Defining genocide: how a rift over Gaza sparked a crisis among scholars

New reports by human rights groups use the term to describe Israel's offensive. The debate has fueled a brutal division among those who study mass violence

A pair of reports published this month by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch mark a significant contribution to the raging debate over how to characterize a war that has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians and decimated Gaza.

But the reports - the first found that Israel is committing genocide, the second acts of genocide - are unlikely to quell deep divisions in the academic field of Holocaust and genocide studies, whose scholars study mass violence.