'Genocide' and the meaning of words

BarcelonaOne of the most brilliant aspects of Lewis Carroll's two books about Alice is the ongoing discussion between her and her interlocutors about the meaning of words, the need for speakers to agree on the same meaning given to each word, and the continued appearance of linguistic perplexity. Thus, for example, in Alice in Wonderland, the Eagle responds in this way to something he has heard: "Speak less convolutedly! I don't understand the meaning of half of the long words you have used, and I'll tell you more: it seems to me that you don't either!" (This is a very common phenomenon, now that all languages, not just Catalan, proceed in the forward direction.) Further on in the same book, Turtle says: "Look, if a fish came to me and told me he was going on a journey, I would say to him: "With what page?"" And Griffo says: "Don't you mean "luggage"? And Turtle answers: "I mean what I say." It reads something similar to Alice Through the Looking GlassHumpty Dumpty says: "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean." And Alice replies: "The question is, can words be made to mean different things?"

Let's get to morality. Is this argument between political parties over the use of the word relevant? genocide When do we refer to the acts of war perpetrated by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip? The facts are clear: indiscriminate destruction of Palestinian homes; continued and arbitrary displacement of large masses of the population from one end of the site to the other; murder of tens of thousands of civilians, including thousands of children and women; subjection of the entire population to persistent hunger, and murder of many Palestinians simply for going to look for food.

Should we discuss whether this is massacre, war crimes, genocide either monstrosityDoing so has only served to conceal and pervert the shameful fact that the nations of Europe have been unable to lift a finger to prevent these events, whatever their name. Neither the sophists of classical Greece, nor Byzantine discussions, nor scholastic disputes were so fruitless.