When Swedish activist Greta Thunberg arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris on Tuesday after being deported by Israeli authorities, a reporter asked her why governments around the world weren't mobilising to break the three-month siege on Gaza, as Thunberg had just attempted.
"Because of racism, that's the simple answer," she said, making several references to Israel committing "genocide".
After 20 months of Israel's war on Gaza, more than 55,000 have been identified as dead - a number presumed to be an undercount, according to the medical journal The Lancet - and an air, land, and sea blockade is preventing food aid from entering the strip.
What is happening to the people of Gaza has not been officially assessed as genocide by the very governments that drew up the post-World War II international order. But several countries, as well as many international rights groups and experts, now qualify Israel's actions as an act of genocide.
The legal definition of genocide is the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. The operative word being "intent".
