The word “genocide” is everywhere. Politicians, social media influencers, journalists and pundits increasingly use it to describe Israel’s war in Gaza — as though one of the gravest accusations in our moral vocabulary has already been settled.

I am troubled not because Palestinian suffering is exaggerated, but because genocide means more than devastation: it requires an intent to destroy a people. I do not believe that has been proven in Israel’s case simply because the charge has been repeated often enough.

The stakes are personal. I am an American Jewish woman about to marry an Israeli man, and God willing, we will have Israeli-American children. In my years as a journalist covering antisemitism in America and abroad, I’ve seen how quickly rhetoric about Israel can bleed into the treatment of Jews.

Genocide carries extraordinary moral weight. Its legal definition is contested, but intent remains its central requirement.........

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