MJ

Yes, I am. Not becasue I care about you but becasue people like you claim "profesionalism in political sciences" and drive Armenia into the misery that she in is now, without giving themselves adequate account while doing so. To a blind man the world is dark. As far as your other "arguments" are concerned, a political scientist does not make claims on the basis of some news which he cannot even reference but, first, reads and studies the constitution of his own country in order not to speak nonsense. As to an "error" you were talking about, I don't even know which one were you referring to. A final comment and I will go to bed: if you want someone discuss anything with you, as I have attempted before, and demonstrate respect towards you, you should first demonstrate that you deserve it. First, by stopping to insult the people who you have never met or know enough about, especially when you are urged to do so. Second by making qulified arguments - at least when you say something stupid, you quickly retract it, not enforce it further. Then you would see that others would be most respectful towards you. No one has interest in "insulting" you. In fact, when one comes here, inherently one is interested in reading something worthwhile and having a qualified discussion - that is if you can have such. As to the rest of your ventilation, I am not going to engage in 'bodysizing' with you.

The Armenian Government has not financed any Chairs in any academic institutions - it simply is not able to. Each Chair requires about $2 million. The well known philanthropists who have financed the Armenian Chairs have also financed much of the Armenian Statehood Institutions - they have bought buildings for the Armenian embassies, allocated funds for the functioning of these institutions, including salaries, have covered their traveling expenses, and so on. Therefore, I think the comparison is inadequate by the issue being turned a little bit upside-down. Whether the Armenian government should sponsor such Chairs or not is a different issue. I think not. However, the said Armenian Chairs have conducted research on the same grounds as if the Armenian government would have sponsored them for. Not that I am saying that they have done something wrong. In fact, all of the Chair-holders are highest caliber professionals. However, if those Chairs had not been sponsered by the said philanthropists, they simply would have not been established. The lack of support from Turkish philanthropists for Turkish Chairs may be only indicative of their lack of interest in the subject and the Tukish government being the only counterparty with vested interest. In which case, I see nothing wrong with doing so. After all, American government and corporations or other philanthropists sponsor variety of Chairs, Chinese government sponsors Chairs in America, and so on. What is wrong is the hiring of non-qualified people (such as Heath Lawrey) on such capacity. But that is, in fact, good for us.

I will answer you when you shave your mustache.

I am sorry for you.

Winston, I know the TARC story better than you can suspect. The bottom line is that they lost, and the Amrenian side held its ground. The success of the Armenian side is obvious. There will be more. But it would not be easy. It is very simple and banal - recognition and reconciliation. If the Genocide is to be perceived as a political issue, Diaspora has nothing to say in it since political issues can be raised only by states. If it is to be seen as a moral issue, obviously the issue of Diaspora is the recognition, and it is being pursued. I really have lost my patience with all of you - really - you too. This place has turned into a kindergarten or a dump for those who have something to dump.

This will be my last comment on the subject. Turkish official line is that “bad things have happened, and they have happened to all of us. It was not Genocide, but undoubtedly a lot of Armenians have suffered as well as Turks have done so.” They don’t deny the killings of Armenians. They argue the numbers, the character and the motives. The establishment of Armenian Chairs in US educational institutions has been long sponsored by well known Armenian philanthropists. I know at least 6-10 such chairs. In such case, Turks also can sponsor Turkish chairs, and that is what they have tried to do. If the quality of research out of such Chairs has not been adequate, it is a whole different story. But, outright, one cannot deny the Turks the right to establish such Chairs. It is an established practice even outside the Armenian and Turkish circles. Additionally, one has to place special attention to the historic research that comes out of Armenian academic institutions – most shameful due to its complete lack of professionalism – they cannot still distinguish the science of history from the traditions of communist partisan ideology. They are as terrible as the Turkish historians are. In fact, Turks are even better than the Armenian historians from Armenia. Turks are at least being exposed to the standards of the modern science of history due to the the scutiny they are under. The historians of Armenia still function in the paradigm of Soviet methodologies. If not for the handful of Armenian historians in America, Canada, and so on, and the foreign professionals specializing in Armenian History, Armenian history research would be on the same shelf as the Azerbaijani one. Now, give me one reference where Turkey and Armenia have alleged that Turkey “has made serious effort for reconciliation.” As to Bushes statement above, show me the line where he claims so. If you are still claiming that the previously mentioned people have been paid directly or indirectly by the State Department, that is a statement made from a vantage point of view of a person who has never had carrier of his own, has never held a serious job, is ready to sell out to anyone as soon is someone pays, and that’s why he thinks that if someone else is doing something, it is out of considerations to “cash-out.” I am sorry for your small and perverted world. Obviously, I would have not said this if you had not persistently continued your theme. No one else is more interested in Turkish – Armenian reconciliation than Armenia. And no one is more interested in it than those who cherish aspirations for the future of Armenia and its sovereignty. In the big picture of things, State Department doesn’t care if Armenians and Turks would reconcile or not. Armenians are a very small factor for the State Department to be concerned and preoccupied with. Armenian Government has never had officially anything to do with TARC. However, it has not denied that it has been consulted. And it has never expressed objections. The same concerns to Turkey. Both governments have quietly welcomed the effort. That is how things work in the absence of diplomatic relations. Otherwise, show me evidence to support the opposite argument as alleged by you. There were some forces in the Armenian community, which have loudly expressed mistrust towards TARC. The most loud one wasa representative of ARF – Sasunian. This guy had expressed strong interest, initially, to participate in the work of TARC. Later, perhaps his leadership had forbidden him, so he started to blast TARC. Any experienced reader could have seen that his primary venom was due to the fact that TARC had continued its work without him. I would claim that those circles who have express their resentment towards TARC are the most mistrusted representatives of Armenian nation. But who gives a damn about them? If the issue is ripe, it would be put on the desk of both governments, who would make the decisions. The Armenian individuals involved in TARC have been the most well known and the highest profile throughout the entire Armenian nation. It is those objecting them are the little known ones. ”Yes, the governments put signature under the pacts when they agree. But this commission, as it was suspected from the beginning, was trying to undermine the policy of Armenian government of international recognition of the Genocide. “ Such arguments are called ‘oxymoron.’ Even you have claimed in this thread that the ICTJ’s qualification of the Genocide as so has resulted from the efforts of TARC - in fact, one person at that. In the last 30 years, all your Armenian Organizations together have not accomplished as much as this one person who is behind much of the success on the American arena. The simple logic says that by asking the State Department to recognize and to intervene in something which is inherently “an Armenian issue,” and thus internationalizing the issue, we are not in the position to claim that the State Department has to be out of it. You can stand in one side of the issue or the other. If you constantly bounce from one side to another, that means you don’t know what you are talking about. Which is not surprising in view of everything else. But it becomes annoying. "Well, they don't have to say it. They hardly say anything. If the name of the group is 'Armenian Turkish Reconcilliation Commission' that says the Armenian members are representing the Armenians.” First of all, they are representing Armenians as much as any other non-governmental individual can do so. They are all professionals, very well recognized individuals and have made much more contributions to the future of Armenia than those who you would insinuate have. And they have the right to call their organization anything they want (while the political expediency of doing so may be rightfully questioned), since it is not indicative of their function but is the name of their organization. It is much like the newspaper called “Republic of Armenia.” It is the name of the newspaper. It doesn’t mean that it is indeed the Republic of Armenia. ”Thanks for the advice I don't mean to denigrate people, not without cause anyway. We are not in a courtroom. I think it is clear what my point is, and to make that point I don't think I need to do more investigation than what is obvious and essential (at least to me).” The above statement is only descriptive of your character. "Armenia lost its independence (sovereignty) from the moment the Bolsheviks supported by the Red Army took over. Since then Armenia has been dependent on Russia and has not made it's decisions. I know that legally it maybe disputable, but the present day Armenia recognizes itself as the continuation of 1918-1920 Armenia which has signted the Sevre treaty without foreign interference. I didn't characterize any treaty 'ridiculous'. What I called ridiculous are Turkeys well known preconditions to starting diplomatic relationship. (Sometimes one of these preconditions is the removal of any mention of Western Armenia from the constitution, which is quite ridiculous).” The multiple and egregious factual inaccuracies in the above paragraph indicate that you neither have clue about the Armenian history nor about the legal framework where the states operate. Current Armenia recognizes itself as the continuation of previous two Republics of Armenia. In 1920 only change of regime has taken place in Armenia – one communist party called ARF has yielded power to another communist party. There has been absolutely no ideological or political difference between them (that’s why ARF has so easily yielded power and has not resisted to the penetration of Communists in Armenia since 1918. There is no difference now, either) The regime is all that has changed in Armenia in 1920. Armenia has lost its independence in 1923. Severs treaty is an international treaty and Armenian has signed it exactly due to foreign interference. So has done Turkey - due to foreign interference. You should also show me where Turkey does speak about “Western Armenia” and where the constitution of Armenia does so. There has never existed anything like Western Armenia as a matter of legal or historic (other than geographic) entity. It is purely a product of schizophrenic fantasy. Even the Severs treaty does not specify anything remotely sounding like Western Armenia. And the Severs treaty is what comes closest to it. There is a legitimate thing as Western Armenian. That is about all. This ridiculous term has been put in circulation by the most incompetent Armenian activists, and has been repeated so many times that a non-diligent person like you (don’t mean to be offensive) repeats it without thinking and analyzing the basis of it. America does not owe anything to Armenia. However Armenia owes significant foreign debt to America, currently. Moreover, America has forgiven Armenia the $50 million debt loaned to her in 1919 (something that ARF has stolen from the Republic of Armenia, subsequently), which by today’s measures would have been equivalent to tens of billions of dollars. We have not only asked America to help us but we have begged her. Armenia has received about $1 billion aid from America, only, in the last 12 years or so. In the opposite case, Armenia would have not existed today. Additionally, Armenia has as almost as much debt to the World Bank, where USA has 17% ownership. IMF is another lender. There are others lenders, too. Armenian people have defined their cause by declaring independence. Armenian people through the Armenian government have not presented any other claims to anyone. “Most Armenians do not mater.” What matters is a representative government which will be the sole body to speak on behalf of the “most Armenian people.” That is what we would have had if we had normal elections this year. Russia… This is the sole country, after Turkey, which has destroyed Armenia and continues to do so as of today. I don’t think that Russians are such evil. In fact I love them much. I just think that large segments of Armenians are stupid slaves. It is most dishonest or incompetent to claim that Russia protects Armenia, when it has been the sole country responsible for the loss of Armenian lands to Turkey and Azerbaijan, the current crisis in Karabagh, and the suffocation of the Armenian economy and the confiscation of her most valuable assets through predatory tactics. Russia has killed the Armenian economy, has impoverished the Armenian population of Armenia through its monetary policies called “the ruble zone” in the early 90s. There are about 10,000 Russian forces in Armenia “protecting” the Armenian borders. THese are merely border troops. It is most ridiculous to claim that these troops have a function of defending Armenia against Turkey. Much larger and more professional Russian troops have not been able to resolve even the Chechen problem in some 10 years. If it was in the state interests of Turkey, unfortunately the Turkish army would have been able to easily sweep Armenian and Russian troops into the Caspian within few days. And it would not have cared if Russia was there or not. Russia will go in war with Turkey… Yeah, yeah, yeah… Tell such stories in kindergartens. What do you think Russia will do to Turkey if it cannot even deal with Chechnya? In any arguments of these types, one must try to express competent thoughts so that to be taken seriously. Not everyone can do so. And places where systematically incompetent thoughts are cultivated turn into kindergartens – such as this forum. But at least, one should try to be honest and consistent in his/her arguments. Incompetence is not a serious fault – most people, as Sip would attest I am sure, are incompetent. Intellectual dishonesty is different issue.

OK, it cannot cover up, but it is trying to do so by buying American academic institutions, by forging documents, by hiding archival documents and all kinds of other things. We know that it doesn't want to repent, but the Turkish government doesn't say so. It says there is nothing to repent. I would like this fact to be acknowledged, and not hear false statements that Turkey is doing every effort to reconcilliate. It is not trying to "do so." It is trying to "explain" it. If Armenians are entitled to buying academic institutions, so are the Turks. Yes, they say "there is nothing to repent because it was Armenians' fault." To the best of my knowledge, since 9/11, no person in his/her right mind has alleged that "Turkey is making every effort for reconciliation." The thing is that Turks don't need it. It makes no difference to them. It makes difference to us, however, so that we can treat the Armenian psyche from mass schizophrenia, first of all.

Sasun, Your insinuation of the people involved with the reconciliation efforts is an outright misinformation, softly speaking. These people have their full time jobs, and they don’t get paid from the State Department. The expenses associated with these efforts (and no compensation for their work) were covered by a Diplomatic establishment out of Vienna. The governments put their signatures under the pacts. In this sense no one can replace nor will attempt to assume a role which belongs to the Armenian government. However, the theoretical, legal and logistic frameworks are always prepared by small groups of people. Let’s call them think-tanks. For all practical purposes, you can view this group of people involved as think-tank. Additionally, one of the members of that “think-thank” was an active Armenian diplomat, and another one was the former foreign minister. These are not accidental people. This group was formed with the knowledge of the Armenian Government. Diasporan organizations are not entitled to anything. They are just disgrace – first of all the ARF- and it is time for them to be replaced by those who represent new and contemporary thought. Diasporan organizations represent no one but themselves – ARF represents about 6000 people worldwide, Ramgavars represent less than that and Hnchags don’t exist for all practical purposes. It is important to state that no member of reconciliation effort has ever spoken on behalf of the Armenian people – believe me, they know their limits better than you and I do. You are utterly wrong. Armenian Sovereignty has been lost in 1923, when it has been joined with the Caucasian Federation. Also, I don’t know how can you characterize a treaty which is the only acting document regulating the regional issues, as “ridiculous.” This is another subject you should study before making inaccurate and uninformed statements. Turkey is always citing this agreement – carefully though, so that not to open a can of worms. The entire Turkish policy in the region is based on this document – it is the only document, again. America nor any one else don’t owe anything to Armenia neither legally nor morally. However, I agree that America is the champion of democracy and the guarantor throughout the whole world. And we are asking America to help us. Our cause is the strengthening of the foundations of Armenian statehood. And no one else has helped us more in that cause than America. I am aware of some stupid ventilation on the subject of “Armenian Cause” – pure garbage, if I am to speak out. If America should make moves based on the desires of American-Armenians, then it should also do so based on the votes of American-Turks, American-Jews, etc. Maybe that is not a bad thing to wish, but it is obviously a controversial and complex issue. In any case, before we expect something from someone else, we need to clean our house, first. It is true that every single US presidential candidate in the last 15 years or so has promised to proclaim the recognition of the Genocide and has not followed up with it. This only means that as human beings, as individuals, they are for the recognition. When they become president and have to make decisions in an institutionalized environment based on the recommendations of their State Department and Pentagon, they find themselves obligated to make judgments based on the whole complex of the surrounding issues.

Thank you for your explanations, Arpa. I also think that he is using a term adopted from us, and it is good. Sasun, I don’t think that Turkish Government is covering anything up. It cannot cover anything up in this age and time. The Turkish government just doesn’t want to repent. That’s all. The statement doesn’t constitute disbelief on Bushes part. He is picking up on the emotional subject important to Armenians and avoids making a political statement. If he didn’t believe in the validity of the discussed assertion, he would’ve kept silent or just made an ambiguous statement, such as “we are sorry for the tragedy that has befall on our Armenian Turkish brothers, who have both suffered in the WWI…” Armenians have no capacity to press the US Administration to do something that it doesn’t want to do. There is enough evidence for such statement. Moreover, America and others owe nothing to Armenians. Your statement about the reconciliation commission is most unfortunate and attest to the fact that you are talking about things which you don’t know enough about. That is not a good quality. You are trying to denigrate honorable people. The reconciliation initiative is a private initiative on behalf of the professional people involved and similar people who back them up. They don’t need neither your or mine election nor approval. In fact, they couldn’t give a damn about what someone like us would think. And they are brave people. The reconciliation effort is continuing as hard as it is and that is the only meaningful thing to do. The rest of the things are just to feed the mass schizophrenia or the charades. Efforts are underway right now to press Turkey to open the borders both from Europe and America in this regard. In my view, the most important insight related to the blockade of Armenia, which is neglected due to incompetence or lack of truthfulness, is the following: according to the 1921 Russo-Turkish and the subsequent fourlateral treaty where Armenian is signatory, subject to interpretation, Turkey and Russia have the right to blockade Armenia – both transportationwise and informationaly. If the informational blockade in our days is impossible, due to the new technologies, though it was exercised by the USSR in 1988-89, the transportation blockade is obviously possible. It is the obligation of the Armenian government, first of all, to walk away from a treaty which it has signed, so that to not grant voluntarily Turkey and Russia the protested right of blockade. Moreover, in the past, Russia has subjected Armenia to blockade, too. Additionally, if America has the power and should press Turkey, as expected, to lift Armenia’s blockade, with the same token, Russia should be expected to press the lifting of the blockade of Armenia by Azerbaijan, and should stop paralyzing the Abkhazian sector of the railway so that the transportation cost from and to Armenia may be reduced and make Armenia more competitive in the economic sphere. I would like to here comments and emotions in this regard, for example. If we need to discuss these issues, we should do them competently and truthfully. Otherwise, it is just a juvenile ventilation.

I disagree. I think this statement is stronger than ever before. Pretty much, other than using the G- word, every meaningful thing is said in that statement. The reluctance of using the G-word is due to the understanding that it constitutes a political statement, which they don't want to make, I think. One question I have is what does the Armenian audience expect to hear, short of the G-word, which would be deemed satisfactory?

Presidential Message: Armenian Remembrance Day, 2003 Today marks the anniversary of a horrible tragedy, the mass killings and forced exile of countless Armenians in the final days of the Ottoman Empire. Many Armenians refer to these appalling events as the "great calamity," reflecting a deep sorrow that continues to haunt them and their neighbors, the Turkish people. The suffering that befell the Armenian people in 1915 is a tragedy for all humanity, which the world should not forget. I join the Armenian-American community and Armenians around the world in mourning the horrendous loss of life. I also salute our wise and bold friends from Armenia and Turkey who are coming together in a spirit of reconciliation to consider these events and their significance. I applaud them for rising above bitterness, and taking action to create a better future. I wish them success, building on their recent and significant achievements, as they work together in a spirit of hope and understanding. As we remember those who perished and suffered, we salute the nation of Armenia, and Armenians everywhere. The United States is grateful for the contributions of Armenian Americans to our national life. Generations of Armenians have employed wisdom, courage, and centuries-old traditions to overcome great suffering and enrich their adopted American homeland. The United States is proud to be a friend of Armenia, a young state with an ancient heritage. We are deepening our partnership to help achieve a secure, prosperous, and dignified future for the citizens of Armenia. The United States is committed to achieving a just and lasting settlement to the Nagorno-Artsax conflict. We will also continue to help Armenia as it strives to strengthen its democracy and market economy. On behalf of the American people, I send solemn wishes to the Armenian people on this day of remembrance. Our nations stand together, determined to create a future of peace, prosperity, and freedom for the citizens of our countries, for our regions, and for the world. GEORGE W. BUSH http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20...20030424-8.html

Children as Victims of Genocide: The Armenian Case By Vahakn N. Dadrian Director of Genocide Research, Zoryan Institute Presented at International Association of Genocide Scholars Fifth International Biennial Conference Irish Human Rights Center Galway, Ireland June 6-10, 2003 Contact: P.O. Box 99 Conesus, NY 14435-0099 Contents The General Picture The Variety of Methods of Liquidation of Children Trabzon: A Microcosm of Multi-Level Child-killings The Drowning Operations and Serial Rapes Other Sites of Drowning and Serial Rapes The Scope of Homosexual Rapes The Holocaust of Armenian Children: Infernal Mass Deaths by Burning Alive The Elements of License for Fiendishness Against Armenian Children Scant Exceptions of Benign Turks Notes Children as Victims of Genocide: The Armenian Case The General Picture The centrally organized mass murder of the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire during World War I is considered to be the first major genocide of the twentieth century. Moreover, many scholars of the Holocaust (Y. Bauer, L. Davidowicz, I. L. Horowitz, I. Charny, R. Rubenstein) in a variety of ways recognize that the Armenian Genocide was more than a mere precedent. It in fact became a connecting link to the subsequent Jewish Holocaust by virtue of the impunity that was accorded to the perpetrators of that genocide by the civilized world. It is, therefore, no accident that on the granite wall of the Exhibition Hall of the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., is engraved in block letters Hitler's following statement: "Who after all is today speaking of the destruction of the Armenians?" The Nazi leader was reassuring his field commanders on the eve of World War II that his impending genocidal initiatives too were likely to be consigned to oblivion. Since genocide refers to the wholesale extermination of a given religious, ethnic or nationality group, victims of this capital crime invariably include children who are often an integral part of the population. For this very reason, the subject of the genocidal fate of Armenian children has been generally subsumed within that of the entire victim population and not generally treated as a separate and distinct subject of study. This may be understandable at the operational level of the crime of mass murder where differences of age, gender, socio-economic status, religion, ethnicity or nationality tend to dissolve themselves abruptly. They all collapse into an undifferentiated category of people targeted for imminent destruction. However, in recent decades attempts have been launched with a view to discerning certain features or patterns that stand out with respect to the genocidal treatment of children. This attempt provides a perspective through which children are viewed as a distinct subcategory within the overall victim population. The study of the Armenian Genocide affords the identification and examination of such a subcategory. Several factors played a role in this occurrence, but most particularly the ideology of the perpetrator group, the historical background of the Turkish-Armenian conflict, and the instruments utilized for the mass murder. Therefore, a brief comment in this regard may be in order. Unlike several other instances of twentieth century genocide, the Armenian Genocide is not a sui generis phenomenon but rather the culmination of a historical process. As such it is antedated by decades of a series of periodic massacres, from which the perpetrators remained free from prosecution and from ultimate retributive justice. Predictably fearful of the wrath of the Great Powers of Europe, the perpetrators of these massacres, especially those of 1894-1896, acted with some restraint as women and children were mostly spared. Instead of becoming wholly exterminatory, these massacres, along with the large-scale devastation they entailed, ended up serving the purpose of crippling the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire. The fact that, by 1915, when the World War I genocide was initiated, the very same population had recovered considerably and had become a viable and organized community was a development that had rattled the Young Turk leaders contemplating genocide. The operative catch phrase was "This time we will do a thorough job," in other words, that no category of Armenians would be exempted from destruction. The impunity accruing to the perpetrators of the previous series of massacres had sufficiently emboldened them to embark upon operations of indiscriminate mass murder. Accordingly, these leaders decided to rely on "bloodthirsty murderers" (kanlý katil) as instruments of massacre. Thousands of felons and repeat criminals were selected and released from the various prisons of the Ottoman Empire for massacre duty; they were to show no compassion or mercy for women, children or the infirm. The variety of ferocious and sadistic methods with which thousands of Armenian children were murdered reflects the efficacy of this administrative arrangement. As a Turkish officer after the war conceded, "the worst crimes against the Armenians were perpetrated by these criminals" (en büyük cinayetleri ika ettiler ).[1] There is one more aspect to this condition of differential treatment of children in connection with the Armenian Genocide. Unlike the racist Nazis, for example, the Ottoman Turks were quite appreciative of the value of the gene pool that Armenian children embodied; they were regarded as an invaluable resource for the enrichment of the mainstream of the Turkish nation. Accordingly, whenever possible, Muslim Turks, and orphanages run by governmentally appointed Turks, were encouraged to collect multitudes of Armenian orphans, mostly male, and to raise them as Turks after some nominal rituals of conversion to Islam, including serial circumcisions and name changes. It is against this background that the genocidal fate of Armenian children in World War I may be outlined in terms of a number of categories. The Variety of Methods of Liquidation of Children A significant portion of Armenian children, along with the other two principal segments of the Armenian population of the Empire, i.e., women and old men, succumbed to the severe hardships associated with the arduous and exacting treks of an unending series of dislocations and deportations to the desolate deserts of Mesopotamia in today's Syria. These were arranged in such a way as to accentuate the hardships by deliberately prolonging, for example, the routes of the treks, by denying food and water, and by terrorizing in many brutal ways of mistreatment the already critically wasted deportees. Exposure, exhaustion, starvation, disease and epidemics further aggravated the plight of the victims thereby compounding the scale of lethal attrition. It should be noted in this connection that the absence of able-bodied men in these deportee convoys was due to the fact that nearly all of them were conscripted at the start of World War I and later gradually annihilated in a variety of ways. Another sizable portion of Armenian children fell victim to the vast array of episodic massacres carried out in all corners of the Empire, massacres that were in and of themselves exceptionally atrocious. As American Ambassador Henry Morgenthau stated, to save "powder and shell," the Moslem peasant population in the countryside, acting as support groups to the criminal gangs recruited for massacre duty, used "clubs, hammers, axes, scythes, spades, and saws. Such instruments... caused more agonizing deaths than guns and pistols... ." [2] Noted British historian Arnold Toynbee's massive compilation of eyewitness accounts of the Armenian Genocide is replete with details about these types of atrocities. [3] Reliable evidence indicates that in the general scheme of things, the method of outright massacre was to be primarily applied in operations directed against the male population of the six provinces in Anatolia. These included Sivas, Diyarbekir, Harput, Erzurum, Bitlis, and Van; to these was added Trabzon province. All of these provinces, considered to be potential flash points, or bones of contention in the lingering Turkish-Armenian conflict, were put under the jurisdiction of the High Command of the Ottoman Third Army, headquartered in Erzurum. The relentless liquidation of an estimated 90% of the able-bodied males of these provinces was effectively carried out in the spring and summer of 1915 by General Mahmud Kâmil, commander-in-chief of the Third Army. The rest of the population was to be liquidated indirectly, i.e., through exhausting and endless deportation treks. But due to the interplay of several factors, including the whims of the respective local organizers of the mass murder, the procedures of annihilation were neither uniform nor regular, as far as differentiating between outright massacre and deportation was concerned. The bulk of the Armenian population of Bitlis province, for example, which consisted almost entirely of old men, women, and children, was destroyed within the boundaries of the province; there was no deportation, so to speak. Except for the city of Van itself, the rest of the Armenian population of Van province, which, together with Bitlis province, comprised the cradle of the Armenian nation, was likewise exterminated through a series of local massacres. In the provinces of Sivas, Harput, Trabzon, Erzurum, Diyarbekir, as well as the independent sanjaks of Urfa and Marash the genocide was carried out in part through deportations and in part through massacres. In all of these operations children were part of the general population targeted for wholesale destruction. In many instances they were also subjected to separate and differential forms of mass murder. This was the case each time children constituted a distinct and separate group. In Trabzon province, for example, thousands of children were allowed to be left behind as the adults were pushed into deportation convoys. In the deserts of Mesopotamia, in Deir Zord district in particular, thousands of emaciated children, skeleton-like survivors of the deportation treks, were likewise targeted as a distinct category. In Erzincan, in Erzurum province, hundreds of forlorn children likewise constituted a separate target. What follows is an outline of the three principal methods of killing employed, i.e., drowning operations, burning alive, and wholesale rapes to precede killing, through which thousands of Armenian children met their genocidal fate in the 1915-1916 period. As specified by the German Vice Consul of Mosul, and by Turkish governmental fiat, male and female children up to 13 years old were subsumed under the category of children.[4] Trabzon: A Microcosm of Multi-Level Child-killings The Drowning Operations and Serial Rapes A major port city on the Black Sea and the capital of the province bearing the same name, Trabzon served as a crucible for the Armenian Genocide. Nearly all forms and aspects of the crime were devised and successfully implemented there. The data cited below are excerpted from a study soon to be published by Cambridge University Press.[5] As noted above, some three thousand children were left behind as orphans in various buildings of Trabzon. During the proceedings of the Turkish Military Tribunal in Spring 1919, some two dozen Turks, including physicians, military officers, governmental officials, and merchants, in the course of twenty sittings, testified orally and in writing to the methods used to dispose of these children.[6] Two Turkish MDs, Dr. Ziya Fuad, Inspector of Health Services, and Dr. Adnan, the city's Health Services Director, testified based on evidence gathered from local Turkish physicians that Dr. Ali Saib, Director of Public Health of Trabzon province, systematically poisoned Armenian infants brought to the city's Red Crescent Hospital and ordered the drowning at the nearby Black Sea of those who resisted taking his "medicine." Another method Dr. Saib applied in a house full of Armenian infants was "the steam bath." Through the installation there of an army "etüv" contraption, babies were exposed to suffocating hot steam and thereby instantly killed. Father Laurent, the French Capuchin Father Superior in Trabzon, testified through an interpreter that he personally saw the corpses of the dead poisoned children being squeezed into large, deep baskets on the hospital grounds, like animals from a slaughterhouse, then dumped into the nearby sea. That same Red Crescent Hospital had been reduced to a pleasure dome, where the province's governor-general, Cemal Azmi, kept fifteen young Armenian girls (Court-Martial 10th sitting, April 12, 1919), to be used for frequent sex orgies. This had prompted Customs Inspector Nedim to denounce the governor (16th sitting) and Turkish Lieutenant Hasan Maruf to expose the additional fact that "After committing the worst outrages the government officials involved had these young girls killed." In a separate study, a young Armenian, who had befriended the governor's son in Berlin, where the governor had taken refuge right after the war to escape prosecution in Turkey, provided additional data on this episode of lethal debauchery. During one of his boastful narrations about this debauchery, Governor Azmi told the following to the young Armenian, whom he believed to be a Turk as the latter had by then assumed a complete Muslim Turkish identity, including the Turkish name Mehmed Ali, a thorough study of the Koran, the Islamic Sacred Law, and circumcision: "Among the most pretty Armenian girls, 10-13 years old, I selected a number of them and handed them over to my son [who was then 14 years old] as a gift; the others I had drowned in the sea." [7] During the same courts-martial, Nuri, the police chief of Trabzon, admitted carrying to Istanbul several young Armenian girls as governor Azmi's gift to CUP leaders there. (9th sitting, April 10, 1919). Similar sexual indulgences were reported in connection with the activities of other Young Turk party potentates, such as the CUP commissar in Trabzon, Yenibahceli Nail, who, according to U.S. Consul in Trabzon, Oscar S. Heizer, "has ten of the handsomest girls in a house in the central part of the city." [8] Heinrich Bergfeld, the German consul at Trabzon, a lawyer by profession, and an ardent Turkophile, in his decrial of the mass murder in Trabzon called attention to "the numerous rapes of young girls." In its Verdict issued at the end of the Trabzon trial series, the Tribunal underscored the fact that these "serial rapes," "the violation of helpless victims," and the fact that "young girls were deflowered (izaleyi bikr) [took place] in the hospital that supposedly had a humanitarian mission." One of the ghastliest features of child-killing in Trabzon province was the method of drowning them en masse, utilizing Trabzon's river, Degirmendere, but mainly that port city's coastlines on the Black Sea. The most poignant testimony on these latter drowning operations was provided by the Turkish deputy of that province, Hafýz Mehmed, who by profession was a lawyer. In a postwar speech (December 11, 1919) in the Chamber of Deputies of the Ottoman Parliament, he revealed that he personally saw how, one day, Armenian women and children were loaded onto barges at the port city of Ordu in Trabzon province and drowned on the high seas. He then stated that the local people were lamenting with the words, "God will punish us for what we did." At the 15th sitting of the Trabzon trial series, Turkish Ordu merchant Hüseyin, appearing as a witness, confirmed this very drowning operation. In its Verdict, the Tribunal with emphasis referred to these operations of mass drownings targeting as they especially did "male and female infants" (zükur ve inas çocuklarý) with the help of "repeat criminals" (cerayimi mükerrere). Deputy Hafiz Mehmed in his above-mentioned speech also indicated that Trabzon's governor-general Djemal Azmi was reported to have applied the same method of drowning in the rest of the province. This attribution to the governor-general was confirmed by General Mahmut (Cürüksulu) who at about the same time in a speech in the Ottoman Senate declared that Djemal Azmi had authorized the procedures of wholesale extermination for the entire province. In one of his longest and most detailed reports to Washington, U.S. Consul at Trabzon, Oscar Heizer, likewise referred to: ... a number of lighters. [They] were loaded with people at different times [with the result that] a number of bodies of women and children have lately been thrown up by the sea upon the sandy beach below the walls of the Italian monastery here in Trabzon and were buried by Greek women in the sand where they were found. For his part, Signor Gorrini, the Italian Consul-General at Trabzon, in a detailed report called attention to the fact that: the children [were] torn away from their families... placed by hundreds on board ship in nothing but their shirts, and then capsized and drowned in the Black Sea and the river Degirmendere – these are my ineffaceable memoirs of Trabzon, memoirs which still, at a month's distance, torment my soul and almost drive me frantic... . The consul of Austria-Hungary, Ernst von Kwiatkowski, and the consul of Germany, Heinrich Bergfeld, both wartime allies of Ottoman Turkey, holding doctorates as a historian and a jurist respectively, did in numerous cipher telegrams sent to Vienna and Berlin refer to "women and children being loaded into barges, taken to the high seas, and drowned there." Colonel Stange, the highest-ranking German combat officer, whose regiment of Turkish irregulars was first assembled at Trabzon, personally confirmed these drowning operations (auf's Meer hinausgefahren und dann über Bord geworfen). After denouncing in his "secret" report sent to German headquarters these acts of "beastly brutality" [which] were perpetrated by Trabzon's "scum" (Gesindel) and the "brigands" released from the prisons, he concluded that all of these operations were part and parcel of an overall scheme of wholesale mass murder "conceived a long time ago." [9] In echoing the prima facie evidence the postwar court martial proceedings were generating, the Turkish newspaper Hadisat underscored the three-dimensional atrocities perpetrated against the Armenian children of Trabzon: serial rapes, poisonings, and drownings.[10] Other Sites of Drownings and Serial Rapes The drowning operations were not limited to seas or rivers; they extended to lakes as well. The report by U.S. Consul at Harput, Leslie A. Davis, is notable in this respect. In his lengthy analysis of the genocide that took place in his jurisdiction, Harput province, he describes how orphanages in which Armenian children were gathered after the liquidation of their families served as transit camps for subsequent annihilation through drowning. It develops that Consul Davis had requested permission from Harput province's governor-general, Sabit, to open an orphanage for "hundreds of children arriving all the time from other places... ." Saying that the government will take care of them, the governor denied permission. Shortly after the Consul left the governor's office, an order was issued that all children, along with the other remaining women, had to leave on the following Tuesday, i.e., in three days. "Then the children disappeared and it was reported that they had all been taken to a lake about twenty miles from Harput and drowned." Consul Davis then describes a horrendous scene of butchering around Lake Goeljuk which was "about five hours distant" from his seat in Harput. "Finally a Turk told me in strict confidence that he had seen thousands of dead bodies around Lake Goeljuk and offered to take me to the places where they were." The Consul estimated that "in the space of twenty-four hours, we had seen the remains of not less than ten thousand Armenians who had been killed around Lake Goeljuk. This, of course, is approximate... I am sure, however, that there were more, rather than less, than that number...." After describing the gaping bayonet wounds on most of the naked bodies, usually in the abdomen or chest, sometimes in the throat with the victims showing "signs of barbarous mutilation," Consul Davis declared: "That which took place around beautiful Lake Goeljuk in the summer of 1915 is almost inconceivable. Thousands and thousands of Armenians, mostly innocent and helpless women and children, were butchered on its shores and barbarously mutilated." [11] Another center for mass murder through drowning involving especially children was the Kemach Gorge on the Euphrates River, about 50 km southwest of Erzincan in Erzurum province. A large part of the Armenian population of that province, about 20-25,000, in particular that of Erzincan, was massacred at that narrow gorge with the help of the irregulars, i.e., the brigands of the 86th Cavalry Regiment of the 29th division of the Ninth Army Corps of the Ottoman Third Army headquartered in Erzurum. Relying on "a consular report," America's ambassador to Turkey, Morgenthau, states that at Kemach Gorge, "hundreds of children were bayoneted by the Turks and thrown into the Euphrates... ." [12] An equally large number of Armenian children were destroyed through mass drownings at the Mesopotamian lower ends of the Euphrates River, especially in the area of Deir Zor, the Armenian counterpart of Auschwitz. According to the testimony of an Armenian survivor, Mustafa Sidki, Deir Zor's police chief, on August 10, 1916 selected the prettiest girls from a convoy of deportees. They were taken to a bridge on the Euphrates where the police chief and his accomplices raped them. The victims were then all thrown into the river to be drowned. The same police chief "on October 24, 1916 ordered some 2,000 Armenian orphans carried to the banks of the Euphrates, hands and feet bound. They were then thrown into the river two by two to the visible enjoyment of the police chief who took special pleasure at the sight of the drama of drowning." [13] As described in connection with the atrocities committed in Trabzon, rape in all forms was one of the most common by-products of the Armenian Genocide. As Turkish lieutenant Hasan Maruf admitted to his British captors, "cases of rape of women and girls, even publicly, are very numerous. They were systematically murdered after the outrage." [14] As was the case in Trabzon, multitudes of young girls were transported to Constantinople from many parts of Anatolia for a variety of purposes involving sex. An Austrian resident in Tarsus, near Adana, Mrs. Christie recorded in her diary that a large number of girls were collected from the city's schools and placed at the disposal of the officers in the town's military barracks. "Over a hundred of them were carried in automobiles to Constantinople." One of them, about fifteen years old, managed to escape the fate of the others.[15] In the deserts of Mesopotamia, in the triangle formed by the rivers Euphrates and Khabour that conjoin near Deir Zor, rape was routine. According to one survivor, for example, Ras-ul-Ain's mayor, Hüseyin Bey, a Tchetchen, bragged that he alone had raped 50 to 60 young Armenian girls. His two sons emulated him on a regular basis.[16] Another venue for rape on a massive scale was the use and misuse of Armenian churches as temporary brothels. Young Armenian girls were assembled and made available to Turkish officers and soldiers. As a Swiss pharmacist reported in the city of Urfa, for example, "the large, Armenian Gregorian church, an edifice of Armenian sanctity, had been reduced to a bordello. Military officers, gendarmes, police officers, and plain city Turks would come there and choose girls for sexual indulgences." [17] A similar episode of desecration for sex is narrated by a Turkish staff captain, Nebil Bey. As he related, some 300 young girls "belonging to the best Armenian families of Bitlis" were collected in the Armenian church of the city "for the use of the army. Soldiers and officers alike visited the church, which soon became a hotbed of disease. Each regiment that passed through the town on its way to the front left its traces, as after a time all these unfortunate girls became infected." As a result, the commandant of Bitlis decided to punish the girls "for exhausting the vital forces of the Ottoman army and poisoning with their infection the children of the Fatherland." Some of the girls were given poison, others were killed outright. The captain added that all this was done through the orders of Third Army Commander-In-Chief General Mahmud Kâmil.[18] The license afforded the Turkish military and civilians to rape at will any Armenian girl did take its toll in fatality through exhaustion. As one Turkish court official conceded, in Urfa "ninety-five out of a group of one hundred soldiers... died of exhaustion and disease from committing excessive rapes." [19] The Scope of Homosexual Rapes The sexual license prevalent during the Armenian Genocide was not limited to the rape of young Armenian females. A Swiss pharmacist who throughout the war remained in Urfa and traveled extensively in the area asserts that widespread homosexual rape occurred both in connection with genocidal killings and in Turkish homes where young adopted Armenian boys were kept. As he reported, "Turkish officers, especially, engaged in unbelievable and unspeakable acts of [sexual] bartering of Armenian girls, but nobody can imagine the magnitude of crimes of unnatural sex inflicted upon hundreds, yes thousands, of Armenian boys." He also stated that "long after the killings had stopped, rapes, acts of deflowering virgins and other forms of sexual violations, especially of young boys, continued." [20] The following two accounts by the Swiss pharmacist exemplify the modalities of rape indicated above. An Armenian boy, adopted by a Turkish family in Mezre, Harput province, related a graphic description of rapes committed regularly by a Turkish man with the full knowledge of his wife in that household. There is also an instance where a hodja, a Muslim teacher, is depicted at attempted rape.[21] The other modality involves rape before murder. In Ankara province, near the village of Bash-Ayash, two rapist-killers - a brigand, Deli Hasan, and a gendarme, Ibrahim-raped twelve boys, aged 12-14, and subsequently killed them. Those who did not die instantly were tortured to death while crying "Mummy, Mummy." [22] Finally, reference may be made to another replica of mass poisoning of children described above in connection with the Trabzon case. A female survivor from Giresun relates how in Agn (Egin), Harput province, some 500 Armenian orphans collected from all parts of that province were poisoned through the arrangement of the local pharmacist and physician. Upon completion of this lethal operation, the Turkish physician is reported to have declared: "The Armenians have no burial plots. The Euphrates is their graveyard" (Ermenilerin topragý yoktur Onlarýn mezarý Yepraddýr).[23] The Holocaust of Armenian Children: Infernal Mass Deaths by Burning Alive As described at the outset of this study, the decision makers and organizers of the Armenian Genocide were determined to be as radical as possible in their scheme of wholesale extermination. They were unpleasantly surprised as to how ineffective the segmental massacres of the era of Sultan Abdul Hamid had been in the 1894-96 period and how the Armenians, far from being crippled permanently had, within a matter of two decades, bounced back as a viable and vibrant community. To avoid a similar mistake and to render the projected genocide as optimal as possible in terms of its outcome, they invented a new device: the liberation from the prisons of the Empire of thousands of criminals. They were to be as vicious as possible so as to avoid succumbing to occasional sentiments of pity vis a vis old men, women, and children, and massacre them indiscriminately and mercilessly. They were joined by thousands of Kurds and displaced immigrants from the Caucasus, particularly Chechens from the Caucasus and the Balkan peninsula. All of these groups were filled with hatred of the Armenians toward whom they projected their anti-Christian animosities inherited from their conflict with Christian Russia or the Christian nationalities from the Balkan peninsula, from which they were either evicted or they opted to leave. No less compelling, however, was their sense of avarice and greed, and their urge for lasciviousness and unrestrained sexuality. In the mass burning of Armenian orphans, plain sadistic fiendishness was mostly at work. After eliminating the rest of the Armenian population, these remnants had become a nuisance to the perpetrators. In several regards it was deemed most economical to end their misery by torching them en masse. In four provinces, Diyarbekir, Harput, Bitlis, and Aleppo, this method was applied with special ferocity. In Diyarbekir, for example, Dr. Reshid, a Circassian with ethnic roots in the Caucasus, and the province's governor-general, "took 800 children, enclosed them in a building and set light to it."[24] That such barbarism was not limited to burning alive is evidenced by the following excerpt from the journal of a French Catholic missionary who was there throughout the period of the massacres, i.e., June-December 1915: In this province it was customary to bury alive in large ditches and in one fell swoop hundreds of children in the 7-13 age category. After a lapse of several days, one could see the undulations of the earth conveying these souls' agony that was stirring from the bowels of their hecatombs. [25] According to the account of an eyewitness, in another instance in Furuncular, district of Malatya, in Harput province, the gendarmes buried alive in a large pit dug beforehand 90-100 Armenian children, aged 3-4. The victims, sensing their imminent death, started to scream hysterically and hopelessly as they were thrown into the pit, located in a place ironically named "The Garden of Children" (Çocuklar-Bahçesi ). But the gruesome operation was completed in just a few minutes.[26] In Harput province, the county supervisor Kadri "burned to death 800 children who were from Palu" in Diyarbekir province. [27] During one of the major death marches from Deir Zor to two major death camps in the deserts of Mesopotamia, Souvar and Shedadiye, some 5,000 Armenian children were consumed alive in a holocaust of flame and death. For four days, approximately 60,000 emaciated deportees were driven to these camps. It was on August 25, 1916 (or September 7, 1916, new style date), the day of the Muslim Festival of Sacrifice (kurban bayrami) that the orphans were gathered together and crowded into a large orphanage building in Deir Zor. They were then pushed in batches to a spot about an hour distant from the city, doused with petrol and torched to death.[28] This holocaustal method of immolation was not always limited to children, however. As narrated by a Jewish eyewitness, it was inflicted about the same time in the same area of Deir Zor on multitudes of other Armenians, mostly women. Eitan Belkind was an officer in the Turkish army and was assigned to the headquarters of the Ottoman Fourth Army, whose jurisdiction included Aleppo, the Mesopotamian deserts, and Deir Zor, in particular. He was assigned to the vicinity of the Khabour River that flows by Suvar and Shedadiye. Here is his account: After a three day ride I reached the heart of Mesopotamia where I was a witness to a terrible tragedy... The Circassian soldiers ordered the Armenians to gather thorns and thistles and to pile them into a tall pyramid... afterwards they tied all of the Armenians who were there, almost five thousand souls, hand to hand, encircled them like a ring around the pile of thistles and thorns and set it afire in a blaze which rose up to heaven together with the screams of the wretched people who were burned to death by the fire... Two days later I returned to this place and saw the charred bodies of thousands of human beings.[29] A high-ranking German officer, Colonel Ludwig Schraudenbach, the commander of the Ottoman Fourteenth Division operating mainly in Mesopotamia, in his post-war memoirs, referred to another method of immolation. As he put it, "children were placed between wooden planks, tied to them and then burned to death." [30] The most extensive operations of mass burning of children took place, however, in the province of Bitlis. The massive participation of certain Kurdish tribal groups in these operations wrought havoc with the victim population. That holocaust was initiated by the governor-general of the province, Mustafa Abdulhalik (Renda), who happened to be the brother-in-law of Interior Minister, later Grand Vizier, Mehmed Talaat *****, the principal architect of the Armenian Genocide. According to the testimony of the Armenian Catholic Bishop of Trabzon, Having gathered together 1,000 little children, the governor-general Mustafa Abdulhalik led them to a place called Tashod where he had them burnt to death in the presence of notables and Turkish crowds, at the same time shouting at the top of his voice, 'It is necessary to erase once and for all the Armenian name in these provinces for the security of Turkey.' Their remains, along with those still alive, were afterwards thrown into ditches prepared especially beforehand; the moans of those not yet completely consumed could be heard for days.[31] Two European eyewitnesses likewise reported these incidents of burning alive. Swedish missionary Alma Johansson, who was running the German orphanage in Mush, reported that the Armenian orphans, along with the staff of the orphanage "were burnt alive" (lebendig verbrannt). "It was heartrending to hear the cries of the people and children who were being burnt to death in their houses. The soldiers took great delight in hearing them... ." [32] For his part, German M.D. H. Stoffels, staff physician with the Persian Expeditionary Corps, reported to the Austrian consul in Trabzon that on his way to Mosul he came across in Mush (and Siirt in the same province) "a large number of formerly Armenian localities, where in the churches and houses he saw charred and decomposed corpses of women and children"(verkohlte und verweste Frauen-und Kinderleichen).[33] Reference may also be made to a Venezuelan major who had volunteered his services to the Ottoman-Turkish army in World War I and was assigned to duties in the areas of Bitlis, Van, and Mush as Inspector General of the Turkish Forces in Armenia. In his memoirs he stated that in Mush "women and children were penned up and burned alive... ." [34] Perhaps the most trenchant eyewitness testimony on the veritable holocaust of Armenian children in Mush, Bitlis province, comes from a Turkish Army Commander, General Mehmed Vehib. Following the completion of the main part of the Armenian Genocide, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Third Army in February 1916. A gallant military officer, he was dismayed at his realization that an entire nation had all but disappeared from the land. A local massacre of Armenian labor battalion soldiers in his jurisdiction prompted him to investigate, to set up a court-martial and execute two genocidists. In his detailed postwar report, prepared at the request of the Turkish Military Tribunal, he provides a glimpse into the nature of the genocide that had taken place in the areas of the six eastern provinces subject to the authority of the Third Army. In that report, General Vehib testified as to what he personally saw while on an inspection trip: "Armenian women and children were burnt alive in the village Tchurig, located 5 km north of Mush." He had seen the victims' charred remains, and with indignation he declared, "One can hardly find in Islam a parallel to such atrocity and savagery" (Tarihi Islamda misli örülmemis bir zulum ve vahset).[35] Another very credible Turkish military source openly and without equivocation confirms the sweeping holocaust to which the Armenians of Mush and the ninety-eight Armenian villages of Mush Plain were subjected - with the dubious justification that "armed Armenian units were assaulting Turkish soldiers and villages." This source also reveals the wholesale burning-alive operations that were conducted by Küçük Kâzým, who, according to this Turkish source, "was burning down the entire Mush valley and was annihilating the Armenians." [36] The Elements of License for Fiendishness Against Armenian Children As a rule, the degree of success in genocide hinges, all other things being equal, on the degree of ruthlessness, bordering on viciousness, with which the crime is conceived, organized, supervised, and implemented. More often than not, however, it is at the level of implementation that ultimate success is measured and determined. As indicated above, a large body of the executioners of the Armenian Genocide were highly motivated for their involvement. Frustration, displaced aggression, rage, cupidity, and in no small measure cultural conditioning for primordial violence were all factors that converged in an atavistic impulse for genocide. A brief review of the modus operandi of Salihzeki, the mutasarrif of Deir Zor, and the arch-organizer of the secondary Armenian Genocide in the deserts of Mesopotamia in the summer of 1916, provides insight into this type of motivation. On several occasions he scolded his Chechen underlings for ineptness in the art of cruelty and viciousness. In Deir Zor, for example, he assembled his Chechen executioners and admonished them not to be swayed by pity or lured by bribes and thereby help some Armenians escape their fate. He then rode his horse to a nearby tent, grabbed a two-year-old Armenian child, brought him to the Chechens and said, Even this innocent one - assuming that it is possible to consider innocent an Armenian offspring, for these sons of bitches are no Longer innocent - needs to be killed, just like all others of his age, without pity. There will come a day when they will rise up, hunt down those responsible for the killings of the Armenians and will Avenge themselves. He then whirled the child in the air round and round several times and violently hit him to the ground. Another time he again admonished his Chechen and Arab aides, strictly forbidding them to ever relax and allow any Armenians to escape: Why do you need bribes? If what you want is money, kill them first and then you have all their money and goods. Kill them first and then you will have all that they possess... You are rendering a service to the Empire, hence your work is legitimate. You have accomplished your mission but be cognizant of the fact that if one of these sons of bitches, if he is a little boy, stays alive, he will avenge himself one day.[37] Salihzeki relied almost entirely on Chechen tribes who lived mostly in Sefa, southeast of Ras-ul-Ain, and who originally had migrated from the Caucasus. The heads of local governments in Ras-ul-Ain, Suvar, Shedadiye, and Hassiche were his closest accomplices. In addition, he had co-opted the deputy of Deir Zor, the governor of Aneh, Commanders Salahaddin and Ali Bey, Cavalry Colonel Hasan, Lieutenant of Cavalry Tevfik, Deir Zor Garrison Commandant Mustafa, Aneh 's police chief Bedri, Inspector of Police Balsidi and some ten police officers.[38] This subculture of primordial barbarism came into full play in several instances that would be recorded by foreign eyewitnesses and Armenian survivors. A German chronicler relates, for example, how gendarmes battered out the brains of Armenian children who lagged behind convoys by smashing their skulls.[39] And here are three additional examples from the killing fields of the notorious Kemach Gorge near Erzincan in testimony supplied by two Armenian survivors: 1. - May 25, 1915 At the plain near the pass of Kemakh, where we had camped, the gendarmes entered a neighbor's tent and in order to get the beautiful girl, Armine, they slaughtered her father, her brother, and two young nephews. Armine was taken away and never returned. YEPRAKSI YANIKIAN 2. - May 26, 1915 At the same place, in bright daylight two gendarmes killed with bayonets Aram Kasbarian and took away his beautiful wife. His six years old son when crying and screaming on his father's bleeding body, was taken and a long wooden stick was forced in through his rectum and in this condition he was shown to the people with the cries, "Here is your flag... ." YEPRAKSI YANIKIAN 3. - May 26, 1915 At the same place, several gendarmes took by force the young child Msrob, five years old, from his mother's arms and nailed him on a wooden frame through his eyes, hands and feet. then he was elevated in the midst of the people with shouts of, "Here is your Christ and his Cross, let him come and save you... ." AREVALOUYS *****LIAN [40] Mabel Evelyn Elliott, an American physician who served in Istanbul during the Armistice as Medical Director of Near East Relief and was the representative of the American Women's Hospitals recorded in her memoirs case studies she [conducted] at the Rescue Home for Armenian girls in Üsküdar, a city on the Asiatic side of Istanbul, where Florence Nightingale had laid the foundation for the Red Cross and the tradition of modern nursing. The cases involved some 150 survivor-victims of the Armenian Genocide, victims which Dr. Elliott described as "girl-children:" You must see them as I remember them, passing, one by one, through my consultation room; gentle, well-bred girls, with brushed hair and shining finger nails, who spoke in low voices and wore with instinctive taste their borrowed clothes. None of them had discussed with anyone her experiences during the war. For the first time their reticence was disturbed, necessarily, by professional questions, and when they had begun to speak it was as though they could not stop. The whole story poured from them. The things that I heard were unbelievable. A doctor sees more deeply into the abysses of human society than any other person except a priest, but I knew only America. . It was incredible, too, that these girls could have seen and endured them, and survived to sit there telling of them. The stories did not vary greatly; the variety was in the revealed temperament of the girls. Some sat quietly, with folded hands, talking on and on in a low voice, growing whiter and whiter until there was no blood in their lips. Others became excited, little by little lost their self-control, and ended screaming and sobbing. It was better for them to pour out this bitterness that had been so long damned behind their silence, and I did not stop them. I sat in the little, white room and listened. . Then there was another girl, whose story had a touch of the incredibly fantastic. With eyelids closed, she was the most beautiful girl I have seen among a people renowned for feminine beauty. Her features were like those preserved for us from antiquity by the chisels of great artists; her skin was like that of a child, and her body was a rhythm of line. But when she opened her eyes, it became painful to look at her. One eyeball, swung outward in its socket so grotesquely that one thought of a gargoyle. . I did not believe it. I had grown accustomed to hearing of monstrous things as I shall ever be, but this was incredible. When a knife or hot iron would have served the purpose, why resort to an infinitely delicate surgical operation? It is a question I cannot answer; a question whose answer is so deep in the Turkish character that only a Turk could answer it. For when I examined the eye, and saw beyond doubt that the story was true. The microscopic scars were there, in the minute muscles of the eye. Some finely trained and skillful surgeon had used his training at the operating table to make this girl hideous. He had done this, while hundreds of Turkish soldiers, wounded in fighting for their country, were dying for lack of surgical help.[41] This manifestation of the concentrated hate of the centuries, turned into professional sadism, cannot be divorced from the social system in which that hatred was nurtured, fueled, and even rewarded. Dr. Elliott's additional data and her related comments attest to this fact, highlighting at the same time the diabolical and hideous targeting of children as an integral part of organized genocide. Finally, reference may be made to a report sent to the U.S. State Department by another American physician. Dr. George B. Hyde, of the American Red Cross, who was stationed in Cilicia in 1919. In 1920 he advised the State Department and also Senator Warren Harding shortly before this Republican Senator from Ohio was elected the 29th President of the United States, on the victimization of Armenian children during World War I. He stated that he "had treated several hundred Christian children of both sexes, ranging between the ages of 5 and 12, upon which, the Turks had committed beastly outrages." He gave his opinion that at least "nine out of ten of these victims of Turkish savagery must have succumbed." [42] Scant Exceptions of Benign Turks The magnitude of the number of victims of the Armenian Genocide is testimony to the scale of the success of that lethal undertaking by the Ittihadist Young Turk regime. But it also attests to the paucity of "righteous" Turks whose involvement in significant numbers could have made a difference in the outcome of that genocide. It is true that there were strict orders and very stern threats against such involvement, but the opportunities to circumvent such orders were likewise considerable. Religious cleavages and wartime incitements against the Armenians combined to impede the engagement of a significant number of Turks to intercede or directly assist the Armenians targeted for annihilation. Notwithstanding this, it is only right that even when a negligible minority tries to help, such brave people should be singled out and recognized for their benevolence. The cases below are all but illustrative examples. They are not meant to be comprehensive or exhaustive. One of these examples is both striking and moving. According to information supplied by the Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul during the Armistice, a number of kind Turkish military officers, at great personal risk to themselves, took the trouble of bringing with them and handing over to the Patriarchate several male and female orphans from such distant provinces as Harput, Aleppo, and Diyarbekir. In another instance, a colonel dared to transport at once eleven little girls to Istanbul and hand them over to the Patriarch.[43] In Arabpunar a Turkish major who spoke German told a German employee of the Baghdad Railway Co. that he and his brother each rescued and carried with them a little Armenian girl whom they had found in the streets of Ras-ul-Ain. He strongly criticized the authorities for the atrocities which he said, "our Koran forbids." [44] Even more moving is the story of a Turkish mullah, a religious chief judge in Mush, who died trying to save Armenian women and children. The notorious Kurdish brigand chief, Moussa Beg, after selecting and removing the youngest and prettiest Armenian girls from the collected crowd was getting ready to burn to death the rest in the village of Avzoud. The mullah, arguing that no religion, whether Muslim or Christian, allows the burning alive of women and children, energetically intervened with his protest. And, hoping that he could thus prevent an imminent holocaust he took shelter in the same building where the victims were piled together. The killers just ridiculed him and, undeterred, they proceeded with their scheme and the mullah perished in the ensuring inferno along with the other victims he was trying to save.[45] The genocidal victimization of Armenian children is equally relevant and significant in terms of the final fate of the surviving children is concerned. Thousands of male children were adopted as sons and raised as Turks. Tens of thousands of female children and young girls were likewise absorbed in the mainstream of the Turkish nation as servants, concubines for harems, or legitimate wives following conversion to Islam. Still many others languished in orphanages. The subject of Armenian children as victims of genocide, in order to be complete, needs to be additionally explored in terms of the final stage of that victimization, namely, the differential fate of the surviving orphans, concubines, brides, and religious converts. NOTES ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [1] Ahmed Refik Altýnay, Iki Komite Iki Kýtal (Two Committees, Two Massacres). Istanbul, 1919, p. 23. He was assigned duties at the Ottoman General Headquarters, Dept. II, Counterintelligence, as a Navy Lieutenant. After the war, he served as Professor of History at Istanbul University and has published several books. [2] Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, Garden City, N.Y., 1918, p. 312. [3] The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915-1916. Documents presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon. Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs by Viscount Bryce. (Compiled by Arnold Toynbee) London, His Majesty's Stationery Office. Miscellaneous No. 31 (1916), pp. 90, 248, 323, 351, 374, 378, 385-6, 455, 485-6, 540, 553, 561. (This important compilation was republished in 2000 and is now available from Gomidas Institute, Princeton, NJ) [4] German Foreign Ministry Archives i.e., symbol A.A. Türkei 183/44, A25739; in the new catalog system R14093, no. 2463, sent from Aleppo to the German Embassy in Constantinople (Istanbul) on August 29, 1916. [5] Vahakn N. Dadrian, "The Framework: The Armenian Genocide: An Interpretation" in America and the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Jay Winter, ed., Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003 (forthcoming). See Section III dealing with The Case of Trabzon: A Microcosm of the Armenian Genocide. [6] Vahakn N. Dadrian, "The Turkish Military Tribunal's Prosecution of the Authors of the Armenian Genocide: Four Major Court-Martial Series," Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Vol. 11, No. 1 (Spring 1997), pp. 39-42 on The Trabzon Series. [7] Vahakn N. Dadrian, "The Documentation of the World War I Armenian Massacres in the Proceedings of the Turkish Military Tribunal," International Journal of Middle East Studies. Vol. 23, No. 4 (November 1991), p. 574, note 55; Arshavir Sheeragian, Gudagun Err Nahadagneroun (The Testament of the Martyrs). Beirut, 1965, pp. 262-263. [8] U.S. National Archives. RG59.867.4016/128. July 28, 1915; ibid. 4016/411, no. 169. April 11, 1919. [9] A.A. Botschaft Konstantinopel 170, registry no. 3841. August 23, 1915 report. [10] April 2, 1919 issue. [11] Leslie A. Davis, The Slaughterhouse Province. An American Diplomat's Report on the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1917. Susan K. Blair, ed. New Rochelle, N.Y., 1989, p. 64, 79, 82, 83, 87. A copy of the 132 typed pages report is in U.S. National Archives RG59.867.4016/392. [12] Morgenthau, Ambassador [n•2], p. 318. See also The Treatment [n•3], p. 239. [13] Vahakn N. Dadrian, "The Comparative Aspects of the Armenian and Jewish Cases of Genocide: A Sociohistorical Perspective."Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide. A.S. Rosenbaum, ed. Boulder, CO., 1996, p. 131. [14] British Foreign Office Archives. FO 371/2781/264888, Appendix B, report no. 1, pp. 6-7. [15] The Treatment [n•3], pp. 442-443. [16] Raymond Kevorkian, "L´Extermination des déportées Arméniens Ottomans dans les camps de concentration de Syrie-Mésopotamie (1915-1916). La deuxième phase du génocide. Revue d´Histoire Arménienne Contemporaine. Special Edition vol. II, Paris, 1998, pp. 109, 119. [17] Bruno Eckart, Meine Erlebnisse in Urfa (My Experiences in Urfa). Potsdam-Berlin, 1922, pp. 18-19. [18] Ararat, vol. VI, No. 66, 1919, p. 422. The affidavit of Captain Nebil is in the archives of Jerusalem Armenian Patriarchate. File Zh, doc. 747, no. 49. [19] Ephraim K. Jernazian, Judgment Unto Truth: Witnessing the Armenian Genocide. New Brunswick, N.J.,1990, p. 65. [20] Jacob Künzler, Im Lande des Blutes und der Tränen. Erlebnisse in Mesopotamien Während des Weltkrieges (In the Land of Blood and Tears. Experiences in Mesopotamia During the World War). Berlin-Potsdam, 1921, pp. 77, 87. In the new edition, edited by Hans-Lukas Kieser, Zurich, 1999, pp. 99, 108-109. [21] M. Esmerian, Aksoree yev Baderazmee Guragneroun Metch (Amid the Fires of Exile and War). Boston, 1952, pp. 94-95, 105, 108-109. [22] Haigashen Darekirk (Haigashen Annual). Vol. 1, 1922, p. 328. The names of four of the victims are listed in this source. [23] Mariam Kokmanian, "Hayatchintch Sarsapner" (Horrors from the Armenian Extermination Campaign). Djagadamard (Istanbul Armenian newspaper), January 17, 1919. [24] Morning Post (London newspaper). December 7, 1918. [25] Therese Philippe Bresse, La famine de la Syrie et le martyre de l´Arménie (The famine in Syria and the martyrdom of Armenia). Alexandria, 1919, pp. 8, 9. [26] G. Kapigian, Yegernabadoum (The Holocaust), Boston, 1924, pp. 251-253. [27] FO608/244/8183, folio 407. [28] Teotig, "Mius Merelotzu" (The other Memorial Day) Amenoun Daretzoutzu (Everyone's Almanac). Istanbul, 1921, pp. 318-319. [29] Yair Auron, The Banality of Indifference: Zionism and the Armenian Genocide. New Brunswick, N. J., 2000, pp. 181, 183. [30] Ludwig Schraudenbach (retired Colonel), Muharebe (War). Berlin/Vienna, 1925, pp. 351-352. [31] Les Memoirs de Mgr. Jean Naslian. Eveque de Trebizonde. (The Memoirs of His Grace Archbishop Jean Naslian). Vienna, 1955, pp. 146, 413. On p. 138 of the same work, there is a description of the burning alive at Norshen, near Mush, of the Armenian Catholic Primate of Mush. Archbishop Naslian coincidentally was in Europe during the Genocide and could thus escape a similar fate. [32] A.A. Türkei 183/48, A34435; R14097 in the new catalog system, October 1, 1917 report. See also Germany, Turkey and Armenia. A selection of documentary evidence relating to Armenian atrocities from German and other sources. London, 1917, p. 26. [33] Austrian Foreign Ministry Archives. 12 Türkei/380, folio 909, May 26, 1917. [34] Rafael de Nogales, Four Years Beneath the Crescent, Muna Lee, translator. New York, London, 1926, p. 135. [35] Vahakn D. Dadrian, "The Armenian Question and the Wartime Fate of the Armenians as Documented by the Officials of the Ottoman Empire's World War I Allies: Germany and Austria-Hungary," International Journal of Middle East Studies. Vol. 34, No. 1. (February 2002), pp. 76-77, p. 84, note 111, p. 85, note 111. [36] Ilhan Selçuk, Yüzbaþý Selahattin'in Romaný (The Roman of Captain Selahattin). Vol. 1, Istanbul, 1993, p. 124. [37] Kevorkian, L´Extermination [n. 16], p. 190, item 47; p. 192, item 48. [38] Ibid., pp. 180, 184. [39] Heinrich Vierbücher, Armenien 1915. Die Abschlachtung eines Kulturvolkes durch die Türken (The Slaughter of a Cultured People by the Turks). Hamburg, 1930, p.58. [40] Levon K. Daghlian, D.M.D., Memories of the Holocaust. Boston, 1976, p. 48. [41] Mabel Evelyn Elliott, Beginning Again at Ararat, New York, 1924, pp.20-26. See also Vahakn N. Dradrian, "The Role of Turkish Physicians in The World War I Genocide of Ottoman Armenians," Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 1, no. 2, (1986), pp.169-192. [42] The Lausanne Treaty, Turkey and Armenia, ed. by The American Committee Opposed to the Lausanne Treaty, New York, 1926, p.71. [43] Nubar Library. Paris. Papers of Patriarch Zaven. 1914-1916. File 288/P. 1, 2/6. [44] A.A. Türkei 183/38, A 23991, or R14087. Report by W. Spieker. Enclosure in Aleppo German Consul Rössler's communication of September 3, 1915. 183/38, A28019. Enclosure no. 81. [45] Henry Barby, Au pays de l'épouvante. (In the land of terror) Paris, 1917, p.96.

I have the same problem. In the past, it was readable. Don't know what has changed.

Juan, That episode will change a lot in the region. In particular, it may lead to a harder stance of the US towards the usurper of power in Armenia.

Artsakh has been part of Albania. Here is a powerful testimony to that: http://www.artsakhworld.com/1500v-a.html Artsakh has been part of Armenia for very short period of time, and that is very long time ago. For all practical purposes, Artsakh has never been part of Armenia. However, one may raise a legitimate question as what was Albania and who where the Albanians. It would not be a far fetched statement to claim that Albania has been a satellite state attached to Armenia throughout its existence.

The below referenced material has a tangential relevance to the discussed subject. _______________________________________________________________________ This research note is from Volume 9 of the Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies (1996, 1997 [1999]). The original pagination has been kept intact, although the paragraphing has been altered to fit the web. The footnotes in the original have also been converted to endnotes for the web. This is made available with permission from the Society for Armenian Studies. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 99 begins here. The Politics of Demography: Misuse of Sources on the Armenian Population of Mountainous Artsax George A. Bournoutian Introduction The Armeno-Azeri conflict over Nagorno- or Mountainous Artsax has spilled over into the academic world. Armenian historians maintain that all of Artsax was at one time part of the ancient Armenian kingdom and that the disputed territory of Nagorno-Artsax has had an Armenian majority for several hundred years. Azeri historians assert that the region was never part of Armenia and that the Armenian population of Nagorno-Artsax arrived there from Iran and Turkey after 1828, and only thanks to Russian policy, which favored Christians over Muslims, did the Armenians establish a majority in Nagorno-Artsax. That Azeri diplomats and journalists echo this claim in their statements and articles is understandable. What is lamentable is the willingness of some Western scholars to accept the Azeri claims without examining primary sources. In her study The Azerbaijani Turks: Power and Identity under Russian Rule (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1992), Professor Audrey Altstadt states, In the first decade of Russian rule, immigration [to the Caucasus] appears to have been confined to Russians . . . and Armenians from Iran, as provided in the Treaty of Turkmanchai. Armenian immigration affected mainly the Shemakhi, Ganje, and Karabagh regions and areas west including Erevan (p. 28). She cites my article, "The Ethnic Composition and Socio-Economic Condition of Eastern Armenia in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century," in Ronald G. Suny, ed., Transcaucasia: Nationalism and Social Change, East European series 2 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1983), pp. 77-79, as the source for this information. My study deals primarily with Erevan and Nakhichevan. Nowhere in that work, nor in my two books on the region,(1) have I ever discussed population figures for Shemakhi, Ganje, or Artsax. Altstadt, well aware of the narrow scope of my work (she participated at the conference held at the Kennan Institute in 1980 where I presented the paper cited in her work), uses it inaccurately to give credence to the Azeri point of view. By lumping Artsax with Erevan, she confuses the issue -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 100 begins here and the reader; from her footnote, those not familiar with my work would assume that it contained population data on Artsax as well as Erevan. Later in her same work, Altstadt is even less cautious, for she states, On the issue of the current majority in mountainous Karabagh, Vahabzade and Aliyarov noted that the Armenians had been a minority in most of Caucasia at the time of the Russian conquest and were encouraged to immigrate from Iran by the Treaty of Turkmanchai (1828) and Russian state policy until they formed majorities in several pockets (p. 196). An uncited Russian survey of 1832 and my article are used as the main sources for this statement. The survey lists the Armenian population of the whole of Artsax at 34.8 percent (slightly over one-third) and that of the Azeris at 64.8 percent. This time Altstadt confuses the reader by identifying the whole of Artsax with Mountainous Artsax. The Armenian population of Artsax (as will be demonstrated below) was concentrated in 8 out of the 21 districts or mahals of Artsax. These 8 districts are located in Mountainous Artsax and present-day Zangezur (then part of Artsax). Thus 34.8 percent of the population of Artsax populated 38 percent of the land. In other words the Armenians, according to the survey cited by Altstadt, formed 91.58 percent of the population of Mountainous Artsax. Altstadt continues her campaign of misinformation in a volume entitled Ethnic Conflict in the Post-Soviet World: Case Studies and Analysis (New York, 1997). She states, As a result of the Russo-Iranian Treaty of Turkmanchai (1828), thousands of Armenian families were relocated from Iran to the Caucasus. The influx of Armenians, from Iran and the Ottoman Empire, led, by the end of the century, to the formation of Armenian majorities in various areas of that region, including the mountainous part of Artsax (p. 229). My article is once again used as a source. Unfortunately, those who have the habit of copying sources without verification have used Alstadt's misleading footnotes and have further damaged my credibility as a scholar. The worst offender is Suzanne Goldenberg's Pride of Small Nations: The Caucasus and Post-Soviet Disorder (London: Zed Books, 1994), which states, Even in 1832, after considerable migration had taken place, it is generally accepted [my emphasis] that Muslims were a majority in Artsax. An official Russian survey of that year recorded that Muslims made up 64.8 percent of the region and Armenians 34.8 percent (p. 158). The note cites my article as the sole source. The survey, which I have never seen or cited, is now attributed to me. To add insult to injury, Azeri newspapers in the -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 101 begins here West, including one in Toronto, portray me as the Armenian scholar specializing in the region who agrees with the Azeri point of view. To aid Professor Altstadt and all the others who have either misused their sources or cannot decipher manuscripts, have no or poor knowledge of the necessary languages, or are just too slothful to check sources, I shall present below the information I have gathered from the primary sources on the demographics of Artsax. I hope that this material will finally clear the smoke and spare me the embarrassment of the last few years. Correct Figures on the Armenian Population of Mountainous Artsax as Derived from Primary Sources Prior to Soviet rule, the Russians conducted a number of surveys in the different regions of Transcaucasia.(2) Although not as accurate as a present-day census might be, the surveys were the first of their kind in Western Asia. In 1822, the Russian administration decided to determine the Armenian population in Transcaucasia. The survey was primarily to determine how many "non-Orthodox" Christians there were in the region.(3) The survey managed to record the number of Armenians in Georgia, Ganje (Elisavetpol), and Baku.(4) Erevan and Nakhichevan were under Persian rule and were not included. The Khan of Artsax, Mahdi-qoli, fearing that the Armenian-populated districts might be removed from his control, did not permit the survey in Artsax. Later that year, he fled to Persia, and the Russian were able to commence their first survey of Artsax. The survey began in early 1823 and was completed on 17 April of that same year.(5) Its more than 300 pages recorded both the Armenian and Muslim population, not by numbers, but by villages and tax assessments. It noted that the district of Khachen had twelve Armenian villages and no Tatar (Russian term for the Turkish population) villages; Jalapert had eight Armenian villages and no Tatar villages; Dizak had fourteen Armenian villages and one Tatar village; Gulistan had two Armenian and five Tatar villages; and Varanda had twenty-three Armenian villages and one Tatar village. Thus the five mountainous districts (generally known as Nagorno-Artsax today) which, according to Persian and Turkish sources, constituted the five (khamse) Armenian melikdoms,(6) had an overwhelming Armenian population before 1828.(7) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 102 begins here The mahal of Tat'ew had twelve Armenian and one Tatar village; that of Kiopar, six Armenian villages; and Bargushat, two Armenian and three Tatar villages. Thus these mahals, which form part of present-day Zangezur and were a part of the larger region called Artsax, were also overwhelmingly Armenian. Armenians were also represented, in small numbers, in all the other non-nomadic districts of Artsax. It is possible that the cryptic survey cited by Altstadt was an official Russian state publication regarding the population of Caucasus which was published in St. Petersburg in 1836.(8) That source puts the Armenians of all of Artsax at approximately 19,000 and the Tatars at approximately 35,000. Thus the Armenians were 35.2% of the population, which is close to the so-called 1832 survey cited by Altstadt. The important fact is that the official 1836 survey clearly states that the Armenians were concentrated in the mountainous part of Artsax (generally called Nagorno-Artsax). Thus once again 35.2% of the population of Artsax (the Armenians) inhabited 38 percent of the land, where they formed an overwhelming majority. The Myth of Armenian Immigration from Iran and Turkey Having disposed of one myth, I shall concentrate on the question of the immigration of Armenians from Iran and Turkey into Artsax. Between 1828 and 1831, 45,207 Armenians immigrated to Erevan (23,568 from Iran and 21,639 from Turkey), and 3,883 to Nakhichevan (3,856 from Iran and 27 from Turkey).(9) The Armenians of Bayazid desired to settle in Artsax but were told that there was not enough land for them there. They were encouraged rather to settle around Lake Sevan, where Muslim tribes had evacuated. They did, and the district became known as Novo-Bayazid or New Bayazid (later Gavar and Kamo).(10) The only work which deals primarily with the Armenian immigration from Persian Azerbaijan to Russia is by Sergei Glinka.(11) He does not supply any numbers, but makes it clear that the majority of the Armenians were headed towards the newly-established Armenian Province, created from the Khanates of Erevan and Nakhichevan. An archival document, however, does shine some light on the issue. The document states that only 279 Armenian families decided to immigrate to Artsax, and that they settled in Kapan and Meghri on the banks of the Arax (in the southernmost -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 103 begins here part of Zangezur bordering Iran).(12) All documents relating to the Armenian immigration make it clear that Russia, for political, military, and economic reasons, strongly encouraged the Armenians to settle in the newly-established Armenian province, especially the region of Erevan, which between 1795 and 1827 had lost some 20,000 Armenians who had immigrated to Georgia.(13) Since few Georgian Armenians planned to return, Russia concentrated on repatriating the Armenians taken to Iran in the seventeenth century by Shah Abbas. The only major immigration into Artsax was by the former Armenians of Artsax who had escaped the oppression of its ruler Ebrahim Khan,(14) some as late as the 1790s, who had sought refuge in Ganje, Georgia, and Erevan. They began returning home after a decade or so, following the Russian protectorate over Artsax in 1805 and continued to do so until the 1820s. According to archival documents most of them returned to their own villages, which, for the most part, had remained abandoned.(15) In conclusion, non-Armenian primary sources clearly demonstrate that the Armenians of Mountainous Artsax (Nagorno-Artsax) had an overwhelming majority in the region presently claimed by them long before 1828, as far back as the seventeenth century.(16) Scholars who deal with the issues of Artsax and Nagorno-Artsax would do well to respect this fact. Iona College New Rochelle, New York Return to beginning -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Notes 1. George A. Bournoutian, Eastern Armenia in the Last Decades of Persian Rule, 1807-1828 (Malibu, CA: Undena Publications, 1982) and The Khanate of Erevan Under Qajar Rule, 1795-1828 (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1992). Back to text 2. The first survey was conducted in Georgia at the start of the nineteenth century, and the last was the complete survey of Transcaucasia in 1897. Back to text 3. The Georgian Church was in communion with the Russian Orthodox Church. Back to text 4. Akty sobrannye Kavkzskoiu Arkheograficheskoiu Kommissieiu (Documents Pertaining to the Russian Administration of the Caucasus), VI/1 (Tiflis, 1866), doc. 601. Back to text 5. The survey, conducted by State Counselor Mogilevskii and Colonel Ermolov II (a relative of General Ermolov, commander-in-chief of the Caucasus), was printed in Tiflis in 1866 (no pagination). Back to text 6. For example see Tarikh-e Qarabagh, written by Mirza Jamal Javanshir, the vizier of Ebrahim Khan of Karabagh, manuscript no. B-712/11603, Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan, Baku (my English translation and the facsimile in A History of Qarabagh [Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1993]). Back to text 7. The survey lists Goris and Khan-Kend (present-day Step'anakert, capital of Nagorno-Artsax) as Armenian settlements. Back to text 8. Obozrenie rossiskikh vladenii za Kavkazom v statisticheskom, etnograficheskom, i finansovom otnosheniiakh (St. Petersburg, 1836), no pagination. Back to text 9. Russian survey of the Armenian Province (former Khanates of Erevan and Nakhichevan) 1829-1832 in Ivan Shopen, Istoricheskii pamiatnik sostoianiia Armianskoi-oblasti v epokhu eia prisoedineniia k Rossiskoi-Imperii (St. Petersburg: V tip. Imp. Akademii nauk, 1852), English translation of the survey in Bournoutian, The Khanate of Erevan, pp. 204-270. Back to text 10. Central State Historical Archives of Georgia (Tbilisi), record group 2/1, file 2254, f. 8. Back to text 11. S. Glinka, Opisanie pereseleniia Armian Adderbidzhanskikh v prediely Rossii (Moscow: V Tip. Lazarevykh In-ta Vostochnykh Iazykov, 1831). Back to text 12. Central State Archives of Military History, record group VUA, file 978, ff. 22-26. Back to text 13. Akty sobrannye, docs. 559, 564, 568, 570, 573, 582, 586, 614; and S. Glinka, Sobranie aktov otnosiashchikhsia k obozrenii istorii Armianskogo naroda, II (Moscow, 1838), pp. 163-166. Back to text 14. Panah Khan and his son Ebrahim Khan were the first Muslims to make any inroads into mountainous Karabagh. They controlled parts of the region from 1755 to 1805 and were responsible for the temporary Armenian emigration. Back to text 15. Archives of the Foreign Policy of Russia, record group 100/3 (Russian Relations with Armenians), file 464, ff. 5-9, 12, 189-190, 347-348; Akty sobrannye, I, docs. 871, 874.; II, doc. 1714; III, 598-600. Back to text 16. The documents cited here are included in my Russia and the Armenians of Transcaucasia, 1797-1862: A Documentary Record (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1998), which contains an annotated translation, with commentary, of hundreds of documents from various archives of the former USSR. Back to text -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Volume 9 of the Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies can be purchased for $20 from the Society for Armenian Studies (SAS) at the following address: Armenian Research Center University of Michigan-Dearborn 4901 Evergreen Rd. Dearborn, MI 48128-1491 USA. http://www.umd.umich.edu/dept/armenian/sas/bour2.html

Ha'aretz, English Edition, Friday, April 18, 2003 No monopoly on absolute evil By Yossi Sarid The Germans are not the only nation on earth capable of perpetrating a holocaust and the Jews are not the only nation capable of being its victims - and Israeli children must be taught this. "The Pain of Knowledge: Reflections on Holocaust and Genocide Issues in Education - in Israel and Elsewhere," published [in Hebrew] by the Open University of Israel, Tel Aviv, 248 pages The Open University did the right thing when it decided to publish Yair Auron's book, "The Pain of Knowledge: Reflections on Holocaust and Genocide Issues in Education - in Israel and Elsewhere," for the general reading public, instead of earmarking it solely for the participants in Auron's university course on this subject. The book, which has just been published, is now available for all individuals who are interested in its topic. May the number of interested readers increase, because "The Pain of Knowledge" deals with a subject of supreme importance that until now has been of concern only to a small number of Israelis - although Israelis, more than any other nation, should consider it both crucial and fascinating, because it is through that subject that they are building the ladder of their concepts and values. This ladder, like the one Jacob saw in his dream in the Genesis narrative, is planted firmly on earth, but reaches up to the very heavens. Auron first presents his readers with articles that discuss theoretical issues pertaining to the formation of a collective memory. The second set of articles are concerned with issues pertaining to the teaching of the Holocaust in Israel and elsewhere. The third and final set of articles deals with the teaching of genocide in the world in general and in Israel in particular. Two chapters are of particular interest: the one on the annual excursions to Poland during which Israeli high-school students visit concentration and death camps, and the second on teaching genocide studies in the school system. The two chapters raise substantive questions of immense importance that touch on the very roots of our existence here in this country - as Israelis, as Jews and as human beings. I personally was powerfully drawn by these two chapters because they concern two central issues that are questions of principle, with which I was concerned during my term as minister of education. Auron generally refrains from expressing his own personal standpoint and tries instead to offer a methodological, didactic and unbiased survey. Nevertheless, between the lines, readers can quite easily discern what Auron's position is. The only exception to this rule is the last chapter - on genocide - in which he explicitly enunciates the position he has openly championed for years, where he criticizes the fact that not all acts of genocide are given the attention they deserve and where he calls for their universal recognition. This is perhaps the most important and most interesting chapter in the book. Here is a classic illustration of the truism that the presentation of a clear position always augments interest because it sparks either sympathy or antagonism. The `other victims' During my stint as education minister, I held the view that, in failing to include genocide studies in the curriculum, the Israeli school system was neither fulfilling its role nor furthering its own goals and that, as a result, Israeli high-school students knew nothing about the Nazi regime's non-Jewish victims: gypsies, homosexuals, political prisoners, patients of mental health hospitals, persons with physical handicaps, Jehovah's Witnesses, Poles, Russian prisoners of war and "other victims." And it is not just the victims of the Nazis who are forgotten. What interest is shown here in this country in the genocide suffered by the Armenians, Bosnians and Rwandans? Or in politicide, which is a form of genocide to which a nation is subjected by its very own leaders, for example, the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin, China under Mao Tse-tung, Cambodia under Pol Pot, and democratic Australia in its treatment of the Aborigines? There are those who argue that, in the 20th century, more acts of genocide or politicide have been committed than in any other century in human history and thus they define it as the "century of genocide" or the "century of violence." In his book, Auron expresses his surprise that, in Israel, school and university curricula make almost no reference to genocide. The curriculum entitled "Sensitivity to suffering in the world: Genocide in the 20th century," which was prepared for the Ministry of Education in 1994, was not approved. I fully share Auron's surprise and fully support his protest. I tried to correct this distorted situation to some extent and on April 23, 2000, on the date that Armenians mark their own Memorial Day, I appeared, as an invited guest of honor, in the community's church in Jerusalem's Armenian Quarter. I came to the memorial ceremony in order to deliver the following message: "I have come here in order to be with you, the distinguished members of the Armenian community, on your memorial day, which today marks the 85th anniversary of the massacre of the Armenian people. I am here, together with you, as a human being, as a Jew, as an Israeli and as Israel's minister of education. As you have done in past years, you, the members of the Armenian nation, are today gathering in Israel and in other places around the world to remember and to remind others of the terrible disaster that befell your people in the early part of the past century. "For many years, for too many in fact, your nation has been alone on its memorial day. I am well aware of the special significance of my presence here today, together with other Israelis. Today, perhaps for the very first time, you are less alone. Armenian Memorial Day should be a day of introspection for all of us, a day of soul-searching. On this day, we Jews, victims of the Holocaust, will assess our attitude toward the pain of others. "The massacre of the Armenians by the Turks in 1915 and 1916 is one of the most horrific events of modern history. America's Jewish ambassador to Turkey at the time, Henry Morgenthau, defined the slaughter as the `greatest crime in modern history.' This good person could not have possibly imagined in his wildest dreams what awaited us later on in the 20th century. At that point in time, the worst possible event imaginable - the Holocaust of the Jewish people - was still ahead of us." Nurturing sensitivity "One individual who was profoundly shocked by the murder of the Armenian people and who shocked many readers with his classical work, `Die vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh' (`The 40 Days of Musa Dagh'), was a Jewish author and a native of Prague, Franz Werfel. The idea behind the writing of this book was born in March 1929 when Werfel visited Damascus on his way to Palestine. He wrote: `The pitiful sight of Armenian refugee children, maimed and almost starving to death, working in a carpet factory provided me with the final impetus to liberate from the abyss of oblivion the cruel fate of the Armenian people.' "Werfel's book, which appeared in Germany in the spring of 1933, shocked millions of people. Adolf Hitler was already in power. `The 40 Days of Musa Dagh' was one of the banned books burned by the Nazis. It was translated into Hebrew in 1934 and had a powerful impact on many young people in Palestine. I was one of them. "For me and for many of my generation living in this land at the time, `The 40 Days of Musa Dagh' was a book that shaped our character and our overall outlook on life. In modern-day Israel, very few of our young citizens have heard of Musa Dagh and many of them know absolutely nothing about the massacre of the Armenian people. I know how much importance Armenians around the world attach to the attitude of Jews, especially the attitude of the State of Israel, toward the genocide that the Armenians have suffered. As Israel's minister of education, I will do everything in my power to ensure that our children will once more become familiar with this monumental work, `The 40 Days of Musa Dagh.' I will make every effort to see to it that Israeli children will learn, and be knowledgeable about, the murder of the Armenian nation. "Genocide is the gravest and most abominable crime imaginable against humanity. One of the goals of the Israeli school system - indeed, a central goal - is to nurture sensitivity toward the suffering of innocent individuals whose sole `crime' is their ethnic identity. We Jews, the chief victims of murderous hatred, must show an exceptional level of sensitivity toward, and must feel immense solidarity with, other victims. We must arouse, among the members of the younger generation, a natural and profound sense of revulsion toward all acts of genocide in the past, present and future. Genocide is the root of all evil and we must make a major political and educational effort in order to eradicate it and banish it forever from human history. "Those who are eyewitnesses, who sit on the sidelines, who choose to turn a blind eye, who feel that they have all sorts of accounts to settle, who remain silent, are only helping the murderers; they are certainly not helping the murdered. "In 1918, Samuel Tolkowsky, who at the time was personal secretary to Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, who would become Israel's first president, wrote an important article, with Weizmann's approval, called `The Armenian Question from the Zionist Point of View.' In that article, Tolkowsky states the following: `We Zionists look upon the fate of the Armenian people with a deep and sincere sympathy; we do so as men, as Jews and as Zionists. As men our motto is `Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto.' As Jews our exile from our ancestral home and our centuries of suffering in all parts of the globe have made us, I would dare to say, specialists in martyrdom; our humanitarian feelings have been refined to an incomparable degree, so much so that the sufferings of other people - even alien to us in blood and remote from us in distance - cannot but strike the deeper chords of our soul and weave between us and our fellow sufferers that deep bond of sympathy that one might call the solidarity of sorrow. "And among all those who suffer around us, is there a people whose record of martyrdom is more akin to ours than that of the Armenians? As Zionists we have a peculiar question of principle. Zionism being in its essence nothing else than the Jewish expression for national justice, it is natural and logical for us to be deeply interested in the struggle for emancipation of any other living nation. ... We are convinced that the future peace and happiness of that part of the world - the Middle East - of which our own national homeland, Palestine, is only a part, will be best assured when `all well-defined national aspirations shall be accorded the utmost satisfaction that can be accorded them without introducing new or perpetuating old elements of discord and antagonism that would be likely in time to break the peace. In our opinion, a free and happy Armenia, a free and happy Arabia, and a free and happy Jewish Palestine, are the three pillars on which will rest the future peace and welfare of the Middle East.' "These words were written by Weizmann's personal secretary more than 80 years ago. Such true, important statements, which emphasize the value of human life, irrespective of the individual's identity - Jew, Arab, Armenian, Gypsy, Bosnian, Albanian or Rwandan. And I want to pass on this noble message to all the students in our school system. In our history curriculum, in the new curriculum that is now being formulated, I want to see a central chapter devoted to genocide, to this immense atrocity, to this inhuman atrocity, and I want that chapter to deal explicitly with the genocide suffered by the Armenian people so that the record can finally be set straight regarding the national and personal memories of each of you, of each member of your nation. This is our obligation to you, this is our obligation to ourselves. "We are now in the midst of the intermediary days of the Jewish festival of Passover, the period that links up the first and last day of this holiday. This is the festival of our liberation, in which we were redeemed from bondage, in which we were released from slavery in order to become free individuals. This is what we wish each nation, including the Armenian nation: liberty and redemption, redemption and liberty." Universal lesson Discerning readers will note that I did not define the genocide suffered by the Armenians as the Armenian "holocaust." At the time, I did not want to generate yet another controversy over a "semantic issue" - holocaust or genocide. At the time, I felt that it was more important to plant in the vineyard of education the central chapter on genocide rather than get into a quarrel with the gatekeepers. Today, now that I fulfill no official capacity, I consider it my duty to state that, from my standpoint, there is no difference: "Genocide" and "holocaust" are synonymous terms - genocide is genocide. Every genocide - if it is truly genocide and not merely a propagandistic counterfeit of genocide - is a holocaust. Israelis and many Jews in Israel and in other countries around the world fear linkage of these two concepts because they sense that such a link might eliminate the Jewish Holocaust's uniqueness, that it might turn the Holocaust into "just another catastrophe" that has befallen one more nation on the globe. I identify with the position held by Auron, who has written: "We propose that the teaching of both the Holocaust and genocide take place within a single context." Furthermore, he writes, the "basic axiom underlying the preparation of the course in whose context this book has been written is that all human life is precious to the same degree, regardless of the individual's identity." Whenever the "lessons of the Holocaust" are discussed, prominence must be given to the central lesson: This entire atrocity could repeat itself and, in fact, it has already repeated itself and is still repeating itself. The lesson is that the Holocaust was not a just a single, isolated, demonic event, that the Germans are not the only nation on earth capable of perpetrating it and that the Jews are not the only nation on earth capable of being its victims. The lesson is thus universal and not necessarily national and specific. From our perspective, the Holocaust will always be unique even if we identify more strongly with the horrible catastrophes of other nations. The person you are closest to is yourself. A nation always displays the greatest concern for itself. This is only natural, perhaps only human. It is inhuman to ignore the murder of another nation, to assume that, if the victims are not Jews, the murder cannot, by definition, be termed the holocaust of a nation. If we really want all human beings to consider genocide as the gravest crime that can be committed against humanity, there is no justification whatsoever in maintaining a Jewish monopoly on the term "holocaust" - although the Jewish Holocaust has, without question, certain unique traits, which are unprecedented in their malice. The basic assumption must always be that absolute evil is not the exclusive province of Nazi Germany or Germans, just as a bitter and cruel fate is not exclusively reserved for the Jews, and that, in any case, no nation (especially if it is strong) is invulnerable to the possibility of becoming a victimizer, while no nation (especially if it is weak and dispersed) is invulnerable to the possibility of becoming a victim. I do not believe in such concepts as good nations or evil ones. However, I do believe in the existence of good leaders and evil ones, who champion positive or negative ideologies respectively and who are capable of bringing their countries and nations into a world of light or a world of darkness. There are no guarantees against suffering and pain. Moreover, your own suffering cannot be used as justification for the suffering of others and does not provide you with the right to make others suffer, although it might provide you with the right to bring happiness to others. The seemingly semantic debate goes far beyond semantics and conceals ugly considerations that are far beyond monopolistic claims. Indifference and numbness are not the only factors that can lock your heart and consciousness. We ourselves are helping to promote denial of the Holocaust for reasons of realpolitik. And, if our reasons are realpolitik, what right have we to criticize others and to blame them for their conceptual myopia or for their baseness? We ourselves, for example, deny the Armenian holocaust that was perpetrated by the Turks, because we attach great importance to our relations with Turkey, and because Israel's political, security and economic interests force us to adopt a policy of denial - a policy that will ultimately wreak its vengeance upon us when more and more individuals begin to deny our Holocaust. Holocausts must never be denied - irrespective of the reasons for the denial, irrespective of the identity of the victims. Thus, it was not surprising that, immediately after I finished my delivery in the Armenian church, then-prime minister Ehud Barak and cabinet minister Shimon Peres hastened to emphasize that the speech given by the education minister did not represent the cabinet's position. Fear of the Turks enveloped them because the Turkish reaction was one of great displeasure and, indeed, profound indignation. Peres even went so far as to adopt, in a sadly inappropriate and obsequious statement, the official Turkish position that no genocide was ever perpetrated against the Armenians. I resigned from the cabinet and thus my plans for including in the school curriculum a special and extensive chapter on genocide is probably not being implemented. This is not only unfortunate; it is disgraceful. The State of Israel would justify its definition as the "Jewish state" if it would spearhead every protest against and every condemnation of all acts of genocide and Holocaust - and without stopping to think about the consequences and without making any realpolitik considerations. This is a far more important precondition for the existence of a Jewish state than even laws concerning leavened bread on Passover. "Remember what Amalek did to you" - we must certainly remember. But we should remember not just what Amalek did to us. Auron writes that what happened to "us" is supplemented, not contradicted, by what happened to "others." This sort of merging will add moral significance and universal strength to the memory of the Holocaust and to our justified demand that the world must never forget.

What is the Iraqi air force motto? I came, I saw, Iran. Have you heard about the new Iraqi army exercise program? Each morning you raise your hands above your head and leave them there. What's the five-day forecast for Baghdad? Two days. What do Miss Muffet and Saddam Hussein have in common? They both have Kurds in their way. What is the best Iraqi job? Foreign ambassador. Did you hear that it is twice as easy to train Iraqi fighter pilots? You only have to teach them to take off. How do you play Iraqi bingo? B-52 ... F-16 ... B-2 ... What is Iraq's national bird? Duck. What do Saddam Hussein and General Custer have in common? They both want to know where the hell those Tomahawks are coming from! Why does the Iraqi navy have glass bottom boats? So they can see their air force. IMPORTANT SPECIAL RETAIL ANNOUNCEMENT! All Wal-Mart and K-Mart stores in Iraq will all become Targets.

Sorry, meant to post it in the Humor section. Would the Moderators move it there, please, and delete the current message? Thanks in advance.

Dar Al-Hayat.com Below is an excerpt from an editorial that appeared on the Web site of the London-based, Saudi-owned media organization. Frankly, I missed Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf. He is the only Iraqi official who I think deserves full amnesty on all his previous crimes, because of his cuteness when he was lying in the face of the disaster. But where is Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf? Where are Saddam and his sons? Where is Tarek Aziz? Where is the rest of the gang? I heard that al-Sahhaf has been captured, and then he issued a statement denying it, and declaring that he was the one who actually captured the Americans. Then I heard that when Saddam's statue was destroyed in Baghdad, al-Sahhaf made a statement to say that the statue was for one of Saddam's doubles. http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/04/14/...ices/index.html

I found another material which has some relevance to some of our previous discussions: The Real Roots of Arab Anti-Americanism Barry Rubin From Foreign Affairs, November/December 2002 Summary: Despite what many argue, Arab and Muslim rage at the United States has had very little to do with actual U.S. policies--policies that have been remarkably pro-Arab over the past 50 years. Promoting anti-Americanism is simply the best way Muslim leaders have found to distract their publics from the real problem: internal mismanagement. New U.S. policies or a PR campaign will not change matters. Barry Rubin is Director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center and Editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs. His latest books are The Tragedy of the Middle East and Anti-American Terrorism and the Middle East. DAMN YANKEES Since last year's attacks on New York and Washington, the conventional wisdom about the motivation behind such deadly terrorism has gelled. The violence, we are often told, was a reaction to misguided U.S. policies. For years, certain American actions -- such as the country's support for Israel and for unpopular, oppressive Arab regimes -- had supposedly produced profound grievances throughout the Middle East. Those grievances came to a boil over time, and finally spilled over on September 11. The result was more than 3,000 American deaths. Although anti-Americanism is genuinely widespread among Arab governments and peoples, however, there is something seriously misleading in this account. Arab and Muslim hatred of the United States is not just, or even mainly, a response to actual U.S. policies -- policies that, if anything, have been remarkably pro-Arab and pro-Muslim over the years. Rather, such animus is largely the product of self-interested manipulation by various groups within Arab society, groups that use anti-Americanism as a foil to distract public attention from other, far more serious problems within those societies. This distinction should have a profound impact on American policymakers. If Arab anti-Americanism turns out to be grounded in domestic maneuvering rather than American misdeeds, neither launching a public relations campaign nor changing Washington's policies will affect it. In fact, if the United States tries to prove to the Arab world that its intentions are nonthreatening, it could end up making matters even worse. New American attempts at appeasement would only show radicals in the Middle East that their anti-American strategy has succeeded and is the best way to win concessions from the world's sole superpower. THE BLAME GAME For years now, anti-Americanism has served as a means of last resort by which failed political systems and movements in the Middle East try to improve their standing. The United States is blamed for much that is bad in the Arab world, and it is used as an excuse for political and social oppression and economic stagnation. By assigning responsibility for their own shortcomings to Washington, Arab leaders distract their subjects' attention from the internal weaknesses that are their real problems. And thus rather than pushing for greater privatization, equality for women, democracy, civil society, freedom of speech, due process of law, or other similar developments sorely needed in the Arab world, the public focuses instead on hating the United States. What makes this strategy remarkable, however, is the reality of past U.S. policy toward the region. Obviously, the United States, like all countries, has tried to pursue a foreign policy that accords with its own interests. But the fact remains that these interests have generally coincided with those of Arab leaders and peoples. For example, the United States may have had its own reasons for saving Kuwait from annexation by Iraq's secular dictatorship in 1991 -- mainly to preserve cheap oil. But U.S. policy was still, in effect, pro-Kuwaiti, pro-Muslim, and pro-Arab. After all, Washington could have used the war as a pretext to seize Kuwait's oil fields for ... [to acquire the rest of the material requires a fee] http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20021101faes...mericanism.html

I came across an interesting, in my view, material, which is related to some of our discussions: http://www.brookings.edu/dybdocroot/views/...on/20030301.pdf

Alpha, I it is not my place to defend Israel vs. Palestinians. I can just attempt to respond to your last note. In fact, perhaps my best response to your note would be the referencing of a pargrpah or two from the beginning and the end of your own material: “An Israeli missile strike killed a Palestinian bomb-making expert in Gaza and gunmen killed two Israeli soldiers in the West Bank on Thursday in a surge of violence ahead of an anticipated U.S.-led peace drive. Israel said it hoped the fall of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would chasten Palestinian militants into laying down their arms. But militant groups spearheading a 30-month-old revolt said they would not be cowed by the U.S. conquest of Baghdad and threatened to intensify attacks in Israel. Israeli security sources said the man killed by helicopter gunship fire was Mahmoud al-Zatma, accused by Israel of preparing explosives for suicide attacks carried out by the Islamic Jihad militant group.” And “An anonymous caller to Reuters claimed responsibility for the West Bank attack in the name of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction. Elsewhere in the West Bank, an Israeli army unit on a raid exchanged fire with Palestinian gunmen in the town of Tulkarm, killing one and wounding four, an Israeli military source said. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in the West Bank town of Salfit said they had shot dead a 65-year-old Palestinian land broker suspected of collaborating with Israel. Palestinians have killed dozens of their brethren accused of helping Israeli forces track and kill Palestinian militants. At least 1,987 Palestinians and 729 Israelis have been killed since the uprising flared in September 2000 after negotiations on a Palestinian state froze.” Overall, the material brought by you only supports Israel’s legitimate right to defend itself and supports the argument that Israel is acting out of self-defense. The support of the US to Israel is the only thing that guarantees the “even handed status quo” in the region – the existence of Israel vs. Arab world. The Palestine issue is a fraction of the overall Arab-Israeli relationship. Finally, the Arab youth, which has no jobs and no hope for jobs, may and will consider “Great Satan” whomever one wishes. The handwriting of the Arab popular thought is similar to the tested way of diverting attention from an “Internal Satan” to an “External Satan.” It is apparent, however, that only the US can help to create conditions for them to get jobs, throughout the whole region, and instead of searching for “Satans,” to build their countries, which are devastated by Arab tyrants, etc. And when that youth has jobs and future, they will start praising the US much like the other segments of the Arab population do so.

Azat, In some issues I am Liberal, in other issues I am Conservative. In fact, I don’t understand it when one qualifies himself/herself liberal or conservative across the board. I do think that I am Libertarian by my essence, as a person. However, I tend to vote Republican – the least of the two evils.

Thanks, Harut. But I don't buy it, unfortunately. I know it is hard.