South Africa has taken Israel to the International Court of Justice, accusing it of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and 12 other countries have backed the case.
“Genocide” is a legal term that has been increasingly used to describe what Israel is doing in Gaza as it kills more people, a figure approaching 40,000.
What other terms have been used to describe what is happening in Gaza??
Genocide, killing a people
Genocide is the “deliberate killing of large numbers of persons belonging to a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.”
It was coined by Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin – “geno,” the Greek word for race or tribe, and “-cide,” Latin for kill – to describe the Nazi murder of Jews and other groups during the Holocaust.
The term “genocide” appeared early in this war: in October, more than 800 academics signed a letter warning of a “potential genocide in Gaza.”
In a March report, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Francesca Albanese, said there were “reasons to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide has been reached…”
Analysts and human rights observers point to statements by senior Israeli officials, as well as soldiers fighting in Gaza, calling for the destruction of Gaza and the displacement of its population.
Urbicide, killing a city
Coined in the 1960s, the term urbicide describes the deliberate destruction of a city and became widely used in the wake of the Serbian siege of Sarajevo between 1992 and 1996.
The Russian attacks on Grozny, Chechnya in 2001, Israel's destruction of the southern suburbs of Beirut in 2006, the destruction of the Syrian cities of Homs and eastern Aleppo by Bashar al-Assad's government between 2012 and 2017, the ISIS campaign in Mosul, Iraq, and Russia's attacks on Mariupol and Bucha in Ukraine have all been described as urbicide.
Between October 7 and May 31, Israel damaged or destroyed around 55 percent (or 137,297 structures) in Gaza, according to a report by the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT).
Since these structures are the elements that make up a city – homes, schools, hospitals, cultural sites, religious sites and infrastructure related to water, electricity and transportation – some researchers consider Israel's actions to constitute the massacre of Gaza's cities, or urbicide.
Home, murder at home
Domesticide is an extension of urbicide and means the deliberate and systematic destruction of habitable spaces, targeting intimate places of residence so that any form of stability, physical or emotional, is replaced by a sense of constant flux.
Of all the damage Israel has done since October, Gaza's homes have been the hardest hit. UNOSAT counted 135,142 damaged homes, mostly in Gaza City, Khan Younis and northern Gaza.
Now that their homes are no longer habitable and their sense of connection is destroyed, some Palestinians will feel they have no choice but to leave Gaza.
Even though this is a forced migration, it would in a sense allow Israeli officials to deny any responsibility for the Palestinians' abandonment of their homeland.
The UN says restoring Gaza to pre-conflict levels would take decades of intensive clearing of rubble, unexploded ordnance and landmines.
Politicide, murder of representation
Politicide is when a powerful actor works to politically execute the public and private spheres of its enemy.
The term first appeared in the 1970s to describe the destruction of groups of people who share a political identity.
It is also used to refer to the assassination of political leaders and later came to include the destruction of structures that allow political entities to exist.
“The term politicide was used… to describe Israeli policy toward Palestinians in the run-up to and during the second Intifada in 2000, when Israel’s clear aim was to destroy the conditions for the very existence of a Palestinian state,” Ziad Majed, a professor of Middle Eastern studies and international relations at the American University of Paris, wrote in Orient XXI in December.
Ecocide, killing the environment
The term ecocide – environmental destruction – was coined in 1970 by biology professor Walter W. Galston, in protest against the United States' use of the toxic herbicide Agent Orange in Vietnam to destroy plant growth under which the Viet Cong were hiding.
Israeli munitions have had a serious impact on the climate and ecosystems of Gaza, where Israeli attacks have contaminated soil and groundwater with munitions such as white phosphorus.
Israel has destroyed more than half of Gaza's agricultural land, according to an Al Jazeera investigation.
While this makes it dangerous to access or consume vital resources such as water, the full extent of the damage is not yet known.
In 2021, 97 percent of Gaza's water was unfit for human consumption after more than a decade of Israeli blockade and multiple wars.
Israel continued to attack infrastructure and block aid, rendering desalination and wastewater treatment plants inoperative.
Last November, 130,000 cubic meters (34.3 million gallons) of untreated sewage were pouring into the Mediterranean Sea every day, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council.
Even the air in Gaza became dangerous during Israel's war: smoky and polluted by Israeli bombs or by fires started by displaced people with whatever scrap metal they could find.
Researchers and experts from environmental organizations say the long-term damage has led to calls for Israel's actions to be classified as ecocide.
Educacide and scholasticide, killing knowledge
Educide and scholasticide are the systematic destruction of an educational system and its institutions.
Educide, in particular, is the systematic murder of academics and intellectuals, or educational genocide, according to British academic Rula Alousi.
The term was first used in 2009 to describe the killing of Iraqi education staff after the 2003 US invasion.
UN experts have warned of the risk of scholasticide in Gaza, with at least 90 percent of the territory's schools damaged or destroyed.
All 12 universities and higher education institutions in Gaza have been destroyed, while thousands of students and teachers have been killed.
More than 600,000 students have been deprived of schooling since 7 October.
Culturcide, killing the sense of self
Culturcide is the destruction of a culture, especially one that is exclusive to a specific ethnic, political, religious or social group.
Israel has destroyed or damaged around 200 historic cultural sites in Gaza.
Cultural casualties include archaeological sites, historic mosques housing rare manuscripts, one of the world's oldest Christian monasteries and an ancient port dating back to 800 BC.
South Africa included the removal of cultural heritage from Gaza in its ICJ complaint against Israel.
“Israel has damaged and destroyed numerous Palestinian centres of learning and culture,” she said in her application to the International Court of Justice.
