168 replies to this topic

[Yervant1]

Sept 11 2023

 

 

Rabbis’ Refusal to Consider Renewed Armenian Genocide Shameful

By Michael Rubin

AEIdeas

September 11, 2023

“Expressions such as ‘ghetto’, ‘genocide’, ‘holocaust’ and others are . . . inappropriate to be part of the jargon used in any kind of political disagreement,” the Rabbinical Center of Europe declared on September 6. The statement by 50 rabbis condemning Armenia for raising alarm about the ongoing atrocity in Artsakh left many scratching their heads for three reasons.

First, many Jews had never heard of the “Rabbinical Center of Europe.” The group is real but represents mostly a Hasidic subsection of Europe’s Jewish community. Second, the group’s posturing is devoid of research. The rabbis did not visit Armenia let alone Artsakh, the self-governing republic that Nagorno-Karabakh’s residents established as the Soviet Union collapsed. Finally, the rabbis seem aloof to how Azerbaijan use their statement to deflect from ongoing slaughter.

Indeed, the rabbis’ statement appears a vestige of the past: For decades, various Jewish organizations opposed recognition of the Armenian Genocide because they believed acknowledgement of genocide pre-Holocaust would diminish the uniqueness of the Nazi slaughter of six million Jews. Prominent Jewish or Israel-interest groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), American Jewish Committee, and Anti-Defamation League quietly interceded with congressmen to derail Armenian Genocide resolutions long before any vote in Congress, until, in 2007, seven Jewish Democrats broke with precedent to vote in favor of the resolution.

That same year, the Anti-Defamation League fired New England Regional director Andrew Tarsy after the New England branch recognized the Armenian Genocide, but National chairman Abe Foxman rehired him the next day after a national uproar. Many within the Jewish community came to recognize that the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust could be both unique and share common traits. Past persecution need not pit Jews and Armenians against each other, or force either into denial. Organizations like the Rabbinical Center of Europe are right to educate about and preserve remembrance of the Holocaust, but they are ignorant in their knowledge about the Armenian Genocide.

They also appear cowardly. While the Jewish community in Armenia grows, both Azerbaijan and Turkey hemorrhage Jews. Dictatorships in both countries like to trot out Jewish representatives in a museumification of the Jewish community, but numbers do not lie. Azerbaijan’s Jewish community, around 40,000 strong at independence, has declined more than 75 percent since.

The frequent Azerbaijani narrative of Armenian collaboration with Nazi Germany is also cynical. True, some Armenians cast their lot with Nazis not out of antagonism toward Jews but more to undermine the Soviet Union. Today, Diary of Anne Frank populates children’s libraries and Armenians shelter Jews fleeing oppression in Russia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Iran. Heightening such cynicism is Azerbaijan’s unwillingness to address its own World War II-era history of Nazi collaboration and the slaughter of Polish Jews by the Azerbaijani Legion. Cynicism is especially rife when Azerbaijan host foreign rabbis. President Ilham Aliyev ignores his own father’s history suppressing Jews both as KGB chief for Azerbaijan and as a politburo member under Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.

Rabbis should prize knowledge rather than base their statement in ignorance. They may assume comparison to ghettoes is facile, but how do they know it is not? Azerbaijan has locked its Armenians in Artsakh by blockading the region, often arresting those who seek to depart. People starve. If Artsakh is like a World War II-era ghetto, then what would that make the rabbis’ denialism? At best, they become like Franklin Roosevelt who turned his back on the reality of the Holocaust; at worst, they become useful idiots for the perpetrators.

As for genocide, what other term might the rabbis suggest for the eradication not only of a people but also any physical evidence of their existence? There was a reason why Adolf Hitler cited the Armenian Genocide as inspiration. Can current events be decontextualized from the eradication of more than one million Armenians, an event Aliyev and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan mock and deny?

The Rabbinical Center of Europe has embarrassed itself. Rather than make empty statements, perhaps the rabbis should try to visit Artsakh. Let us hope the Armenian Genocide Museum and the Artsakh government invite them. If Azerbaijan prevents them from visiting Stepanakert, perhaps the rabbis might ask why.

Learn more: Silence Is Never the Answer When Hostages Are Taken | Good Luck with That Grand Strategy | China Preaching Autocracy to Africans Shouldn’t Surprise, but It Won’t Work | The US Should Reflag Islands in the South China Sea

https://www.aei.org/...ocide-shameful/

[Yervant1]

Your words will have any weight, if and when your government accepts the Armenian Genocide. Otherwise it's only words of convenience! 

 

Jan 12 2024

 

 

Israel rubs ‘Armenian genocide’ in Turkey’s face after it supports ICJ hearing

 

Jerusalem, Jan 12 (EFE).- Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz on Friday criticized Turkey’s history, saying “we remember the Armenians,” after its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, announced that his country would send documents to the International Court of Justice in The Hague that support the charge of genocide brought by South Africa against Israel.

“The President of Turkey Erdogan, from a country with the Armenian genocide in its past, now boasts of targeting Israel with unfounded claims. We remember the Armenians, the Kurds. Your history speaks for itself. Israel stands in defense, not destruction, against your barbarian allies,” Katz said in a message directed at the Turkish leader on the social network X (formerly Twitter).

The Armenian genocide refers to the systematic extermination of the Armenian people in the Ottoman Empire during World War I through massacres, death marches, and deportations.

The Turkish government maintains that the deportation of Armenians was a legitimate action that cannot be called genocide, and many countries seeking good diplomatic relations with Turkey have avoided acknowledging the events as genocide.

Israel does not recognize the events as genocide, and this is the first time a senior Israeli official has described the events as such.

Israel has been accused of genocide by South Africa before the UN’s top court, which held its first hearing in The Hague on Thursday and Friday, with the Israeli legal team accusing South Africa of “hypocrisy.”

Katz said South Africa is violating the Genocide Convention by supporting “the Hamas terrorist organization, which calls for the elimination of the State of Israel”.

Turkey has expressed “satisfaction” with South Africa’s complaint from the outset, and a Turkish parliamentary delegation is in The Hague to follow the trial.

“I believe that Israel will be convicted there. We believe in the justice of the International Court of Justice,” the Turkish president said.

Turkey is a historic ally of Israel, but after the Oct. 7 attack by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, Erdogan denounced Israel’s response of massive bombardment of Gaza as a “war crime,” and Israel withdrew its ambassador from Ankara at the end of October. EFE

sga/ics/mcd

https://www.laprensa...ts-icj-hearing/

 

 

[Yervant1]

No comment! We'll wait and see. Probably April 24 will come and go without any declaration. Recently Israeli weapons helped Azeries kill countless Armenians.

Jan 14 2024

 

Recognize the Armenian genocide now The state of the Jewish people has for years refrained from officially recognizing the genocide that the Turks perpetrated against the Armenians, due to what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has informally defined as "vital security interests" as well as "the profound economic relationship between the two states." The outcome of this definition is that even now, Erdogan has identified with and supported the modern day Amalek.

 By  Nadav Shragai

 

This coming April will mark the 109th anniversary of the Armenian genocide by the Turks, for which, Turkey's current president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, refuses to assume responsibility. This date will almost simultaneously also mark 76 years of Israel's embarrassing efforts to evade formal recognition of this genocide.  And right now, we are commemorating another important episode in modern history: 100 days since the October 7 massacre, in addition to the blood libel that Turkey's president has accused Israel of, which according to him is "like the Nazis", as he has alleged that Israel is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip.

 

This current juncture – at the precise time when a court hearing has begun in The Hague alleging that "Israel has violated the Convention of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide" – should lead the way, however late this might be, to a profound discourse and reflection towards official Israeli recognition, after all this time, for the Armenian genocide.

The state of the Jewish people, which itself experienced the Holocaust, a considerably more severe historical event both in terms of scale and ferocity, has for years refrained from officially recognizing the genocide that the Turks perpetrated against the Armenians, due to what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has informally defined as "vital security interests" as well as "the profound economic relationship between the two states." The outcome of this definition is that even now when for the umpteenth time, Erdogan has identified with and supported the modern-day Amalek, the Palestinazi Hamas, and even when he has reiterated the absurd comparison between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hitler – Israel still refuses to recognize the Armenian genocide.

This genocide took the form of death marches, mass slaughters, and the widespread forced expulsion of the Armenian population by the Turks during World War I. The Ottoman government established 25 concentration camps for the Armenians who survived the expulsion. At that time, Dayr az-Zawr in north-eastern Syria was the end of the line on the road to hell for the Armenians. Many of the death marches were organized to reach Dayr az-Zawr and it is here that the Armenians were eventually savagely massacred. Those who did manage to survive these marches were forced to feed off animal meat and the corpses of dead children.

Some Armenians turned themselves into a living documentation of the horrors, etching on their skin the incidents they had survived on the way and the crimes perpetrated by the Turks. They covered up this writing with layers of dirt, but once they were caught – their pursuers poured water on them to erase the testimony that had been etched on their bodies.

Hitler's question

"The quickest way of getting rid of the women and children who were gathered in the concentration camps was to burn them," various witnesses to the atrocities later wrote in the testimonies they submitted. The US and Italian consuls described how tens of thousands of Armenians, including women and children, were drowned in the Black Sea. Two doctors from the city of Trabzon on the Black Sea coast testified that Armenian children had been killed with poison gas. Comprehensive documentation of the Turks' crimes is also evident in the diaries of Henry Morgenthau Sr., the US Ambassador to Turkey between 1913 and 1916.

Eitan Belkind, a key member of the anti-Ottoman Jewish spy ring known as NILI, who infiltrated the Turkish army during World War I, was witness to the horrific murder of some 5,000 Armenians who were tied together and then set on fire using a ring of thorn bushes placed around them. "The screams of the miserable and the flames ascended into the sky hand in hand," wrote Belkind.

Avsholom Feinberg, one of the founders of NILI, who used to travel a lot during the war, also provided testimony of the Armenians who were murdered: "Their members in the working battalions are being put to death en masse by shooting. They are starving them. They are abusing them. I asked myself if I may only cry because 'my People is shattered', and did Jeremiah not shed tears of blood also for the Armenians?"

Former minister, Yair Tsaban: "The claim of 'interests' accompanied the Jewish people during the darkest hours of the Nazi era, when we desperately appealed for help, but the nations of the world explained to us that due to various 'interests' – it is not possible to respond to our cries for help."

In his book, Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide, Professor Yair Auron revealed that on the eve of the Jewish Holocaust, in August 1939, Hitler arrogantly asked his S.S. officers: "Who remembers today what they did to the Armenians?" Now, when Erdogan constantly vilifies and reviles the State of Israel whenever he gets the chance to, Israel no longer has any logical, formal reason to continue to rely on the paltry excuse that it had good reason to rely on in the first place – that of "interests".

At this current period in time, when Erdogan unashamedly supports the new Nazis of our generation, Israel has been presented with another opportunity to amend this situation. The Jewish state should have asked itself a long time ago: would it, itself, have accepted the refusal to acknowledge the Jewish Holocaust by any state due to economic or security interests, as it has pinned its refusal for years on such interests in its decision to refrain from any official acknowledgment of the Armenian people's holocaust.

After all, the moral compass should be the same in both cases, and the Israeli government's refusal to acknowledge the Armenian genocide is a clear case of blatant moral bankruptcy. Though the Armenian holocaust was different from the Jewish Holocaust – less industrially organized and effective, and much more limited in terms of its scale – despite these significant differences, the Armenian people did suffer a real form of genocide. Many historians and more than 30 states have recognized the genocide of this people, in which between one to one and a half million people were annihilated. To our great shame, of all nations, Israel has refrained from acknowledging this, and in the clear conflict between morality and interests – it is the interests that prevailed.

Issues that go beyond politics

In the past, the Ministry of Education shelved a curriculum that included teaching about the Armenian genocide. Israeli TV refrained from broadcasting the documentary movie of Theodore Bogosian, An Armenian Journey, which dealt with this genocide. On another occasion, a text deemed to be too direct was censored, which Noemie Nalbandian had prepared to be read out at the annual Independence Day torch-lighting ceremony at Mt. Herzl, as it mentioned the Armenian holocaust.

When Shimon Peres was Israel's minister of foreign affairs, he approached the Anti-Defamation League, imploring the organization to tone down its resolution, categorically determining that the slaughter of the Armenians was genocide. When Turkey canceled a number of arms deals with France, after the French had acknowledged the Armenian genocide – it was Israel, rather embarrassingly, which was granted these contracts, as Jerusalem had made the decision to avoid any such recognition of the Armenian's plight.

Israel's continued political contortions when faced with the Armenian people's genocide, even now when the administration that is the heir to the perpetrators of that horrific act aligns with the worst of our enemies, should give cause for a conversation, however brief, with Yair Tsaban, originally a member of the left-wing Mapam (United Workers Party) and one of the founders of Kibbutz Tzora. Tsaban, who for many years has been at the forefront of the struggle for Israeli recognition of the Armenian genocide, was the first minister in an Israeli government to 'rebel' against official policy, and already 28 years ago, he attended the memorial day ceremonies of the Armenian community in Israel.

Even today, at the ripe old age of 93, Tsaban is horrified by the use of the word "interests" in relation to the lack of Israel's official acknowledgment of the Armenian genocide. "The claim of 'interests,'" he reminds us, "accompanied the Jewish people during the darkest hours of the Nazi era, when the Jews desperately appealed for help, but the nations of the world explained to us that due to various 'interests' – it is not possible to respond to their cries for help."

"How can Israel continue to look the Righteous Among the Nations and their descendants in the eye – as they too literally had 'existential interests' in not hiding Jews or saving them, but they preferred to live by the dictates of their conscience rather their existential interest?" asks Tsaban.

"As a people who have undergone the worst of all genocides – we neither have nor should make any exceptions when it comes to the genocide of another people. On the contrary – we have the moral obligation of adopting a much more rigorous and less tolerant approach to cases of genocide experienced by others." Tsaban reiterates the words of one of Israel's most renowned poets, Nathan Alterman, who in one of his poems called on the "Champions of healthy realism" to stop "worshiping the idols called interests."

"There are issues that go beyond politics and diplomacy," said Benjamin Netanyahu in 1989, serving as the Deputy Foreign Minister at the time, and he stressed: "Genocides are a clear case of this particular category." It is not yet too late.

https://www.israelha...n-genocide-now/

 

 

[Yervant1]

 Israel’s Foreign Minister Tweets the Term

            Armenian Genocide: ‘Too little, Too Late’

            By Harut Sassounian

            Publisher, California Courier

            www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com

 

Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz reminded Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the Armenian Genocide after the Turkish leader supported South Africa’s complaint with the International Court of Justice (World Court) that Israel was committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.

Foreign Minister Katz tweeted on January 12, 2024: “The president of Turkey Erdogan, from a country with the Armenian genocide in its past, now boasts of targeting Israel with unfounded claims. We remember the Armenians, the Kurds. Your history speaks for itself. Israel stands in defense, not destruction, against your barbarian allies.”

Within the larger context of the Israel-Hamas conflict, Israel’s reference to the Armenian Genocide to attack Turkey raises a number of important issues. After refusing for decades to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, Israel’s Foreign Minister all of a sudden remembered the Armenian Genocide when it suited his country’s interests. Here are my comments on his tweet:

1) Israeli Foreign Minister’s reference to the Armenian Genocide cannot be considered a formal recognition which can only occur when the Israeli Parliament (Knesset) adopts a resolution acknowledging the Armenian Genocide.

2) This is not the first time that an Israeli Minister has referred to the Armenian Genocide. Three other past Israeli Ministers had made similar acknowledgements when they were serving in the government:

– Minister of Education Yossi Sarid stated on April 24, 2000, “I join you, members of the Armenian community, on your Memorial Day, as you mark the 85th anniversary of your genocide. I am here, with you, as a human being, as a Jew, as an Israeli, and as Education Minister of the State of Israel.”

– Minister of Justice Yossi Beilin stated on April 24, 2000: “Something happened that cannot be defined except as genocide. One-and-a-half million people disappeared. It wasn’t negligence, it was deliberate.” Earlier, when serving as Deputy Foreign Minister in 1994, Beilin made a similar statement on the Armenian Genocide.

– Minister of Immigrant Absorption Yair Tsaban attended the Memorial Day ceremonies of the Armenian community in Israel in 1995 and urged the recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

3) Nevertheless, Israel’s Knesset attempted several times in recent decades to adopt a resolution to recognize the Armenian Genocide. Each time, the government of Israel blocked the resolution to appease Turkey.

4) It is unacceptable that Israel is using the Armenian Genocide as a bargaining chip in its problematic relations with Turkey. The State of Israel, as a nation of Holocaust survivors, should have been the first country, hopefully not the last, to recognize the Armenian Genocide.

5) Equally unacceptable is the Israeli government’s excuses for its denial of the Armenian Genocide. When relations are good between Israel and Turkey, Israeli officials say: “We don’t wish to ruin our good relations with Turkey because of the Armenian Genocide.” And when the relations are bad, as it is now, Israel declares: “We do not want to make our relations with Turkey worse by recognizing the Armenian Genocide.” Israel has thus tarnished its reputation in the international community as a genocide denialist.

6) Contrary to the Israeli government’s denialism, individual Jews have been some of the leading voices calling attention to the Armenian Genocide: Henry Morgenthau, U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire (1913-1916); Franz Werfel, Austrian Jewish novelist, author of: “The Forty Days of Musa Dagh”; Raphael Lemkin, Polish Jewish Lawyer, who coined the term genocide; Reuven Rivlin, former President of Israel when he was the Knesset Chairman; Professors Israel Charny, Yair Auron, and Yehuda Bauer; and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Elie Wiesel.

7) For years and more recently, Erdogan has used very harsh words to insult the Israeli government and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, likening him to Hitler, and accusing him of being a ‘war criminal and terrorist’ who is committing genocide against the Palestinians. However, as in past conflicts, when the current crisis is over, Israel and Turkey will return to their earlier lovey-dovey relationship. Even at the height of this existing hostile situation, the two countries have continued their billions of dollars of trade, exchange of intelligence, and tourism.

8) Western Europe and the United States, by ignoring the Turkish leader’s misdeeds within NATO and his warmongering in several regional conflicts, have spoiled Erdogan to such a degree that he knows he would be able to get away with anything he wanted to do without facing any consequences. Back in 2010, when a Turkish humanitarian flotilla was approaching Gaza to break Israel’s blockade, Israel’s military attacked the Turkish ship killing 10 Turks. Thereafter, Netanyahu issued an apology to Erdogan and paid $20 million in compensation to the victims’ families.

9) Even if Israel recognizes the Armenian Genocide, Armenians will not forget the billions of dollars of lethal weapons that Israel sold to Azerbaijan to kill and injure thousands of Armenian soldiers during the Artsakh War. Shockingly, even in the midst of the Israel-Gaza war, Israel has continued to sell additional sophisticated armaments to Azerbaijan, as several Azeri cargo planes have been seen leaving Israel loaded with such weapons.

The “Israel Hayom” newspaper published on January 14, 2024, an article by Nadav Shragai, titled: “Recognize the Armenian genocide now.” The author boldly wrote: “The Israeli government’s refusal to acknowledge the Armenian genocide is a clear case of blatant moral bankruptcy.”

Back in 1989, when Netanyahu was Deputy Foreign Minister and had not yet lost his moral compass, had said: “There are issues that go beyond politics and diplomacy. Genocides are a clear case of this particular category.”

[Yervant1]

Common Dreams

Jan 22 2024

 

What the New York Times Gets Wrong About Lemkin's Work on Genocide

Words matter, but the paper of record has ignored our letter of clarification about historical misrepresentation and the important role of the Armenian genocide in the thinking of the man who coined the term.

 

Jan 22, 2024Common Dreams

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On January 11, 2024, the New York Times published an article by Isabel Kershner and John Eligon titled “At World Court, Israel to Confront Accusations of Genocide.” From the standpoint of critical media literacy and ethical journalistic practices, the article exhibits framing biases, historical and contextual omissions, and overly simplistic reasoning that attempts to explain why “Israel has categorically rejected the allegations being brought this week in the International Court of Justice by South Africa.” We assert that this editorial spin does a disservice to journalism and adds to a faulty record that enables human rights violators.

The overall tone is in lockstep with corporate media’s bias toward Israel—a bias credibly substantiated by the likes of the Lemkin Institute for the Prevention of Genocide, The Intercept, The Guardian, Mint Press News, and Common Dreams. While multiple aspects of the article are troublesome, the third sentence provoked our immediate response letter to the Editor of the New York Times. That sentence is as follows.

Oversimplifying Lemkin’s endeavors does a shameful disservice to his legacy. Such a decontextualized presentation edits out the foundation of his body of work and contracts the character of his mission.

“Genocide, the term first employed by a Polish lawyer of Jewish descent in 1944 to describe the Nazis’ systematic murder of about six million Jews and others based on their ethnicity, is among the most serious crimes of which a country can be accused.”

Days later, echoing a similar mischaracterization of Raphael Lemkin’s work, USA Todaypublished a piece by Noa Tisby titled, “Is Israel guilty of genocide in Gaza? Why the accusation at the UN is unfounded” (January 16). Tisby’s article, like that of Kershner and Eligon, amended the breadth and depth of Lemkin’s work to accommodate a particular narrative.

Considering the New York Times’ reputation as a leading U.S. paper of record, the need for public correction therein took precedence over the op-ed in USA Today. Hence, our letter:

As two Armenian Americans who grew up in the shadow of the 20th century’s first genocide, an attorney and a media expert respectively, we found critical context lacking in “At World Court, Israel to Confront Accusations of Genocide,” by Isabel Kershner and John Eligon (January 11). Any discussion of genocide and Raphael Lemkin is grossly incomplete without citing how the Armenian genocide informed the Polish-Jewish lawyer’s noble work.

Lemkin (b.1900), while a university student in the 1920s, learned of the Ottoman Turk's coordinated mass slaughter of Armenians that culminated in 1915. The extermination of Armenians informed Lemkin's life mission to establish international laws and treaties making genocide a punishable offense. In 1944, Lemkin finally named that crime genocide.

This article implies that Lemkin advocated solely for the Jewish cause. A humanitarian first, Lemkin sought to establish protections for all people. For example, he worked with Algerians who sought to hold accountable their colonizers for crimes against humanity.

The Armenian Genocide impelled Lemkin to action. Absent this historical context, the article reinforces the Israeli government's illogical claim that Jewish people are the sole victims of genocide. South Africa’s charge that the Israeli government is engaging in genocide reflects Lemkin’s commitment to the denunciation of the crime irrespective of ethnicity.

The New York Times ignored our letter.

Oversimplifying Lemkin’s endeavors does a shameful disservice to his legacy. Such a decontextualized presentation edits out the foundation of his body of work and contracts the character of his mission. It ignores the events that prompted and preoccupied his thinking on international discourse toward establishing laws against the crime that he came to term “genocide.” Lemkin was horrified that the Ottoman Turkish government could kill its own citizens—albeit “dhimmi,” or second-class citizens—with impunity. His application of the term genocide to the Ottoman Turk’s systematic mass slaughter of the Armenians predated the Holocaust. Years later, as a formidable advisor to prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials, Lemkin drew conclusive parallels to the Nazis’ genocidal massacre of Europe’s Jewish citizens.

To selectively invoke Lemkin’s work on genocide as a defense against the charges brought against Israel banks on the idea that public memory is short.

Editing the Armenian Genocide from Lemkin’s life work has contemporary and historical implications. In light of increasing attacks by a radicalized right-wing contingency in Israel on Jerusalem’s Armenians, deleting the Armenians from current reporting sets a dangerous tone for Armenians living under current threat. The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention has featured articles on Armenphobia and on the Armenians’ right to exist, and has issued statements of concern over recent attacks on the Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem’s Armenians, or “East Jerusalemites” as they are designated by the Israeli government, like other Palestinians, live in a system that privileges Israel’s Jewish population. Hostilities from Jewish fundamentalists toward Armenians in Jerusalem are nothing new. However, the level and frequency of aggressions have intensified thanks to Netanyahu’s far-right government which has energized and normalized them. With attention concentrated on Gaza, Israeli extremists are free to act without fear of consequences. The Lemkin Institute explained that this can be “viewed as another attempt by Israeli extremists to create a homogenized Jewish ethnostate in the Palestinian territories.”

The New York Times article’s abridged version of Lemkin’s work emboldens those who continue to deny that the 1915 Armenian Genocide occurred. To selectively invoke Lemkin’s work on genocide as a defense against the charges brought against Israel banks on the idea that public memory is short. A well-worn quote reported by A.P. Berlin bureau chief, Louis Lochner, from a speech given by Hitler to his military generals before the 1939 Nazi invasion of Poland rhetorically asked, “Who today, after all, remembers the annihilation of the Armenians?” With hot wars blazing and existential alarms blasting, we not only remember the Armenians but uphold this New York Times article as a cautionary tale that words matter.

 

MISCHA GERACOULIS

Mischa Geracoulis is a media literacy expert, writer, and educator, serving as Project Censored’s curriculum development coordinator, and on the editorial boards of the Censored Press and The Markaz Review.

 

 

 

 

HEIDI BOGHOSIAN

Heidi Boghosian is an attorney and is the executive director of the A.J. Muste Memorial Institute. Previously she was the executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, a progressive bar association established in 1937, where she oversaw the legal defense of people targeted by government. She also co-hosts the weekly civil liberties radio show Law and Disorder, which is based out of Pacifica Radio's WBAI, New York, and is broadcast to more than 25 states on over 60 nationally affiliated stations.

 

 

 

 

 

The article’s abridged version of Lemkin’s work emboldens those who continue to deny that the 1915 Armenian Genocide occurred. To selectively invoke Lemkin’s work on genocide as a defense against the charges brought against Israel banks on the idea that public memory is short. A well-worn quote reported by A.P. Berlin bureau chief, Louis Lochner, from a speech given by Hitler to his military generals before the 1939 Nazi invasion of Poland rhetorically asked, “Who today, after all, remembers the annihilation of the Armenians?” With hot wars blazing and existential alarms blasting, we not only remember the Armenians but uphold this article as a cautionary tale that words matter.

 

https://www.commondr...genocide-lemkin

[Yervant1]

How about you (Netanyahu) recognize the AG first, before using it for politics!

Ha'aretz, Israel

March 10 2024


Netanyahu Accuses Erdogan of Denying Armenian Genocide as Ties Between Countries Worsen

The Israeli PM made his statement in response to the Turkish president's comparison between him and Hitler, marking a further deterioration in the tone in the diplomatic confrontation between the two countries

Jonathan Lis

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan traded barbs over the weekend. After Erdogan stated that "Netanyahu earned his place alongside Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin," the Israeli premier accused Turkey of denying the Armenian holocaust.

The back-and-forth marked a further deterioration in the tone in the diplomatic confrontation between the two countries and an exceptional step by the Israeli prime minister. Previous Israeli governments have been consistently careful not to assign responsibility to Turkey for the Armenian genocide in order not to harm mutual relations.

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On Saturday, Erdogan likened the Israeli leadership with Nazi Germany for the second time. "Netanyahu and his government are the Nazis of our time. What they have done in Gaza is akin to the actions of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin," he declared in a speech on Saturday. "We're committed to bring these 'murderers' to justice in accordance with international law. In the human conscience, they are already convicted."

Following Erdogan's remarks, Netanyahu's was quick to respond and stated that the Turkish president is a "denier of the Armenian holocaust." Netanyahu added that, "Israel, which adheres to the laws of war, will not receive moral lessons from Erdogan, who supports murderers and rapists of the terrorist group Hamas, denies the Armenian holocaust, butchered Kurds within his own country and make dissidents and journalists disappear."

Despite the verbal crossfire, Israeli officials are having a hard time determining whether diplomatic relations have reached a permanent dead-end or the rhetorical class is calculated and reparable. They think that Erdogan is interested in fulfilling a significant role in Gaza after the war ends. U.S. and Israeli officials do not rule out this possibility, and even see advantages in making Turkey a central player on the Gaza front.

A signal of the pragmatic Turkish line regarding Israel could be found on Saturday in the meeting between Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, and his American counterpart, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in Washington.

In his public statement, Fidan refrained from criticizing directly the Israeli military or the Israel's political leaders. Instead, he focused on calling for increasing humanitarian aid to Gaza. "The dire situation in Gaza requires our urgent attention as the international community to stop the suffering of the innocent people," Fidan said. Therefore, he added, "we need to work hard together to make sure that we have a cease-fire and we have unhindered humanitarian assistance inside Gaza."

On September 20, 2023, just two weeks before the deadly Hamas attack in southern Israel, Netanyahu and Erdogan met for the first time. Conciliatory talks between Erdogan and Israeli President Isaac Herzog months earlier, laid the groundwork for the Erdogan-Netanyahu meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Netanyahu said that relations between the countries were strengthening, against the backdrop of joint efforts to thwart terror attacks in Istanbul. The two agreed to coordinate mutual visits within the coming months.

Fewer than six months after that well-documented handshake, relations are in a tailspin. Turkey has publicly backed Hamas since October 7 and Erdogan has repeatedly excoriated Israel and its motives in Gaza.

Israeli Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz was the first Israeli official to accuse Turkey of being responsible for genocide. Katz wrote on X that, "The president of Turkey, the country that perpetrated the Armenian genocide that thought that the world would shut up, is proud today to submit material to the court in The Hague."

The foreign minister added that, "We haven't forgotten the Armenian genocide and the murderous acts against the Kurds." He then tweeted: "You all are nation destroyers. We defend ourselves from your barbarous comrades."

Dr. Nimrod Goren, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington and head of the Mitvim Institute, said that the current confrontation is more bitter than previous ones and requires immediate diplomatic attention by Israel to bridge the differences.

"Netanyahu and Erdogan have a history of disparagement and conciliation, but there hasn't been a gap like the one between the smiled-filled meeting between them in New York in September and the increasing enmity since October," Goren told Haaretz.

"Escalatory rhetoric is not a policy and is not a substitute for one. Managing the crisis with Turkey and reducing the harm it is liable to cause to Israeli interests requires diplomatic skill. It's important to return to Ankara the Israeli diplomats who were recalled from there by Israel when the war erupted. The presence and work of professionals on the ground is more necessary now than ever."

https://www.haaretz....8e-29fa35a10000

 

[Yervant1]

I wish I had your optimism, Israel will not recognize AG. Turkey is not their only reason for nonrecognition, add to that Azerbaijan, Iran and others!

Israel - March 14 2024

 

A fitting Israeli reply to Erdogan: Recognize the Armenian Genocide

Opinion: As a nation founded on the principles of justice, human rights, and remembrance of historical injustices, Israel has a moral obligation to recognize the Armenian Genocide

Grigor Hovhannissian

 

 

Armenian ears perked up over the weekend when Benjamin Netanyahu criticized Turkey for not recognizing the Armenian Genocide by the Ottomans a century ago. After all, Israel itself has withheld recognition for reasons that frustrate Armenians, who see themselves as fellow travelers of the Jews. Is change afoot at last? Naïve as it may sound, I urge the answer be yes.

Of course, I understand the context, and the word for it is realpolitik: the subordination of ethics, ideals and principles to concrete interests and calculation of outcomes. Israel has not recognized the Armenian Genocide for fear of offending Turkey, a populous NATO member that has been a trade partner and a tourism destination.

Netanyahu seems to be pivoting because Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan strongly supports Hamas. Not only has he no appreciation for the massacre Hamas perpetrated on Oct. 7, but he accuses Israel itself of genocide and on Saturday compared Netanyahu to Hitler.

 

“Turkey is a country that speaks openly with Hamas leaders and firmly backs them,” Erdogan said on Saturday. “Netanyahu and his administration, with their crimes against humanity in Gaza, are writing their names next to Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin, like today’s Nazis.”

Then came Netanyahu’s tweet: “Israel, which adheres to the laws of war, will not accept moral preaching from Erdogan, who supports murderers and rapists of the terrorist organization Hamas, denies the Armenian Holocaust, massacres Kurds in his own country and eliminates regime opponents and journalists.”

 

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Gaza War, the fact is that at the International Court of Justice at the Hague in January, Israel found itself accused of genocide in Gaza. Israel’s defense rested largely on one word: intent. Israel says its goal is to remove Hamas from power in Gaza, and not to kill Palestinian civilians. It argues that intent, and lack of it, is critical in determining whether an action is a genocide.

The 1951 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide, inter alia, as being killings and other acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

That convention was adopted primarily because of two major genocides that shocked the world in the first half of the 20th century. The first was the murder of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottomans during World War I. It was a campaign of death marches to the Syrian desert and into concentration camps, and a project to eradicate Armenians that featured confiscations and sexual violence and forced Islamization.

Our tragedy deeply affected the Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term genocide in 1944 – at the high of the Holocaust, the systematic murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis. Two years later the nascent United Nations recognized genocide as a crime under international law, and then came the convention.

Over 30 countries around the world have recognized the Armenian Genocide as such – but Israel is not one of them. Withholding that recognition has been a sore point in relations that should have been close – because Armenians have a history of standing up for Jews and seeking to protect them.

We are proud that at Yad Vashem, many Armenian names are listed among the righteous who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. No other nation in the wider Middle East comes even close. The Armenian church has a proud and long history in the Holy Land as well, and has always sought good relations.

Israel, meanwhile, has developed an alliance with Azerbaijan, Armenia’s hostile neighbor to the east. Israel sells Baku drones and other weapons (which have been used against us), buys oil from its despotic regime, and thus enjoys access to the Iranian border too.

Unfortunate though that alliance is from our perspective, Azerbaijan’s issue is not the genocide by Turkish cousins from a century ago; it has been more interested in perpetrating its own ethnic cleansing against 120,000 Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh just last September.

The main impediment for Israeli recognition of our genocide has been Turkey, which vehemently denies the genocide, fearing that acknowledgment would lead to demands for reparations. Israel, seeking to maintain diplomatic ties and military cooperation with Turkey, has rather meekly complied. That figurative ship appears to have decisively sailed in recent months. Erdogan is a friend of Hamas and not of Israel.

We understand very well that Netanyahu is using the genocide issue as a cudgel against the increasingly belligerent Turkish leader. But there is a wider picture as well. Israel is rather isolated in the world right now. It doesn’t need more cynicism and scheming from its prime minister. Rather, now would be a great time to do the right thing.

There is a realpolitik argument for this, for those who need it. U.S. President Joe Biden, who recognized the genocide two years ago, would undoubtedly be pleased – which would help ease the rift with the US administration. Moreover, Turkey's influence in the region has waned in recent years, while Israel's relations with other regional actors, such as Greece and Cyprus, have strengthened.

But realpolitik, though often hailed as a pragmatic and realistic approach to international relations, has a dark side. It can involve excruciating moral compromise and result in alliances with oppressive regimes, turning a blind eye to human rights abuses. Such actions undermine the credibility of nations and tarnish their reputation. They start standing for cynicism and hypocrisy.

As a nation founded on the principles of justice, human rights, and remembrance of historical injustices, Israel has a moral obligation to recognize the Armenian Genocide, which is deemed by an overwhelming majority of scholars and experts as a historical fact. The denial of our genocide undermines the global fight against genocide denial and impunity.

By taking a principled stand and acknowledging the Armenian Genocide, Israel can demonstrate its commitment to universal values and strengthen its moral standing in the international community – at a time when that standing is being questioned.

So Netanyahu should do more than fire off a tweet. He should follow in Biden’s footsteps. The time for Israel to recognize the Armenian Genocide is now. It would be a fitting reply to Erdogan.

• Grigor Hovhannissian is the former Armenian Ambassador to the United States and to Mexico, and the former Deputy Foreign Minister of Armenia.

https://www.ynetnews...ticle/bj1ebxjrp

 

 

[Yervant1]

Denialists Erdogan and Netanyahu Shamefully

Exploit the Term Genocide to Bash Each Other

 

By Harut Sassounian

TheCaliforniaCourier.com

For several decades, Israel and Turkey were in a honeymoon, supporting each other politically and economically.

However, over the years, their relationship soured due to their opposing positions on the Palestinian issues. On several occasions, Israel and Turkey withdrew their ambassadors from each other’s capitals due to such conflicts, only to reinstate them again. In other words, they kissed and made up repeatedly.

We all know the _expression_, “politics makes strange bedfellows.” Israel and Turkey are one of those political odd couples. Initially, there was some basis in their partnership, more aptly described as mutual exploitation. Israel, surrounded by a large number of hostile Arab nations, needed Turkey as its political and economic ally, an Islamic nation that had established diplomatic relations with Israel in 1949. Meanwhile, Turkey needed Israel for various reasons, including political support from the West, the purchase of advanced weapons and billions of dollars of trade.

The other aspect of this unholy union was that both countries denied the Armenian Genocide. Turkey used its relations with Israel to convince the powerful Jewish lobby in the United States to block the recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the U.S. Congress. Turkey pressured Israel to block the International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide in Tel Aviv in 1982, prevent the broadcast of a documentary on the Armenian Genocide and its recognition by the Knesset. Turkey went as far as threatening its domestic Jewish community and demanded that the Chief Rabbi of Istanbul to lobby American Jewish organizations on behalf of Turkey.

In 2009, Erdogan told the Israeli President Shimon Peres during a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in front of the assembled world leaders: “When it comes to killing you know very well how to kill. I know very well how you killed children on the beaches [of Gaza].”

Then the Mavi Marmara incident occurred in 2010, when the Israeli military attacked six Turkish civilian ships in the Mediterranean Sea trying to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, killing nine Turkish passengers. The raid seriously deteriorated Israeli-Turkish relations. Turkey recalled its ambassador from Tel Aviv and expelled Israel’s ambassador from Ankara. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized to Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and offered $20 million in compensation for the raid.

Shortly before Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023, Israeli customs officials intercepted 16 tons of explosive materials for making missiles hidden in a Turkish shipment of construction supplies for Gaza. Surprisingly, Israel took no action against Turkey. This was yet another example of Israel appeasing Turkey’s anti-Israeli actions. Rather than designating Turkey as a state sponsor of terrorism, Israeli leaders embraced Erdogan, encouraging him to continue his misdeeds.

Following the recent Hamas attack on Israel, Erdogan called Hamas “freedom fighters,” and likened Netanyahu to “Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin, today’s Nazis.”

In January 2024, Israel’s Foreign Minister tweeted: “The President of Turkey Erdogan, from a country with the Armenian Genocide in its past, now boasts of targeting Israel with unfounded claims. We remember the Armenians, the Kurds. Your history speaks for itself. Israel stands in defense, not destruction, against your barbarian allies.”

Last week, Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz summoned the Turkish envoy, Shakir Ozkan Torunlar, to complain about Erdogan’s statement that he will “send Netanyahu to Allah to take care of him, make him miserable and curse him.” Katz replied on X/Twitter: “You [Erdogan] who support the burning of babies, murderers, rapists and the mutilation of corpses by Hamas criminals, [are] the last one who can speak about God. There is no God who will listen to those who support the atrocities and crimes against humanity committed by your barbaric Hamas friends.” Katz then admonished Erdogan: “Be quiet and shame on you!”

The Turkish foreign ministry replied to Katz: Israel has been built upon ‘occupied’ Palestinian land since its creation. “Since the first day they occupied Palestinian lands, the Israeli authorities have made a great effort to keep the serious crimes they committed against the Palestinians secret, and have tried to create an armor of immunity for themselves. They have targeted our President, who screams the truth.”

The Turkish Foreign Ministry then accused Israel of committing ‘genocide,’ stating that the “entire world public opinion is eagerly awaiting the day when Israeli officials who committed crimes will be brought to justice.”

Earlier, Netanyahu, who himself does not recognize the Armenian Genocide, criticized Erdogan for denying the Genocide. Netanyahu tweeted: “Israel, which adheres to the laws of war, will not accept moral preaching from Erdogan, who supports murderers and rapists of the terrorist organization Hamas, denies the Armenian Holocaust, massacres Kurds in his own country and eliminates regime opponents and journalists.” However, Netanyahu keeps arming Turkey’s ally, Azerbaijan, with sophisticated weapons which were used to commit a new genocide against Armenians in Artsakh.

In conclusion, both Erdogan and Netanyahu should be ashamed of using the Armenian Genocide and Holocaust as a bargaining chip in their dispute.

Rather than using the term genocide as a cudgel to bash each other, both Israel and Turkey should have recognized the Armenian Genocide long ago, in order to be classified among the ranks of civilized nations!

[Yervant1]

The Jewish Chronicle

April 4 2024

 

 

Why Israel must now recognise the Armenian genocide

 

Denial of the genocide is state policy in Turkey and Azerbaijan – but Israel does not officially acknowledge what went on either

In the first week of September last year, several aircraft took off from the Ovda military airbase in the Negev desert, destination Azerbaijan. Their cargo was the latest in Israeli weapons technology, including state-of-the-art military attack drones. A few days later, the Azerbaijan army conducted a devastating attack upon the ethnically Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, driving out the entire population and subsequently destroying its historic architecture in ways that have reminded some of Isis’ destruction of Palmyra. More than 100,000 refugees fled to Armenia.

Experts tracking arms sales have estimated that 70 per cent of the weapons employed by the Azerbaijani army had been sold to them by Israel. In the past, Armenia has even accused Israel of not just providing these weapons, but of operating them too.

Embarrassingly, among those who celebrated this Israeli-supported victory in Nagorno-Karabakh was Hamas: “We congratulate Azerbaijan for its victory in the battles and regaining the occupied territory” boasted a Hamas spokesman in 2020. Another to applaud was Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who said last September: “We support the steps taken by Azerbaijan – with whom we act together with the motto of one nation, two states.”

Sandwiched between Turkey and Azerbaijan, the Armenian state is caught in a vice of pan-Turkism, the post-Soviet revived desire for the unification of all Turkic peoples. And if this wasn’t problem enough, the Russians are also angry with Armenia, which – looking for new and more reliable allies – is seeking a foreign policy pivot from Moscow to the European Union. Moscow could turn Armenia into the next Ukraine, a Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman recently hinted, darkly. Armenia is in desperate need of friends.

 

 

 

On the surface, Israel and Armenia have much in common. They are both little countries with ancient cultures surrounded by hostile neighbours. Both are shaped by the trauma of 20th-century genocide. And both have large and important global diasporas. One is Christian – in fact, the oldest Christian country in the world – one is Jewish, but both are under threat by radical Islam. It is not insignificant that Hamas thinks of Nagorno-Karabakh and Gaza as both “occupied territories” requiring liberation. So why has Israel been arming Azerbaijan and delighting Hamas and Erdogan?

Recently, Israeli doublethink on Armenia has got even crazier. On 9 March, Benjamin Netanyahu published a remarkable tweet: “Israel, that adheres to international law, rejects the absurd preachings about morality from Erdogan, who supports the mass murderers and rapists of Hamas, denies the Armenian genocide, massacres Kurds in his own country and vies for the world record in eliminating and jailing regime opponents and journalists.” Bibi was right, of course. The denial of the Armenian genocide – the first of the 20th century – is state policy in Turkey and in the ethnically Turkic state of Azerbaijan. The problem is that Israel does not officially acknowledge what went on either.

Christian Armenians had lived in what we now know as eastern Turkey for thousands of years. Yet, during the First World War, more than a million of them were systematically murdered by the Ottoman authorities Recent events in Nagorno-Karabakh have resurfaced much of this historic trauma.

Turkey’s line on all of this is that the death marches of the Armenian genocide were strategic resettlement, that they were putting down a potential rebellion at a time when the Ottoman Empire was especially vulnerable. But there was no rebellion to speak of. It was ethnic cleansing, pure and simple. On 22 August, 1939, just before the invasion of Poland, Hitler reportedly said that no one would care about his plan to create lebensraum (“living space”) in eastern Europe because: “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” Who, indeed.

The hypocrisy of Netanyahu’s statement is that he has been responsible for blocking Israeli recognition of the Armenian genocide. “It is time to stop grovelling before Erdogan,” wrote Yair Lapid in 2018. “It is time to do the moral and right thing and recognise the genocide of the Armenian people”. Every year there is a call in the Knesset to debate this subject; every year it has been squashed by the government of the day. There are serious issues here: for some, recognition of the Armenian genocide could weaken the understanding of the Holocaust as a unique horror. The fact that the official remembrance day for the Armenian genocide, 24 April, falls right around Yom HaShoah only accentuates this concern. Israel has a lot of other things on its plate right now. But Lapid was right about the need to do the right thing by Armenia. The problem is that Israel gets about 40 per cent of its oil from Azerbaijan, and both are strategic allies against Iran. But, albeit indirectly, receiving the applause of Hamas must give Jerusalem serious cause to rethink Israeli foreign policy in the Caucasus.

Hopefully, Netanyahu’s tweet marks the beginning of a shift in attitude.

https://www.thejc.co...nocide-jvxgn8k7