The problem is simply this, that the term 'genocide' was coined in 1944, and around two years later, senior Nazi officials were on trial at Nuremberg for 'war crimes', many related to genocide or attempted genocide.

Where you have trials, you have lawyers, and where you have lawyers you have niggles over fine points of meaning. You end up with definitions which are so finely-graded and loaded with exceptions, additions, qualifers, wise saws and modern instances that they become functionally useless.

They tried to get round this in the 1990s by talking about 'ethnic cleansing' instead, but when you look at it, both processes are effectively the same.

We ask cui bono? We should always ask that. The answer, of course, is that it benefits, not the perpetrators nor the victims, but the lawyers, advisors and consultants who pocket sky-high fees by providing excuses for both action and inaction by their principals.

Hamas states its aim unequivocally, because their mindset is medieval. The Israelis respond in kind because too many see their history repeating itself unless they take a hard line.

Absolutists and frightened people are not amenable to reason and do not engage in dialogue or nuanced thinking. Only those of us far from the battlefield, well-fed and safe, can afford to do that.