The current Israeli onslaught is above all a war being waged against the civilian population of Gaza. But it is also a war on the very concept of objective reality and the language we need to describe it. It has generated two entirely separate worlds of discourse, one based on the true character of Israel’s war, the other based on what its Western allies pretend to believe is happening.

In the real world, everyone can see that the Israeli military is deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians on a horrifying scale. The only morally serious debate is about whether this campaign of mass killing meets the threshold to be defined as genocide.

In the fantasy world of the Biden administration, on the other hand, there is a sham discussion about whether Israel’s war on Gaza satisfies the criteria for “proportionality.” US politicians and diplomats still talk as if mass civilian casualties in Gaza are an unfortunate side effect of Israel’s military tactics and not the intended outcome.