OP-ED

Are You Surprised The World Turns a Blind Eye to Genocide?

Turns out we're not morally superior to past generations

Do you see what I'm seeing," many human rights activists are left asking people these days, shocked at the wave of apathetic winds blowing through our body politic? As someone enamored with history, it's heartbreaking to witness the world turn a blind eye to an attempted genocide. You would think that our love for humanity would supersede any sense of nationalism, but far too often, people are willing to justify atrocities if it means maintaining the status quo. It's easier to stay silent than to risk your career, reputation, or relationships with peers. Of course, I'm referring to the tragedy unfolding in Gaza, a topic some people wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole. Recently, a top human rights official, Craig Mokhiber, left the United Nations, accusing them, in a resignation letter of "failing in its duty," to condemn what he referred to as a "textbook case of genocide" in Gaza.

Even after learning that the Israeli government bombed Jabalya, the largest refugee camp in Gaza, this week in an attempt to target members of Hamas, a militant group, many people continue their efforts to justify this war. "Israel has a right to defend itself," we hear time and time again from those who completely disregard Palestinians' right to live, let alone defend themselves. We're told that killing refugees, men, women, and children, many of whom are wounded, is an act of self-defense, that war is messy, and that we should just buckle up and accept these atrocities as necessary as if they are nothing more than collateral damage as if anyone has the right to justify away someone's life like a business expense, a tax write-off they're hoping gives their tax return a little extra oomph. Nevertheless, such an attack, completely disregarding civilians' lives, undermines the moral authority of this military campaign, not to mention the 75-year Israeli Occupation Palestinians have endured.

“The current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist colonial settler ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs, and coupled with explicit statements of intent by leaders in the Israeli government and military, leaves no room for doubt.” — Craig Mokhiber, former director of the United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights

Some people are afraid to use the term "genocide" to describe what's unfolding in Gaza. That much is clear. Mokhiber leaving the United Nations is a clear sign of the struggle many human rights experts are experiencing. Despite having decades of experience, scholars like Mokhiber are being ignored, silenced, and even threatened. If this occurred twenty or even thirty years ago, maybe more people would be more willing to describe this scenario as a genocide, but not now, not when the stakes are this high. From a Black American perspective, I'm not sure if this collective silence on the plight of Palestinians is the byproduct of ignorance, cruelty, or some twisted combination of the two. However, we can't say we've learned from past atrocities if we aren't willing to, as a society, work to prevent future ones.

"Never Again"

"Never Again," a phrase popularized by Meir Kahane, the founder of the Jewish Defense League, became a way of condemning the atrocities of the Holocaust while also inspiring a sense of self-determination. "No longer would Jews let themselves be victims of anyone or anything," the phrase came to mean. Of course, the Holocaust was not something that Jewish people allowed to happen. That's not how oppressive regimes operate; they capitalize on the disparity in power between groups. However, it's also true that "Never Again," took hold as a powerful phrase, encouraging people to reflect on the harm committed in the past while vowing to prevent future calamities.

The world community, for the most part, has embraced the "Never Again" mantra, engaging in restorative justice for Jewish people in the form of reparations, an effort the United States government readily supported. "As recently as 2016, the US Department of State helped Holocaust survivors access the payment owed to them by a French railways company that was an accomplice in deportations." America has no problem acknowledging restorative justice as a valid process or the human rights violations Jewish people experienced during World War II. However, this phrase, "Never Again," is also a reminder of the country's selective empathy problem.

The nation has never adopted a "Never Again" mantra toward protecting Black people from the scourge of White Americans' backlash. Congress has never formally apologized for America's role in the chattel slavery system, or agreed to engage in restorative justice or pay reparations for enslaved Black Americans or their descendants. And while, in Germany, many former concentration camps have become museums, in the spirit of "Never Again," allowing students the opportunity to learn about the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime to prevent history from repeating itself, American school children are often barred from learning about the chattel slavery system. White people regularly marry on plantations and treat them like a playground rather than a forced labor camp, a historical site of human rights violations. “Never Again” should mean that no group of people will ever have to experience the terror of genocide, but so far, this mindset has not been universally applied. Indeed, as we see the terrors of war unfold before our eyes, we’re left to wonder whether we’ve learned anything at all from history or whether we’re actually teaching future generations what they need to know about oppression, about resistance.

Perhaps our society wouldn’t be in such a moral pickle if more people learned how oppression operates. Genocide, "the deliberate and systematic destruction of a group of people because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion, or race," can be committed by any group of people. Christopher Columbus, a Spaniard, began a campaign of enslaving and brutalizing the Taíno people, killing 7 million in four decades. During World War II, the Nazis in Germany committed genocide against Jewish people, killing millions. More than 70 years ago, a group of Black Americans charged the United States government with genocide for the millions enslaved, brutally lynched, and confined to second-class citizenship. As sad as it is, human beings do engage in genocidal behavior; this is something that has happened numerous times throughout history. And the previous marginalized status of a group does not exclude them from being able to participate in this. United Nations experts decried the Israeli military campaign's bombing of Gaza as "crimes against humanity" and called for the "prevention of genocide, in an October press release. However, it seems that many of their cries have fallen on deaf ears.

The state of Israel was not created for the salvation of the Jews; it was created for the salvation of Western interests. This is what is becoming clear (I must say it was always clear to me). The Palestinians have been paying for the British colonial policy of “divide and rule” and for Europe’s guilty Christian conscience for more than thirty years…The collapse of the Shah not only revealed the depth of pious Carter’s concern for “human rights,” it also revealed who supplied oil to Israel, and to whom Israel supplied arms. It happened to be, to spell it out, white South Africa. — James Baldwin, Civil Rights Activist, Author, Scholar

While many activists have called the siege on Gaza "genocide," an attempt to kill Palestinian people and forcibly remove them as a part of a colonial project to expand territory, not just those responsible for kidnapping or harming Israeli civilians, there are many who will never use that term to describe what's happening. No matter how many Palestinian civilians are killed by Israeli combatants, some will continue to desperately try to justify this war. They will struggle to call for a ceasefire, even though it's obvious Palestinians and Israelis are suffering. There's no need to wonder what you would have done if you were alive during the chattel slavery era or even during World War II because our moral fortitude is being tested in real-time. It's easier, you see, to condemn the misdeeds of those who came before than those living amongst us because there is no consequence in doing so.

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