Turkey Implements the Stefanik Principle

One of the more common refrains I heard by persons who wanted to defend Elise Stefanik's bad faith grandstanding on campus free speech was the supposedly rhetorical question "how hard is it to simply condemn 'calls to genocide'?" The problem -- well, not the problem because that implies there is only one, but a problem -- is "who decides what count as a 'call to genocide'?" 

We already knew, for instance, plenty of campus actors characterizing Israel's conduct in Gaza as "genocidal"; and it was not long before South Africa brought its own "genocide" charge against Israel before the ICJ. If, as is not improbable, the ICJ rules that at least some of the genocide claims against Israel are "plausible", one can only imagine the turnabout that will occur by the usual on- and off-line subjects who just witnessed pro-Israel activists claim the skins of several high-profile academic actors on the principle of "zero tolerance for permitting speech 'supporting genocide.'" This turnabout was absolutely predictable and while I'm not sure "deserved" is exactly the right word to use here (given that the persons who will be victimized will almost certainly not be named "Chris Rufo" or "Bill Ackman"), it's hard to deny the karmic significance.

But we don't even need to wait that long to see this poisoned tree bear fruit. In Turkey, an Israeli national playing for a Turkish soccer club flashed a signal after scoring a goal meant to represent solidarity with the Israeli hostages who remain in Hamas' captivity. As a result, he's been arrested by the police for "supporting genocide", with threats of further recriminations by the Turkish Justice Minister as well as a promise by his team's president that he'd be kicked off the squad. It's entirely unsurprising that, in the wrong political climate, merely signaling sympathy for Israeli hostages will mark one as a genocidaire (hey, who remembers that essay just days after 10/7 that arguing that even grieving dead Israeli civilians was a means of fueling the Israeli death machine?). Again, all of this was obviously predictable in advance, and while I doubt Turkey is taking its cues from Congress' most craven opportunistic weasel, it still demonstrates the naivete of anyone who thinks that the answer to Stefanik's "genocide" question was "simple".