Eight years ago, the Myanmar armed forces launched a textbook genocide, physically destroying the Rohingya people in their own ancestral region in Rakhine state. Myanmar’s army set entire Rohingya villages ablaze. Thousands were killed. Women, girls, and the elderly were raped.
It was perhaps the first images of ethnic cleansing to this scale – masses of people being forced to leave their lands – televised on our screens. The violence continues today, even as we watch yet another genocide unfold before our eyes. As I watch what is happening in Gaza, I cannot help but think about a similarly genocidal violence perpetrated on the largely defenseless civilian population of Rohingya in my native Myanmar and the role Israel has played in it.
There are, of course, a lot of differences between what is happening to the Rohingya and the unconcealed war of annihilation being inflicted on the Palestinians in Gaza. For one, Israel’s genocide in Gaza is being supported and funded by the United States. Importantly, as well, the Holocaust memorial museums led by the one in Washington have acknowledged Myanmar’s persecution of the Rohingya as genocide. In sharp contrast, these same institutions have failed in their responsibility to apply their “Never Again” slogan to Gaza’s Palestinians. But both genocides are being carried out by two apartheid states – both established in 1948, who have largely enjoyed good relations (Israel itself has sold tens of millions of dollars in weapons to Myanmar’s military) – against the predominantly Muslim peoples they’ve persecuted for decades, all while the world watches on. …..more
