Կենաց-לחיים

Robert Fisk on Armenian genocide's status in Israel

2010-02-01T09:51:00.001-08:00

Here is a link to Robert Fisk's latest piece published in the Independent:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fiskrsquos-world-israel-can-no-longer-ignore-the-existence-of-the-first-holocaust-1883686.html

Erdogan on Genocide

2009-11-08T13:48:00.000-08:00

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan today rushed to the defense of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, ahead of the Organization of the Islamic Conference meet in Istanbul. Although the Sudanese head of state will most likely not attend, Erdogan thought it was important to express his opinion on Bashir's involvement in the atrocities in Darfur, for which the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant in March 2009. According to Erdogan,

"It is not possible for those who belong to the Muslim faith to carry out genocide"(Ha'aretz).

Link to Jerusalem Post on Israel-Azerbaijan relations

2009-07-07T03:39:00.000-07:00

I am redirecting interested readers to a Jerusalem Post article on recent developments between Israel and Azerbaijan on the occasion of Peres visit to Baku.

Niyazi Capa ("No Jews or Armenians") May Face Prosecution

2009-02-20T03:49:00.000-08:00

The Armenian office of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has posted an article today, reporting that the author of "No Jews or Armenians are allowed through this door. Dogs are free to enter" may be charged for discrimination (not for racism, as should be noted).

Armenia Wins Gold; Israel Silver

2008-11-25T22:05:00.000-08:00

Armenia placed first in the Chess Olympiad held in Dresden, Germany this past week, and Israel scooped up a silver medal, finishing one point behind the winner. While Armenia was favored to win the tournament, the Israeli team was not expected to perform this well.

Movement in Armenian-Jewish Relations

2008-09-11T09:29:00.000-07:00

The fallout from the August 2007 Watertown-ADL controversy (see #1, #2) is slowly changing Armenian-Jewish relations - perhaps for the better. As a result of the uproar by Watertown's Armenian community over the Anti-Defamation League's stance on recognition, the heads of both the ADL and the American Jewish Committee (AJC), Abe Foxman and David Harris respectively, issued statements recognizing the 1915 killings of Armenians in the Ottoman empire as genocide.

Now, the AJC reports in an October 9, 2008 press release, "The Armenian Church has presented the American Jewish Committee (AJC) with a gold Kiddish cup, a Jewish ceremonial goblet, in appreciation of the long, positive history of close ties between the Armenian and Jewish peoples."

Although the press release quotes the Archbishop of the Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern), Turkish-born Vicken Aykazian, speaking at an AJC Board of Governors Meeting in New York, the cup was actually first presented to an AJC delegation in the Republic of Armenia back in May 2008. That AJC delegation included Barry Jacobs, the organization's D.C.-based Director of Strategic Studies, and Ambassador Peter Rosenblatt, who received the cup from His Holiness Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians. Jacobs and Rosenblatt also met with the prime minister of Armenia, Tigran Sargsyan

The kiddush cup theatrics and the AJC press release suggest a warming of relations between American Jewish organizations and American Armenians as well as the current government of Armenia. But the visit was not without its detractors in the American Armenian community, some of whom regard the AJC and Barry Jacobs in particular as chief antagonists in the struggle for U.S. recognition of the Armenian Genocide. In a somewhat allusive and occasionally confusing article denouncing the entire visit as a "machination," Jirair Haratunian claims that

Jacobs circulates articles from various sources supporting not only Israeli positions but pro Turkish and pro Azerbaijani policies as well. Jacobs’s bias against Armenia is palpable. A New York Times photograph taken at the session of the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee showed Jacobs seated among a group of Turkish protesters wearing badges saying “NO” to the pending Genocide resolution.

Jacobs was a long-time Department of State employee before beginning work for the AJC. He is a classic realpolitiker with little patience for history when it gets in the way of the interests of the United States and the Jewish community as he (and many other foreign policy analysts) perceive them. But two factors may be compelling him and others to sing a different tune as of late.

For one, American Jews like most other Americans, once informed of the issues, tend to support recognition of the Armenian Genocide. More importantly, however, there are real developments afoot in the South Caucasus and in Turkey that may call for a revision of entrenched positions.

First, the current regime in Yerevan may be headed for rapprochement with Turkey. Second, the Georgian crisis along with a host of other factors that have been stewing since the American invasion of Iraq are contributing to geopolitical uncertainty in the Caucasus.

All the players in the South Caucasus, including the Russians, are trying to balance their long-term interests with their current alliances. With Georgia and the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline facing an uncertain future, Armenia, currently Russia's most stable ally in the region, may reap benefits (though, to be sure, it will also endure significant economic costs). The U.S. may lose the most if it does not act fast. Certainly, Armenia has improved its strategic worth since the Georgian war.

In a catastrophically-translated press release about the AJC visit, the Republic of Armenia expressed some hope that the Jewish organization may help to improve Armenian ties with the U.S. and Armenia's relations with its neighbors:

During the meeting, the Prime Minister of Armenia and the head of the Jewish Committee of America touched upon the possibilities for improvement of the Armenian-Turkish and Armenian-Azerbaijani relations, the furtherance and expansion of cooperation with the United States [...] as well as the outlook for [...] strengthening the Armenian-Israeli political ties based on the historical and many other affinities between the Armenian and Jewish peoples. The parties said to be convinced that this might be instrumental in the betterment of Armenia's relations with the countries of our region. Peter Rosenblatt emphasized the need for raising awareness about Armenia in Israel which is susceptible to be ensured through active implementation of [...] cultural, educational and other programs.

Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan reiterated our country's position with regard to the settlement of its relations with Turkey by stressing Armenia's readiness to establish relations without pre-conditions.

Un point sur l'actualité arménienne: la descente aux enfers continue

2008-03-28T04:28:00.000-07:00

Les élections présidentielles qui ont eu lieu le 19 février ont vu la victoire au premier tour du Premier ministre actuel et favori du Président sortant, Serge Sargsian. Le candidat qui était son principal opposant, Levon Ter Petrossian est l’ancien Président (1991-1998) et l’homme qui a conduit le pays à l’indépendance entre 1988 et 1991. La campagne a été virulente et très suivie par les citoyens, et les résultats le jour du scrutin ont donné une avance telle à Sargsian qu’elle a donné à tous (sauf aux observateurs de l’OSCE apparemment) le sentiment que les résultats étaient gonflés par des irrégularités surtout au moment du comptage : après plusieurs estimations qui donnaient 57% à Sargsian et 19% à Ter Petrossian les résultats définitifs sont redescendus à 52% contre 25%. Dès le lendemain, 20 février, Ter Petrossian a réunit une manifestation de plusieurs dizaines de milliers de personnes et organisé un campement de tentes sur la place de la liberté. Aucun débordement n’a eu lieu ni ce jour là, ni les jours suivants qui ont vu les manifestations se poursuivre dans le calme. Ter Petrossian se prétend le vainqueur des élections et appelle au mieux à une démission immédiate du gouvernement qu’il qualifie de « cleptocratie» et au moins à la tenue de nouvelles élections. L’OSCE dans son compte-rendu provisoire a noté des irrégularités pendant le décompte mais a malgré tout validé le scrutin le disant en règle avec les critères internationaux et les engagements de l’Arménie. Notons que dans les trois jours qui ont suivi l’annonce des résultats 10 fonctionnaires du MAE dont certains en poste à l’étranger ont démissionné par protestation, et le procureur général adjoint, Gagik Jahangirian a rejoint l’opposition. Il est maintenant en détention. Kotcharian a dès le 23 février précisé que les forces de maintien de l’ordre étaient prêtes à intervenir pour assurer le calme et l’ordre public si un coup d’Etat se profilait. A cette date les arrestations politiques ont commencé, sur des personnalités en vue dans l’équipe de campagne de Ter Petrossian. Sur le plan politique, Sargsian a lancé une manœuvre de ralliement de la troisième et quatrième force politique de cette campagne, en engageant des négociations sur les postes à pourvoir.
Le 28 l’ex-KGB admet avoir envoyé deux hommes de son administration dans la manifestation de Ter Petrossian, que celui-ci avait accusé de pousser à la violence. Le lendemain, nouvelle mise en garde de Kotcharian, plus sévère.

Le 1er mars, le campement de tentes est dispersé brutalement par la police, Ter Petrossian ramené à son domicile par le chef de la sécurité personnelle de Kotcharian où il est place en résidence forcée. Quelques heures après, 10000 personnes se rassemblent entre la mairie et l’ambassade de France, et se barricadent derrière des bus. Ter Petrossian entame un dialogue avec les autorités leur demandant de l’autoriser à revenir auprès des manifestants pour les appeler au calme et éviter de nouveaux incidents. Le dialogue échoue. Dans la soirée le Président déclare l’état d’urgence, le rassemblement est dispersé après des affrontements entre les policiers et les manifestants qui font 8 morts (dont un du côté des policiers) et 230 blessés des deux côtés. On ignore tout des circonstances dans lesquelles ces 8 personnes ont été tuées. Les forces de l’ordre diront qu’ils ont dû sévir à cause de rapports qui indiquaient la présence d’hommes armés parmi les manifestants. La preuve de l’existence de ces armes aurait été faite quand les manifestants avaient repoussé les policiers avec des barres de fer. Une division blindée est envoyée quadriller la zone de l’affrontement à 4h du matin dans la nuit du 1er au 2. Deux députés proches de Ter Petrossian, Miasnik Malkhassian et Hakob Hakopian viennent grossir le nombre des détenus politiques, à 30 le 02 mars. Deux autres sont en fuite : Khatchatour Sukiassian et Sasun Mikaelian. Les auditions préliminaires ont déjà commencé pour ces deux députés, qui ont perdu leur immunité parlementaire après un vote du Parlement le 04 mars. Le 03 mars un décret du président suspend la liberté de la presse pendant la durée de l’état d’urgence, jusqu’au 20 mars, cependant que la Cour Constitutionnelle commence les auditions par rapport aux plaintes sur les irrégularités des élections. La communauté internationale, par la voix des Etats-Unis, de l’ONU et de l’OSCE, a appelé à l’abréviation de l’état d’urgence et au dialogue entre les parties.

Le 04 mars parvient également la nouvelle d’une rupture du cessez-le-feu au Karabakh. Chacune des parties rejette la faute sur l’autre. Le nombre de victimes irait de 02 à 10 selon les sources, en majorité des soldats azerbaïdjanais. La communauté internationale appelle au respect du cessez-le-feu par toutes les parties. Ce matin 08 mars, des rapports de presse azérie, turque et macédonienne parlent d’une alliance militaire entre la Turquie et l’Azerbaïdjan pour lancer une opération de débusquement de terroristes du PKK réfugiés au Haut-Karabakh.

Les autorités continuent à durcir leur position et à condamner toutes les voix dissidentes sur leur gestion de la crise, celle du médiateur de la République (ombudsman), Armen Harutiunian par exemple, et parlent de la possibilité d’arrêter Levon Ter Petrossian et de le faire passer en jugement si les auditions de ces camarades laissent penser qu’un coup d’Etat s’organisait. Ce matin (08 mars), le procureur général Aghvan Hovsepian, a exposé « l’hypnose de masse » dont Ter Petrossian a fait usage pour parvenir à rassembler autant de monde dans les rues ; il envisage par conséquent de faire appel à l’expertise de psychiatres et de psychologues au cours des procès qui doivent s’ouvrir le plus vite possible.

Le 06 mars, Matthew Bryza, assistant adjoint au secrétariat d’Etat aux affaires européennes et eurasiennes, a rencontré le Président Kotcharian. Il s’est gardé de condamner la proclamation de l’état d’urgence souhaitant qu’il soit levé au plus vite, a appelé au calme et au dialogue, et à ne pas faire la chasse aux opposants politiques, alors que les chiffres du gouvernement donnent ce matin le chiffre de 68 détenus. L’Union Européenne a, elle, demandé à ce que toutes les personnes arrêtées pour avoir participé aux manifestations soient relâchées. Bryza a aussi rencontré Ter Petrossian et Raffi Hovannissian, dont le parti est le seul parti d’opposition représenté au Parlement. Dans un article paru le 05 mars dans Washington Post, Ter Petrossian demandait à la communauté internationale de condamner fermement les actes du gouvernement arménien, précisant que l’absence de réactions énergiques des pays occidentaux et des organisations internationales amèneraient « les Arméniens à tirer deux conclusions indésirables : que les moyens pacifiques et légaux sont inutiles dans une lutte politique, et que l’Ouest se soucie de démocratie uniquement quand ça l’arrange politiquement. »

Je résume : les Etats-Unis et l’OSCE très prudents, et de toute façon pour ne pas troubler les choses et que les conflits ne reprennent pas dans le Caucase, et surtout que le BTC ne souffre pas de tout ça. Poutine satisfait de la gestion de la crise par les autorités. L’Azerbaïdjan qui en profite pour faire monter la sauce. Les media silence radio. 8 morts, plus de 100 prisonniers politiques, à la date du 28 mars 2008. Un procès qui promet de nous rejouer les meilleures scènes juridiques de l’époque brejnevienne.

Israeli Parliament to Consider Recognition of Armenian Genocide

2008-03-27T11:02:00.000-07:00

Invitation to this year's commemoration ceremony at the Hebrew University

Yesterday, the Knesset approved by a 12-point margin a proposal to have a parliamentary committee hold a hearing on recognizing the WWI killings of Armenians by the Ottoman empire as genocide (Ha'aretz). The Knesset House Committee will now decide whether recognition of the Armenian Genocide ought to be sent for review to the Knesset Education Committee or to the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. Unlike last year, the government did not oppose the proposal.

The person behind the initiative is MK Haim Oron (Meretz), mentioned previously in this blog. Oron recently won the leadership race of the small left-wing party and is the brother of Yair Auron, who has written two books, one on Israel's position on the Armenian Genocide, and other about the Genocide's reception in the pre-state Jewish community in Palestine.

Backers of recognition in Israel would prefer to have the issue debated in the open Knesset Education Committee, while its opponents, led by MK Yosef Shagal (Yisrael Beitenu), previously described here, would like to see it delegated to the closed-door Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

Turkey "Baffled" by Lantos

2007-10-12T10:43:00.000-07:00

The Turkish Daily News reports that Ankara is "baffled by [Democratic Congressman Tom] Lantos's vote" to approve the Armenian genocide resolution for a floor vote in the House. The source of the confusion? According to the newspaper's unnamed Washington sources, "Israel had been lobbying against the resolution's passage." Since the longtime House representative and chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs "is one of Israel's strongest supporters in Washington," he was, so the logic goes, expected to vote against the resolution. Ankara has continued to warn American Jewish groups that their support for recognition would damage Turkey's relationship with Israel.

Brian Ardouny of the Armenian Assembly of America expressed his gratitude to the House Foreign Affairs Committee for supporting the resolution in the face of pressure from the White House.

Aram Hamparian of the Armenian National Committee of America called the adoption of the resolution by the House Committee a "meaningful step toward reclaiming our right, as Americans, to speak openly and honestly about the first genocide of the 20th century."

At the risk of sounding pedantic: the Armenian Genocide was not the "first genocide" of the 20th century. This statement is unfortunately repeated unthinkingly by many people working toward the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. I don't really understand why it is necessary to claim any sort of primacy (does it make the tragedy worse?), but if one is going to do so, there is at least one earlier case - the genocide of the Herero and Nama in South-West Africa by German colonial troops between 1904 and 1907.

European Armenian Federation for Justice and Democracy hails vote on resolution

2007-10-11T09:48:00.000-07:00

The European Armenian Federation for Justice and Democracy, the most prominent Armenian lobby in the European Parliament has just issued a press release (only in French for the moment) hailing the Foreign Affairs Committee vote. The Federation expresses gratitude to all forces that voiced support for the passing of the resolution:

hundreds of American activists, human rights organizations, from various religious backgrounds, representatives of various minority groups [...] Of particular importance is the support of Jewish organizations, that did not withdraw their support in spite of recent threats to the Turkish Jewish community by Mr Babacan, chief negotiator for Turkish accession to the European Union."

On the diplomatic front, Erdogan, in a bold but not unusual move, has just required from his AKP party, to vote the invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan by Turkish troops. Clearly, Turkey is blackmailing the United States and thus raises the pressure quite high.

Archbishop Aris Shirvanian: "The Road to the Recognition of our Catastrophe Starts in Jerusalem"

2007-10-11T02:17:00.000-07:00

There is an interesting article by Anshel Pfeffer in Ha'aretz, so far only available in Hebrew, that features the Armenian Archbishop in Jerusalem, Aris Shirvanian. Subtitled, "The Armenians are close to a historic achievement," the article describes the efforts by Turkey as well as by Armenians to win the support of Israel and Jewish groups in their opposed efforts. The piece, which appeared with a big picture of Shirvanian on the frontpage of the online edition, comes in the wake of the vote by the Committee on Foreign Relations to put House resolution 106 before Congress, described by Taline below.

The archbishop is quoted as saying that,

Not only the Turks believe that the road to Washington goes through Jerusalem.

According to Shirvanian,

on the day when Israel changes its policy and recognizes the Armenian genocide, the US, too, will move." Pfeffer remarks dryly that "the belief in the almost mystical power of Israel and the Jewish lobby to determine votes in Washington is probably the only thing that the Turks and Armenians share in their historical fight over recognition of the Armenian Holocaust [ba-shoah ha-armenit].

According to Pfeffer, the Turks are doing their utmost to persuade the Israelis to exert more pressure on American Jewish organizations. Apparently, Turkey is afraid that Jewish and Armenian organizations are now cooperating to ensure that the resolution passes.

As I have argued previously, there is something very dangerous about the manner in which some Israeli statesmen are playing with the Turks. Yossi Sarid, of the leftist Meretz Party, who as a minister of education under Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 2000, promised that "he will do everything in order that Israeli children learn and know about the Armenian Genocide," points to President Shimon Peres as a prime culprit. Back in 2000, Peres, then Barak's Foreign Minister, flew to Ankara in the wake of Sarid's comments and assured the Turks of the standard lie, that "a tragedy" happened to the Armenians but not genocide. Today, Yossi Sarid says, Peres, among others, continues to support the "demonic image from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion that we [i.e., the Jews] rule the world and that if you want something from America, you should come to us."

According to Pfeffer, during his visit to Jerusalem, Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan was able to obtain an assurance from Peres to support Turkey's goal of establishing a joint Turkish-Armenian historical commission to study "the issue." Prof. Yair Auron, long active in the recognition cause in Israel, points out the obvious: that such a commission is a deliberate attempt to obscure the truth. As Aram Hamparian, Executive Director of the Armenian National Committee told the Jerusalem Post, such a request

is about as sincere as the Iranian government saying they need to revisit the Holocaust.

Pfeffer's article also finally elucidated the connection of Israeli Meretz parliamentarian Haim Auron to Prof. Yair Auron; the two are brothers. If you recall, MK Haim Auron (also, Oron) appeared previously on this blog after he tried to place recognition of the Armenian genocide on the agenda of the Knesset.

Passera - passera pas?

2007-10-11T01:24:00.000-07:00

Alors que le gouvernement américain continue à jouer au chat et à la souris avec le génocide arménien, la résolution a été adoptée à 27 voix contre 21 par le Comité des Affaires étrangères. Reste l'approbation du Congrès à obtenir. Ne nous réjouissons pas trop vite cependant, ce n'est pas la première fois qu'on arriverait près du but pour le voir se dérober sous nos pieds à la dernière minute. Et avec le Président Bush qui a exprimé deux fois dans ces derniers jours son opposition au texte, les craintes peuvent être fortes à bon droit.
A noter aussi l'écho journalistique rendu de l'événement: ce matin à 8h, France Info annonçait simplement qu' une résolution reconnaissant le génocide des Arméniens avait passé la première étape aux Etats-Unis et que les autorités turques qualifiaient le texte d'inacceptable. Une heure plus tard, l'annonce ciblait l'indignation des autorités turques face à la résolution. Et il y a une demi heure, le journaliste disait: "les relations turco-américaines mises en péril par un texte de loi". Cela en dit long sur la manière dont on veut présenter ce qui se passe. Et comme aucun courant d'opinion n'est mobilisé sur la question, il y a fort à parier que cela ne retiendra l'attention de personne.

A titre d'illustration de la conscience morale des peuples, je mets ici le lien vers le discours d'ouverture de Lantos au Comité des Affaires étrangères d'hier. http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/press_display.asp?id=430

Selon lui le dilemme moral se réduit à deux termes incompatibles: d'un côté "témoigner la solidarité envers le peuple arménien" en qualifiant de génocide ce qui s'est passé en 1915 et de l'autre mettre en péril la vie des citoyens américains qui servent aujourd'hui en Irak et qui courraient un danger bien plus important si les relations turco-américaines se dégradaient au point d'empêcher aux Américains l'usage de la base militaire turque. D'un côté un simple mot donc, et une accolade dans le dos en signe de solidarité, de l'autre des périls bien concrets, bien réels, d'ici et maintenant. C'est cela qu'il appelle "un vote de conscience".
Tout est bon pour rejeter la responsabilité que le gouvernement américain a d'avoir décidé d'envoyer et de maintenir ses soldats en Irak. Pour moi ce serait plutôt cela, le vote de conscience.

Welcome to Turkey

2007-09-12T02:46:00.000-07:00

Here is a poster you can see in some Turkish airports (this one is at the Bodrum airport) . So that one knows the "truth" on arriving, or does not forget it on leaving...

The famous academic authority invoked in the poster, Turkaya Atayov, holds a large record in denial, having authored numerous books presenting the various Turkish explanations of 1915 (as it evolved over time between the 1970's and the 1990's) and sponsored by Turkish state universities.

No further comment needed.

Outgoing Israeli Ambassador to Turkey Denies Genocide

2007-08-30T15:45:00.001-07:00

Pinhas Avivi, the outgoing Israeli ambassador to Turkey, told the Turkish Daily News that while "a lot of people see what happened during the events of 1915 as a tragedy," "there is a great difference accepting it as genocide." According to Avivi, "genocide is a decision by a government to destroy a people" and “never ever has anybody proved that this was the situation in 1915.”

Given Israeli policy on the issue, there is nothing surprising about the substance of this proclamation. The frankness with which the ambassador distorts history, however, is rather embarrassing. American diplomats at least use circumlocutions (if they don't, they get fired) when they deny that "the events of 1915" constituted genocide.

It is clear that the Israelis are doing their utmost to reassure Ankara of their friendship. The Turks, on the other hand, continue to show signs of frustration and disappointment, blaming Israel for the momentous shift in policy on Armenian Genocide recognition by the ADL. At the same time, they are eager to hear some approval for their position. In the background loom the nearly $10 billion in bilateral trade and joint economic ventures between the countries, the entrenchment of the Islamist AKP in power with the recent election of Abdullah Gul to the presidency, and Israel's concerns about Turkey's Iran-policy. It is perhaps with these factors in mind, that we should read Avivi's responses to the Turkish journalist's query about the ADL controversy.

Clearly, Israeli diplomats are playing a complicated game with the Turks. While Ankara plays the rejected lover, the Israelis claim that they are being faithful. As part of this charade, Israeli officials up to President Shimon Peres are promising the Turks to "keep an eye on it" - in order to make sure that other Jewish organizations do not announce similar shifts in policy. Avivi even claims that "the impression we got from different Jewish organizations in Washington is that, the ADL's approach is not seen as the right approach." Given that the American Jewish Committee followed the ADL's shift in policy, I am not sure where this impression is coming from. Are the Turks buying the bull that Israel is feeding them?

I have to wonder, too, whether Avivi's efforts to kiss up to the Turkish public were entirely successful. Asked by Barçın YİNANÇ about antisemitism in Turkey, the ambassador says that he believes it is "weak" in Turkey:

On the governmental level, and as far as 90 percent of the newspapers are concerned, apart from the newspaper Vakit and one or two journalists, I never felt it (Turkish Daily News).

Reassured, the journalist notes that, "For some countries, it's such an issue that it requires the Israeli government to step in. Avivi tells him that “Anti-Semitism has never been an issue for us to be taken up on official level." The journalist, however, reminds Avivi of "false news report that Israel was reportedly buying land in Turkey" and "that conspiracy theories based on Zionism are quiet widespread." Aviv acknowledges that the embassy could have done more to reach out to ordinary people.

I have a hard time believing that there is less antisemitism in Turkey than in France or Germany, where Israeli government officials do not shy away from expressing fears about resurgent anti-Jewish expressions by the public.

Turkey Demands ADL Retract Position Shift

2007-08-29T13:44:00.000-07:00

The Turkish ambassador to Israel, Namik Tan, announced last Sunday that Turkey expects Israel to compel American Jewish organizations to retract their recent public recognition of the Armenian Genocide:

Israel should not let the [US] Jewish community change its position. This is our expectation and this is highly important, highly important" (Jerusalem Post).

According to the Jerusalem Post, the ambassador refused to accept protests by Israeli government officials that they do not control the policy of American Jewish organizations.

In the meantime, the Turkish Daily News claims that Israeli President Shimon Peres has pledged to ask the ADL to reverse its position. I would not put too much stock in this. Any promises that Israeli officials make on this matter are worthless. Neither Peres nor anyone else can effect a reversal by the ADL at this point.

The question is whether the Turks know this and merely want to force Israel not to follow suit (it will not), or whether they truly believe that Israel can "deliver" American Jewish organizations. I realize that the latter is a popular belief, including among some Armenian activists who have long criticized the role of American Jewish organizations in thwarting Congressional recognition resolutions. But anyone who thinks that this is how things work has a very flawed understanding of the American political system of which Jewish organizations are an integral part.

Neither the Anti-Defamation League nor the American Jewish Committee take orders from Israel. As hard as it is to persuade otherwise those convinced that these groups are part of an international "Zionist cabal," I think that this latest episode demonstrates just how costly it can be to believe the yarns about Jewish power and conspiracies. I would maintain that diplomats would do better to understand that American Jewish organizations pursue what they perceive to be the interests of America and the Jewish community (in the U.S., Israel, and elsewhere in the world), all as part of a universalist commitment to defending human rights and combating discrimination. Inevitably, there are conflicts about the balance to be struck between these various aims.

Turkey Expresses "Anger and Disappointment"

2007-08-23T23:17:00.000-07:00

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül (Photo: Wikipedia)

Citing sources in the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Ha'aretz reports that Turkey is pressuring Israel to compel American Jewish organizations to reverse their recognition of the Armenian Genocide. So far, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, perhaps the two most recognizable Jewish political organizations in the U.S., have publicly declared that the events of 1915 constituted genocide. Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül expressed disappointment that Israel had not done anything to prevent these declarations, and talks between the Pinhas Avivi, the Israeli ambassador in Ankara, and Gül escalated to "unpleasant tones" [טונים צורמים] (Ha'aretz Hebrew).

The report is rather incredible, and reveals the bizarre spell that the phenomenon of Jewish diplomacy continues to exert on supposedly rational actors in the international state system. It appears that the Turkish Foreign Ministry truly believes in the existence of a cabal that initiates and enforces policies for all of world Jewry. The State of Israel now plays the role once attributed to the Rothschilds. I have always thought of Turkish diplomacy with respect to the denial of the Armenian Genocide as rather clever. Now it turns out that one of its guiding assumptions seems to have been the belief that American Jewish organizations take their marching orders from Jerusalem. I know that this thesis is popular among certain groups in the U.S. and elsewhere as well; the believers will hardly be persuaded by evidence to the contrary. The Turkish Foreign Ministry would do well to study the role played by Jewish groups in the American political system as well as the views of U.S. Jews on foreign and domestic policy, without the blinders of stereotypes about Jewish conspiracies.

The impact that the recognition decision of the ADL as well as the (characteristically) quieter AJC has made is astounding. In Turkey, government officials apparently "admitted that the ADL's shift in position was a setback for Ankara" (Turkish Daily News). Somehow, vast powers have been attributed to these Jewish organizations in the fight for and against House resolution 106, which would have the U.S. officially recognize the Armenian Genocide.

Cross-posted from Kishkushim.

AJC Executive Director David Harris Recognizes Armenian Genocide

2007-08-21T23:06:00.000-07:00

After Foxman's statement, the American Jewish Committee, arguably the most prestigious organization representing U.S. Jewry on the national as well as international stage, for the first time recognized the killings of Armenians during WWI as genocide:

At the same time, I cannot escape the events of 1915 and the conclusions reached by credible voices, from Ambassador Morgenthau to Harvard professor Samantha Power, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Problem from Hell: American and the Age of Genocide, to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, about the nature of what took place: it was a genocide, they determined, albeit one that occurred more than thirty years before the term was coined (see full press release).

This is a huge development whose significance cannot be overstated. It marks a major policy shift for the organization. To think that all this started from the controversy in Watertown is actually deeply inspiring. Truth and justice have triumphed over realpolitik.

It remains to be seen what the fallout will be for relations between American Jewish organizations and Turkey. To be sure, Turkish diplomacy has been dealt a serious blow. With the issue having taken center stage, neither the ADL nor AJC could any longer afford to take a "neutral" or strategic position.

Thanks to R. for the link.

Foxman Recognizes Armenian Genocide

2007-08-21T13:56:00.000-07:00

Perhaps my cautious optimism below was not unfounded. Today, the ADL released a press statement, in which Abe Foxman called the massacres of Armenians perpetrated by the Ottoman empire "genocide":

We have never negated but have always described the painful events of 1915-1918 perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians as massacres and atrocities. On reflection, we have come to share the view of Henry Morgenthau, Sr. that the consequences of those actions were indeed tantamount to genocide. If the word genocide had existed then, they would have called it genocide.

The ADL did, however, maintain its line that a Congressional resolution is "counterproductive."
Nevertheless, this is a very welcome development. I dare say that the whole affair has vindicated the recognition cause and that the prospects for a resolution passing are now better than ever.

Thanks to Peggy for the link.

ADL Continues to Stumble

2007-08-20T18:36:00.000-07:00

Throughout this week, an "Open Letter to the New England Community" will appear as a paid advertisement in various newspapers in the region. The advertisement is an attempt by the national ADL to justify its ongoing position of "neutrality" on U.S. House resolution 106. As R., who brought this to my attention, points out, the document smacks of inconsistency and poor logic. I was flabbergasted, for example, upon reading this paragraph:

We believe that legislative efforts outside of Turkey are counterproductive to the goal of having Turkey itself come to grips with its past. We take no position on what action Congress should take on House Resolution 106. The Jewish community in Turkey has clearly expressed to us and other major American Jewish organizations its concerns about the impact of Congressional action on them, and we cannot ignore those concerns. We are also keenly aware that Turkey is a key strategic ally and friend of the United States and a staunch friend of Israel, and that in the struggle between Islamic extremists and moderate Islam, Turkey is the most critical country in the world.

The first sentence is a staple of those who oppose the recognition of the Armenian Genocide as genocide by foreign governments. I'm not at all convinced by this claim.

Yes, recognition resolutions may make large sectors of the Turkish population more intransigent on this issue, but how has inaction on this front helped matters? If anything, we have ample evidence from the past 9 decades proving that neutrality by foreign powers on this question has actually increased the strength of the denialist camp. Several generations of Turks have grown up reared on textbooks and popular mythologies that deny not just the genocide but massacres of Armenians in toto.

Furthermore, it seems rather unfair to extend this kind of courtesy to Turkey, while frustrating the aims of Armenians and non-Armenians who want recognition of this genocide. Isn't the continued frustration of attempts to achieve recognition also counter-productive to these people's attempts to come to terms with their past?

The second sentence of this paragraph, which claims that the ADL "takes no position" on H.R. 106 strikes me, with all due respect, as a blatant lie. If the ADL is indeed "neutral" on this matter, why does the same paragraph invoke fears about the safety of Turkey's Jewish community, as well as Turkey's importance as a strategic ally?

I sympathize with the fears of the Turkey's Jews as much as I sympathize with the anxieties of some Armenians living in Turkey, who have also expressed opposition to genocide recognition resolutions abroad. But the kind of argument that is being made here is extortion pure and simple. It reminds me of some of the claims made by early-19th-century German legislators who refused to grant civic emancipation to Jews in their territories because they believed this would lead to attacks against Jewish people by the hostile population. Turkey is responsible for the safety of its citizens - it is a modern state with all the powers of an advanced security apparatus at its disposal.

I do agree with the ADL that it

is regrettable that such an important program as ADL’s No Place for Hate® Program, which provides a framework for fighting hatred and bigotry while increasing diversity awareness and fostering respect, has been mired in a controversy having nothing to do with the program.

But the ADL knows very well that if an educational program had been launched by a group that it perceived as hurtful, it would do everything possible to shut it down, no matter how beneficial it may have been to the community. If large segments of the population in New England find the position taken by a sponsor of a program on a certain issue to be objectionable, they have the right to oppose the program too. NGOs do not have immunity from public pressure.

I do have a question for my perpetually pessimistic friends. Is there not some grounds for optimism when one reads the following line?

We will continue to work to convince Turkey to pursue recognition and reconciliation, and we will seek ways to encourage this process [emphasis added].

Anti-Defamation League in Hot Water over Armenian Genocide

2007-08-19T08:22:00.000-07:00

A Jewcy Banner in a petition that calls on the ADL to recognize the Armenian Genocide

The municipal council of Watertown, Massachusetts, which together with Glendale, California is one of the major Armenian centers in the U.S., last Tuesday voted unanimously to pull out of the "No Place for Hate" tolerance-education program. The reason? The program is funded by the Anti-Defamation League, whose national board, the council alleges, has not been forthright in recognizing the Armenian Genocide.

Among other developments, the controversy has led to the firing of the New England Regional Director of the ADL, Andrew Tarsy, after he defied the national leadership of the organization and called on it to refer to the killing of 1.5 million Ottoman Armenians in 1915 as genocide. Now, some people are hoping that the scandal will lead to the "implosion" of the Anti-Defamation League and the sacking of its controversial leader, Abe Foxman.

One of the people who has been leading the campaign against the ADL is Joey Kurtzman over at Jewcy, who in a July post, Fire Foxman, "broke the news" of a February 2007 meeting between Turkish foreign minister Abdullah Gul and American-Jewish organizations, at which the latter allegedly agreed to oppose a House bill that would recognize the Armenian Genocide. For some thoughts on this meeting, see my post, "Recognizing the Armenian Genocide: Another Round."

I have very little sympathy for some of Kurtzman's other aims, which apparently include "the end of the Jewish people." Unlike Kurtzman, I hardly think the ADL is redundant. And while I can imagine how gratifying it is for a spunky, young Heeb to bash someone like Abe Foxman, I wish Kurtzman could have spared us the self-righteous universalist moralizing. Furthermore, Kurtzman's polemics against the ADL's anti-Mel Gibson campaign are a scandal, as is his pooh-pooing of antisemitism.

Nevertheless, I say mabrouk to the man for his spirited coverage of the Watertown-ADL controversy. To me, the whole episode illustrates something that I have repeated like a broken record on this blog: the American Jewish grassroots overwhelmingly support U.S. recognition of the Armenian Genocide. It's too bad that an excellent program, the ADL's "No Place for Hate," ended up being cut to send a message.

It is clear that there is a split between the grassroots and local leaders on one hand and the diplomatic activity of the larger organizations on the other. The directors are thinking geopolitics. When the Turkish foreign minister invites them to make a pitch for action against an Armenian Genocide resolution by Congress, they are not going to tell him "no" to his face, especially when he joins his plea to the status of the Jewish community in Turkey and to Turkish-Israeli as well as Turkish-American relations. The foreign policy departments of the premier American Jewish diplomatic organizations, such as the American Jewish Committee, are focused on the Middle East today; they are doing everything they can to keep Turkey on America's side, and at least somewhat close to Israel. The question is whether historical truth, moral integrity, and diaspora Armenians should all suffer for the pursuit of these interests.

Second Armenian Church to be Turned into a Museum in Turkey, Or How to Keep Falsifying History with European Funding and Approval

2007-08-08T05:35:00.000-07:00

According to PanArmenianNet, an Armenian church in the Edremir district of Van is being reconstructed with European funding. As for the Holy Cross Church on Akhtamar Island a few months ago, this church should be turned into a museum. No doubt, like for the Holy Cross, there will be no mention whatsoever of how this church came to be deserted, when and why. Nor why the church was left abandoned for so many decades. As a perfectly politically healthy place in Turkey, the museum will show the Turkish account of Armenian's presence in Van.

How Not to Help the Cause of Recognition

2007-08-06T11:35:00.000-07:00

Apparently, some people in Glendale thought it was a good idea to invite a conspiracy theorist, who calls himself a historian and claims "Jewish descent," to give a lecture on the "Jewish Genocide of Armenian Christians." Christopher Jon Bjerknes (interesting first name for a Jew), whose previous contributions to historical scholarship include a work alleging that Albert Einstein plagiarized some of his most important discoveries, now accuses "doenmeh" (crypto-Jews living in Turkey) and Zionists of having been behind the 1915 genocide.

Could anyone tell me who Rev. Bedroj Hajian is and why he would honor this certified antisemite with an interview?

I'm sure that the appeal for these ideas is rather limited, but it does worry me that some people are going one step further with the notion that Jews especially have been behind blocking recognition efforts.

Warning: the above link to this lunatic's book contains racist slander.

Donald Bloxham Winner of the Lemkin Award for his Book on the Armenian Genocide

2007-08-03T03:06:00.000-07:00

Donald Bloxham has received the 2007 Raphael Lemkin Award for his book The Great Game of Genocide Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians. I got acquainted with this work back in Berkeley last year, by my friend Amos. Bloxham's study adds an important piece to the historical inquiry about the Armenian genocide, with rich insights on European and American interests in the Ottoman Empire from the end of the 19th century until after the war.

Raphael Lemkin was an international lawyer who coined the word "genocide."

Yom ha-Shoah

2007-04-16T01:41:00.000-07:00

Emmanuel Ringelblum ז"ל

Today, Jews in Israel and in the diaspora commemorate the millions who were murdered by the Nazis and their allies in the Second World War. In the United States, many synagogues and Jewish community centers will hold remembrance ceremonies and lectures tonight. In Israel, an official commemoration ceremony is held at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial. At 10 am on Monday, a siren sounded for two minutes, and people stood silently to mark the day.

Yom ha-Shoah is usually observed on the 27th day of the Hebrew month of Nisan. Because that day fell on a Sunday this year, which means that the day of mourning would have begun Saturday night just before the conclusion of the Sabbath (in Jewish tradition, a day begins on the evening before), the observance was pushed to Nisan 28, 5767 (April 16, 2007).

If you want to take this opportunity to learn something about the Shoah, Yad Vashem has a new online exhibit on Emmanuel Ringelblum's "Oneg Shabbat" or, in Ashkenazi pronunciation, "Oyneg Shabbos" [lit., "pleasure of the Sabbath"] archive in the Warsaw Ghetto. Ringelblum (1900-1944) was a young Polish-Jewish historian, who devoted his time in the ghetto to systematically recording the trials, tribulations, and occasional triumphs of everyday life under the most cruel circumstances. He directed a large team of contributors, who secretly gathered material for the archive, and successfully hid most of its contents in milk canisters and metal crates, which were recovered after the war, in 1946.

A page from Ringelblum's diary. The first 1942 entry, from January 8-26, begins:

January 1942. The conditions for the refugees are simply unbearable. Because of the shortage of coals, they are freezing to death.

The title of the exhibit is "Let the world read and know," an excerpt from a longer statement by an Oneg Shabbat activist that appears in the archives:

It must all be committed with not a single word omitted. And when the time comes - as it surely will - let the world read and know what the murderers have done

The photographs are from Emmanuel Ringelblum, Ktavim fun Geto, Volume 1: Togbukh fun Varshever Geto, 1942-1939 (Warsaw, 1961). Thank you, Judy, for this gift.

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I recently received a link to a very moving recording obtained by NPR from the Smithsonian. Taped by a British reporter in April 1945 at Bergen-Belsen, shortly after its liberation, it preserves for posterity the voices of Jewish camp survivors singing "Hatikvah," which later became the anthem of the State of Israel. Note that they are singing an earlier version, which has slightly different lyrics in the second stanza. Thank you, Ms Dessen.

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In the English Wikipedia entry on Yom ha-Shoah, you can read the following gem:

Most of the Jewish community consider the day a Jewish religious holiday. Non-Zionist Orthodox Jews do not, instead remembering the victims on days that were already days of mourning before the Holocaust, such as Tisha b'Av in the summer, and the Tenth of Tevet, in the winter. It deliberately ignores other victims of the Holocaust such as Gay people, Gypsies, the Mentally Ill, the Disabled or Easter Europeans sent to the Gas Chambers.

It's amazing to me how even the commemoration of the Shoah can be turned into an attack on the Jewish people, along the old canard that the Jews are misanthropes who care only about their own suffering. I'm not going to get into how misleading and tendentious the second sentence is.

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Yad Vashem Council Chair Tommy Lapid, a former Israeli parliamentarian and minister, said that

even after the Holocaust we witnessed genocide in Biafra, Cambodia, Rwanda, and we must cry out against the genocide currently being committed in Darfur in Sudan.

MK Ahmed Tibi (Ra'am-Ta'al) called the Holocaust "the greatest crime in the history of humanity," and condemned those who deny the Shoah (Ha'aretz).

Serge Sarksian remplace Markarian dans ses fonctions de Premier Ministre

2007-04-13T00:56:00.000-07:00

La nouvelle date d'il y a quelques jours déjà, mais je dois avouer que le manque de surprise dans le développement cette affaire m'a fait passer l'envie d'écrire à ce sujet. Alors qu'au lendemain du décès de Markarian, une tension semblait se dessiner au sein de l'administration, qui aurait pu placer Hovig Abrahamian dans la course pour le poste, c'est en définitive sans heurt aucun que Kotcharian a reporté son choix sur l'éternel Ministre de la Défense Sarksian. Ce geste rend nulles les suppositions quant à une rivalité entre le futur Président sortant et l'actuel Premier Ministre qui sera à n'en pas douter, reconduit dans ses fonctions à l'issue du scrutin législatif du mois prochain. Le verrouillage des postes en prévision de l'élection présidentielle de l'année prochaine se confirme, et selon toute vraissemblance, Sarksian se donne une garantie de plus due à un -heureux?- hasard de placer toutes les ressources administratives de son côté. Quant à Kotcharian, qui lui aura apporté un soutien indéfectible en dépit des légères tensions d'il y a quelques mois, il s'assure sans doute un "parachute doré" pour sa sortie de la Présidence, et assurer la continuité du travail gouvernemental pour les 5 années suivantes. Pendant ce temps, l'opposition, prévoyant comme d'habitude sa victoire en cas d'élections transparentes, a pour la enième fois appelé les gens de la rue en perspective d'un renversement révolutionnaire après les élections, avec la même crédibilité que depuis 2003... L'immobilisme politique en Arménie est toujours aussi fort.

Coverage of Genocide Recognition Bill

2007-03-30T01:23:00.000-07:00

The title of today's New York Times story on House resolution 106, "Planned House Vote on Armenian Massacre Angers Turks," does not sound very promising at first glance. But the article itself should inspire optimism among advocates of recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the U.S. The article frames the issue mainly as one pitting the Turks and the White House against House Democrats. From the article, the issue clearly emerges as one of strategic and commercial interests versus morality and justice. This kind of framing provides all the more reason for Nancy Pelosi to support the resolution - rightly or wrongly, most Americans believe that U.S. foreign policy ought to be and is guided by moral values. Furthermore, many Americans probably resent what they perceive as undue pressure exerted by the Turkish government, especially when expressed in a half-threatening, half-paternalistic warning by Abdullah Gul. The Turkish foreign minister told the Times that

As the elected government of democratic Turkey, we would not be able to remain indifferent. However, I am confident that common sense would prevail at the Congress.

The article does mention the restoration, by the Turkish government, of the Armenian church at Akhtamar near Lake Van (depicted in our banner). This is definitely a good public relations move, that will engender sympathy among Americans for Turkish efforts at reconciliation.

Schiff presses Rice on Genocide

2007-03-28T06:00:00.000-07:00

Congressman Adam Schiff (Photo: Schiff's House Site)

Following is the original transcript of an exchange between Congressman Adam Schiff (D-California, 29th District) and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice regarding the recognition of the Armenian genocide by the United States, on March 21. It is somewhat long, but I thought some of Rice's answers were worth noticing, sometimes for their brutal honesty, more often for their diplomatic contortions.

The exchange took place at a House Appropriations Committee hearing before the Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs, on which Schiff sits. The transcript is from a press release on Schiff's online newsroom.

REP. ADAM SCHIFF: Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Secretary, welcome.
About a week or so ago, Madam Secretary, you and Secretary Gates sent a letter to some of the chairs of committees here on the Hill opposing recognition of the Armenian genocide.
This concerned me for a number of reasons, not the least of which that I don't see how we can have the moral authority that we need to condemn the genocide going in Darfur if we're unwilling to recognize other genocides that have taken place, if we're unwilling to recognize the first genocide of the last century, where 1.5 million people lost  their lives.
We're all well aware of how the Turkish lobby and Turkey has, either implicitly or explicitly, threatened because it doesn't want the genocide recognized and its own difficulty in coming to grips with that chapter of Ottoman history.
So I'm not going to ask you about that, but I do want to ask you, is there any -- do you have any doubt, in your mind, that the murder of 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1923 constituted genocide? Is there any doubt about that, in your mind?

SECRETARY OF STATE CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Congressman, I think that these historical circumstances require a very detailed and sober look from historians and what we've encouraged the Turks and the Armenians to do is to have joint historical commissions that can look at this, to have efforts to examine their past and, in examining their past, to get over their past.
But I will tell you, Congressman, I don't think that it helps that process of reconciliation for the United States to enter this debate at that level. I just don't think it's helpful.

SCHIFF: Madam Secretary, your comments, you think that there should be some kind of debate or discussion about the genocide suggests that you have a question about whether genocide occurred.
Is that correct?

RICE: Congressman, I believe that this is something that Turks and Armenians are best to address through their own processes of coming to terms with their history.
Lots of people have had to come to terms with their history...

SCHIFF: Yes, and, Madam Secretary, we have to come to grips with our own history.

RICE: Yes.

SCHIFF: And we did.

RICE: I personally am well aware of that.

SCHIFF: But, Madam Secretary, you come out of academia.

RICE: Yes.

SCHIFF: Is there any historic debate outside of Turkey? Is there any reputable historian you're aware of that takes issue with the fact that the murder of 1.5 million Armenians constituted genocide?

RICE: Congressman, I come out of academia, but I'm secretary of state now and I think that the best way to have this proceed is for the United States not to be in the position of making this judgment, but rather for the Turks and the Armenians to come to their own terms about this.
Lots of people are coming to terms with their history in Asia, in Europe people have had to come to terms with their own history and that's...

SCHIFF: Madam Secretary, we have no reluctance to recognize genocide in Darfur. We have no reluctance to talk about the Cambodian genocide or the Rwandan genocide or the Holocaust.
Why is it only this genocide? Is it because Turkey is a strong ally? Is that an ethical and moral reason to ignore the murder of 1.5 million people? Why is it we don't say, "Let's relegate the Holocaust to historians" or "relegate the Cambodian genocide or Rwandan genocide ?" Why is it only this genocide that we should let the Turks acknowledge or not acknowledge?
And, Madam Secretary, Hrant Dink, who was murdered outside of his office, is not a testimony to Turkish progress. The fact that Turkey brought a Nobel-winning author up on charges of insulting Turkishness because he talked about the murder of the Armenians doesn't show great efforts of reconciliation of Turkey.
Why is it only this genocide we're incapable of recognizing?

RICE: Congressman, we have recognized and the president recognizes every year in a resolution that he himself issues the historical circumstances and the tragedy that befell the Armenian people at that time.
We do recognize it. But I don't -- if you'll just allow me. I do not see that this situation is going to get better in the sense that it allows Turks and Armenians to move on to deal with their present unless we are able to let them deal with their past as to the murder that you...

SCHIFF: Madam Secretary, because I'm going to run out of time.
You recognize more than anyone, as a diplomat, the power of words.

RICE: Yes.

SCHIFF: And I'm sure you supported the recognition of genocide in Darfur, not calling it tragedy, not calling it atrocity, not calling it anything else, but the power and significance of calling it genocide .
Why is that less important in the case of the Armenian genocide?

RICE: Congressman, the power here is in helping these people to move forward. After the murder that you talked about, Turks went into the streets to embrace Armenians and to say that this is not the way that Turks behave.
The foreign minister himself has called into question the issue of arresting people for Turkishness. I do think that there is an evolution that is going on in a Turkey that is democratizing and democratizing before our very eyes and where Turks will be able to deal better with their history.
But I do believe that people are better left to try and deal with this themselves if they're going to be able to move forward.
We have to ask ourselves, "What is the purpose here," and I think the purpose is to acknowledge, of course, the historic tragedy, but the purpose is also to allow Turks and Armenians to be able to move forward.
And, yes, Turkey is a good ally and that is important. But more important is that like many historical tragedies, like many historical circumstances of this kind, people need to come to terms with it and they need to move on.
We've done that in our own country. People have done it in Europe. People have done it in Asia and I think...    

SCHIFF: Madam Secretary...

(CROSSTALK)

RICE: ... the best to have them move forward together.

LOWEY: Thank you, Mr. Schiff.

Décès inattendu du Premier Ministre arménien

2007-03-26T01:47:00.000-07:00

Andranik Markarian, 1951-2007 (Photo: Iran-Daily)

J'ai appris hier matin -de bouche à oreille- que le Premier Ministre arménien Andranik Markarian était décédé d'une crise cardiaque. Après avoir en vain fait le tour des principales radios d'information, des dépêches AFP, du site du Monde, etc. j'ai décidé d'attendre confirmation avant de me faire l'écho de la nouvelle -sur notre blog, même si cette affaire ne concerne pas particulièrement la communauté juive. Heureusement ce matin les media arméniens -non, pas internationaux, quel journaliste sensé perdrait son temps sur une nouvelle aussi peu grand public?- donnaient davantage de précisions sur ce décès.

Apparemment l'ex-Premier avait de lourds antécédents en matière cardiaque: il se faisait régulièrement suivre en Russie et en France. Une paralysie du coeur l'a pris dans son appartement et les médecins ont inutilement tenté de le réanimer.

Des funérailles d'Etat sont prévus par le Président Kotcharian, qui a déclaré être profondément touché. Il a immédiatement prévenu son Ministre de la Défense, Serge Sarksian, qui en route pour une visite officielle en Chine a annulé son voyage. Une réunion d'urgence a eu lieu hier, et une autre est prévue pour aujourd'hui, dès le retour de Sarksian. Quant aux suites deux tendances semblent se dessiner. Kotcharian pencherait pour un candidat proche de lui au poste, en la personne de Hovik Abrahamian, actuel Ministre du Gouvernement local, une des figures montantes du régime depuis trois ans. Ce mouvement s'est accéléré en 2005, quand Kotcharian a inclus le département des Réfugiés et situations d'urgence dans le Ministère du Gouvernement local, le tout confié à Abrahamian. Ce choix pourrait cependant créer de nouvelles vagues entre Kotcharian et Sarksian, qui fera sans doute son possible pour pousser un homme à lui, quelqu'un de discret et d'acquis, et qui lui rendra la campagne présidentielle de l'an prochain que plus aisée. Affaire à suivre...

Je vois l'information pour la première fois sur un media international sur le site de la BBC.

Armenian Embassy in Ottawa, Canada

2007-03-19T10:51:00.000-07:00

The Armenian embassy in Ottawa, Canada (March 2007)

I thought I'd post a picture I took recently of the Armenian Embassy in our nation's capital. In my opinion, it's quite striking. Note the Ararat motif in one of the gables. The embassy is located close to the downtown area, near the Rideau Canal on which people frequently skate during the winter. I don't know the significance of the statue on the right - if any of our readers could enlighten us on that point, your help would be much appreciated.

State Department Urging Congress to Reject Genocide Resolution

2007-03-16T13:35:00.000-07:00

Assistant Secretary Daniel Fried
(Photo: Dept. of State)

Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried is urging Congress to reject the proposed House resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide. According to Fried, Turkish officials have told the U.S. that Turkey would shut down the American air base at Incirlik or restrict U.S. overflights, should the resolution be approved. Fried, Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian affairs, made the remarks at a Thursday session of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Europe. The full transcript of his remarks is now up.

In bringing up these arguments, Fried is appealing frankly to American strategic interests. There is no doubt that the base has been vital to ongoing American operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. More dubious, however, is Fried's argument, which has been adopted by other anti-recognition activists, that

such a step would undercut voices in Turkey calling for a truthful exploration of these events in pursuit of Turkey's reconciliation with its own past and with Armenia.

Supposedly, there are now growing calls in Turkey for changes to the infamous Article 301. But if there is such a furor now about a House resolution, I don't see how this is strengthening the extremists. I think there is also some confusion of cause and effect. Haven't the Article 301 prosecutions actually emboldened the violent extremist groups in Turkey? Why is it that the onus of responsibility for fostering a more democratic climate in Turkey and for a real engagement with the past is placed on people in the U.S. who want recognition of the Armenian Genocide? It's pretty clear that this is a ploy, an affectation of concern for justice and reconciliation, which is being instrumentalized to prevent passage of the recognition resolution.

Fried reached another low when he claimed to speak on behalf of the "60,000-70,000 Turkish Armenians" who oppose the U.S. measure because it would "dramatically ... threaten their personal security." Sorry, but the Dink assassination demonstrated all too clearly that the Armenians in Turkey are living in a state of fear. The Turkish government bears responsibility for their security - it cannot blame America for supposedly "inciting" violence.

Thanks to Taline for bringing this report to my attention.

Israeli Parliament Narrowly Votes Against Discussion of Genocide

2007-03-14T16:38:00.000-07:00

Meretz MK Hayim Oron (Photo: Wikipedia)

The Knesset, Israel's legislature, on Wednesday narrowly voted against an initiative by MK Haim Oron (Meretz) to convene a parliamentary discussion on the Armenian Genocide in the Culture and Education Committee. The vote against this initiative came after heavy pressure from both Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni, who expressed concern about the negative fallout the initiative would have on Turkish-Israeli relations, Ha'aretz reports.

Fifteen members of the governing coalition voted against Oron's proposal, while a group of 12 MKs, which included legislators from the opposition parties, as well as MKs Shelly Yahimovich (Labor), Nadia Hilo (Labor), and Yitzhak Aharonovitz (Yisrael Beitenu) voted for it. MK Reuven Rivlin (Likud), who has previously signed a petition calling for recognition, implored the legislators not to remove the issue from the agenda.

Meretz, the party to which Oron belongs, is a leftist, social democratic party, somewhat comparable to the European Greens. It has a faction of five seats in the current Knesset (its lowest total ever). One of the party's past leaders, Yossi Sarid, has supported official recognition of the Armenian Genocide. I could not obtain a complete list of the breakdown, but I assume that the other people who voted for the initiative included the rest of the Meretz parliamentarians, and members of parties from across the political spectrum. As Oron said, "this is not about left-wing and right-wing" - a statement confirmed by the presence of both members from the left (Meretz) and the right (Likud and Yisrael Beitenu) on the side voting for the bill.

Yahimovich, a former media personality and a rookie MK, is part of the left-wing of the Labor Party (Avodah). Hilo, a Christian Arab who hails from Yafo (Jaffa), is active on social justice causes. Aharonovitz, on the other hand, belongs to the far-right party Yisrael Beitenu associated mostly with Russian immigrants, though he himself was born in Israel. A former Lieutenant-Colonel in the Israeli Army and a past Deputy-Commissioner of the Israeli Police, he is respected for his expertise on security matters. The recently-deceased, Moscow-born MK Yuri Stern, also of Yisrael Beitenu, had previously supported recognition efforts.

Oron said that he wanted to bring the topic up for discussion now because this was the last opportunity to do so before April 24 - the day on which Armenians commemorate the Genocide. He said that

it is incumbent especially upon us, members of a people which experienced genocide [Shoah] and fights against its denial, to show sympathy for the tragedy of another people.

To me, the debate in the Knesset as well as the coverage again illustrate that there is nearly unanimous consent in Israel that what happened to the Armenians was a genocide. Ha'aretz referred matter-of-factly to "the Armenian Genocide which took place nearly 100 years ago." But of all countries, Israel can least afford to anger the Turks right now. There is no doubt that the relationship with Turkey is of paramount strategic interest to the country.

And yet, Health Minister Ya'akov Ben-Yizri, speaking on behalf of Foreign Minister Livni, must have realized just how unconvincing the official explanation, defending the government's position, sounded:

As Jews and Israelis we have special sympathy and a need to commemorate the massacres [מקרה ההרג] that were perpetrated against the Armenians in the last years of Ottoman rule. We also understand the significance of the sensitivity [sic. maybe someone can suggest a better translation] of the Armenian people, but over the years this has turned into a loaded topic between the Armenian and the Turks, and each side is attempting to persuade [others] to affirms its claims, and we hope that both sides will reach an open dialogue that will enable them to heal the wounds that have been left open.

כיהודים וכישראלים יש לנו רגישות מיוחדת וגם צורך להזכיר את מקרה ההרג שנעשה בארמנים בשנותיו האחרונות של המשטר העותומני", אמר בן יזרי. "אנו גם מבינים את חשיבות הרגישות של העם הארמני, אך במהלך השנים הוא הפך לנושא טעון בין הארמנים לטורקים וכל צד מנסה להוביל לצדקת טענותיו, ואנו מקווים ששני הצדדים יגיעו לדיאלוג פתוח שיאפשר להם להבריא פצעים שנשארו פתוחים

Oron responded that he hoped the topic would remain on the agenda, because "we owe this clarification [i.e., recognition] to the Armenian people, precisely at this time when we are struggling to preserve the memory."

Ha'aretz also noted the presence, in the public gallery, of the leaders of the Armenian community, "who did not hide their disappointment."

Oron's last name, in Hebrew, has the same spelling as that of Prof. Yair Auron (for more on him, see this partial review of one of his books, and this one on his activism). I am not sure whether they are related.

An English version of the Ha'aretz article is now up, but it is only an abridged translation. Thanks to John and Ima for their help.

From the Jewish Grassroots

2007-03-01T23:14:00.000-08:00

A lead editorial in the Wednesday, February 28 edition of The Jewish Press condemns the efforts by the Turkish government to enlist Jewish organizations in a bid to prevent the passage of House Resolution 106, which would officially recognize the Armenian Genocide:

We are certainly not insensitive to the significance of Turkey’s support of Israel. But the Turkish government’s attempt to capitalize on that support by pressing the American Jewish community to oppose a Congressional resolution that condemns as “genocide” Turkey’s murder of a million and a half Armenians during World War I strikes us as being the height of chutzpah.

The editorial refers specifically to the February 5 meeting of Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül with several American Jewish organizations, where Gül solicited their support in blocking passage fo the resolution (see my previous post).

The Jewish Press's implicit support for House Resolution 106 is very significant. The weekly has a circulation of at least 95,000. Its orientation is generally right-wing, and most of its readers identify as "Modern Orthodox." The paper's editorial line is unequivocal about its support for the State of Israel, and many of its readers identify with religious Zionism; in the past, one could be sure that they would support the Likud or parties to the right of it. It would certainly be hard to accuse them of not having the national security and strategic interests of Israel in mind. Having said all this, the paper's editorials frequently provoke controversy in the religious Jewish community in New York and elsewhere. Its columns are often widely discussed.

While the Jewish Press editorial argues that "opposition to House Resolution 106 does not necessarily signify lack of sympathy with the victims, or, indeed, sentiment against the concept itself," the board is unequivocal about its own position on the genocide:

Anyone who seriously and objectively considers those events cannot but conclude that there was a calculated and purposeful effort to exterminate the Armenians. After all, approximately 1.5 million perished.

The Jewish Press especially condemned Foreign Minister Gül for using the argument of the Shoah's uniqueness to make the case that Jews should quash an Armenian Genocide resolution:

The Turkish official reportedly appealed to the participants by noting – outrageously, we think – the uniqueness of the German genocide against the Jews.

It concludes that

acknowledging as genocide the systematic murder of a million and a half human beings of a particular ethnic heritage in no way detracts from recognition of the Holocaust as a uniquely monumental evil in the blood-soaked annals of human history.

"Controversial"...

2007-02-21T02:33:00.000-08:00

... would be the pretext once again invoked to avoid a public event talking about the Armenian genocide. It has been a couple of weeks now that I have been receiving the excellent news that the Taviani brothers' film, "Masseria delle Allodole", was in the run up for the Berlin film festival. In "The Lark Farm", Paolo and Vittorio Taviani are setting up the story of a family which lives in Western Armenia and awaits the arrival of their parents from Italy. Alas, the First World War prevents this family from joining and the family members became victims of the genocide perpetrated by the Turks. The scenario is inspired by the autobiographic novel of Antonia Arslan. But a news reported by PanArmenian.Net suggests that the film is eventually being put aside the main lineup in order to avoid a "contreversial" topic. We need to wait for further information, but, if true, this would but one more piece to the already wide file of movies censored or marginalized for dealing with the Armenian genocide, from the Forty Days of Musa Dagh to Ararat and others.

Recognizing the Armenian Genocide: Another Round

2007-02-08T18:39:00.000-08:00

Much will depend on Congressman Tom Lantos,
Chair of the House Committee of Foreign Affairs

On January 30, 2007, Congressman Adam Schiff (D-California, 29th District) submitted House Resolution 106 to the 110th U.S. Congress. The bill

Call[s] upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide (...).

It was co-sponsored by Congressmen George Radanovich (R-California, 109th District), Frank Pallone (D-New Jersey, 6th District), Joe Knollenberg (R-Michigan, 9th District), Brad Sherman (D-California, 27th District; member of the Foreign Affairs Committee), and Thaddeus McCotter (R-Michigan, 11th District). The resolution was referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, which is chaired by Congressman Tom Lantos (D-California, 12th District), a veteran legislator and the only Holocaust survivor ever to serve as a House representative. The Committee will decide whether the resolution should be considered for a vote on the floor of the House. The sponsors of the bill are upbeat that the 110th Congress might finally pass this resolution, assuming that it passes the Committee. But House Resolution 106, which would call for American official recognition of the Armenian Genocide, faces formidable obstacles.

After Turkish diplomacy's recent defeat in France, where a bill outlawing denial of the Armenian Genocide was passed in in October (see my post on Kishkushim - it also includes coverage to the resolution's pre-history), and in the wake of the Hrant Dink assassination, Turkey is doing all it can to thwart the passage of the House resolution. As in previous years, it is attempting to enlist Jewish organizations in its fight. I do not have space here to get into the complex history of the relationships between Turkey, the U.S., Israel, and American Jews. I leave this for a future post. Suffice to say, that some Jewish organizations have in the past supported Turkey's efforts, with an eye to geopolitics - specifically, Turkey's relations with the U.S. and Israel. It is possible that we are witnessing the beginning of a shift in the positions of these Jewish organizations (groups concerned primarily with foreign policy), but it is still too early to tell.

On February 6, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that Turkish Foreign Minister

Abdullah Gül met for 90 minutes Monday night [February 5] with representatives of the United Jewish Communities federation umbrella group, American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, American Jewish Congress, Chabad-Lubavitch, B’nai B’rith International and the Orthodox Union. He asked for assistance in facing down legislation sponsored by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who is Jewish and who has a substantial Armenian-American constituency.

The article also mentioned that the bill had picked up 169 co-sponsors (JTA).

In fact, the meeting was held after a direct appeal by the Turkish government to the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, which explains the presence of such communal and religious groups as Chabad-Lubavitch, B'nai B'rith, and the Orthodox Union. It is probable that Gül appealed directly to the foreign policy groups to urge House representatives not to pass the bill. Significantly enough, no Jewish organization has come out with a statement on the matter yet, which suggests that most of the Jewish groups are lukewarm about engaging in this dirty work.

But Turkish diplomacy has certain carrots and sticks that it brings to the table. Disregarding the Jewish angle for a moment, Turco-American relations matter a great deal to most members of the current U.S. administration as well as to many Democrats from the Clinton years. Most of the State Department, Pentagon, and other foreign policy types are deeply invested in America's special ties to Turkey. They frequently cite the importance of Incirlik Air Force Base, and the symbolic value of having a Muslim ally such as Turkey more or less (indeed, these days it is less and less) behind America. American Jewish organizations dedicated to foreign policy are also concerned about the prospects of the U.S. losing a strategic ally such as Turkey. They carry two additional concerns - the state of Turkish-Israeli relations and the position of the Jewish community in Turkey. The Turks know this and they will most likely do what they can to use these pressure points.

As was to be expected, the Turkish moves have received a fair amount of coverage, certainly among Armenians in the diaspora and in Armenia. Collectifvan posted a French translation of the JTA article, and PanArmenian.Net cited the Armenian Assembly of America's Regional Director for Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh Arpi Vartanian, who at a Yerevan press conference remarked that

the Turkish delegation uses the large influence of Jewish Lobby, which strongly supports Turkey. “Almost there are no relations between Armenian and Jewish lobbies, they meet rarely for the sake of certain common issues. But recently here too we notice some changes. Some influential Jewish lobbyists started to speak about the Armenian Genocide, they bring as evidences the words of U.S. Ambassador to Ottoman Turkey Henry Morgenthau during World War 1, archival documents. Moreover, Turkey has already approximately calculated that the 106th resolution can be adopted and has doubled its efforts in this direction,” Vartanian stressed.

Talk about the "large influence of [the] Jewish Lobby," especially with the latter term capitalized in this manner, is unlikely to endear the AAA to ordinary American Jews. It would have been wiser to speak with more nuance. There are different Jewish organizations who lobby Congress; they have distinct interests and do not really act cohesively. How large their influence is continues to attract significant debate. Armenians probably realize better than anyone that Jews are sensitive about accusations that "the Jewish Lobby" exercises disproportionate influence on American policy. But Vartanian is right about the state of Armenian-Jewish relations (at the level of organizations) in America. I do not expect much progress on this front over the next year.

However, as I do not tire of repeating, the Jewish grassroots will support this resolution if they are engaged and mobilized. Jews at the grassroots and at the organizational levels are at the forefront of the Darfur struggle. Some Jews, as individuals, have long supported the Armenian struggle for genocide recognition. Given the compelling moral arguments in favor of recognition, there is no reason why an equally large number of Jews might not be enlisted in the recognition cause as well. All it takes is a little more effort.

The Jewish organizations dedicated to foreign policy know that their grassroots membership largely supports recognition. The geopolitical concerns, which require a great deal of explanation, are simply not that compelling when stacked up against the moral arguments. But so far the foreign policy types have counted on the relative lack of awareness among the American Jewish public (though the awareness is probably higher than among Americans as a whole). Given access to the right information, many ordinary Americans would no doubt support the efforts for official recognition of the Armenian Genocide. Among American Jews, the connection is even more intuitive. Jews cannot help but sympathize with the efforts of Armenians to achieve recognition of the tragedy that befell the Armenian people. They know how painful it is to have the historical reality of genocide denied to spite the victims and their descendants. Indeed, there is no doubt in my mind that most American Jews would agree with me that we have a moral responsibility to support the passage of House resolution 106 to achieve the long overdue official recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

I hope that we can reach out to each other and ask American Congressmen to vote for the bill - together and in one voice.

Fighting Denial: Yad Vashem Launches Farsi Site

2007-02-07T11:32:00.000-08:00

The homepage of Yad Vashem's Farsi site

Yad Vashem, the Jewish people's memorial to the Shoah in Jerusalem, recently launched a Farsi-language site with information about the Holocaust. Since it went online about two weeks ago, more than 20,000 people have accessed the site, including 6,000 from Iran. This is equivalent to the number of people who access the English-language site every year (Ha'aretz).

The Farsi site contains a history of the Holocaust as you might see it at the Yad Vashem museum, beginning in the late 19th century and including information about such events as the 1881 and 1905 anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia (see the first page). It covers the period of Hitler's rise to power and has a detailed section on such markers as the Nuremberg Laws. From there, it proceeds via the appeasement of the 1930s to the outbreak of World War Two, the literal ghettoization of the Jews in Poland, the murders of the Einsatzgruppen during the invasion of the USSR, the Wannsee Conference, and the extermination camps. The whole effort strikes me as a great response to appeal directly to Iranians, many of whom in any case believe that Ahmadinejad's negationist games are not only damaging to Iran's reputation but also morally reprehensible.

I would greatly appreciate hearing some reviews from those of you who read Farsi!

I am sure something like this has been attempted before, but perhaps it is worth another try to launch a similar site on the Armenian Genocide in Turkish.

American Jewish Committee: Abolish 301

2007-01-31T23:30:00.000-08:00

(Image: AmnestyInternational)

One of America's most respected Jewish organizations is calling on Turkey to abolish article 301, in the wake of Hrant Dink's assassination. The American Jewish Committee declared on January 24 that

Law 301 is widely believed to have created the atmosphere that encouraged those responsible for the murder of Hrant Dink, the Turkish Armenian editor of Agos, who was shot at his Istanbul office last Friday.

The AJC urged Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan to "take steps to guarantee the full rights of expression in the media and other forums."

The Manipulations of Alexandre Adler

2007-01-29T19:29:00.000-08:00

Alexandre Adler

Hrant Dink must be turning in his grave about all the articles that have invoked him to argue for causes quite foreign to his own. While we might applaud the fact that Dink's murder has forced many Turks to speak out publicly against the nationalist ideology that caused his death, some unsavory characters have perversely seized the occasion to attack diaspora Armenians and the Republic of Armenia. Alexandre Adler's recent column in Le Figaro to me represents the height of this kind of cynicism.

Adler's essay crafts "connections" between ideas and events that are hallucinatory at best. After eulogizing Dink for one paragraph, Adler proceeds to launch into a vicious tirade against Armenia only to end with a melodramatic paean to the founder of post-Soviet Azerbaijan and the father of the state's current ruler:

Héros de l'Union soviétique, fils de mollah, excellent connaisseur de la poésie persane et patriote turc à la Mustafa Kemal, Haidar Aliev synthétisait ces courants culturels apparemment incompatibles, en tout cas aujourd'hui, en un espoir utopique pour demain : la grande alliance des trois cultures russe, turque et persane dans un nouvel ensemble producteur de laïcité et de démocratie.

[A USSR hero, son of a mullah, remarkable connoisseur of Persian poetry, and a patriotic Turk, Haidar Aliev combined those cultural currents which, at least today, seem incompatible, with a utopian hope for tomorrow: the great alliance of three cultures - Russian, Turkic, and Persian in a new fusion producing secularism and democracy.]

Adler then has the audacity to declare that

Si un jour nous parvenons à réaliser cette ambition, on se souviendra de Dink comme de l'un des héros stoïques de cette indispensable longue marche

[If one day we manage to achieve this ambition, we will remember Dink as one of the stoic heroes of this long, vital march.]

Adler's enlistment of Dink in his ode to Haidar Aliev is distasteful enough, as is his characterization of Armenia as a "violent, aggressive, and inept" country. But even more insidious is Adler's effort to link Armenia to Russian and Arab terrorism, and, along the way, to establish some kind of moral equivalence between the genocide of 1915 and Armenians' alleged crimes in recent times:

Certes, la Turquie devrait avancer avec retenue et dignité vers une prise en compte de plus en plus lucide de la tragédie de 1915, mais l'Arménie d'aujourd'hui a aussi son chemin à accomplir pour conjurer une bonne fois pour toutes son alliance faustienne avec les éléments les plus terroristes de l'ex-Union soviétique et du monde arabe, le moment Asala, si on cherche à lui donner un nom.

[Surely, Turkey must advance with self-restraint and dignity toward a more and more lucid accounting of the tragedy of 1915. But today's Armenia also has a ways to travel to conjure {i.e., "do away with"} once and for all its Faustian deal with the most terrorist elements of the former Soviet Union and the Arab world, the Asala moment, if one is looking for a name to give it.]

Few would deny that Armenia, like a host of other former Soviet republics, is experiencing some serious problems. The most serious challenge facing the country is the ongoing blockade against it by Turkey, and by Azerbaijan, with which it continues to be embroiled in a conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. Other troubles include corruption and authoritarian tendencies among some of its leaders - tendencies that are abundant elsewhere in the region (indeed, Azerbaijan probably takes the prize). But to link Armenia to Islamist or ex-Soviet terrorism is an insidious lie.

Asala (the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia) was a terrorist group active in the late 1970s and until the early 1980s, which assassinated Turkish diplomats in the West. It was founded and based in Beirut during the Lebanese civil war. But it had no connection at all to Armenia, which in any case was a Soviet republic then. Nor was it ever embraced by the vast majority of Armenians in the diaspora.

Finally, as horrible as the actions of the now defunct group may seem today, anyone who seeks to compare them with the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians is nothing but a vicious demagogue.

On top of all this, after linking Armenia to the attempted assassination of John Paul II (a connection that seems as solid as the visions produced by the mushrooms he must have ingested), Adler also manages to drag the Jews into the whole mess, of course on his side. As if the innuendo about Armenian connections to Arab terror weren't enough, he praises Haidar Aliev as someone "qui aurait banni ... racisme et antisémitisme" [who would have exiled racism and antisemitism].

Both advocates for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide as well as their opponents have appealed specifically to Jews and their historical experience to aid their respective causes. One canard circulating among various denialist groups is the claim that Armenians were or are antisemitic, which is part of a transparent effort to impugn Armenian credibility and to provoke antipathy toward the cause of genocide recognition among Jews. Adler seems to be employing a similar strategy by linking Armenians to Arab terrorism, while presenting Aliev as a heroic vanquisher of antisemitism. I think I speak for many Jews when I say that I want no part in Adler's dangerous game.

Le juste

2007-01-24T13:13:00.000-08:00

Ce weekend a eu lieu une cérémonie importante à Paris, présidée par Jacques Chirac : le Panthéon s’est ouvert pour ceux et celles, Justes, qui durant la seconde guerre mondiale avaient pris le risque de cacher des Juifs, alors que la France vichyste faisait le jeu de l’occupation et de son programme infâme. Dans son discours, le Président français a qualifié le négationnisme de la Shoah de crime. On ne peut que l’approuver… mais regretter l’insuffisance d’un propos à vocation pourtant universelle. C’est également le message de Serge Klarsfeld que l’on peut entendre dans la vidéo sur YouTube.

Serge Klarsfeld, fondateur de l’Association des Fils et Filles des Déportés Juifs de France, fait partie de ces personnalités, encore trop peu nombreuses, qui à partir de leur expérience individuelle et de leurs racines, vont au-devant d’autres expériences communes quoique nées sur un sol différent. Mercredi dernier, lors d’un meeting organisé par le Conseil de Coordinations des Arméniens de France, Serge Klarsfeld, Me Christian Charrière-Bournazel, représentant de la LICRA (Ligue Internationale Contre le Racisme et l’Antisémitisme), et à leur côté le très médiatique Bernard-Henri Levy se sont tous exprimé en faveur de la loi sur la pénalisation du négationnisme du génocide arménien. Je ne reviendrai pas ici sur le contenu de leur argumentation, qui ne leur est pas spécifique, mais sur ce qui fait la richesse de leur point de vue. Ces trois hommes ont explicitement lié leur conviction sur la nécessité de cette loi au fruit de leur histoire familiale et/ou de leur réflexion professionnelle. Ils ont démontré une fois de plus que sur un sujet aussi sensible pour les Arméniens que celui du négationnisme, la mémoire et le travail fait autour du négationnisme de la Shoah est une perspective qui permet de mieux cerner les enjeux du délit. Les deux génocides ont leur spécificité bien sûr - comme aussi les génocides cambodgien et rwandais - mais les négationnismes ont aussi leur. Alors que la Shoah n’est contestée que par quelques affiliés de sectes révisionnistes, fous dangereux mais solitaires et traduisibles en justice, le génocide arménien est nié par l’Etat turc héritier du gouvernement Jeune turc responsable du crime, et nié avec tous les moyens d’un Etat puissant et influent, qui a fait de la négation un de ses chevaux de bataille, et produit des émules féroces dans de nombreux pays, de l’Union Européenne aux Etats-Unis. Pour eux point de peine. Pourtant, le négationnisme est un crime organisé qui nécessite une réponse irrévocable et sans ambiguïté ; et pour ses relais coupables, un juge, ayant en mains la loi lui permettant d’exercer son office.

Reactions after a Tragedy

2007-01-23T15:41:00.000-08:00

Today was Hrant Dink’s funeral in Istanbul's Armenian cathedral. The event brought 100,000 people to the street, Turks and Armenians united in their mourning for the journalist and in anger toward the Turkish state. With their presence around Dink today and their demand for an explanation other than the crazy face of a lone teenage nationalist, this crowd gives some credit to the following lines I wrote a couple of hours after the killing.

First, Hrant Dink was no vociferous nationalist. He saw his struggle in Turkey as one for democratization and freedom of speech. The fact that he talked openly about the Armenian Genocide was meant to open up a space for expression on the subject which is a very strong taboo in the country. He had managed to change things a little bit. Something like the beginning of a change could be felt from the Turkish civil society on which Dink and others, such as Zarakolu, Orhan Pamuk, Halil Berktay, and Taner Akçam had placed all their hopes for democratization, and, linked to it, recognition of the genocide. Concerning such subjects as joining the EU, Dink was in favour of it, because he reckoned that this was a way for his country to advance on democratization.

Secondly, we can already see that the Turkish government is trying to present this crime as an attack against Turkey, saying that the killers are trying to destabilize the country, and to divide citizens from different religions. They also pretend, as always, that Armenians there live with no trouble, when the reality is that the 57,000 Armenians remaining in Turkey, who live mainly in Istanbul, can hardly identify in public as Armenians and are subject to all kinds of discrimination. Worse, the government wants to make the death of Dink a common outrage to all democrats, including themselves obviously. Erdogan has declared that this murder was "a bullet fired at democratization and freedom of speech" in Turkey. This is a total shame, given that the very same Dink was on trial last year for having touched the limits of democracy and freedom of speech in his country - limits which we know to be very low- that is for having used the G-word. He was condemned to a 6-months suspended sentence for this reason, convicted of having insulted Turkish identity, under article 301 of the penal code.

Turkish here share a part of the responsibility in distorting the meaning of what happened. Their ignorance, added to the political line of each of them, making them write nonsense. Since Friday, I’ve read that Dink was unwelcome in the Diaspora and in Armenia because his opinions were not those of the majority; allegedly because the Diaspora is made of extremists who don’t want any reconciliation with Turkey; allegedly because Armenia has something else on its plate than genocide recognition, and that hard economic realities made this issue disappear. Today, 2,000 people gathered in Yerevan at the same time that the funeral was taking place. Certainly, we Armenians are not of one mind on how to further genocide recognition; but we are united about the necessity of achieving it and we are of one heart about what Dink was doing, saying and writing in Turkey. If those same media had taken a look at the reactions all around the Armenian world, at the commemorations in all Armenian churches since Friday, they would not have written such silly things.

I’ve also read articles toeing the line of Turkey’s Prime Minister, saying that this crime was in fact directed against the Turkish state. And now, four days after the tragedy, four days after having spread absurdities, I don’t hear anything anymore. Silence, disinterest, oblivion. And I can’t help but noticing the huge difference between similar cases. Anna Politovskaya, well-known Russian journalist and human rights activist in her country, was killed last October. For days and days, even weeks, that was a big topic in the media; Putin was the target of accusations, and the opportunity was seized to recall what was going on in Chechnya. In Istanbul, a lot of people whether Armenian or Turkish, want explanations.

I believe that unless Turkish civil society and its intellectual leaders sincerely committed to democratization claim justice for Hrant Dink’s murder, and satisfaction on the issues he was struggling for, nothing will come out of it. All I can do is hope that their reaction will be strong enough to sustain a wave of change such as the crowd of this morning was promising.

Hrant Dink

2007-01-19T09:12:00.000-08:00

Just now I heard on the news that Hrant Dink, a brave man, whom I had the privilege of hearing at Berkeley last year, was killed on the street today. Dink, the editor of the Armenian-Turkish weekly Agos, frequently in the news in Turkey for "insulting Turkishness," was 53 years old.

Israel's Position on Nagorno Karabakh

2007-01-18T00:25:00.000-08:00

MK Yosef Shagal
(Yisrael Beitenu)

Yesterday, the following item appeared on PanARMENIAN.net, with the usual spelling mistakes and grammatical idiosyncracies:

With the absence of Azerbaijani Embassy in Israel it’s incorrect to speak on delicate topics such as the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, Knesset member Josef Shagal said in Baku. In his words, Israel doesn’t have official stance on the conflict, as Azerbaijan did not express its position on the Palestine-Israel conflict and did not support the military operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon. “Once nobody could believe that Israel will withdraw troops from Sector Gaza Strip. However, it became a reality as a consequence of certain processes. I am sure, the same will happen with the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. The day will come when positive tendencies will lead to resolution of the problem. I wish the conflict be settled peacefully,” Shagal said, reports Zerkalo Baku-based newspaper.

It is not immediately apparent why this is news, but the person in question, Yosef Shagal caused a bit of a scandal last time he opened his mouth about South Caucasian affairs on May 15, 2005. Back then, the former Baku native, who emigrated to Israel in 1990, announced that "Israel supports a fair position of Azerbaijan in the Upper Karabakh conflict." For good measure, he went on to promise Israel's support in canceling the Congressional arms embargo on Azerbaijan, enacted by the U.S. House of Representatives in in 1992 (Sami Rozen, Axis). Unfortunately, these remarks were taken quite seriously in the region, and, some analysts argue, used by the Iranians to pull Armenia closer toward them (Ibid.).

Never mind that at the time, Shagal had no official government position whatsoever, and that he was a rookie backbencher of an upstart (though significant) opposition party, Yisrael Beitenu, composed of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, including a number of outright racists such as its chief, Avigdor Lieberman. In the wake of Shagal's bizarre and unauthorized comments - which seemed to represent only his own private foreign policy - Israeli Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni canceled her trip to Azerbaijan, which has not hosted an Israeli minister since 1998, in order not to convey the impression that the government endorses Shagal's position.

Things have changed slightly since 2005. Now, unfortunately, Yisrael Beitenu is a member of the governing coalition, though its representatives, with the exception of Lieberman, named Deputy PM and Minister for Strategic Affairs, work mostly in insignificant committees. No doubt, Lieberman made sure that Shagal would toe the line this time. The Knesset member even threw in Israel's dissatisfaction with Azerbaijan's line during the war with Hizbullah in the summer.

While searching for information on Shagal, I discovered an interesting document. It is a protocol of a meeting with Jewish organizations from the former Soviet republics, which took place at the end of the war, in August 2006, in Israel (the organizations had come one a solidarity mission). Present at the meeting was the head of the Jewish community in Armenia, ~~Rimah Verpapitian-Feller (sp?)~~ Rimma Varzhapetian-Feller (thanks for the correction, Anonymous) as well as a certain Genady Zalmanovitch, head of the Azerbaijani Jewish community. While the former did not speak during the meeting, Zalmanovitch went on in quite some detail - he finally stopped, after protests from the audience - about Iran's discrimination against Azeris and the comparably privileged status of Armenians in the Islamic Republic. Zalmanovitch began his long-winded speech by admitting that he "sometimes offend[s] the representative from Armenia." What is more interesting, however, is that Zalmanovitch highlighted that "Lebanon recognized the Armenian Genocide [literally, "the Armenian Shoah or Holocaust"; לבנון הכירה בעקרון בשואת הארמנים] , while Turkey and Azerbaijan opposed this."

Member of German Leftist Party Denies Genocide

2007-01-10T00:36:00.000-08:00

Armenians in Germany call on the Bundestag to condemn the Genocide
Berlin, April 2005 (Source: Central Council of Armenians in Germany)

A Bundestag parliamentarian who belongs to the Linkspartei.PDS, the successor of the former East German Communist Party, is in the news for denying the Armenian Genocide. Hakki Keskin first publicly entered the ranks of the negationists when he condemned the June 2005 Bundestag resolution which

mourn[ed] the actions of the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire which almost led to the complete extermination of the Armenians in Anatolia.

At the time, the two lawmakers from his party sitting in the parliament voted for the resolution. But Keskin's position, exposed in a recent newspaper report, has drawn official protest from the Central Council of Armenians in Germany, who have asked the leftist party for clarification.

On his website, Keskin parrots the standard denialist line:

Personally, I believe that the deportation of hundreds of thousands human beings, whatever their motives may have been, was profoundly inhumane and wrong. I want to emphasize that Turkey does not deny the fact that as part of this deportation hundreds of thousands Armenians but also Muslims died.

Keskin also backs Erdogan's calls for a UN-monitored Turkish-Armenian historical commission to evaluate the evidence.

Now, the vice-chair of the party's Bundestag-caucus [Vize-Fraktionschef] Bodo Ramelow has stooped so low as to accuse the Central Council of "instrumentalizing the victims of the genocide" (Tagesspiegel)and even giving credence to Keskin's statements to the effect that the killings of Armenian "had a pre- and post-history" [Vor- und Nachgeschichte] which involved atrocities by Armenians against Turks.

Meanwhile, both Keskin and Ramelow are spreading the usual stories about the "Armenian lobby," which is allegedly stifling freedom of speech. Keskin has even planned an event to examine the lobby's activities.

Israeli-Armenian Relations

2006-12-19T12:24:00.000-08:00

A Diamond Necklace made in Armenia (Source)

Most Armenians in the Diaspora know about Israel's relations with Turkey, but I bet far fewer know that Israel is one of Armenia's top-five trade partners. Almost all of this trade is in diamonds, as is most of the trade between Armenia and Belgium (where, it should be noted, Jews are the major players in the industry).

David, over at a The Armenian Economist (a great blog, by the way), provides the following data for 2005 in a post on "Georgia, Russia, and Armenia's Economy."

Total exports (USD millions): 950.4

Germany 147.2
Netherlands 130.1
Belgium 124.6
Russia 119.1
Israel 112.2
USA 62.1
Other 255.0

Total imports 1767.9 USD millions

Russia 259.5
Belgium 162.4
USA 116.0
Germany 114.0
Israel 102.5
Iran 102.0
Other 911.5

According to the CIA World Factbook, which cites slightly different figures, Armenia exported commodities worth $800 million in 2005. Its largest export partners were:

Germany (15.6% of exports)
Netherlands 13.7%
Belgium 12.8%
Russia 12.2%
Israel 11.5%
US 11.2%
Georgia 4.8%

The Factbook cites a number of $1.5 billion for Armenia's imports, with the following countries accounting for the largest numbers:

Russia 13.5%
Belgium 8%
Germany 7.9%
Ukraine 7%
Turkmenistan 6.3%
US 6.2%
Israel 5.8%
Iran 5%
Romania 4.2%

State-Sponsored Genocide Denial: A Growing Market

2006-12-12T11:20:00.000-08:00

"Let the games begin" (Tehran, Iran)

Iran is quickly consolidating its leading role in the market of state-sponsored genocide denial. Yesterday, the Islamic Republic opened an international conference in Tehran to "discuss the Holocaust away from Western taboos." Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made several statements denying the genocide of 6 million Jews during WWII. Now, he has invited 67 scholars, including such luminaries as David Duke, formerly of the Ku Klax Klan, and Robert Faurisson to "re-examine" this issue. The dominant theme of the conference is that the Jews conspired to create the myth of the Holocaust in order to seize Palestine and create their own state. It's a message that still appeals to many people, especially in the Muslim world. For coverage, see Al Jazeera (quite good actually) and the New York Times. The lead sentence of the Turkish daily Hurriyet is a quotation from Ahmadinejad, "Yahudi soykırımı bir mitostur," [The Jewish genocide is a myth].

Some of our readers might be confused by images such as these, which have appeared in the media:

What are these Jews doing hugging Ahmadinejad? The individuals in question belong to an ultra-Orthodox sect that is so fervently anti-Zionist that it sends representatives to any cause that it perceives as injurious to the state of Israel. Most ultra-Orthodox Jews, including those who live in Israel and depend on the state for its benefits, believe that the creation of a secular state before the coming of the Messiah was a sin. A relatively small number of them believe that they ought to actively support Israel's enemies to reverse this historical transgression.

New York Times in Denial

2006-10-17T00:02:00.000-07:00

Anti-French protesters in Istanbul

I could not disagree more with Tuesday's New York Times editorial, "France in Denial." The editorial attempts to strike some sort of "balance," on the one hand condemning Turkey for not dealing with its past and prosecuting writers who mention the Armenian Genocide, while on the other hand calling the recent French National Assembly vote "absurd," "cynical," and "outrageous." But the argument the Times offers against the resolution appears utterly incoherent. Indeed, calling it an argument does not do justice to the term. Instead of making its case for why such a law should not exist, given that a similar law against Holocaust denial is on the books in France, the Times offers the following reasons for its opposition to the resolution:

French politicians are exploiting anti-Turkish feelings
French legislators are pandering to the large Armenian community in their country
The resolution could increase anti-Muslim feelings in France
The law would deal a blow to freedom of expression

To me, these appear more like excuses than reasons. Even if 1, 2, and 3 were true, are they really grounds for not having a law like this on the books? As for the third reason specifically, Armenian Genocide denial is now in its 91st year. Does action against it really have to take a backseat to the possibility of increasing anti-Muslim feeling? I also fail to see how this law would do something like that; it seems rather illogical. Finally, I wonder whether similar "arguments " might not be constructed for a law banning Holocaust denial today (in #1, substitute "Muslim" or "Arab" for "Turkish," and in #2, "Jewish" for "Armenian").

The last reason, which to me seems contradictory to the first three, might represent a more solid argument, except that the law forbidding denial of the Shoah (Loi Gayssot) overrides guarantees of freedom of expression in France. So how does the Times deal with this problem?

The editorial admits that the Loi Gayssot too violates freedom of expression. However, in the case of this law, the Times argues, the "laws at least are based on the threat posed by die-hard anti-Semites who still subscribe to Hitler's racist theories." On the other hand, the "Armenian question poses no dangers in France. Playing politics with it trivializes not only the Holocaust, but also the Armenian genocide."

I'm not familiar enough with the Loi Gayssot in France to evaluate whether it is true that this law is actually based on the threat of fanatical antisemites. Certainly, denial of the Shoah can be seen as a form of hate speech. But the same could be said for denial of the Armenian Genocide. Let's not forget that memorials to the Genocide have been defaced in France and elsewhere. And let's not forget that anti-Armenian stereotypes and hatred are alive and well among many people, whether in Turkey, Russia, Azerbaijan, or even the West. And yes, these stereotypes sometimes have profound consequences for Armenians. Denial of the Genocide is frequently combined with accusations of "Armenian treachery" and conspiracy theories about Armenians controlling the media, government, or academy. As for the last sentence - I simply do not understand what it is supposed to mean. How could a law forbidding denial trivialize either the Holocaust or the Armenian Genocide?

If the Times had wanted to make an argument against this law, it should have stuck to the question of freedom of expression. But in that case, the argument would also have to be aimed contra the laws against Holocaust denial.

See also the coverage of the bill's passage on Kishkushim, which includes a link to the resolution's pre-history.

A Medieval Jewish Cemetery in Armenia

2006-10-07T11:29:00.000-07:00

Two tombstones from the cemetery. The top one is from the grave of "Zvi the righteous, upright and lovely boy." On the bottom is the tombstone from the grave of Esther the daughter of Michael. Part of a verse from Proverbs (31:30) is visible in the photograph, "Grace is deceitful, and beauty is vain."

Ha'aretz has a long feature by archaeologist David Amit on the finds from the latest expedition to a medieval Jewish cemetery that was discovered in Armenia nearly a decade ago. Unfortunately, the article, entitled "Hebrew Gravestones in the Land of Ararat" is so far available only in Hebrew. The expedition was led by Professor Michael Stone, director of the Armenian Studies program at Hebrew University. The article itself details some of the findings from the various expeditions, and includes translations of a number of interesting tombstone inscriptions. The cemetery is located in Eghegis, in the Vayots Dzor Region, and it dates to the 13th century. The Jewish community that lived in the area appears to have come from Persia. For those who are interested, a full report by Stone and Amit appeared in the Journal of Jewish Studies, Vol. 57, Issue 1 (2006).

The cemetery first came to the attention of the scholars from Jerusalem when they were contacted by the local Armenian Bishop Abraham Makartchian in 1997. Bishop Makartchian runs a summer camp in Eghegis for orphans who lost their parents during the long war with Azerbaijan. The young and energetic "Bishop in jeans," as Amit calls him, also graciously hosted the archaeologists.

Armenia Debates Sending Peacekeepers to Lebanon

2006-09-14T19:20:00.000-07:00

Armenia is debating whether to send peacekeepers to Lebanon, after receiving an official invitation to join the UNIFIL mission there. Lebanon has a large Armenian community, and Lebanese Armenians are urging the country's participation in the peacekeeping mission. If the government decides to accept the invitation, it is likely that a small contingent of Armenian sappers would be involved in the clearing of mines and unexploded ordnance. According to Oskanian, there are still questions about the mandate and the location in which the troops would be serving, which need to be resolved before Armenia can commit.

On Wednesday, a Turkish reconnaissance team arrived in Lebanon. The Turkish parliament gave its overwhelming approval to a bill Turkey is expected to contribute up to 1,000 troops. However, the country has declared in advance that it will withdraw if its soldiers are asked to disarm Hizbullah. Turkish public opinion is largely opposed to the country's participation in the mission.

Shahan Kandakharyan, editor-in-chief of Azdak, the largest Armenian newspaper in Lebanon, has announced that Lebanese Armenians are opposed to Turkey's participation in the mission:

A country, which is a strategic and military partner of Israel and blocks Cyprus must not be admitted to Lebanon. Also a country, where human rights are violated and the Armenian Genocide of 1915 is denied cannot take part in settlemetn of the Middle East crisis,

he said (see full text of an interview with him).

Meanwhile, Germany has announced that it will contribute 2,400 airforce and navy servicemen to the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon. German defence minister Franz Josef Jung announced that the country's sailors and airmen, who will be patrolling the entire Lebanese coast, aboard two frigates, four patrol boats, two supply ships, a tender, and two helicopters, "will have the right to use force against vessels that show resistance." Chancellor Angela Merkel called the decision to participate "historic." However, Germany has refused to send ground forces to Lebanon, citing concerns that the country's Nazi past prevents it from putting troops in a situation where they might have to challenge Israeli soldiers. Israelis have generally welcomed the German participation, with some isolated opposition. However, a month ago, when debates about a new peacekeeping force had just begun, the head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany vehemently objected to the deployment of German troops in Lebanon. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert previously expressed his strong support for a German role in the mission.

On ne plaisante pas avec les mots…

2006-09-14T15:20:00.000-07:00

Sanction diplomatique pour abus de… vérité : c’est bien ce à quoi ressemble le rappel de l’ambassadeur des Etats-Unis en Arménie, John Evans, qui a quitté Erevan samedi dernier, un an avant la fin de sa mission. En avril dernier, peu avant la commémoration du 90ème anniversaire du génocide des Arméniens, le représentant de l’administration Bush avait dérogé à la loi de l’omission qui caractérise le discours politique américain sur cette question depuis des années.

Le funambulisme rhétorique de tous les Présidents américains au moment du 24 avril peut faire figure de certificat es acrobatie au cirque politique ; pour mémoire, rappelons simplement les contorsions du 24 avril dernier : « a terrible chapter of history" that "remains a source of pain for people in Armenia and for all those who believe in freedom, tolerance and the dignity and value of every human life." En utilisant le terme de génocide pour qualifier les massacres de 1915-1917, Evans a encouru les foudres de ses chefs, et en a payé les conséquences par l’abréviation de son mandat en Arménie. Il a eu beau, par la suite, tenter de minimiser le fait en expliquant qu’il donnait là son point de vue de particulier, forgé depuis deux ans par une connaissance plus approfondie de l’histoire du peuple arménien, rien n’y a fait. Justification maladroite peut-être, puisqu’elle mettait l’administration Bush devant une alternative soit peu flatteuse, si on choisit de lui accorder l’ignorance, soit franchement accusatrice, si on opte pour la mauvaise foi la plus totale face à des intérêts de puissance plutôt que d’humanité. Certes, dans l’un comme dans l’autre cas, l’administration Bush n’en serait pas à son coup d’essai…

Dernier rebondissement de l’affaire : la semaine dernière, le Sénat n’a pas pu faire approuver la nomination du bien-pensant Richard Hoagland en remplacement de John Evans, le sénateur Menendez ayant publiquement désavoué le refus des Etats-Unis de reconnaître le génocide arménien. Coup d’épée dans l’eau bien entendu puisque l’administration Bush a déjà tiré les conséquences de ce malheureux écart : maintenir la position américaine sur cette question gênante en prenant soin d’éliminer tout facteur de déviance dans le jugement …

The Jewish Composer of the Armenian People

2006-09-14T10:21:00.000-07:00

Armenian Jewish Composer Willy Weiner

Yasha Levine, who frequently reports from Armenia for the Jewish Telegraph Agency, has written a fascinating feature article on the growing popularity of the composer Willy Weiner in the country. Weiner was born and raised in Armenia, which has a Jewish population numbering in the hundreds. After graduating as a violinist from the famous Yerevan Conservatory, he spent several years touring with Armenia's orchestras. In the late 1990s, Weiner moved to Israel with his two sisters and parents. However, he soon came back to Armenia, where he has, perhaps ironically, turned to music inspired by Jewish melodies and themes in recent years:

"I drew great inspiration from Israel, but I could not write music there,” Weiner told JTA. “When I was in Israel, I did not write a single note, but as soon as I came back to Armenia, the music began to flow.”

His first album, "Exodus," was released by an Armenian label in 2003. He rose to prominence in the country with a sold-out performance celebrating Armenia's 14 years of independence. That concert was fully supported by the Armenian government, as part of a cultural program called "Through Culture to Tolerance," which celebrated the contributions of Armenia's minorities to the country.

The article notes that "Armenia has always had a reputation for its lack of institutionalized anti-Semitism." Weiner's next album is called Halom (Dream), and is due to be released soon.

Jewish Senator Backs Recognition

2006-08-31T14:13:00.000-07:00

Addendum: On Thursday, September 7, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved the nomination of Richard Hoagland as ambassador to Armenia. The vote was 13-5 with Democrats Paul Sarbanes (MD), Chris Dodd (CT), John Kerry (MA) and Barbara Boxer (CA) , and Republican Norm Coleman (MN) voting against.

The Forward reports that US senators from the Republican and Democratic Parties are threatening to block the confirmation of Richard Hoagland as ambassador to Armenia. Hoagland was designated as the successor to John Evans, fired last spring after giving a speech in which he used the term genocide to describe the mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks during WWI. Hoagland, it turns out, has avoided acknowledging the extent of the massacres. Now, the bipartisan group of senators is challenging Hoagland's appointment in an effort to reverse the American policy of non-recognition.

The article notes that a number of Jewish organizations have traditionally opposed recognition bills, because of their fear that such resolutions would damage US and Israeli relations with Turkey, an important strategic ally for both countries. There is a chilling quotation from a member of the Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs (JINSA), a Jewish-American thinktank, to the effect that

The Jewish lobby has quite actively supported Turkey in their efforts to prevent the so-called Armenian genocide resolution from passing.

Interestingly enough, that same group has recently ceased opposition recognition because of Turkey's recent criticism of Israel and lack of cooperation with the United States. This bodes well for recognition efforts.

Furthermore, Norm Coleman, a Republican Jewish senator is among those opposing to the Hoagland appointment and making recognition a key issue:

Coleman, one of the GOP’s two Jewish senators, has emerged as an outspoken advocate of changing American policy on the issue. He has said that he will continue to oppose Hoagland’s nomination in protest of the government’s unwillingness to recognize the Armenian genocide.

“I continue to be deeply troubled by the United States refusal to recognize the historically documented mass killings of Armenians in 1915 as ‘genocide,’” Coleman said in a statement released in early August. “As someone of the Jewish faith, I bring great sensitivity to the issue of recognizing the reality of genocide.”

Coleman’s view is reflective of a belief, held by many in the community, that Jews have an ethical obligation to recognize another ethnic group’s genocide. Others take a more pragmatic approach, placing Israel’s strategic interest over other moral considerations.

I am hoping that Coleman's efforts will signal a penetration of the support for recognition among most American Jews into the thinktanks and lobby groups, who have so far shown themselves to be myopically "strategic" (or immoral) in their thinking . My own experience indicates that the grassroots simply do not accept the excuses of the foreign policy experts.

The First International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide in 1982 – From the Family "Archive"

2006-06-17T18:53:00.000-07:00

The two Clippings from Ha'aretz, June 25.1982

Twenty-four years ago, my mother somehow found the time to clip and annotate the article and letter to the editor above from the June 25, 1982 edition of Ha’aretz, in between taking care of three very young and unruly children – my twin-brother and I had just turned two, my sister was only four months old. My parents and I discovered the clippings by chance today while looking through an old book in the house.

(For those who are interested in details – the book was Haim Rabin’s עיקרי תולדות הלשון העברית, The Fundamentals of the History of the Hebrew Language).

I’ve decided to translate the letters here, because they concern a historical event of great relevance to this blog. That event, the First International Conference on the Shoah and Genocide was supposed to have taken place at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. Yitzhak Arad, then director of Yad Vashem, Gideon Hausner, the attorney general of Israel who prosecuted Eichmann, and Elie Wiesel, were all set to speak. Overall, 150 lectures were to be held, six of them on the Armenian Genocide. But after Turkish pressure on Israel, and, as a result, heavy pressure exerted by the Israeli Foreign Ministry on conference organizers and participants, the conference was held in Tel Aviv with only 300 out of the original 600 researchers participating. Important institutions and individuals withdrew their backing of the event, including Yad Vashem (Yair Auron, The Banality of Denial, 217-219). Paradoxically enough, however, the controversy surrounding the conference actually drew attention to the recognition cause, especially since the lectures on the Armenian Genocide were in fact delivered (Auron, Banality of Indifference, 354).

TOP DOCUMENT: “Limited Participation at the International Conference on the Shoah and Genocide” (JUNE 25, 1982)

"Following the complaint by Turkey, there are fears that Jews [in Turkey] would be harmed if the subject of the Armenian Shoah is discussed"
By Yehudit Winkler, Ha’aretz Writer

The International Conference on the Shoah and Genocide opened on Monday at the Hilton Hotel in Tel Aviv without Elie Wiesel and on a smaller scale than anticipated by its organizers after the Foreign Ministry exerted heavy pressure to cancel the conference.

The opposition by the Foreign Ministry escalated due to fears that essential national interests and perhaps also Jewish communities abroad would be harmed because one of the subjects of discussion at the conference is the Armenian shoah [sic] of 1915. The government of Turkey protested about this to the Foreign Ministry and raised the concern that Jewish communities might be hurt.

The writer Elie Wiesel, who was supposed to have been the keynote speaker at the conference, announced his resignation, at the same time as he emphasized his identification with the goals of the conference which he helped plan. He said that he could not go against any request from the state of Israel if behind it stood the possibility of any danger whatsoever to the lives of Jews. Mr. Wiesel requested that the conference be held abroad.

Conference organizers estimated that only 500 people (half of the expected number)would take part. The organizers reported that cancellations by participants were substantial among Israeli scholars as well as researchers from abroad, and that the pressure from the Israeli Foreign Ministry was leaving its mark on the scale of the conference, although the program content had not changed.
Over the four days of the conference, lectures and seminar discussions will take place on different aspects of genocide.

BOTTOM DOCUMENT: Letter to the Editor, “Conspiracy of Silence”

The Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel proclaims that the government guarantees “freedom of religion, conscience, education, and culture.” The international conference taking place now (in the Tel Aviv Hilton) on the Shoah and genocide with the aim of understanding of, intervention in, and prevention of genocide, was planned by a group of devoted people and fits the spirit of that declaration cited above perfectly.

During the planning process which began three years ago, it came to the Turkish government’s attention that the Armenian genocide would also be discussed at the conference. We are overcome with feelings of horror and incredulity that the government of Israel bowed to the

Turkish pressure not to support and not to formally recognize this conference. In addition to this, the Israeli government influenced many prominent personalities known the world over, who are connected to research on the Shoah, to prevent their participation in and support of the conference.

The undersigned express their outrage and anguish, and are very concerned by this development, which reminds us of the conspiracy of silence that begot the Shoah. This development fundamentally contradicts the essential principles on which this country was founded.

Leni Fortes and 26 signatories
Kfar Saba

Note on the Translation of Some Key Terms

The Hebrew word שואה (shoah) literally means “disaster” or “holocaust.” Like the latter English word, it has come to refer to the destruction of European Jewry by the Nazis and their allies during WWII. The English word is usually capitalized to make that meaning clear. However, the Hebrew word Shoah has also entered the English language. The reasons for this are complicated and merit a separate post.

What struck me in the 1982 article was how the writer employed the Hebrew word shoah. In English, Shoah (capitalized) usually refers exclusively to the genocide of the Jews. It has thus been criticized by a number of scholars for its exclusivity, as well as on other grounds. Interestingly enough, however, as the top article shows, Hebrew-speakers use the word to denote other genocides as well. Thus, the first article matter-of-factly refers to the “Armenian shoah,” despite the fact that a Hebrew word for genocide exists. That word, רצח עם, literally means “murder of a people” (i.e., genocide – a word which combines a Greek and a Latin derivative). Perhaps the closest parallel is the German “Völkermord.” The title of the conference in Hebrew uses both the word shoah as well as the word for genocide. In English, it has often been translated as the conference on “the Holocaust and genocide.” But the writer above interpreted the two words as synonyms. The writer of the letter uses a different Hebrew term, השמד עם, which literally translated means “extermination of a people.”

Addendum:

The government of Turkey as well as representatives of Turkish Jewry denied that there had been any threats against the country’s Jewish community. But Auron cites Monroe H. Freedman, a counselor for the US Holocaust Memorial Council, who told the NYT that a Turkish diplomat had threatened the safety of Jews in Turkey as well as the country’s withdrawal from NATO if the fate of Armenians was included in the proposed Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC (The Banality of Denial, 221).

Iranian President Ahmadinejad Continues Denial of Holocaust

2006-06-16T06:22:00.000-07:00

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in China (Reuters)

After a meeting with the president of China, Ahmadinejad called for an "impartial" investigation of the Holocaust, AP reports. His rationale:

An event that has influenced so many diplomatic and political equations of the world needs to be investigated and researched by impartial and independent groups.

Many in the West will dismiss this as yet another manifestation of the Iranian president's lunacy. But there are plenty of people across the globe who are only too willing to believe the implict claims that 1) the Holocaust has been concocted by Jewish or pro-Jewish groups, and that 2) that "the Jews" have used this "myth" to advance certain political claims.

Recent Books on Responses to the Armenian Genocide

2006-06-15T07:25:00.000-07:00

Robert Melson has a review essay in the last issue of Holocaust and Genocide Studies (2006: 20 (1), pp. 103-111) on four books published in the last few years that deal with international responses to the Armenian genocide. The works reviewed are:

Yair Auron, The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide (New Brunswick, NJ, 2005)

Peter Balakian, The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response (New York, 2003)

Arman J. Kirakossian, ed., The Armenian Massacres, 1894–1896: U.S. Media Testimony (Detroit, 2004)

Gordon and Diana Severance, Against the Gates of Hell: The Life & Times of Henry Perry, a Christian Missionary in a Moslem World (Lanham, MD, 2003)

Jay Winter, ed., America and the Armenian Genocide of 1915 (Cambridge, 2004)

Noting that "the literature on the Armenian Genocide is quite extensive and growing" with works having been published on the 1894-1896 massacres, origins of the 1915–1923 genocide, the role of the great powers, memories of the survivors, the post-WWI Armenian Republic, the parallels to the Shoah, and the denial by the Turkish government and its advocates, Melson remarks that these four books shift the focus to "the role of the bystander," in particular the US, but also the yishuv and the state of Israel.

In fact, Yair Auron's latest book, unlike his earlier work, is not about the yishuv's reactions to the genocide but about the role of the memory of the genocide in Israeli society and state policy. Thus, it seems to me the odd man out in this review, as it is the one book that does not deal at all with the response of contemporaries to the actual events of the genocide but only with issues of memory and recognition in the post-1948 history of the country. A significant part of Balakian's book, too, however is devoted to the post-war aftermath of the Armenian genocide in American politics.

The category of the "bystander" has long been recognized in the historiography on the Shoah. As Saul Friedlander has observed, since its beginnings, the field has been dominated by a basic division into histories of perpetrators, bystanders, and victims (see Friedlander, "The Holocaust," Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies, p 412). In recent years, the categories of perpetrator and bystander have increasingly coalesced - perhaps Jan Gross's Neighbors, on the massacre of the Jews of Jedwabne by Poles from the town, is a good example of that.

A fair amount of debate has also taken place on a very different kind of bystander than the one to which Melson and the authors above refer. Scholars have examined Allied, and, particularly American, inaction in the face of reports from Europe. (It is interesting to note in this context that the two figures most persistent in urging the US to stop both genocides were Henry Morgenthau, Sr., the American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during WWI, and his son, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Secretary of the Treasury during WWII). In fact, the debate on America's "failure to bomb Auschwitz" is still not over - a number of prominent Holocaust and military historians have sought to contextualize and explain the US's reluctance to bomb the trains and camps (see Edward T. Linenthal's discussion of the debate in Preserving Memory, pp.220-223).

Auron's and Balkian's works are the most critical of their subjects. Their works have a moral, prophetic function in the present - alerting us to our responsibilities to shake off indifference about the fates of others. However, we ought to be wary of those who would seek to take the argument even further by coalescing the categories of perpetrator and bystander too much. It is important to criticize America and Israel (as well as many other states) for failing to recognize the Armenian genocide; it is, however, dishonest to make them as complicit in it as the actual perpetrators. America, and certainly not the tiny yishuv in Palestine, cannot even be compared to the "bystanders" who assisted the Nazis in deporting European Jewish communities or those who beat, raped, killed, and expropriated deported Armenians.

The most important question raised by these works is not one of moral complicity but of moral endurance. As Melson asks in his conclusion,

How can the United States, Israel, and the rest of the world community ever hope to prevent genocidal mass-murder in the future and to bring perpetrators to justice, when they do not even have the moral fiber to affirm the facts of the Armenian Genocide, a crime under international law, that occurred over ninety years ago?

The Suffering of Others

2006-06-10T22:37:00.000-07:00

Profs. Israel Charny (left) and Yair Auron (right)

Last Monday (June 5, 2006), the Open University in Israel sponsored a one-day seminar titled קורבנות אחרים [Other Victims] that included addresses by Professors Israel Charny (ישראל טשרני) and Yair Auron (יאיר אורון). As the title of the colloquium suggests, the seminar was meant to correct a lacuna in Israeli education and research. Neither the universities nor the schools are teaching Israelis enough about acts of genocide other than the Shoah (Ha'aretz Hebrew; Ha'aretz English).

Even with respect to the Holocaust, a study conducted by researchers Eyal Naveh and Esther Yogev in 1996, with a sample of 800 Israeli students, revealed that some 85% had minimal knowledge of the Nazis' murder of the Roma ("gypsies") during World War Two. Furthermore, surveys conducted from 1996-2004 among participants in an elective course on genocide showed that 85-90% of the students admitted knowing "very little" about both the murder of the Roma by the Nazis during the Second World War, and the Armenian genocide perpetrated by Ottoman Turkey beginning in 1915.

For many Jews in Israel and the diaspora, comparisons of other genocides with the Shoah remain a source of discomfort, in part because such comparisons have sometimes been carried out in an attempt to relativize the destruction of European Jewry during WWII, as during the Historikerstreit ("historians' controversy") in Germany during the 1980s. But at times the effect of insisting on the "uniqueness" of the Shoah has blinded us to the suffering of others. It must be especially painful to Armenians to see so little awareness among Jews about the Armenian genocide. Worse, due to the same geopolitical considerations (Turkey) driving American policy, the State of Israel does not officially recognize the Armenian genocide. Charny and Auron have been at the forefront of raising awareness of the Armenian genocide in Israel - as well as about genocide more generally.

As the title of Auron's book suggests, genocide is defined not only by the "banality of evil" (Hannah Arendt) but also by the "banality of indifference." Preventing genocide thus requires being open to the pain of others and opening the memory of "our" tragedies to "their" suffering.

Both Israel Charny and Yair Auron are pioneers in the study of genocide in Israel. Charny is the director of Israel's Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, the editor of the excellent two-volume Encyclopedia of Genocide (1999), and the author of many other works. Auron, a lecturer at the Open University, where he teaches courses on genocide, is best-known for two important books dealing with the Armenian genocide, both of which have been translated into English. The Banality of Indifference: Zionism and the Armenian Genocide (2001) examines the reactions of the yishuv, the pre-1948 (i.e., pre-state) Jewish community in Eretz Yisrael (Palestine), to the Armenian genocide - reactions that ranged from callous indifference to attempts to actively aid the victims. His more recent book, The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide (2002), deals with the role of the Armenian genocide in Israeli society and politics from the creation of the state until the present - reviews to follow. In an interview with Shahar Ilan of Ha'aretz, Auron, quoting genocide researchers, called denial "the final stage of genocide."

The colloquium also marked the publication of two new books, in Hebrew, as part of the university's Genocide series. I have not been able to confirm the full titles of both books, but one, edited by Auron, is called "מחשבות על הבלתי נתפס" (Thoughts about the Inconceivable), and the other is edited by Gilad Margalit of Haifa University.

Welcome - Բարի Եկաք - Bienvenue - ברוכים הבאים

2006-06-07T19:03:00.000-07:00

The symbolic birthday of this blog is April 24, 2006. Since 1965, people around the world commemorate the Armenian Genocide on that day. In 2006, Yom ha-Shoah, the remembrance day for the Holocaust, which is observed on the Hebrew calendar date of Nisan 27, fell on April 25. It seemed like a perfect opportunity for Armenians and Jews in the diaspora to cooperate in ceremonies to mourn the victims of the past and to stand united against genocide today. Not much of the sort occurred; rather, we were struck by the lack of mutual acknowledgement.

There is another front on which one would expect Armenians and Jews to be natural allies: the struggle against the ongoing denial of genocide. Unfortunately, here, too, we have let ourselves become divided. This forum is an effort to rectify the present set of circumstances by bringing together news and analysis, individuals and organizations from the diasporas, Armenia, and Israel to work on our common concerns.

The name of this blog is a composite of the Armenian word genats (Կենաց) and the Hebrew expression le-hayim (לחיים). Both words are used to preface toasts, and both literally mean “to life.”

Կենաց-לחיים,
Amos and Taline