, the US Revolutionary war saw the British perpetrated genocide against the Colonists if the military actions following Oct 7 count as a genocide.
75% of those were military deaths, 25% civilian deaths. In Gaza the numbers are switched.
Now I understand that the UN has specific criteria, etc. But the most famous genocide was the systematic execution of millions in gas chambers. This is not akin to that, is what people are arguing.
Anyone who watches Israeli news/media in Hebrew knows that Palestinians are not considered human in the Israeli society. Israel dehumanizes and genocides the Palestinians with the intention of wiping them off the face of the earth.
Here's a letter from 514 verified scholars and legal experts calling on IAGS to retract their resolution, along with their rebuttal of the substance of the resolution:
They have certainly had some interesting members[0].
I encourage you to read more about the term genocide, and then consider the many real and ongoing atrocities happening across Asia and Africa. Investigate how authoritarian regimes—such as the one in Iran—are treating their own people. Only after that should one attempt to draw comparisons to Israel (a rare democracy in the Middle East).
What I see here is either willful ignorance, a refusal to grapple with context, or outright antisemitism.
Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, UN commission of inquiry says https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8641wv0n4go
Gaza: Top independent rights probe alleges Israel committed genocide https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/09/1165856
ICC issues arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant and Hamas commander https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/11/1157286
Israel is a naziesque society through and through.
Also, the ICJ only has jurisdiction when states consent to its authority. And the UN security council can veto any decision. It's essentially a show court.
And again, people endlessly debate what is and isn't rape and murder. Judges and juries make the decision at the end of the day, and people still debate whether their decision was correct. If anything, drawing parallels to murder and rape only serve to highlight how subjective it is.