Disgraced Blinken finally recognises genocide… just not the one in Gaza

Many people around the world will rightly remember the Biden-Harris administration – notably Antony Blinken – as one of the most despicable US regimes in living memory.

In particular, it has shamelessly backed Israel’s genocide in Gaza, while sending billions of dollars’ worth of arms to the apartheid colonial power. It has also gaslit people witnessing the livestreamed atrocities by refusing to accept the determination from numerous genocide experts that Israel has been carrying out a genocide in the occupied Gaza Strip since October 2023.

Antony Blinken: there is a genocide

US secretary of state Antony Blinken has been a particularly ghoulish gaslighter during the Gaza genocide, consistently denying reality with a compassionless stare as he seeks to justify Israel’s war crimes. And now, Blinken has finally recognised genocide, but not in Gaza.

So he is able to do so. He just chooses not to do so in the case of Israel. He makes a clear division between victims he considers to be worthy or unworthy of his support.

Blinken has previously spoken about genocides against Rwandans, Yezidis, Rohingya, Bosnians, Roma and Sinti, and Uyghurs. Now, he has called out the genocidal atrocities in the ongoing civil war in Sudan.

As author Assal Rad rightly responded to Blinken’s latest comment:

You destroyed international law and lied repeatedly in service of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians. By politicizing the determination of genocide you’ve undermined the foundation for accountability.

History will only remember you for the genocide you aided at every turn.

There is absolutely a genocide taking place in Sudan, as there is in Palestine

In 2019, women and trade unions led mass protests in Sudan that pushed war criminal dictator Omar al-Bashir to step down after decades in charge.

But unfortunately, hope didn’t last long. Because military factions descended into a battle for power, with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) receiving Egyptian backing and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) getting assistance from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). (Note here that the regimes in both Egypt and the UAE are US allies.)

Since the current SAF-RSF conflict started in 2023, estimates suggest that between 20,000 and 150,000 people have died either as a direct or indirect result of hostilities. While there have been atrocities on both sides, the RSF seems to be largely responsible for the worst (like in El Geneina).

Blinken rightly condemned the war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and genocide in Sudan in a 7 January statement, announcing related sanctions.

However, as Rad pointed out, this is unfortunately meaningless.

By consistently protecting wanted war criminals in Israel, Blinken and the Biden-Harris administration as a whole have shown that their supposed commitment to ensuring international accountability is just lip service.

They have eroded international law like never before. And it is ordinary people suffering atrocities around the world who will lose out as a result.

Featured image via the Canary