“We know that Jane Doe is not alone.”
From Cornell in the U.S. to South Africa to India, protesters are demanding protection from and accountability for sexual violence.
If you call it a genocide and then campaign alongside the politicians who armed, funded and enabled it, there are only three possibilities:
A) You don’t actually believe it’s a genocide.
B) You do believe it’s a genocide, but complicity in genocide isn’t a dealbreaker for you.
C) You know exactly what it is, but your public condemnation is cynical: you invoke “genocide” because it’s what your constituency wants to hear and because doing so advances your political career, while abandoning the consequences of that position when they become politically inconvenient.
You cannot treat genocide as the ultimate crime when speaking to Palestinians, then treat its enablers as respectable political partners when you need their endorsements, votes or access.
At that point, you’re making genocide an issue we can simply move past.