Palestinian terror is genocide, plain and simple

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It’s time to say the G-word out loud. Palestinian terrorism is not just another form of violence. It’s genocide by another name.

A word such as “genocide” should never be used lightly. If it is to have any meaning, it dare not be flung about just to make some political point or to award victim status to some aggrieved party that has suffered far less than mass murder.

At the same time, we have to be willing to use the G-word when it applies—even if doing so is politically inconvenient or unpopular.

I recently spoke at the 11th National Conference of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. It was the first time I have ever addressed such an event. I was one of the speakers in a session involving individuals connected to genocides other than the Holocaust.

There we were: a survivor of the Rwandan genocide, a son of victims of the Armenian genocide, and me, the father of a victim of Palestinian terrorism. At first glance, it must have seemed to some in the audience that the three of us had nothing in common. But the more I have thought about it, the more I have come to realize that, sadly, we have everything in common. All three of us have experienced not only the consequences of genocide itself, but also the added tragedy of politics preventing a response to genocide.

Jacqueline Murekatete spoke at the Wyman conference about how her family was brutally slaughtered by the Hutu mass murderers in Rwanda in 1994, about her narrow escape from that fate, and about the Clinton administration’s decision not to intervene. A few days after her address, the New York Times reported that the Obama administration is refusing to declassify 100 internal White House cables from 1994 that reveal what U.S. policymakers were discussing about Rwanda as the genocide was taking place. Those policymakers included senior Clinton officials who are now senior Obama officials, such as National Security Adviser Susan Rice.

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