gaza;

Trigger warning – and be grateful for it, because I didn't have one last week when a photo of a girl with half a head appeared on my feed one morning. Her fuzzy pink wrap was almost indistinguishable from the part that was once inside her head, now splayed out around her body. Her face, however, was mostly preserved, her frozen eyes half-closed and yet gazing back at me.

No matter how much photographic, eyewitness and real-time documentation we see, the battle over the truth rages full force. And nothing inflames the debate more than the word "genocide."

• 'They only understand force': The deadly racism behind Israel's policy toward Palestinians
• America's warning to Israel about Gaza aid came too late, for too many
• After October 7, just how far right will Israel go?

For Palestinians, genocide is a descriptive fact – anything else is a lie. For international courts, it is a legal convention, the International Court of Justice is deliberating South Africa's charges, according to a high bar of evidence, while ruling that Palestinians have a plausible right to be protected under that convention. For many Israelis, the word is an antisemitic plot and a lie...........more.......