LONDON: In 1994, a month into the massacre of 800,000 people in Rwanda — the fastest killing of humans in the 20th century — a US defense official raised a concern about the language to be used about the slaughter.
“Be careful … genocide finding could commit (the US government) to actually ‘do something,’” he wrote in a document to be shared with other departments.
The skittishness of President Bill Clinton’s administration to use the accurate word to describe what was unfolding in Rwanda came amid an international failure to stop what was clearly a genocide.
Thirty years later, the same diplomatic dance around the “g-word,” as some US officials referred to it, has unfolded in Western capitals and global institutions over the war in Gaza.
US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shake hands. (AFP)
