Why do media avoid using "genocide" for Gaza?

Gazans have been saying it for months: what they are suffering from is a genocide. Bombings, targeted attacks on civilians and famine have continued and worsened exponentially since October 7, 2023.

On July 29, the leading international authority on the food crisis issued a new alert: the “worst famine scenario” is currently unfolding in the Gaza Strip. It does not spare the children, nor aid workers, not even on-the-ground journalists, as pointed out by Agence France Presse (AFP), who expressed concern regarding the survival of its correspondents. On July 13, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert mentioned the possible construction of a concentration camp in Palestinian territory. Despite these elements, the term “genocide” is rarely used in  mainstream media. The reasons as to why are numerous: journalistic rigour in the face of a "overloaded" term, waiting for legal validation from the International Court of Justice. Meanwhile, deaths are piling up, destruction is intensifying, dehumanizing narratives are on the rise, and the signs of genocide continue to be present.

Under these circumstances, is characterizing the situation in Gaza as a “genocide” a matter of fact or of opinion? How are these editorial choices done? We interviewed journalists who covered the genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia, a journalist currently working in Gaza, experts in international law as well as several Quebec and French editorial offices to properly breakdown these questions. Investigation.

Wednesday, July 30, 10:30 am in Montreal. It is 5:30 pm in Gaza. The voice of Rami Abou Jamous echoes out of the WhatsApp call. As a freelance journalist and regular contributor to the Orient XXI media, he still lives in the Gaza strip, with his wife and two children.

His response to the question "how are you?" is cool and collected: “Still alive, it's fine. It's going well...”

Very quickly, his calm tone contrasts with the reality he describes: a daily life plagued by hunger.

“I've been warning the world about the famine going on for two weeks. I shared what we were experiencing, how it's impossible to buy anything. One morning, we woke up and there was no bread! Nothing. And again, I am lucky. Others haven't had anything for a long time.”

In Gaza today, this “luck” is measured by a kilo of flour and lentils.

“I no longer buy anything in large quantities. I get a kilo of flour for two days, at best. All we've been eating this past week is bread with lentils. That's all there is in the market. And that's all I can afford.”

According to the integrated food safety classification framework (IPC), Gaza had already been on the brink of famine for two years. But the situation has “worsened considerably” since the strengthening the Israeli blockade, in March 2025.

Like other Gazan journalists, Rami has sounded the alarm in his reporting. However, he feels that his words carry no weight.

He's audibly annoyed. “Does everyone have to starve? Do we have to start cannibalizing each other? Do we have to kill each other to say: “Oh yes, it was true, there was a famine”? It is shameful.”

It was only in July, after media attention spiked following a press release by the Society of Journalists of AFP, that a tangible change has taken place on the ground, notes Rami.

“When it comes out of the mouth of a Palestinian, or a Palestinian agency, nobody listens. It has to come from abroad, from a Westerner, for us to realize [what is happening in Gaza]... But hey, I thank AFP for its press release. Everyone mobilized after that. Because we tell ourselves that AFP is telling the truth...” he said in a weary tone.

Under international pressure, on July 26, Israel announced humanitarian pauses in its siege of Gaza to allow aid and airdrops to arrive in Gaza. The following day, 120 aid trucks were able to enter the territory. An insufficient amount, according to the UN, which estimates that 500 to 600 per day would be needed to cover the population's needs for food, medicine and hygiene.

“120 trucks is nothing at all — it's a drop in the ocean,” says Rami. "Additionally, the majority of these products have been hogged by the hungry, because here, everyone is in survival mode. Everyone wants a bag of flour for their family. We've reached a point where if I don't take this bag of flour, my family is going to die. So it's to each their own. And it's all because of a weapon: starvation.”

The World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that more than one in three Gazans is now deprived of food for several days in a row. In hospitals, deaths due to hunger among children under the age of five are on the rise.

Thus, around food aid trucks, the tension is palpable.

“But there is also a minority that attacks trucks to resell products on the black market, because it's worth a lot of money. A lot of people like me don't want to go get this humanitarian aid anymore. For fear of being humiliated or even for fear of being killed. We prefer to stay at home and buy at the market.”

In fact, videos and testimonies report the deliberate shooting of Gazans seeking food in recent months. The UN estimates that approximately 1,400 people have been killed since May while looking for food, most of them by the Israeli army, which the latter denies.

In this survival economy, prices are exploding: nearly $100 CAD per kilo of sugar, $60 CAD for a dozen eggs and $32 CAD per kilo of potatoes.

According to Rami, the deprivation of food does much more harm than a bomb: now, an entire population — 2.3 million people — is bombed by this instrument of war. “Hunger tears through the heart, the belly, it kills, and it destroys psychologically. The day my son said to me, “Dad, I want to eat,” and there was nothing to give him... I would have preferred to die rather than hear that sentence.”

“I invented the word 'Gaza-cide'” 

Last June, when we interviewed the journalist for the first time, we asked him if he believed he was experiencing a genocide. Without hesitation, he then answered: “It's not complicated, you just have to read the definition of the word. They say, “It's up to historians to say if it's a genocide.” What does that mean? [What are we waiting for]? For the 2.3 million inhabitants of Gaza to have all died to say that it was one? ”

According to a report published by UNICEF on July 23, more than 60,000 people have been killed since October 8, 2023, including more than 18,000 children. The NGO estimates the number of people missing at 11,200, “probably under the rubble”.

Although the International Court of Justice (ICJ) was summoned as early as December 2023 by South Africa, which alleges that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, several years could pass before a decision is reached. Indeed, in recognizing a genocide, the main challenge remains to establish the intention, a criteria that is particularly complex to prove. But for Rami Abu Jamous, this intention is obvious: “They are not hiding [it]. They say: “We want to deport the entire population of Gaza to the south.” They can use euphemisms to say that it is a voluntary departure of Palestinians (...), but we are undegoing an ethnic cleansing,” he insists.

He refers to Operation Gideon's Chariots, launched on May 16, whose declared objective, according to an Israeli source quoted by the AFP, is the “conquest” of Gaza and the organization of the “voluntary departure” of its inhabitants. The name of the operation refers to Gideon, a biblical military leader, who exterminated the Midianites.

In November 2023,  Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu was already calling on citizens to remember what Amalek had done to them — a biblical people who, according to the scriptures, had to be exterminated.

Other political leaders also said similar things: "We are fighting human animals”, declared the Israeli Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, on October 9, 2023. A few days later, General Ghassan Alian repeated the same expression and promised the following: “There will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get it.” 

“You experience death, you feel death, you breathe death,” says Rami. "We touch death, we dream with it because there is no life left in Gaza (...) Because we always have friends who are under the rubble, we can't get them out, they've been dead for two years. You can smell death because blood is flowing everywhere, there are bombings everywhere.”

The Palestinian journalist goes further. “I invented the word "gaza-cide". Or rather ”Palestinocide”: because everything in Gaza is being killed. Palestine is being killed with all its components, not just the people. To force it to leave Palestine and leave Gaza.”

He evokes the destruction of museums, libraries, archaeological sites, schools, universities. Everything is systematically targeted. “Their goal is to turn the population ignorant by bombing universities and schools. We haven't had daycares, schools, universities for two years. We don't have any education in general. It is also a genocide for education.”

In terms of healthcare, "[Israel] bombed 95 per cent of hospitals throughout the Gaza Strip. So, there are no more health services, they are destroyed. The few hospitals that are still functioning are working at partial capacity.” Rami also mentions the methodical destruction of agricultural land, in order to put an end to the food autonomy of Gazans, he says.

“A media genocide”

In addition to this violence, there is another that the journalist describes as “media genocide”.

The Gazan denounces the overwhelming weight of the Israeli government's rhetoric: “They have a media arsenal. We are just small writers coming out of Gaza. And unfortunately, it's our word against theirs; and theirs wins all the time.”

As early as October 7, 2023, Rami felt a media bias. He saw Western media condemn the absence of foreign journalists in Gaza, while Palestinian journalists were there and already covering the genocide. He feels outraged.

“There was a gradual shift. They began to tell themselves, 'Oh, OK, there are Palestinian journalists, but they are under censorship [by Hamas]. You can't take everything they say 100 per cent,” he recalls, audibly bitter.

He is angered by what he finds is a “double standard”. “When it comes to the stories or even the figures of the Israeli state, we accept them without questioning their validity. But [when Israel] prevents foreign journalists from entering Gaza, isn't that censorship? ”

“History will judge whether I made propaganda”

Rami says that although he is a journalist, his voice is often discredited. He recalls that, on the Israeli side, journalists showed up armed on a television set. “If I was the one doing that, I would immediately be labeled a terrorist. An Israeli, no. He has “the right to defend himself”, he jokes.

“I am a journalist, I am not a lawyer, I am not a politician,” he insists. "A journalist sees, and must say what they are going through. (...) I tell the story of life as it is. And history will judge whether I made propaganda.”

He also shares what he describes as a violent perspective stemming from the West: Palestinians are expected to die in silence.

“We have to be a guilty and kind victim already. And not only can we not move, but we can't talk either. We have to be murdered quietly, in front of everyone. And the world cheers. That's it,” he concludes.

Get the story started on October 7

Agnès Gruda, a journalist from Quebec who retired three years ago, has covered numerous parts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and traveled to Israel and Palestine about ten times. She also closely followed the Rohingya genocide. She continues to write from time to time in La Presse.

“What is happening there is unprecedented. During the Holocaust, we didn't know. We couldn't see. We understood later. But now we can see. We see children dying, in real time. So yes, I think the time has come to talk about genocide. And to say why," begins the retired journalist.

A month ago, when La Converse contacted her for the first time, she was more cautious about using the term “genocide” to describe what is happening in Gaza. “In media that we consider trustworthy, we generally expect a competent court such as the International Court of Justice to rule,” she said at the time. The role of the journalist is not to decide, but to report the facts.” For her, this label required professional rigour.

However, she added that a number of factors could no longer be ignored: explicitly genocidal speeches by Israeli ministers, starving the population and shooting at civilians looking for food. “These are genocidal actions. I would have no problem talking about genocidal policies or a developing genocidal situation.”

She explains her perspective has evolved over the course of her analysis, but also due to a more intimate reflection. “I am a Jewish descendant. Part of my family was killed in the Warsaw ghetto, or in Auschwitz, or in Treblinka,” she begins.

And this family memory, she adds, makes her sensitive to the use of the word “genocide.” “I have long thought that Israeli policies were apartheid. I had no problem with the word “apartheid.” However, according to her,the term “genocide” was still loaded.

She says that she first saw a disproportionate war of reprisals in Gaza. Then, crimes against humanity. But one element in particular caused a shift in her understanding: the AFP press release in which local journalists say they can no longer cover the war due to lack of food.

“Journalists in war zones are resourceful people,” she says. "And for me, what was really a turning point (...) was when the Gazan journalists from AFP said that they could no longer work because they were too weakened by hunger. That gives the image of an entire society that is deliberately starving,” she shares, outraged.

To support her thinking, she cites the words of researchers such as Amos Goldberg And Omer Bartov, both specialized in the history of the Holocaust, who claim to recognize the signs of a genocide in Gaza. “My thinking has become clearer, and so I would say that yes, it is a genocide, it is no longer an opinion.”

So why is it still difficult to talk about genocide in the media?

Gruda identifies several factors. She explains how different ways Western media shape the narrative influence public understanding: for a large part of the public, the Israeli-Palestinian story only began on October 7, 2023, with the Hamas attack.

“So it's creating confusion. Because, for many people, part of Israel's actions are a response to this aggression.”

According to her, this partial, decontextualized reading of the situation would allow Israeli officials to carry out their political project successfully. “When there are terrorist attacks in Israel, right-wing extremists often takes the opportunity to push colonization narratives further. There is opportunity to exploit this kind of situation,” she continues.

And then there is the weight of history, the Holocaust. “The term “genocide” was created by Raphaël Lemkin in the middle of the Second World War to describe the fate that was inflicted on Jews. So, there is an emotional layer, it is difficult to attribute a genocidal act to Israel. For the media, it is more difficult to say in a peremptory way, 'there it is, what is happening in Gaza right now is a genocide,'" she concludes.

“Pro-Israel organizations are creating pressure”

The former journalist sees a second obstacle to media recognition of the genocide. “Recognition [of a genocide] almost always comes after the fact. That of the Rohingya is a rare case where it was recognized while it was in progress,” she begins.

But when she compares media coverage of these two genocides, she notes several notable differences. The first one, she says, is Israel's lobbying efforts.

“At the time of the Rohingya genocide, there was no pro-Burmese group that called the newspapers every time there was a wrong word, a word they didn't like. While this is the case in Canada and elsewhere in the West: pro-Israel organizations are lobbying. [Newsrooms] are very, very careful not to be targeted by them so that they don't have to always be defending themselves.”

Another unique factor of the ongoing genocide in Gaza is the absence of foreign journalists on the ground. An unprecedented phenomenon, she explains.

“This is the first time in the history of this kind of conflict that, for so long, no foreign media has been allowed in. (...) In Gaza, there always has been a blockade, but you could still get in quickly.”

“On the Rohingya side, the Associated Press (AP)," she continues, "documented mass graves, villages burned systematically... and collected testimonies. Meanwhile, in Gaza, there are journalists from there, more than 200 of which were killed. So there really is a species of Blackout on information.”

When asked if she were an editor-in-chef today, “Yes, I would use the word “genocide”. We are at this stage, where there is a moral responsibility to use it, but also a legal one. You have to use the term carefully, and explain why.”

The word genocide “is part of an unequal history of international law itself”

According to the jurist Matiangai Sirleaf, a professor of international law at the University of Maryland, whether to talk about genocide goes past journalistic rigour or legal recognition. “It is part of an unequal history of international law itself.”

“It's not as if the intentional starvation of a population did not meet the criteria for genocide. Or as if there was a debate about whether the killing of civilians is illegal internationally. All that is clear! ” she exclaims.

So why is there so much hesitation in calling this a genocide? According to the expert, the answer is historical and political: the definition of genocide, as it appears in the 1948 convention, is not neutral.

“When the convention [for the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide] was written, it was designed to avoid colonial powers having to worry about the atrocities they had committed in the past and were still doing.”

She recalls that at the same time, anti-racist movements in the United States, in particular those of the Civil Rights Congress, wanted the convention to also be used to denounce racist violence in the United States, such as lynchings, segregation and the deprivation of fundamental rights. These acts were described as “genocide” against African Americans in a petition addressed to the United Nations.

“To reassure the United States and obtain American adherence to the genocide convention, continues the expert, Raphaël Lemkin clearly affirmed that the petitioners had made a mistake in their drafting of the petition, and that a genocide could only be recognized based on an extremely high amount of proof.”

She continues: “This story is important because it helps us to understand why the definition is so narrow, so strict, so difficult to reach... We have to ask ourselves: who benefits from this wording? ”

This results in the massacres of indigenous peoples in the Americas, those of the Hereros in Namibia or the millions of deaths in Congo under Leopold II that have never been recognized as genocides that have affected real peoples, she explains.

“International law does not work in a vacuum. It is rooted in a story, in a selective memory of violence. Even today, there is a hierarchy in the recognition of victims: some genocides are immediately identifiable, others struggle to be named, especially when they deal with racialized or marginalized groups.”

“There were numerous genocides before the Holocaust. There were numerous genocides after the Holocaust,” insists the expert.

And in Gaza, this logic is repeated in the recognition of victims: “There is a hierarchy of victimization. Who is entitled to recognition? Who deserves empathy? And who is deprived of it? These questions are at the heart of what we are seeing today.”

So, for the expert, waiting for the final judgment of the International Court of Justice should not prevent journalists from describing the massacres in Gaza: “The judicial process will continue, and when it is over, we will be able to discuss its conclusions. But in the meantime, ignoring the sociological meaning of genocide and refusing to make links to past genocides is a moral failure.”

She concludes bluntly: “Journalists choose not to condemn ongoing actions, and that choice is moral.”

Neutrality that borders on self-censorship

Marie-Ève Carignan, professor of communication at the University of Sherbrooke and director of the media division of the UNESCO chair in the prevention of radicalization and violent extremism, also observes a worrisome trend in newsrooms: the fear of “doing bad things” or even of being perceived as taking sides, which would encourage some journalists to censor themselves.

“In some armed conflicts, journalists who don't necessarily want to be given a political role and [be accused] of intervening in a conflict may self-censor themselves.”

She observes this phenomenon in the coverage of terrorism, in particular: “Often, in our analyses, we see that it is when the government labels an attack as “terrorist” that journalists will talk about “terrorism.” But before that, we're going to say an 'armed attack'.”

“I think it's the same with genocide,” says the researcher. "Not necessarily because there is a lack of independence between the politician and the journalist, but there is a fear, perhaps, of influencing the political context or of committing journalistic inaccuracy.”

So how do you know when it is legitimate to characterize an attack as “genocide”?

For Carignan, describing these massacres as genocide is not a matter of taking a militant position as long as the article is based on rigorous journalistic work, credible experts and reliable and diversified sources such as Amnesty International.

She also highlights the fears of lawsuits and gags that motivate certain more cautious editorial decisions: “At the moment, the media are not always very strong financially. [They are therefore afraid of] being sued by groups that would say that they are being wrongly characterized as genocidal or guilty of having perpetrated a conflict.”

La Presse, Le Devoir and Radio-Canada: genocide in Gaza?

La Converse asked La Presse, Le Devoir and Radio-Canada about their editorial decisions regarding the use, or non-use, of the word "genocide" in their articles about Gaza.

La Presse does not describe the massacres committed by Israel in Gaza as genocide. However, the term does appear in quotations in some articles. The media's assistant editor, François Cardinal, did not respond to La Converse's interview request. However, he specified by email that there is no policy on the use of the word “genocide” at La Presse. “Like any charged and delicate word, its use is evaluated on a case-by-case basis, depending on the context in which the text is written, the arguments around it, how to use the word, etc.”

‍Le Devoir also declined our interview request, saying that “editorial policies are developed and discussed internally, and we want to keep it that way.”

As for Radio-Canada, the Crown corporation reiterated by email that it is required to respect its journalistic standards and practices based on accuracy, balance, fairness, impartiality and integrity.

Public relations and head of promotion Marie Tétreault stated that Radio-Canada's “information department is subject to journalistic standards and practices (accuracy, balance, fairness, impartiality, integrity) and cannot take sides in any political, social, economic or other issue. Like most major media, in Canada and abroad, Radio-Canada does not use the word “genocide” to describe the situation in Gaza in a factual or direct way. The International Court of Justice is currently considering a genocide complaint, filed by South Africa, against the State of Israel. However, the word “genocide” is not banned from our airwaves or our digital platforms, but its use, when it comes to the conflict in the Middle East, must be attributed to a specific source: a political actor, an expert or a chronicler, in particular.”

Are Western media making the same mistakes as in 1994?

Georgina Holmes is a professor of political science and international studies at The Open University in the U.K. She has extensively analyzed the role of the media during the Tutsi genocide in 1994, specifically in her book Women and War in Rwanda: Gender, Media and the Representation of Genocide, published in 2019.

She immediately wanted to specify the following: “The term “genocide” is very politically charged, because as soon as we talk about genocide, we must act. And if you are a signatory to the genocide convention, you must act to put an end to it. States therefore avoid using this term, which is very problematic,” she insists.

According to her, journalists should have used the word “genocide” as early as October 2023: “The evidence was already there.” She denounces a persistent contradiction of waiting for a legal body to recognize the genocide before talking about it, when the evidence presented by journalists is precisely one of the ways a genocide is recognized.

She also observes a massive revival of the Israeli version of events, which is often focused on the need to eradicate terrorism. “Articles have subscribed to this narrative, instead of questioning the state violence they see,” she laments. At the same time, “scholars have been told not to talk to the media.”

The expert insists on the power of Israeli propaganda, which she tells us is part of a work of denial and destruction of the intelligentsia on the ground: “The Israeli government has an extremely sophisticated propaganda machine, both through their social networks and within diasporas.”

Added to this are Israel's efforts to discredit UN bodies on the ground. In particular, UNRWA was prohibited from operating in certain areas, which prevents it from documenting ongoing abuses, even though it may have been in the process of collecting evidence on a possible genocide.

She recalls a question asked in 1994 by journalist Alan Elsner to a United States representative about Rwanda:” From how many acts of genocide can we speak of genocide ? ”

“And that's the problem: trying to gather the evidence. But when do we decide that enough is enough?" asks Holmes, before concluding: “But it's too late for the Palestinians...”

Rwanda, a forgotten lesson

In 1994, when the massacres began in Rwanda, the BBC told its journalists to only cover what was happening at the country's borders. “They were told that it would be too dangerous to enter Rwanda, and that it was only a 'tribal' conflict”, explains the researcher.

But upon reaching the country's border, journalists were confronted with sights that contradicted what they were told. Survivors and humanitarian workers shared the atrocities they witnessed and suffered from. They described the violence they experienced as unimaginable.

Despite their superiors being prohibited from entering the country, several BBC journalists still decided to enter Rwandan territory by their own means. There, they begin documenting everything they can in an extensive manner, which was later used as evidence during judicial proceedings before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the expert explains to us.

However, even faced by the scale of the tragedy, journalists were forbidden to use the word “genocide”. Reporters documented the unfolding of the Rwandan tragedy using the testimonies and images they captured while on site. “They were filming things that showed that a genocide was happening. They photographed shoe piles, like the ones found in Nazi camps; children behind barbed wire in terrifying camps... They were doing everything they could to demonstrate that the incident was politically motivated and that it was a direct result of state violence, not a tribal conflict.”

Despite their efforts, the dominant media narrative continued to present the situation as a conflict between neighbours, a spontaneous ethnic war, without state involvement. The tenacity of these few journalists in the field was still able to outweigh any other conclusion; it was indeed a genocide, premeditated, and then sanctioned by the government authorities.

Name the unspeakable

While these reporters were cautious in their editorial choices regarding Rwanda's genocide, some journalists elsewhere chose to name what they saw very early on. This is the case for Roy Gutman, an 81-year-old American reporter. As a journalist for the Newsday newspaper, he was sent to Bosnia in 1992 to cover the Srebrenica genocide, what the world then called “an ethnic conflict”. He quickly realized that the situation on the ground crossed far too many lines for this overly simple narrative.

“No, I didn't believe it was a simple war, I knew it was a huge atrocity presented as a war,” he said.

During the first few months of the genocide, the journalist reported on the mass deportations that occurred in the country. But when he learned, through a local newspaper, that individuals were being taken to concentration camps, he decided to find out if these camps really existed.

What he discovered haunted him for a long time. The camps did exist, and he gathered civilian testimonies of systematic rapes of women, group executions, and unjustified detentions.

“I spent a lot of time putting the big picture together. I put all these stories side by side and at some point I said to myself, 'Wait a second... There is a pattern: deliberate expulsion of the population, dehumanization, extermination. Isn't that exactly the definition of genocide?' It is from these individual stories that I gradually built this overall picture,” he explains.

No legal authority then qualified these atrocities as genocide. But Roy Gutman wrote it as such. He decided to name what he sees — a genocide — as early as 1992. In 1993, he published the book A Witness to Genocide, a collection of his articles covering the genocide. This book won him the Pulitzer Prize the following year.

Later, his work, which was essential in bringing to light these crimes, was then cited as part of the proceedings of the International Criminal Tribunal for Ex-Yugoslavia.

Today, in Gaza, the question remains the same: “At what point does the accumulation of facts become sufficient for us to dare to name what we see? ”

Wait for a court verdict? The case of Srebrenica

Léo Kalinda, a retired journalist who had a long career at Radio-Canada, doesn't mince his words. He covered the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda and the Srebrenica genocide in Bosnia.

According to him, relying on justice to rule on whether something is a genocide is an illusion. The example of Srebrenica is proof of this: 30 years after the events, the debate is still active.

And this vagueness persists even among specialists, explains Kalinda. In particular, he remembers Dr Rony Brauman, a humanitarian worker who worked for a long time with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders). According to the latter, there was a terrible massacre in Srebrenica, which was a crime against humanity. But since women, children, old people, and people who were not considered potential threats were let go, it was not considered a genocide by many of these experts.

When faced with these conflicting voices, Kalinda concludes: “You can see: even the specialists do not agree.”

“There are days when I think I will see images of Kigali in Gaza”

“When we now look at what is happening in Gaza, it is a repeat, 30 years later, of what happened in Rwanda”, he continues in a heavy voice. "There are days when I think I will see images of Kigali in Gaza.”

He remembers the horrid sights of “all these guys who kill indiscriminately. In Rwanda, they shot at dogs, at anything.”

While on site, Kalinda and his journalist colleagues had to hide from the Hutu army, in United Nations tanks, to document the unspeakable.

Today, he observes the same oppressive methods being used by the Israeli army in Gaza against the Palestinian civilians: the population control, the widespread fear and confusion, the risks the latter have to take. “I see exactly what the Israeli army is doing, it is in search of non-Israeli bodies. It was exactly the same [in Rwanda].”

“I think political correctness has its limits”

Kalinda's experiences allowed him to form a strong opinion of the situation. In the face of mass violence, euphemisms have no place. “Today, if I were to go on air, if the management of Radio-Canada said to me: 'Listen, we're going to discuss Gaza, what do you think?' I would certainly talk about genocide. (...) I think that political correctness has limits,” he said.

He notes media self-censorship is fuelled by the fear of antisemitism accusations. This fear, he explains, even paralyzes public media: Radio-Canada and Radio France Internationale, in particular, are said to be cautious because they anticipate the reactions of their readers and listeners. The former reporter believes that the use of the term “genocide” remains too explosive for them.

“To say that there is a genocide in Gaza is not at all to say — not even for a second — that you are pro-Hamas. The facts are there: the speeches of genocide perpetrators, hunger as a weapon of war...”

“I think there is political and moral cowardice,” he adds.

Kalinda is adamant on the issue of reporters who have decided to wait for an official court verdict: “Journalists who say they are waiting... will wait a long time. The lawyers are going to nitpick.”

“We no longer ask ourselves the question of genocide, we ask ourselves the question of guilt, complicity, and non-denunciation of genocide”

Some editors, however, have chosen to describe the massacres in Gaza as genocide, including those from L’Humanité, Médiapart and Blast.

La Converse contacted the editorial directors of these three media organizations, but at the time of writing, none of them had responded to our interview requests. However, we were able to talk to Jérôme Hourdeaux, a journalist at Médiapart.

“For me, the turning point was in December 2024. Amnesty International, then Doctors Without Borders had come out with reports one after the other saying that there was no longer a risk of genocide, but that there was genocide,” he began.

From the first week following October 7, 2023, the Médiapart team wondered what the international community really was witnessing. How do one name such things?

At the time, political tensions were high, especially around the issue of specific word usage and semantics. Many French columnists, explains Hourdeaux, were urging their interviewees to describe Hamas's attacks as “terrorist”, while at the same time evading Israel's murderous strikes against Gaza. Those who do not comply with this process risked being labelled as “complacent”, he recounts.

“We quickly realized that there were a lot of political issues around these terms, especially in France,” explains the journalist. The editors therefore call on international lawyers to ask them what international laws apply to the situation in Gaza, and to understand what a crime against humanity, a war crime, and a genocide is.

“And so, afterwards, that's the standard we've always tried to keep,” explains Hourdeaux.

However, this consensus is far from unanimous, which infuriates the journalist: “I think that describing the facts is now enough to describe the crimes. [All the more] because the Israeli plan is clear; they reiterate it, they say it in statements that are sometimes even outrageous. (...) In recent weeks, we've become sure that not only is there a genocide, but not qualifying it as such is making a mistake,” he sighs.

Omitting the word is far from neutral, adds the journalist. “Since the word is on the table, when a newsroom does not use it, it necessarily means something,” he explains. "In other words, there is a refusal to use it.”

For Hourdeaux, the debate is no longer about whether the situation qualifies as a genocide, but about the responsibilities of those who continue not to use it.

“History will be the judge. In 20 or 30 years, when people look back at what happened in Gaza and compare what the press said at the time, it may have the same effect as in other periods of history, when we realized that the press supported authoritarian regimes or regimes responsible for war crimes. And so, yes, some may not be proud,” concludes the journalist from Médiapart.

For Maxime Cochelin, a journalist with Blast, the use of the term “genocide” is the result of rigid legal examinations of what is happening on the ground.

“It is the very reading of the United Nations Genocide Convention, coupled with a minimum of intellectual honesty and based, in addition, on the analyses of Ilan Pappé, Omer Bartov, Omer Shatz, Francesca Albanese, Amnesty International and so many other figures, especially from the Palestinian community,” Cochelin explains.

Social media versus traditional media

But beyond these editorial or individual choices, a wider question arises on the power of the traditional press in the face of social media.

Carla Murphy, a professor of journalism at Rutgers University in New Jersey who specializes in media ethics and social justice issues, is seeing a profound change in the way citizens get information.

“I am not sure whether the use or non-use of the word “genocide” by the traditional media is still as important. The public has access to other media that regularly broadcast images and stories of state-sponsored destruction, famines, etc., of a given population.” She cites major social networks, Discord and podcasts, amongst others.

“Everyone now has access to the UN definition of genocide, to reports from Amnesty and other NGOs. Mainstream media continue to set the political agenda, of course. But it is only one aspect among many others. (...) The public uses a variety of other media to form their own idea of the relevance of the term “genocide” to describe Israel's actions in Gaza.”

According to her, the words traditional media use or do not use are up to a small circle of professionals whose influence, although still present, is no longer widespread.

“Of course it is important for a democracy to have transparent, rigorous journalism. But I'm not sure that audiences are still measuring the value of it," Murphy adds.

A late but noticeable awakening

From Gaza, Rami has noticed a “small alarm” go off in Western French-speaking media about the genocide in Gaza. “We can see that they are more daring to talk about massacres, to ask themselves the question of whether or not there is a genocide... At least, we are starting to use this word.” This “small alarm” does not go unnoticed by him.

When asked if he plans to leave Gaza, if the massacres end, his answer is clear: “I would like to get out with my family, I promised my children... But I don't plan to leave Gaza permanently, unless I have to, if I have to, if I am forced to move south, if I am forced to board a ship, if I am deported to another country. But leaving voluntarily, no.”