Jonathan Lessware
In 1994, a month into the massacre of 800,000 people in Rwanda — the fastest killing of humans in the 20th century — a US defense official raised a concern about the language to be used about the slaughter.
“Be careful … genocide finding could commit (the US government) to actually ‘do something,’” he wrote in a document to be shared with other departments.
The skittishness of President Bill Clinton’s administration to use the accurate word to describe what was unfolding in Rwanda came amid an international failure to stop what was clearly a genocide.
Thirty years later, the same diplomatic dance around the “g-word,” as some US officials referred to it, has unfolded in Western capitals and global institutions over the war in Gaza.
Last month, the most significant and comprehensive report so far declaring that Israel has carried out acts of genocide in the conflict was published by a UN-appointed commission of inquiry.
Yet the US, most European countries, and the UN itself still refrained from describing Israeli actions in Gaza as a genocide.
Traditional alliances, including longstanding support for Israel, have become entangled in a reluctance by nations to shoulder the legal burdens of international law that they had signed up to.
The inertia of nations to accept that a genocide has taken place and to therefore act to try and stop it has infuriated Palestinians and the wider Arab and Islamic world. It begs the question: How many lives could have been saved if they had?
If the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas were to collapse and the fighting resumes, would countries like the UK and Germany then accept what international law experts say is happing — that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians?
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