(RNS) — “Words move hearts,” Islamic scholar Hamza Yusuf has famously said, “and hearts move limbs.”

And when particular words are misapplied, they can move limbs to violence.

Since the Israel-Hamas war began in early October, commentators, activists and casual observers have loosely employed — and grossly misused — terms such as “genocide,” “apartheid” and “terrorism.” In the extreme conditions of wartime, we reach for extreme language to express outrage, emotion and urgency.

But these words have definitions, and respect for those definitions equates to respect for the tragic circumstances on both sides. They can also be a call to further violence. Using them in such cases is not only rash, but deceitful.

Genocide’s meaning is straightforward, as defined in 1948 by the United Nations Genocide Convention: “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” 

Examples include the systematic attack on the Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I; the Nazi attempt to destroy European Jewry in World War II; and, more recently, the Islamic State group’s targeting of Yazidis in northern Iraq.

Despite the chants and pronouncements of some partisans, what Israel is doing in Gaza — whether or not one considers it a necessary evil or an unnecessary military onslaught — is not a case of genocide.

Genocidal actors don’t use electronic means and paper leaflets to warn their ostensible targets of its military actions and to guide them to safer areas. No area in Gaza is entirely safe, because no area in Gaza is devoid of Hamas terrorists, but Israel’s warnings have saved Gazan civilians.

Add to this the fact that Israel’s current military campaign was begun as, and is clearly aimed at, destroying not a people but a movement — one that in its original charter embraces “jihad” against “the Jews.”

“Apartheid,” of course, is a word that was coined to refer to South Africa’s racist system of institutionalized segregation from 1948 to the early 1990s. Government policy forbade Black people from marrying white people. Hospitals and beaches were segregated. Education opportunities for Blacks were restricted. Blacks were in myriad ways second-class citizens.

Israeli law mandates, and its independent courts ensure, the equal treatment of all the country’s citizens, Arab and Jewish alike.

Israel’s courts — including its highest one — have included Arab justices, and have struck down legislation that would have allowed the state to expropriate private Palestinian land where Jewish homes were built. Israeli Arab citizens serve as ambassadors, legislators, journalists and academics. Not to mention that Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, includes an Islamist Arab political party. Arab citizens of Israel have been elected to every Knesset since the state’s founding.

There are, to be sure, limitations of movement on noncitizen residents of the West Bank, which was captured from Jordan in 1967 and is currently occupied by Israel and administered by the Palestinian Authority. But those limitations — the much-denounced “checkpoints” in that territory — are born of, and are fueled by, the need to protect against terrorist attacks, attacks that have, sadly, not abated. And they are in no way comparable to South Africa’s treatment of Blacks during the apartheid era.

“Terrorism,” as the word itself suggests, refers to violent actions intended to instill terror, rather than to achieve a military objective. The Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 was terrorism. The al-Qaida attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, were terrorism. The many and ongoing jihadist attacks on Western targets are terrorism.

A recent example of a terrorist attack was the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion of southern Israel, where armed and hate-fueled men — that some media, intent on avoiding the “t”-word, call “militants” — committed acts of torture, rape and murder (including the slaughter of babies, children and the elderly), and took hundreds hostage. 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — who refuses to acknowledge his own people’s Armenian genocide — has called Israel a “terror state” because of its efforts to protect its citizenry. This is risible. 

That Pope Francis reportedly referred to Israel’s military operations against Hamas as “terrorism” is more disturbing. The pontiff is said to have told Israeli President Isaac Herzog, with regard to Israel’s actions in Gaza, that it is “forbidden to respond to terror with terror.” 

Israel’s current war against Hamas is not aimed at terrorizing but rather at rendering that indisputably terrorist group incapable of launching future savage attacks on its citizens. Every war takes a tragic toll on innocents, and Hamas’ strategy of entrenching its fighters and weaponry in private homes, mosques and hospitals virtually ensures that innocents will die, as has sadly happened. But their blood is ultimately on the already blood-drenched hands of Hamas.

Israel is seeking not to commit but rather to uproot terrorism. Calling Israel’s self-defense terrorism is, like applying the words “genocide” and “apartheid” to the Jewish state is, nothing short of deceitful.

The patron saint of those who, whether inspired by biases or animus or ignorance, choose to “redefine” words, might be Humpty Dumpty, who, in “Through the Looking Glass,” scornfully informs Alice that “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean.”

But words do have actual meanings. And when those meanings are twisted, they can poison hearts and move limbs in dangerous ways.

(Rabbi Avi Shafran writes widely in Jewish and general media and blogs at rabbishafran.com. He also serves as director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America, a national Orthodox Jewish organization. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)