As I mentioned in a previous article, Gaza is experiencing a genocide. This was a development that many, including myself, ignored until it became vastly too late. Based on the language of many politicians and pundits, it’s a development that remains ignored.
However, credit must be given where credit is due. I once wrote Donald Trump would be vastly worse than Biden when it came to Gaza, but he has actually been a perfect reflection. Like Biden, Trump acknowledged horrific things (in this case, starvation) are occurring in Gaza, and even hinted at the possibility that Hamas is not solely to blame. However, like Biden, Trump is doing nothing of substance about it.
America sometimes acts against genocide. The Allies did stop the Holocaust. However, it did take the United States being directly attacked to start down that path, and America’s refusal to accept more than a few Jewish refugees is part of why we are in this situation right now. During the Rwandan genocide, we did nothing except express remorse afterward. In the Balkans, NATO launched airstrikes and peacekeeping operations in response to genocide and ethnic cleansing of Bosniaks in Bosnia and Albanians in Kosovo. Since then, in light of what happened to the Rohingya in Myanmar recently and the Palestinians in Gaza currently, we have again done nothing but issue a few statements.
What is the theme here? Genocide against white people in Europe is “in Western interests.” Genocide against brown and black people in Asia, the Middle East and Africa is not. We may express remorse after the fact, but our behavior does not change.
You do not need a complex understanding of genocide or ethnic cleansing to understand it’s inherently evil. When genocide occurs, stopping it should be the priority of every wealthy, able country. It does not matter if the perpetrator is an ally.
Sure, Hamas is a terrorist group. It’s also been decimated. It certainly is not the primary party responsible for the current starvation. The starvation we see in Gaza is the product of months of Israeli restrictions on aid that many have warned would kill civilians. It is now killing civilians. While the commonsense solution is to flood Gaza with so much food so people can eat, America’s response is to detain peaceful protesters and revoke diplomas over broken windows.
When the rhetoric of both conservative and liberal legislators and officials decries small-scale vandalism by university students before posing in photo-ops with the war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, it’s easy to see politicians have checked themselves out of doing anything of substance about this genocide.
They seem to have been duped by perhaps the most simultaneously lazy yet successful public relations campaign of the modern era. While we see hundreds of images of starving children in Gaza, Netanyahu points out one of them has a pre-existing condition, so therefore it’s OK for that kid to starve. While we see adults, including doctors, grow emaciated, Ambassador Mike Huckabee shares an anecdote about how he saw one mother who seemed well-fed. While we are told Israel is a democratic country that stands for freedom, the IDF carries out an airstrike on Evin Prison that kills Iranian political dissidents while also repeatedly targeting the few remaining Palestinian journalists with airstrikes.
Yet, almost two years after Oct. 7, we are still asked to condemn it. Yes, I condemn Oct. 7. I also condemn 9/11. And Pearl Harbor. And the sinking of the Lusitania. I also condemn killing children NOW. And labeling journalists as terrorists to justify their assassination NOW. And restricting food to “stop giving Hamas money” when giving way too much food would achieve the same objective NOW. As someone who was recently guilty of this, we should stop debating rhetorical correctness and start discussing how to actually end this genocide.
