Selling Genocide: How Media Complicity Shapes the Destruction of Gaza with Adam Johnson

And so let me start with that by asking you, there's a word on the front of this book that's basically become verboten in US media since October 7th, which is the word genocide.

So why do you think it's an appropriate term in this situation?

Well, it's not my judgment.

It's the judgment of the human rights and academic world who determines such things.

Doctors Without Borders, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Oxfam, the International Association of Genocide Scholars with 86% vote.

Obviously, several different UN panels have determined that.

So it's not my determination.

I am but a mere media critic.

So I defer to consensus and expertise, and the expertise

on this is pretty uniform.

There's been recent efforts to really push back on it by the Israel lobby and their allied media.

So yeah, so that is, again, is not my word.

And if one objects to that word, then they should take it up with Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, and these groups which were mainstream centrist liberal human rights groups until they started speaking out against Israel.

And now they're apparently part of some fringe anti-Semitic conspiracy to sully Israel for its own sake.

So again, not a controversial word within the world of those who study such things.

And therefore, I think one has to use it lest they engage in genocide denial.

So I think there's a consensus within that world that is not really impeachable or even that controversial.

It is only controversial insofar as it makes certain organizations upset, which is to say the pro-Israel lobby and their media organs upset.

But of course, being upset by something or something being uncomfortable is not... a reason to not say it.

The truth is often upsetting.

And indeed, when this book was banned at a library in Sydney, Australia, a suburb of Sydney, Australia, it was banned under the auspices of temporarily banned they eventually brought it back after public outrage uh they were they abandoned under the auspices of it made some people upset and the quote i gave was something from version of like yeah reality is often upsetting that's that's part of being an adult is being able to deal with that um and we shouldn't treat adults like toddlers

So in my entire life, being born well after World War II, I heard consistently about the Holocaust, World War II, and the refrain was constantly, never again, never again.

And Perhaps me being naive, I took that very seriously, that the world had gone to the brink of an ugly side of humanity and had realized it and was doing everything it could to avoid it.

But when this genocide comes to Gaza, we don't really hear that never again rhetoric.

We hear pushing back against the idea that it is a genocide.

And so let me start with that by asking you, there's a word on the front of this book that's basically become verboten in US media since October 7th, which is the word genocide.

So why do you think it's an appropriate term in this situation?

Well, it's not my judgment.

It's the judgment of the human rights and academic world who determines such things.

Doctors Without Borders, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Oxfam, the International Association of Genocide Scholars with 86% vote.

Obviously, several different UN panels have determined that.

So it's not my determination.

I am but a mere media critic.

So I defer to consensus and expertise, and the expertise

on this is pretty uniform.

There's been recent efforts to really push back on it by the Israel lobby and their allied media.

So yeah, so that is, again, is not my word.

And if one objects to that word, then they should take it up with Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, and these groups which were mainstream centrist liberal human rights groups until they started speaking out against Israel.

And now they're apparently part of some fringe anti-Semitic conspiracy to sully Israel for its own sake.

So again, not a controversial word within the world of those who study such things.

And therefore, I think one has to use it lest they engage in genocide denial.

So I think there's a consensus within that world that is not really impeachable or even that controversial.

It is only controversial insofar as it makes certain organizations upset, which is to say the pro-Israel lobby and their media organs upset.

But of course, being upset by something or something being uncomfortable is not... a reason to not say it.

The truth is often upsetting.

And indeed, when this book was banned at a library in Sydney, Australia, a suburb of Sydney, Australia, it was banned under the auspices of temporarily banned they eventually brought it back after public outrage uh they were they abandoned under the auspices of it made some people upset and the quote i gave was something from version of like yeah reality is often upsetting that's that's part of being an adult is being able to deal with that um and we shouldn't treat adults like toddlers

So in my entire life, being born well after World War II, I heard consistently about the Holocaust, World War II, and the refrain was constantly, never again, never again.

And Perhaps me being naive, I took that very seriously, that the world had gone to the brink of an ugly side of humanity and had realized it and was doing everything it could to avoid it.

But when this genocide comes to Gaza, we don't really hear that never again rhetoric.

We hear pushing back against the idea that it is a genocide.