In light of numerous statements by Palestinian and allied writers on the felt inadequacy of language to respond to the images of extreme violence coming from Israel’s genocidal campaign against Gaza beginning October 2023 and the simultaneous push from the right to empty the legal terms invoked to hold Israel accountable to international law of their meaning, what can language provide us as we bear witness to extended genocide? What purpose can the practice of literature—which requires time and solitude—serve in such a moment, when with every passing minute, more Palestinians are murdered, injured, and displaced? Simultaneously, a battle occurs on a different form of language at the hands of mainstream news media and the politicians: the Arabic word “intifada” was mistranslated to mean a genocide of Jews in United States Congress; pundits on the right and center left have claimed that to invoke words such as “genocide” and “apartheid” in the context of Israel’s occupation of Palestine renders them meaningless. This paper argues that these two seemingly disparate reactions are in fact linked. The speechlessness in the face of violence and attempts to obfuscate the precision of legal terms constitute two sides of the same violence through which colonialism wages war on language, cultural meaning, and morality. I thus return to Adania Shibli’s Minor Detail [Tafsil Thanawi] and Assia Djebar’s Fantasia, an Algerian Cavalcade [L’amour, la fantasia], alongside theoretical works such as Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World, Edward Said’s The Question of Palestine, and Noura Erakat’s Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine, in probing the limits and possibilities of language in moments of prolonged, extreme violence. Language in these texts is inextricably tied to violence; they each present a different model or case study of how language is manipulated in violence, whether in the gaps and silences of official archives or the loopholes of legal interpretation. This paper develops a theory of ethical engagement with language during violence through these texts and applies it to our current debates, arguing that the dual loss of language occurring as we witness active genocide is both a branch of this same violence and an avenue through which it can be understood and held accountable.