Genocide names what to prevent, not what to commemorate

"Parallels between Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and early America’s treatment of indigenous peoples are stark. Once you know the twin histories, you cannot unsee it. ... Americans are discouraged to draw parallels between Native American and Palestinian history. ... If anyone should understand ethnic cleansing, it is Americans, because our country was founded upon the genocide of indigenous peoples, followed by centuries of cover-ups." &mdash Sarah Kendzior, "Trails of Tears," Substack newsletter, Jan 11, 2024

Noura Erakat says:

"The worst thing that can possibly happen to any Jewish person, the thing that they’re most traumatized by and afraid of, is literally happening to Palestinians. Siege for 17 years, occupation for 57 years, forced displacement, being placed on a caloric diet subject to systematic military campaigns, a restriction on movement, a lack of ability to determine your own future, and then on top of that, to be killed with advanced weapons technologies in the most painful way and to be denied medical access and then starved to death.

What else would we want to protect people from? And yet none of that, none of the pain that Palestinian flesh bears registers. And there’s this commonsense logic that this is not flesh."

"The Limits of the Law," Noura Erakat interviewed by Afeef Nessouli in the Fall 2024 issue of Acacia (Issue 2)

The word genocide certainly does not indicate what to do. "In Israel, calls for genocide have migrated from the margins to the mainstream." Tamir Sorek, The Conversation, April 2, 2025