Never Again Is the Platitude
Wars have always been about targeting civilians under the pretense of security.
“Never Again” offends me. Every time I hear it, I recoil. It’s a sham, a myth, a lie — the most cynical pretense of all.
Never again is a platitude. We convinced ourselves that those two words signified a lesson learned, that the memory of past genocides would freeze us in place at even the slightest hint of another. That the phrase alone would carry the weight to stop it. But in reality, Never Again means nothing. It's as hollow as the “How are you?”, a ritual we recite without expecting an answer.
“Never Again” is a lie, a moral leash the West uses to police the rest of the world, while continuing to commit the very atrocities it claims to condemn.
Never Again is a comfort mantra. It's said for show. To make the one saying it feel like their moral compass is properly tuned. Never Again is an entire performance, a phrase repeated out of habit, not conviction. It’s no longer a vow, just noise.
July.
Yesterday marked the 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide. Peculiar word to use, anniversary, like we’re celebrating a joyful event or a happy union worth commemorating. It’s dreadful, yet necessary, because it’s Never Again, hey?
July is a hard month for all my Bosnian friends. I see them post online, a few remembrance posts breaking down what happened for those who don’t know. After each one, they always draw a parallel with Gaza. I feel their pain. Just reading their words, it bleeds through the screen and stings me.
Bosnians are a peculiar people, some of the best I know. In many ways, they remind me of Palestinians. There’s a kindness in them, a warmth in their eyes. They carry a kind of knowledge about the world, like they’re privy to something the rest of us aren’t. It’s a club reserved only for those who’ve endured the most devastating forms of injustice.
And yet Bosnians, like Palestinians, don’t hate. They don’t hate the world for letting them down. They don’t even hate the perpetrators of their genocide, some of whom were never convicted and now live among them. I often wonder how people like them can even exist in a world that seems far too harsh for such illuminated souls.
They never ask for anything. They’re grateful to anyone who acknowledges their pain. They don’t rage. They come gently just to let you know that July is hard for them — this summer month, beautiful for most, filled with memories of warm nights and people we love. But for them, it’s an unsettling month, a reminder that not all the bones of their 8,372 dead have been found.
Amanpour.
Yesterday, Christiane Amanpour shared a video commemorating the 30 years since the Srebrenica genocide. It drove me mad. British-Iranian journalist and arguably CNN’s most prominent figure, renowned for her decades of war coverage around the world.
She played a crucial role in bringing the atrocities of the Bosnian War to the world's attention through her reporting. Known for her chit-chat with Ratko Mladic, the perpetrator of the Srebrenica Genocide, during his engagement in pleasantries with Srebrenica residents before he ordered their slaughter.
This is what she wrote, alongside a video she shared:
“Today marks 30 years since the Srebrenica genocide — a dark moment in European and world history, with vital lessons for international justice and impunity. #Srebrenica30”
She also added, on Twitter, @amanpour:
“30 years since the Srebrenica genocide, I ask former U.S. Ambassador For War Crimes Issues David Scheffer if lessons have been learned: "Now... accountability is the norm. But impunity — there are huge exceptions to it in current society...we haven't achieved enough practically to say that the lessons have been firmly embedded in societies."
Christiane Amanpour was in Bosnia at the time of the genocide. She witnessed it in person, reported on it, and clearly and precisely named the perpetrators and their leader. Yet today, she minces her words about the same kind of atrocity unfolding in Gaza, only on a much larger scale.
“Well, at least she’s saying something.”
No. We don’t deal with at least something anymore. We’re far past the point of simply saying something. Someone in her position, with decades of experience reporting from war zones, needs to do more. She must name the perpetrators and call for their accountability.
Her coverage of the Gaza Holocaust happening now, livestreamed on our phones, daily, has been shameful. Her reporting now lacks the moral clarity she once had, and in doing so, she is aiding the ruling system and the very people who not only allowed Gaza to happen, but are actively funding it.
We all need to come to terms with the fact that these people in the West — the ones who speak without really saying anything, who never challenge the status quo that allows Israel to indefinitely uphold the occupation and subjugation of the Palestinian people whose land they covet — are more dangerous than the Ben Gvirs, Smotriches, and Israel Katzes of the world. At least with them, you know exactly what they stand for, and it’s easy to identify their genocidal, criminal intent.
Never Again, hey?
It’s people like Amanpour, and countless other Western media figures, who are enabling the perpetrators of the worst crime of our lifetime, simply by lacking the courage and moral clarity to name what’s happening. The same kind of mass slaughter she once witnessed firsthand is unfolding again, right now. And who is more qualified than she to call this Gaza holocaust exactly what it is? Who is more qualified to name the perpetrators than a woman who once stared at the face of a man who committed the previous one?
We all need to do better by the people of Palestine. Otherwise, Never Again is just a platitude we say like “Hi, how are you?”, then get confused when people actually answer us back.
Wars.
There is one sentence Christiane Amanpour said in her video commemorating the Srebrenica genocide that banged me on the head, having lived through almost 2 years of the unspeakable war crimes unfolding live, on our phones:
“It’s even wars have rules, you can’t kill civilians and non-combatants.”
Knowing what we know now, can we still pretend that wars are about anything but killing civilians? It’s time we grow up, become atrocity-literate, and acknowledge that wars have always been about targeting civilians under the pretense of security or self-defense. At their core, wars are about removing the people from the land you want to take and seizing the resources they live on. The military exists to carry out that economic and territorial mission. It has never truly been about safety.
Civilians are not collateral damage; they are the target. Genocide is not an exception to war; it is a tactic. A deliberate tool of the imperial conquest.
Demographic threat.
The images you see of the blown-up limbs of the Palestinian children are not an accident, or collateral damage of the “war” in Gaza. As Naomi Klein once wrote in her brilliant piece — We need an exodus from Zionism: “From the start it has produced an ugly kind of freedom that saw Palestinian children not as human beings but as demographic threats – much as the pharaoh in the Book of Exodus feared the growing population of Israelites, and thus ordered the death of their sons.”
Children in Gaza are a demographic threat to Israel. They are a demographic threat to a state that strives to be an ethnically pure Jewish state, and in the words of one of my favorite Zionist Instagram propagandists: “We don’t know what our enemies’ children are going to be doing”, it’s clear that they are aware what they have done in Gaza.
These people are fully aware of the atrocities committed in their name, and for their “safety”, why else would they worry about what the children of the people they have slaughtered will do in the future?
Children are seen as a demographic threat to an ethnically pure state. Children are a target. Civilians are the target. Non-combatants are the target. And those resisting the slaughter of their people, people without a state, a military, or any real autonomy, are branded as terrorists so that the Western empire, hell-bent on seizing their land and resources, can gun them down without consequence.
Never again?
You are the conscience. “This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal,” said Aaron Bushnell before setting himself on fire in protest of the genocide in Gaza. It is our responsibility to never accept this as normal. To reject it, to resist it, and to do everything in our power to expose the lies and illusions manufactured by those in power. Upholding that conscience is not a momentary act—it’s a lifelong duty.
Thank you for this. Made me to read the story of the Srebrenica genocide.