The Jury's Out On Genocide

In one video of the pro-Palestine march last week, the crowds passed in front of the Oxford War Crimes Department. It wasn’t planned for effect, just a coincidence that stands testament to other violence that can no longer be rallied against. Everywhere – but notably in this city, where opinion and reasoning are principal – young people are finding it surprisingly hard to have strong, public feelings about global atrocities.

A distinct genre of Instagram presence has been developing ever since we prayed for Paris, allowing individuals to add volume to bombs and gunfire without forming an opinion about them. Instead of caring privately, or choosing publicly, they opt for posts that begin with “whatever happens in Gaza” or “I don’t know much, but I do know” before settling into a diatribe against evils like rape, murder, and hatred. Genocide (and antisemitism) are apparently too ambiguous.

These non-statements are often printed over beige images of Israel’s borders, or under a stanza of unattributed poetry in an equally ambiguous font. It’s like the Russell Howard joke about a man in a bar proclaiming "I would never hit a woman" in self-congratulation. Posts are geared toward Kacy and Kelsey from school rather than the Gaza Strip. In Exeter Wetherspoons last night Kacey and Kelsey mistook Hamas for a geographically relevant food, and Hezbollah for a Russian media personality with a genetic condition, but it cancels out because – sipping Chardonnay - they’re adamant that dying isn’t for children.

There is something foul about ignorance beautified; indecision weaponised into morality. We don’t need to be reminded that everybody is someone’s child. Have you seen the video of doctors giving a press conference in a mass grave?

The more specific and effective a virtual activism stance, the more time-sensitive it tends to be. There’s a book called The Matter of Black Lives in the St Giles Oxfam window at the moment. BLs still M but if I posted a black square tomorrow it wouldn’t sit right. It would probably seem a bit racist. I’d be more convinced that rape and murder are bad if these pro-Palestinian-Zionist-humanists had been posting their hot take consistently before the 7th of October. Go and hold it up on cardboard outside the embassy.