Today, we (Georgetown University Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine) held a vigil to honor the more than 20,000 children murdered by the Israeli military during the past two years. I spoke briefly about genocide denial. Here’s the text:
We are here today to honor the memory of the child victims of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. It is not being carried out in the name of Israel, but rather in the name of Jews and Jewish safety everywhere. And that is a travesty of the Jewish tradition. It is being carried out with American weapons, with American financial aid, and with American diplomatic aid.
What do you people think about Holocaust deniers? If you’re like me, you probably feel nothing but scorn for them.
I used to think that genocide deniers were monsters. But the last couple years have taught me something about denial I never wanted to learn. I now know that for every atrocity, there are those who will deny it, diminish its evil, or explain why it had to be done. I now know that many good people will deny genocide, or act as if it’s not happening, even as it takes place before their eyes, even as it takes place with the full support of their tax dollars, even as it is done in their name. I know this because I have many genocide deniers among my neighbors, colleagues, friends, and in my own Jewish family. For many of them, ‘Never Again’ doesn’t apply to Palestinians.
I now understand that genocide denial is a common, even banal fact. This troubles me. Because genocide denial adds a second level of evil to the crime of genocide. Genocide is merely about the mass murder of people. Genocide denial goes further—it aims to kill the memory of that murder, so as to leave the door open to other genocides in the future.
I now know that it is far easier to tolerate genocide than to oppose it. It is easier to turn away from the murder and starvation of Gaza than to keep your eyes on it. I know what it is to wake up each day to news of fresh massacres—it turns your stomach, and crushes your ability to feel. I know how exhausting it is to grasp the scale of these crimes in a moral framework that values human life in a universal way. For to admit that a genocide is happening and that our leaders and institutions have a hand in it means that we have an obligation to act. And not just to condemn the crime of genocide with words, but to stop it from happening by deeds.
This genocide isn’t being done by Turks or Nazis, or Serbians or Rwandans. This time, the genocide belongs to us. Israel may be the one conducting operations on a day-to-day level, but this genocide is American-sponsored and American-armed, and it has been cheered on by the leadership of both our political parties, and by our legacy mainstream media.
Which means, this genocide is not far away. It is not foreign. It is American. We paid for it, and continue to pay for it. The problem goes beyond our status as tax-paying citizens. This same American-Israeli genocidal regime has an established, even privileged place on this campus, like it does on many others.
I am not talking here about the individuals within our community who have been cheering on murder, or our expert colleagues who explain why Palestinian deaths are deserved or don’t matter. I’m talking about how our institution invests in mass murder. Yes: like other colleges and universities, Georgetown remains financially invested in weapons manufacture and arms trading with Israel.
We should not be naïve about this point: we have been demanding transparency on this issue for many years now, only to be ignored. If Georgetown University had no holdings in the business of mass death, our leadership would be open and proud about the fact. Instead, they act in shame, hiding the books, overturning student referenda on BDS, and punishing students for posing good questions. So much for cura personalis when it comes to Palestinians.
By the same token, we should not be naïve about where our leadership stands on Gaza: just this summer, in a congressional hearing, President Groves bragged about forging ties with Hebrew University, a prestige institution that plays a central role in the surveillance, incarceration and mass slaughter of Palestinians living under a military occupation that is as old as I am. President Groves also boasted that our administration is working with the ADL, which used to be a noble civil rights organization, but is now a notoriously racist institution whose present mission is to repress all criticism of Israel on American campuses. If this relationship blossoms, it will take years for this university to recover its reputation as a place of serious and free inquiry.
What I am saying is that genocide denial is alive and well at Georgetown University. This institution invests in Israeli militarism and genocide and punishes students for asking questions about that fact.
Those most vociferously denying the genocide today will tomorrow admit that the genocide happened. They will say that it was unfortunate, or that we need to move forward. And they will urge us to turn the page on the past so we can build the future. They will encourage us to be realists, or not caught in the past. They will advise us to forget about bygones. They did this with the Holocaust, they did this with Indochina, they did this with Iraq—and they will no doubt do it once again with Gaza.
But that is intolerable. There is no future worth building if we cannot face a genocide in our present, especially when it is done in our name. Genocide denial is genocide acceptance. Genocide denial is genocide normalization. I do not want to live in a world where genocide is normal, and where genocide promoters rule the roost. Gaza deserves much better, and so does Georgetown.
