“It’s a genocide” could be the most popular phrase of 2024. These three words are widely spewed by college students worldwide when talking about, or protesting against, the current war in Israel and Gaza. The ubiquitous nature of this phrase threatens to strip the concept of genocide of its importance.
Throughout history, there have been many genocides. The Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, the Rwandan genocide and the Kurdish genocide are just a few. These are all tragedies that unquestionably clear the threshold for genocide. On college campuses around the U.S., students have erected “apartheid walls” and solidarity encampments, and have proudly chanted for the destruction of the only Jewish state. All of this has been done to protest what they refer to as the ongoing “genocide” in Gaza.
Meanwhile, as these protests continue with no end in sight, in Syria, rebel groups continuously occupy Kurdish cities, and kidnap Kurdish women, yet there are no protests, encampments, or calls to end Syria like we see students calling to end the state of Israel.
Kurdish-controlled regions in northeast Syria have faced relentless assaults on multiple fronts. Turkey’s military incursions and the occupation by Turkish-backed rebel groups have resulted in the deaths of thousands of Kurds, the displacement of tens of thousands more and systemic abuses and human rights violations. How could it be that this dire situation is largely overlooked by the same student activists who chant for justice elsewhere? This selective outrage begs the question: Why do these same students, who are quick to decry “genocide” when it comes to Israel, avoid applying the same terminology to Syria’s treatment of the Kurds?
This disparity isn’t just evident through physical campus demonstrations, but also through the coverage of them in campus media. The terminology applied to Israel – terms like “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing” and “apartheid” – is both specific and charged, perfectly designed to degrade and delegitimize the Jewish state entirely. In stark contrast, atrocities in Syria, or the Armenian genocide, are often framed as “tragedies” or “geopolitical issues” and often get little to no attention on campus, or in campus media outlets. For example, Washington Square News, NYU’s campus newspaper, has an entire subsection under news dedicated to the “War in Gaza.” Yet, there doesn’t appear to be any articles surrounding current events in Syria or Yemen.
Additionally, a couple of weeks ago at UCLA, an Armenian group on campus held a vigil to “raise awareness and commemorate lives lost in the Nagorno-Karabakh region,” yet according to the article, only 40 people showed up. If this vigil were to commemorate the Palestinian “martyrs,” attendance would have vastly increased. Last May, students at UCLA held a Nakba Day event, which attracted around 200 students. In fact, on the one year anniversary of Oct. 7, hundreds of pro-Palestinian protestors took over Columbia’s campus and harrassed two Jewish students who were holding a vigil to commemorate Hamas’s attack. Columbia students even held a memorial for Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar.
In an old article from UCLA’s paper The Daily Bruin, the civil war in Syria was only referred to as a “conflict,” but in a recently published article claiming UCLA is complicit in the “genocide” of Palestinians, the author claims that 11,000 Palestinians were murdered and accuses Zionists of “plunging the region into chaos,” saying Zionists are committing crimes of “ethnonationalism.” It seems that the UCLA students forgot who started the Oct. 7 attacks, and that it was Hamas and other extremist groups who “plunged the region into chaos.” The Daily Bruin makes no mention of the fact that Hamas is the aggressor in this war.
Why is it that a war in Syria was labeled a conflict, yet the situation in Israel is being coined in much harsher and more aggressive terms? The terminology matters. When students describe the Syrian civil war as a “conflict” but label Israeli actions of self-defense as “ethnic cleansing” or “genocide,” they are not only choosing words, but also choosing narratives. This choice erases the complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and downplays atrocities elsewhere. This linguistic bias strongly shapes perceptions of people who may not be properly educated on the conflict, and fuels selective outrage.
Selective outrage is exactly what we are seeing. While the collapse of the Assad regime could indeed pave the way for a brighter future for Syria and potentially improve broader Middle Eastern relationships, we cannot forget or gloss over the past – and the way the regime’s downfall unfolded. The underlying goal of overthrowing the Assad regime is to have an Islamic state governed by Sharia Law. The end of a dictatorship should not come at the cost of unchecked violence and abuse by those seeking to replace it.
During the Syrian civil war, Islamic rebel groups seized cities under the pretext of liberating them from Assad’s tyranny. But their actions were often far from liberating.
Civilians – especially minorities such as Alawites, Christians and Kurds – faced targeted violence, persecution and forced displacement. Entire communities were uprooted in the name of revolution. Yet, while all of this occurred, discourse consisted of phrases like “the problems in Syria can be solved in a peaceful way and not with war.”
Why is this? Why is it that other conflicts and tragedies are discussed with nuance and sensitivity, but Israel is always held to a different standard? When there is such clear bias placed against Israel, and there are no separating factors between conflicts other than the fact that Israel is the Jewish state, it becomes untenable to deny the inherent and virulent antisemitism imbued in these accusations of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
When there is a complete denial of facts or even the possibility of nuance, there can be no dialogue. The college students spouting baseless claims of genocide and human rights without sparing a thought about the call for genocide in Hamas’s own charter reveals their true motives. This outrage has nothing to do with human rights, or concern for the very real challenges that Palestinians face.
This is antisemitism, plain and simple, and no university should allow this kind of open hatred to fester on campus.
This article was originally published in The Yeshiva University Observer.
