The UN called it genocide in Gaza. Will Western journalists dare to?

Words are not enough, but they build the foundation of our shared reality. For almost two years, Palestinian journalists have been documenting our own destruction and broadcasting it to the world. 

We have shown you everything; people burning alive in tents. We have shown journalists targeted in front of live cameras. We have watched Wael Al-Dahdouh learn that israel had killed his family while he was still reporting live on television. We heard the trembling voice of a little girl, Hind Rajab, trapped inside a car, pleading for help in front of the entire world. No one came. Days later we learned israel killed her with 355 bullets. We have shown you everything. 

We have carried the burden of presenting you every piece of evidence there is. And still the world struggles to use the one word that accurately describes it: genocide.

Even when all that is required are words, many still fail to use them.

By now, you should wake up to the consequences of your failed journalistic integrity. For two years, while Gaza bled in front of your screens, so many of you chose words that buried the truth. You spoke of “conflict,” of “escalation,” of “humanitarian crisis,” but rarely of genocide. You avoided the word as though using it would compromise your neutrality, when in reality avoiding it compromised your integrity. Every time you hesitated to name what you saw, you gave cover to those who wanted the world to believe that Gaza’s destruction was anything but deliberate.

“The Commission finds that Israel is responsible for the commission of genocide in Gaza,” said United Nations Commission chair Navi Pillay.

Now that the United Nations has declared it a genocide, will you finally call things as they are? 

When you call it an “Israel-Hamas war,” I have to ask: if this were truly a war between israel and Hamas, then why are children being deliberately starved to death? What hurts me even more is that I, like so many others, keep mentioning the children as if their innocence is the only way to humanise us and appeal to the world’s conscience . Yes, children are the most innocent, but so are their parents. None of them deserve this. Gaza deserves better.

You know that language matters. Using ”sad” instead of “frustrated” is a choice of tone. But using “conflict” instead of “genocide” is not just tone, it is distortion. Journalists are not “dying”, they are being “killed”. Language is enabling this genocide. It is distorting  the reality of what Palestinians are living and dying through. It is shifting the narrative so that the world sees deliberate extermination as something less severe, something that does not demand urgent action.

English is my second language. I remember in grade five learning about the word “conflict.” That was how the word was taught to me. But the word “genocide”, I never learned from school — not in Arabic and not in English. I only learned it in Gaza, not from a book but from reality.

It means bombing homes and high-rises until families vanish, erasing schools and universities from existence, burning people alive, starving children and babies to death, trapping more than two million people inside a 365 km² strip and then telling them to evacuate from one place to another, while bombing every corner so that nowhere is safe. 

This is the definition of genocide. And israel has put it on display so clearly and loudly for the world to see. 

Yet for nearly two years, the world debated the word. They debated whether what was happening in Gaza “qualified” as genocide, as though the killing of entire families, the starvation of children, and the erasure of a people needed further proof. Now, finally, the United Nations has called it what Palestinians have been saying from the beginning: genocide.

Every genocide scholar, international law expert and even U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, in an op-ed titled “It is a genocide”, said: “Many legal experts have now concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.” But did it really require a legal expert to recognize that killing babies is not self-defense? Did the world truly need months of studies and commissions while Gaza buried its children in plastic bags?

Chris Sidoti, Australian expert on international human rights law, and a former Human Rights Commissioner, said some reports in the media are credible, and some are incredible. Francesca Albanese, an UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories, has said the Western media is complicit in the genocide.

Francesca Albanese also notes that 252 journalists have been killed by israel since Oct. 7, 2023.  That will almost certainly rise, because every week brings news of more killings. The only reason we are still seeing news from Gaza is because of Palestinian journalists, but many of these journalists have been deliberately targeted because of the work they do to expose the atrocities, the crimes, and the genocide on the ground. 

A report by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs’ Costs of War project states that more journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since October 2023 than in the U.S. Civil War, both World Wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the wars in Yugoslavia, and the war in Afghanistan combined.

It’s devastating that while Palestinians in Gaza are getting genocided, journalists in the West continue discussing whether it is a genocide or not. You must remember that all the footage and reporting the media channels broadcast only exists because of Palestinian journalists’ sacrifice. 

The debate is over. To continue hesitating is to actively enable the perpetrators, who rely on semantic confusion to avoid accountability.

The very least Western journalists can do is honor the voices and sacrifices of Palestinian journalists by telling the truth without bias. Do not manipulate it. Do not twist it and do not look away. 

if the truth costs Palestinian journalists their lives, what excuse remains for refusing to call this genocide by its name?

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Plestia Alaqad is an award-winning author and journalist.

This piece was edited by James Salanga. Copy edits by Jen Ramos Eisen.

Editor’s note: Throughout this piece, the word israel is written in lowercase. This is a purposeful choice made by the author, following a tradition of writers lowercasing state names (such as america or britain) to question, critique, or resist state power. We included this note to clarify this stance’s roots in broader practices of linguistic resistance.