To me, using the word genocide with respect to Israeli actions in Gaza creates a false moral/evil equivalency. Call it mass murder if you want. Charge war crimes where applicable. But don't call it genocide, which is what Hamas, whose charter actually calls for genocide against Jews, wants, and who is sacrificing the citizens of Gaza for their own agenda.

Benjamin Sledge said it best last month. Just call it war. https://medium.com/the-panopticon-publication/the-israel-gaza-conflict-isnt-genocide-it-s-war-bc270354a3fd

A war which I am no longer in favor of. At one point, though with much ambivalence, I was in favor. https://medium.com/illumination-curated/an-ambivalent-essay-no-a-multivalent-essay-on-the-israel-hamas-conflict-11d067aaff12

Equating Israel's actions with genocide renders the word meaningless.

I agree with this NYT column for which I provide all a gift link, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/16/opinion/israel-hamas-war-genocide.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ZE0.uzdA.7KvcVw1g0W8k&smid=url-share

"It’s obscene because it politicizes our understanding of genocide, fatally eroding the moral power of the term. The war between Israel and Hamas is terrible — as is every war. But if this is genocide, what word do we have for the killing fields in Cambodia, Stalin’s Holodomor in Ukraine, the Holocaust itself?

Words that come to mean much more than originally intended eventually come to mean almost nothing at all — a victory for future génocidaires who’d like the world to think there’s no moral or legal difference between one kind of killing and another."