Rapper Macklemore's protest against Israel's conduct in Gaza during an Ed Sheeran concert prompted the artist's removal from the tour, triggering broader resignations by other performers in solidarity and forcing Sheeran to issue a public apology. The incident has intensified a debate over whether the term "genocide" accurately describes Israel's military operations in Gaza, with commentator David Patrikarakos arguing that the word has been overused and drained of meaning in public discourse, applied to issues far beyond atrocities of the scale for which it was originally coined.

Patrikarakos contends that genocide has a strict legal definition requiring evidence of intent to destroy a people, and that Israel's military capabilities would allow rapid extermination of Gaza's population if that were the objective. He notes that reported casualties exceed 70,000 from a population of approximately 2.3 million, and emphasises that whilst Gaza represents a human catastrophe, this does not meet the legal threshold of genocide. The author contextualises the war's origins in Hamas's October 2023 attack that killed roughly 1,200 people and took 251 hostages, though he acknowledges Gaza is a humanitarian disaster regardless of the terminology used.