Ok, so the aggressor is saying “it’s not a famine, we’re only starving 12% of the children.” You do understand that this is not a good faith argument, right? You might care about preserving the meaning of the word but they don’t give the slightest shit about it. They are not trying to preserve the meaning of the word so that we have the ability to talk about it. They are trying to muddy the waters of the actual facts of what is happening so that people talk about whether there is actually a famine or not rather than the fact that a large number of children are starving. Stop being a patsy and doing their work for them.
We just watched this nonsense happen with the word genocide. Both sides were careless with it. Now, it's lost meaning. Famine is still a hard line in the sand. All the evidence points to Israel having breached that line. The solution isn't to get rid of the line, it's to point to the line, point to the ground and say you're past the fucking line.
If "genocide" lost meaning, it's because people got pulled into a debate around the word rather than focusing on the fact that innocent people are being killed in large numbers. Whether "genocide" or "famine" or any other atrocity, the response to "this doesn't actually meet the definition" should be "you're trying to deflect from the atrocities you're committing and I'm not going to fall for it."
