In early November, U.S. senators and congressmen, as they were considering President Biden’s request for financial aid and weaponry for Israel, were delivered a warning on their possible complicity in genocide. It read, in part: “Please take notice that should you vote in favor of that package, you risk facing criminal and civil liabilities for aiding and abetting genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity under international law, and may face investigation and prosecution.”
At a State Department press briefing on Nov. 6, 2023, a reporter read that warning issued to the representatives, and then asked the Principal Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel: “Do members of the State Department face similar possibilities?” Patel answered that “the U.S. government has a rigorous process in place for evaluating whether something constitutes genocide, and we have not made that assessment in this case.” Translation: Maybe we are part of a genocide operation, but we get to judge what is to be called genocide.
