That's a very fair point - I didn't mention those elements. Speaking only to my own ignorance, I haven't heard the "white European Jews" line being used, but that's for me to go and educate myself on. It certainly sounds like a term that bad actors might use to sow racial division. I will keep my eyes and ears open for it.
Genocide is, indeed, a very unhelpful term to use. In its casual use, it is emotive but nebulous. In its formal use, it has a very high legal threshold to meet. I agree it doesn't really add much to what's happening in a way that's useful.
I'd like to expand a little on Hamas child soldiers.
Hamas' use of child soldiers is despicable. It is also a fact that we do not hold children culpable for their actions in the same way as adults. It isn't, then, carte blanche to kill them and shrug it off by saying "well, they were soldiers". That's not an appropriate response for a modern government, even under such difficult conditions.
Expanding on that point, the UN defines a child as anyone under 18 and here is Human Rights Watch with a list of incidents before October 7th detailing abuse of children at the hands of the Israeli military force. Indeed, one 16 year old was held for over a month in prison, without trial or process, for "slapping an Israeli soldier". A slap does not warrant over a month in detention, but if the soldier records her as a "child soldier", with no burden of proof, it seems to become acceptable to the legal mechanisms that deal with Palestinian people. It's worth emphasising that the legal system deals with Palestinian and Israeli people very differently (same link).
In the end, I suppose what exercises me the most about the situation, aside from the simply appalling loss of life amongst the Israeli and Palestinian people, is that it doesn't need to be this way. The issues there are neither intractable nor unsolvable. It is possible for Israeli and Palestinian persons to be together, to support and to care for one another as people. The Parents Circle prove that.
What passes for the State of Palestine needs international support to save the lives there, rebuild their democracy and remove any perceived need for Hamas. It's not like Hamas are popular: support for them surges during periods of fighting, but even now fewer than half of the people in Gaza support them (44%), up from just 12% in September 2023 (source, AP). Hamas won an election nearly 20 years ago and haven't been put to the polls since.
At the same time, the Israeli government need to stop treating Palestine as a vassal state of disposable humans, any of them acceptable collateral damage in pursuit of Hamas. The government need to stop undermining progress in the region for their own short-term gains (even indirectly promoting Hamas, source: Times of Israel). The Israeli government isn't popular in Israel, either, with only 28% thinking Netanyahu is best suited to be PM.
It's all just so damned needless. Thousands of people are dying and will continue to die, and there's no end in sight. Hamas will murder Israeli people whilst claiming to "fight for Palestine", and Israeli soldiers will blow the legs off of Palestinian toddlers because "Hamas gave us no choice". Tit-for-tat, an eye-for-an-eye, both peoples thinking their revenge is righteous and it's the other lot who are the sole problem.
[Footnote: Not massively relevant, but for the sake of factuality, I'll observe it's a minor error to imply a period of time greater than hours between Hamas' attack and the Israeli military response, eg "since October 8 but long before Israeli retaliation". When Hamas launched their monstrous attacks on October 7, the Israeli government and military responded within hours (source).]
