Rattling the Cage: Playing politics with genocide
By LARRY DERFNER
Jerusalem Post
Apr. 21, 2005 1:52 | Updated Apr. 21, 2005 6:45
“And the world stood silent.” This is one of the most indelible Jewish
memories of the Holocaust, and one of our most bitter accusations.
On Sunday, in the Armenian capital of Yerevan, the 90th anniversary of
the Armenian genocide – the slaughter of at least 1 million Armenian
civilians by the Turkish Ottoman regime – will be memorialized.
What does the State of Israel and many of its American Jewish
lobbyists have to say about it, about this first genocide of the
20th century? If they were merely standing silent, that would be
an improvement. Instead, on the subject of the Armenian genocide,
Israel and some US Jewish organizations, notably the American Jewish
Committee, have for many years acted aggressively as silencers.
In Israel, attempts to broadcast documentaries about the genocide
on state-run television have been aborted. A program to teach the
genocide in public schools was watered down to the point that history
teachers refused to teach it.
In the US Congress, resolutions to recognize the genocide and the
Ottoman Turks’ responsibility for it have been snuffed out by Turkey
and its right-hand man on this issue, the Israel lobby.
Jeshajahu Weinberg, founding director of the US Holocaust Museum,
wrote that when Armenians lobbied to show the genocide in the museum,
Turkey and Israel counter-lobbied to keep out any trace of it. The
museum decided to make three mentions of the genocide, including
Hitler’s call to his troops to be merciless to their victims: “Who,
after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
Over 125 Holocaust scholars – including Elie Wiesel, Deborah Lipstadt,
Daniel Goldhagen, Raul Hilberg and Yehuda Bauer – have signed ads in
the New York Times demanding acknowledgement of the Armenian genocide
and the Ottoman Turks’ culpability for it. Wiesel testified in Congress
on behalf of such a resolution. The International Association of
Genocide Scholars – which, by the way, is studded with Jewish names –
holds the same view as a matter of course.
In the face of all this, Israel’s position, as articulated by
then-foreign minister Shimon Peres before a 2001 visit to Turkey,
says the Armenian genocide is “a matter for historians to decide.”
The American Jewish Committee’s position is that of “the US government,
the government of Israel, and the Turkish Jewish community: that this
is an issue best left to historians, not politicians,” says Barry
Jacobs of the AJC’s Washington office.
Off the record, a Foreign Ministry official describes Israel’s
approach to the issue as “practical, realpolitik. Whoever sees our
position in this region can understand how important our relations
with Turkey are.”
And that’s what determines the Israeli and US Jewish establishment
stand on the Armenian genocide – Israel’s crucial military, economic
and political ties with Turkey.
Then, along with the “realpolitik” considerations, there’s the Jewish
people’s weighty moral debt to Turkey, a safe harbor for Jews since
the Spanish Inquisition over 500 years ago.
Finally, on a petty level, there’s the worry that letting the Armenian
genocide out of history’s closet might diminish the “uniqueness”
of the Holocaust in people’s minds.
“Frankly, I’m pretty disgusted. I think that my government preferred
economic and political relations with Turkey to the truth. I can
understand why they did it, but I don’t agree with it.”
That’s Yehuda Bauer talking. He’s Israel’s leading Holocaust historian,
an Israel Prize winner, and now academic adviser to Yad Vashem. He
began studying the Armenian genocide about 25 years ago as a natural
outgrowth of his study of the Holocaust.
For 80 years, says Bauer, Turkey has been “denying the
genocide… saying, ‘Yes, there was terrible suffering on both sides,
the Turkish versus the Armenian, these things happen in war.’ But
that’s nonsense. This was a definite, planned attack on a civilian
minority, and whatever Armenian resistance there was came in response
to the imminent danger of mass murder.”
To Turkey’s claim, backed by Israel and its Washington lobby,
that there’s no conclusive proof of a Turkish Ottoman order for
the mass murder of Armenians, Bauer says, “Oh, there’s no doubt
about it whatsoever. It’s absolutely clear.” He cites “thousands”
of testimonials from US, German and Austrian officials who were in
Turkey and what is now Armenia when it happened.
One of the most important of those witnesses was US ambassador
to Turkey Henry Morganthau – a Jew, incidentally. He wrote
that the “persecution of Armenians is assuming unprecedented
proportions. Reports from widely scattered districts indicate a
systematic attempt to uproot peaceful Armenian populations and…
arbitrary efforts, terrible tortures, wholesale expulsions and
deportations from one end of the Empire to the other, accompanied by
frequent instances of rape, pillage and murder, turning into massacre,
to bring destruction and destitution on them.”
Israel and the Israel lobby fully acknowledge that the Armenians
suffered a terrible “tragedy.” A Foreign Ministry statement even notes
that “the Jewish people have a special sensitivity to the murders
and human tragedies that occurred during the years 1915 and 1916.”
They just won’t say who was to blame, or whether Turkey bears
historical responsibility. Mention Wiesel and all the rest of the
Holocaust and genocide historians, and the Israeli and US Jewish
officials come back – off the record – with the renowned Bernard
Lewis. Along with a few other American historians, Lewis says it
wasn’t a genocide at all, that World War I was going on and Armenians
were fighting with Russia against the Turks, and that you can’t blame
Turkey for what happened, not then and certainly not now.
Thus the official Israeli/Jewish line: “It’s a matter for historians
to decide.”
Fair enough. Even though Lewis’s side is terribly outnumbered among
Western historians, let’s say the burden of proof lies with Wiesel,
Bauer, Lipstadt et al, who say the Ottoman Turks ordered the massacre
of 1 million-1.5 million Armenians. Let’s say Israeli and US Jewish
leaders aren’t competent to judge who’s right and who’s wrong.
And let’s even give their declared neutrality the benefit of the
doubt because of Israel’s relations with Turkey, and Turkey’s long
history of welcoming Jews in distress.
The point is this: Israel and the US Jewish establishment may say
they’re neutral over what happened to the Armenians 90 years ago, but
their actions say the opposite. They’ve not only taken sides, they’re
on the barricades. They’ve done everything they can to cover up what
the great majority of historians, including the entire community of
Holocaust scholars, say was a clear-cut case of genocide.
Jews shouldn’t do this – for any reason. Ninety years after the
Armenian genocide, there is a decent Jewish response to the sickening
behavior of the State of Israel, the American Jewish Committee and
other US Jewish organizations:
Not in our name.