Progressives acknowledging the fact of genocide is a good first step, and it’s useful that Ocasio-Cortez and others have done so — “I think [unconditional aid to Israel] enabled a genocide in Gaza,” she said in Munich — but it is not in and of itself sufficient. Before anyone in the party can move on to selling a post-Biden vision of human-rights-first foreign policy, they must address what accountability for the war criminals in the Biden administration — those who aided, armed, and funded genocide — should look like.
All genocides are crimes that should be stopped. The US and Israel are primarily responsible for the genocide in Gaza. They might have roles to play in other ongoing genocides but it’s less direct. For US voters, the genocide their own politicians are voting to fund is of primary concern as it’s the one they have the most capacity to stop.