“Who was I to stop the killing?” -Interview R01 from Kjell Anderson’s interviews with perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide, Kigali Central Prison, July 2009

The Golden State Warriors 2024-25 season began on Wednesday when they faced the Portland Trail Blazers. It marked the beginning of the post-Splash Brothers era in Golden State. The Warriors enter the season without a clear second offensive threat to pair with Steph Curry. However, they are hoping to make up for their relative lack of star power with impressive depth.

That’s one way to describe it.

Another is less removed from the world, and perhaps despair. It marks the start of the second NBA season since Israel’s military invasion of Gaza, which has been classified as a genocide by the UN Human Rights Council and the International Court of Justice. It has marked the deadliest year and most significant displacement of Palestinian people in decades.

Despite that, the NBA has refrained from criticizing Israel, without any notable players or league officials speaking out on the state’s actions — and with a few publicly supporting Israel.

Warriors head coach Steve Kerr and superstar point guard Steph Curry have both been excoriated by the American right for their liberal politics over the years. Both have endorsed Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris but have made no public calls for the current Vice President to lessen the United States’ military support of Israel.

Blazers starting forward Deni Avdija is even more directly tied to the horrors. Avdija served in the Israeli Defense Force in 2020, just after the International Criminal Court concluded in a 2019 report “that war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.” He has pridefully discussed his service and expressed solidarity with IDF soldiers since the invasion of Gaza.

Still, silence has been the defining treatment NBA players have given Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.

“One person could not stop this.” -Interview R39 from Kjell Anderson’s interviews with perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide, Nyarusenge TIG Camp, August 2009.

The police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor had already sparked massive actions around the globe in August of 2020. The United States’ long history of racist policing alongside the laundry list of police killings of Black people that had garnered national attention over the previous decade had built into one of the largest American movements of the century.

On August 23rd, Kenosha County police officer Rusten Sheskey shot Jacob Blake seven times in the side and back. The incident was caught on video by a community member and quickly spread.

A few days later, the Milwaukee Bucks went on a wildcat strike, refusing to play their first-round playoff game against the Magic. The NBA quickly postponed all playoff games, sparking several other professional sports leagues to follow suit.

The NBA players, who due to the COVID-19 pandemic were in Florida living in the 2020 NBA Bubble at Disney World, were considering walking away from the season in protest. They ultimately decided against it, influenced by a phone call from former president Barack Obama, and opted to accept some concessions from the league to consider future social justice causes and immediately promote voting. However, players vowed to remain steadfast in a commitment to fighting injustice.

“My participation didn’t mean much — those people would have been killed even if I had done nothing.” -Interview R62 from Kjell Anderson’s interviews with perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide, Mont Kigali TIG Camp, October 2009.

Systems of oppression find a way to work with one another. It is Israel that has worked hand-in-hand with the American police, fueling the militarization of local departments. Those relationships will only get stronger as several cities spin the 2020 protests as justification to pour money into new police complexes, like Atlanta’s Cop City. The very police departments perpetrating harassment and killings that brought NBA players to the brink of ending a season are somehow being given more resources as a purported solution.

It was Israel whose defense industry relied on the white supremacist apartheid regime in South Africa while the rest of the world was isolating them in trade.

It is Israel’s army that has been killing children in Gaza.

It is the United States that has spent nearly $18 billion on military aid to Israel with no serious effort to curtail the civilian death toll.

“I had no power to prevent the genocide.” -Interview R76 from Kjell Anderson’s interviews with perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide, Kigali Central Prison, October 2009.

Every genocide ends.

A community is either erased or gets a chance to build from the wreckage.

When it comes to the future of the Palestinian people, the message from American political and corporate interests has been clear: you have no power to prevent the genocide.

No American politician has more ardently fueled Israeli expansion than Joe Biden. Kamala Harris has refused to distance herself from Biden as he sends more weapons, troops, and backs Israel as it expands its military rampage into Lebanon. And if the Democrats are defeated, Donald Trump will happily sign his name to bombs built to spew Palestinian blood.

But when did our imaginations forget that the President isn’t the only person with power?

Because I remember 2020.

A virus was beginning to ravage the world. The global economy had been brought to its knees. And police murders on video circulated. But people did not succumb to the power of the President. They did not succumb to the power of their bosses.

I remember NBA players staring down ownership and threatening to walk away from the playoffs because they saw injustice in the world and were tired of acting like it was normal to be unaffected.

The NBA regular season is back. Every fan base has hope that the start of a new season brings. Maybe a championship. Maybe just the exciting development of a young player. Maybe an unexpected playoff appearance.

But maybe the 2024-25 season will bring NBA players back to social justice movements, and back to deploying the power they have for those in need.

And maybe all of us will follow.

There are still more than 1 million Palestinians alive in Gaza.

A community is either erased or gets a chance to build from the wreckage.