I've always been puzzled at the way some on the left throw around incendiary terms when it comes to Israel without much thought. Genocide, a word that means the extermination of an entire people, is suddenly used to refer to things like unintentional civilian casualties from military operations, and so on.

Today's Daily Kos brings a good example of this - a generally evenhanded post on the ramifications of Arafat's demise that contains a by-the-way accusation of ethnic cleansing against the Israeli government. Follow the link and you find out that the "ethnic cleansing" refers to Israel's denial of a visa to a Palestinian scholar.

Now I don't know the specifics of the case and Israel may very well be justly criticized here; but to call the denial of a visa to one man "ethnic cleansing" is downright insulting to Kosovars, Kurds, Armenians and other nations that really were subject to violent ethnic cleansing.