EDITORIAL: There is nothing like “innocent” Genocide remarks

Last week, the BBC was in the news yet again, for the wrong reasons. One of its journalists accused Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of playing the “Holocaust card” during his address to the joint US Congress and Senate session last week. As was to be expected, the powerful Jewish lobby did not take it sitting down, and BBC was forced to come out, but minimizing the motives of its journalist’s tweet. Rwanda has been in the same situation as Netanyahu, with its opponents accusing its leaders of playing the “Genocide card” to its advantage. The Jewish Chronicle Online came out with a pure definition of those kinds of accusations; it called it ‘The Livingstone Formulation’. “… a term coined by the academic David Hirsh to refer to the practice of responding to claims of antisemitism by alleging that those making the claim are only doing so to prevent Israel from being criticised. In other words, the Jews are accused of “playing the antisemitism card.” If major media houses contribute to minimizing mass atrocities like the Genocide, then there is cause for worry. But it is also more reason for people not to remain idle bystanders when those kinds of ideologies are propagated. Everyone needs to come on board to fight the spread of such dangerous revisionism. As long as we allow culprits to get away with it, they will become emboldened and it might lead to the last stage of Genocide; denial. The media should join the campaign to fight Genocide denial and should not be seen as a platform being used to perpetuate it.

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EDITORIAL: There is nothing like “innocent” Genocide remarks