Shame on Israel and Turkey for desecrating Yad Vashem
Intermountain Jewish News
May 6, 2005
Should Pol Pot have been invited to Israel to place a wreath at Yad Vashem,
Israel’s Holocaust memorial? If the murderer of millions of Cambodians were
escorted by Israeli officials to a Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, wouldn’t
blasphemy be the perfect word for the act?
Should Idi Amin have been allowed to appear at Yad Vashem?
What about the leaders of the Rwandan genocide, who took their machetes to
800,000 innocent human beings in 1994? Should Israel walk them down the
aisle, wreaths in hand, to the Hall of Remembrance at Yad Vashem? Blasphemy,
indeed.
Unlike Pol Pot and the other mass murderers, the prime minister of Turkey has
no blood on his hands, but the moral stench was the same this week when
Israel had Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan place a wreath at Yad
Vashem. Israel might as well have brought along convicted Holocaust denier
David Irving for the ceremony. Shame on Israel for engaging in its own form
of Holocaust denial. Turkey is the perpetrator of the first genocide in
modern times, the Armenian genocide. And Turkey is no Germany: Germany is
repentant. Turkey is not. Germany paid reparations. Turkey did not.
Modern-day Turkey never acknowledged the Armenian genocide, never said, we’re
sorry. There are Holocaust memorials all over Germany; don’t go look for
Armenian memorials all over Turkey.
The vilest form of realpolitik governs Israel-Turkey relations and, to their
eternal shame, some in the American Jewish community join in the ugly charade
of exonerating modern-day Turkey for the Armenian genocide. Precisely the
kind of tendentious (not to mention outright false) “scholarship” that makes
Jews livid when used by Holocaust deniers to diminish the Holocaust, Israel
turns a blind eye to when Turkey uses it to diminish the Armenian genocide.
What moral credence should Jews attribute to a head of state and Nobel Peace
Prize winner, if he were to state that “whether” there was a Holocaust is a
“matter for historians to decide”? No moral credence whatsoever. Yet, this is
just what Shimon Peres, the former prime minister of Israel and a Nobel Peace
Prize laureate, said about the Armenian genocide.
We have here a prime case of politics trumping truth. Israel needs a positive
relationship with Turkey. And to get it, Israel will engage in the same form
of genocide denial that it acidly resents when others put it in the form of
Holocaust denial. The national American Jewish Committee tags along, engaging
in every from of sophistry to deny the undeniable: the Turkish attempt to
wipe out the Armenian people during World War I.
If Jews don’t want the world to forget the Holocaust, how can the Jewish
state forget the Armenian genocide? As time goes on, the 25-year gap between
the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust will shrink to the merest dots on the
historical map. If one dot is deniable, the next one will also be very easy
to deny.
The rationalizations for denial of the Armenian genocide are flimsy, indeed
excruciating.
* Rationalization #1: It is said that the current Turkish government was not
responsible for the Armenian genocide. This is 100% true — and 100%
irrelevant. Was the current German government responsible for the Holocaust?
Of course not. But it is this German government that has openly acknowledged
the truth, openly repented, and paid extensive reparations. Turkey does none
of this.
This is highly dangerous. As time passes, no direct responsibility will be
attributable to any government for any past genocide. Does this mean that
Germany will gradually be exempt from honesty over its country’s role in the
Holocaust, or exempt from furthering Holocaust education? For Israel and the
national American Jewish Committee to let the current Turkish government off
the hook for the Armenian genocide 90 years ago — which it is obviously not
directly responsible for — is to endanger all future education about all
past genocides. Needless to say, the main point of genocide education is to
prevent it. By the logic of exempting present-day Turkey from the Armenian
genocide, genocide education will gradually halt. This is highly dangerous.
* Rationalization #2: It is said that the Armenian deaths weren’t really a
“genocide,” just a “tragedy.” Not so. Of the reams of evidence to the
contrary — thousands of independently gathered testimonies — here is one
from Hans Morgenthau, the (Jewish) US ambassador to Turkey during the first
part of WW I, in a cable to the State Department:
“Deportations of and excesses against the peaceful Armenians is increasing,
and from harrowing reports of eyewitnesses it appears that a campaign of race
extermination is in progress under a pretext of reprisal against rebellion.”
Note the key phrase: race extermination. That’s genocide.
Morgenthau, as quoted in a recent report by Larry Derfner, also wrote:
“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.”
Note the key adjective: systematic. That’s genocide.
And yet, here we are: Turkey is allowed an honored place at Yad Vashem. And
the national American Jewish Committee won’t call the Armenian genocide by
its name. This is a desecration.
Unlike the national American Jewish Committee, the US Memorial Holocaust
Museum and especially the Museum of Tolerance, affiliated with the Simon
Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, tell the truth. The Holocaust Museum in
Washington mentions the Armenian genocide three times. The Museum of
Tolerance does much more.
The truth, the whole truth, includes this: Turkey served as a haven for Jews
after the expulsion from Spain in 1492, and for more than 500 years
afterward. Turkey is a secular state in a Moslem region, an important trading
partner with Israel and an important strategic partner with the US. All true,
deserving of recognition and indeed gratitude — but not deserving of lies.
The Armenian genocide is a fact. If you argue otherwise, you have to argue
against the evidence not only of Hans Morgenthau but of Elie Wiesel, Deborah
Lipstadt, Daniel Goldhagen, Raul Hilberg, Yehuda Bauer and countless other
authorities.
It should not be hard for present day Israel or Turkey to acknowledge the
Armenian genocide, or for Turkey to commit to Armenian-genocide education.
After all, if the present Turkish government was not responsible for this
genocide, why the denial of the past?
Whatever the social-psychological answer might be, it is not Israel’s role to
aid and abet genocide denial. Right now, there is genocide in Darfur.
Directly abetting the indifference over it are those who deny genocide in the
past. If there is anything in community and state relations that must be
above all political considerations, it is genocide. Our humanity — and the
existence of humanity — depends on it.