BOTH the Tory Party and Labour have responded to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) case on possible genocide by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) in Gaza by trying to ban or shout down anyone using the “G-word” — genocide.

This definitely isn’t because they are precious about calling things “genocide” or any worry that the term could be devalued; the top members of both parties have been very free to call “genocide” in the much less sure case of the Uighurs in China.

South Africa made a case at the ICJ that the IDF’s war is not just a response to the Hamas-led massacre of Israelis on October 7 2023. Instead, the IDF’s actions are “genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group […] in the Gaza Strip.”

The shells and bombs killing civilians, the destruction of necessities of life like hospitals, houses and water systems and cutting off food and medicine deliveries show the IDF’s war is about destroying the Palestinian people in Gaza.

Top Israeli politicians saying they are at war with an “entire nation” in Gaza, including “civilians,” or intend “imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel” to deal with “human animals” strengthens the case.

The ICJ didn’t make a final ruling on genocide, but did accept South Africa has a “plausible” case against Israel. The ICJ ruled Israel must take measures to stop the killing of civilians and let in aid to avoid genocide dangers.

For those who do think the IDF’s war on the people of Gaza is genocidal, the ruling said they definitely have a case. Even those who don’t accept this is genocide should grasp that a “plausible” case means at the very least something very bad is happening.

But the reaction of British politicians has been to try to ignore the ICJ ruling, ban the G-word, and attack or punish those who raise it. When Apsana Begum and Imran Hussein raised the ICJ ruling with Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell, he accused them of “throwing accusations of genocide” at Israel which “is extraordinarily offensive and, in my view, totally wrong.”

Meanwhile, Labour has suspended Kate Osamor because she referred to “more recent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and now Gaza” on Holocaust Memorial Day. Labour thinks mentioning the first three is acceptable, but the last is not, despite South Africa’s ICJ case.

A Labour MP in Britain can’t say what the South African government can in an international court: Labour has now suspended two MPs for being too critical of the IDF’s war in Gaza while saying nothing about other MPs who have travelled to express “solidarity” with the warmongers in Israel.

Both front benches don’t want to discuss genocide. Instead of trying to use the ICJ ruling as a way to push back on the IDF, the Tories and Labour are keener to push back on those who raise it.

But just recently it has been very common to describe China’s repression of the Uighurs as “genocide.” Iain Duncan Smith repeatedly raises the “the Uighur genocide” in Parliament.

Last year Robert Jenrick said that pro-Palestinian protesters were dubious, and probably anti-semitic because they had a “selective concern for humanity, and specifically for the welfare of Palestinians” while they were ignoring “a genocide ... being committed against the Uighur Muslims.” He seems happy to do the reverse.

At the same time, Labour’s Lisa Nandy has repeatedly referred to “genocide against the Uighur population.” Her fellow Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh freely talks about the “genocide of the Uighurs.”

I fully believe the Chinese state is involved in a very severe, colonial-style repression of Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region, with hundreds of thousands of Uighurs and other minorities kept in internment camps.

Just like Israel, the Chinese government argues it is responding to terrorism, after years of well-documented bus bombings and shopping centre attacks by Muslim extremists that have killed hundreds of civilians in the region.

The most substantial case that this is genocide was made by the Uighur Tribunal. This tribunal made a legal-style case about the repression of the Uighurs, but it is not a statutory body.

Its judgement makes one clear point: there have been no “mass killings” in the repression of Uighurs: the tribunal’s judgement that the repression represents genocide rests heavily on claims China is forcibly sterilising Uighurs, thereby destroying them as “a people.”

The tribunal accepted its judgement may actually diminish the meaning of genocide. The Uighur tribunal said: “This judgement, with no evidence of any mass killing, may be thought to diminish the perceived status of genocide as a crime.

“In one way it may do that, and if so, in one way, not necessarily a bad thing. The use of superlatives — ‘world’s gravest crime’ and hyperbole — ‘crime of crimes’ — when attached to tragedy brings public attention, sometimes at a cost to other tragedies able to attract less attention.”

To force home the point, the tribunal said: “In truth, genocide is not necessarily the worst of all possible crimes.”

It is fully possible that neither Xinjiang nor Gaza are, or will be, a genocide. The Uighur Tribunal certainly did not convince me, because of its conscience argument for reducing the terrible meaning of genocide.

Both the Uighurs and Palestinians might be just be hit by variations on the kind of colonial and imperial repressions we have seen across the world, like the “Kenyan emergency” or Vietnam War.

But the idea that anyone could claim there definitely is a Uighur “genocide,” even without mass killings, while believing there is not either an actual genocide or at the very least a danger of genocide, in Gaza, where there are very much mass killings of a civilian population, is, frankly, absurd.

It looks like all the high moral grandstanding has turned into the most grubby kind of avoidance when faced with bloodshed by an ally.

Follow Solomon on X @SolHugheswriter.