91ST COMMEMORATION OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE HELD AT HEBREW UNIVERSITY
By Amihai Zippor
Judeoscope.ca, Canada
May 4 2006
Jews, Armenians Both Feel Need For Israel To Be At Forefront Of
Recognition
(IHC News, 04 May 2006) The Hebrew University in Israel held its
commemoration of the Armenian genocide at its Givat Ram Campus
in Jerusalem on Wednesday 26 April 2006 with some 200 people in
attendance.
The annual event, organized by Armenian Studies Professor Michael
Stone, came two days after 24 April, the official day Armenians mark
the deportation and murder of 1.5 million of their people between
1915 and 1917 by the Ottoman Turks.
As in previous years, the commemoration of the genocide coincided
with the State of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, which pays
tribute to the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis in World War II.
The striking similarity in the history of both peoples is often
spoken about in Jewish and Armenian circles as both have experienced
tragic periods and ironically, when Hitler was asked how he planned
to get away with the systematic extermination of the Jews he answered,
“who remembers the Armenians?”
However, despite overwhelming documented evidence, the genocide,
to the dismay of many Armenians, is not recognized by much of the
international community, most notably the State of Israel.
“I feel pride that the Jewish community is interested and sympathizes
with the Armenian people and it makes me happy to be a citizen of
Israel whose people really do care about the genocide,” said Jerusalem
resident Serop Sahagian whose grandparents were survivors.
“But, I am very disappointed with the government’s policy. Israel
should have been the first nation to recognize the Armenian genocide
and now they are one of the last and that is very bad,” Sahagian said.
During the course of the evening, several of the Jewish and Armenian
speakers touched on this sensitive matter.
At one point, His Excellency Mr. Tsolag Momjian, Honorary Consul of
the Republic of Armenia read a letter he received the previous week
from Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada that was sent to the
Armenian community.
In it Harper stated Canada’s support for Armenians and their right to
have the genocide recognized by all nations. The declaration prompted
Mr. Momjian to say, “I read this tonight because I have a question
for the Prime Minister of Israel,” referring to the Jewish State’s
official silence on the issue.
Meanwhile, Keynote speaker Yossi Sarid, a former Education Minister in
the Israeli government who fought to have the genocide placed in the
Israeli curriculum, said there were two reasons for Israel’s silence.
The first, he explained was relations with Turkey.
“Who doesn’t think we should have relations with Turkey? They are
important? But, when you are talking about the murder of a nation,
all self-interests must be overlooked,” Sarid said.
“When we talk about the democratic State of Israel, Israel must be
the state, if necessary the only state, that says to all the people
of the world ‘we won’t make considerations because we know, we were
born out of genocide,” he added.
Sarid presented the second reason as a worry in the Jewish community
that recognizing any other genocide will take away from the enormity
of the Holocaust and said, “there is no greater educational mistake
than this.”
Also in attendance was the Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem, His
Beatitude Archbishop Torkom Manoogian who cited the Jewish US
Ambassador to Ottoman Turkey, Henry Morgenthau, and his first hand
account of the genocide as it was happening.
“When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for deportations of
the Armenian people, they were merely giving the death warrant to a
whole race,” the Archbishop read, “they understood this and in their
conversations with me they made no attempt to hide the fact.”
The concluding remarks were given by distinguished Fulbright Scholar,
Professor Abraham Terian who warmly thanked Jewish people for their
efforts to help stop the denial of the Armenian people’s tragedy.
“We Armenians whether here in Jerusalem, in the US or wherever we
are in the world are so truly grateful to our Jewish brothers and
sisters who so conscientiously stand by us as we decry genocide and
perpetrators of inhumanity,” Terian said.
Born in Jaffe near Tel Aviv but currently the Academic Dean of a small
Armenian Seminary in New Rochelle, New York, the professor returned
to the topic of the commonality that exists between Jews and Armenians.
“We have so much in common that we speak the same language, our Jewish
brothers and sisters have theirs and we Armenians have ours but beneath
it all there is a subtext that is existentially the same,” said Terian.
“Who should know genocide or holocaust any better than people that
have experienced it and we of all people should be foremost in decrying
what is generally called genocide, something that needs no explanation
or definition anymore,” he said.
He explained that Armenians understand why at the official level,
Israeli leaders are slow to acknowledge the genocide but believe,
just as many Israeli scholars believe, that Israel it strong enough
to tell Turkey:
“In all matters of political expediency, whatever the mutual interests
are politically, all is fine. But, when it comes to denial of the
Armenian genocide, somehow it goes against the grain of Jewish
conscience after what happened to the Jewish people in their recent
past.”
Professor Terian added that for Armenians, just as for Jews, the
psychology of denial in 2006 is sometimes what hurts most. Still,
Jews and Armenians can form a concerted voice because they “understand
each other as to how it feels when they encounter those who deny the
veracity of the Armenian genocide or the Jewish Holocaust.”
Today, Turkey is a strategic ally for Israel and the United States
and while every US president has voiced support for recognizing the
genocide, none have taken that important step.
While Turkey continues to blatantly deny the atrocity ever took place,
the US and Israel are not willing to step forward and condemn the
deniers as they do when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calls
the Holocaust “a myth.”
However, there is renewed optimism that Turkey may soon come clean
with its past.
Turkish intellectuals are beginning to openly write about the genocide
and a milestone was achieved in March when for the first time, Henry
Morgenthau’s personal chronicle of his service as the US ambassador
and witness to the massacres was published in Turkey.
That book was first published in November 1918.
Finally, all the speakers on the evening, including Professor Terian,
reiterated that the magnitude of the Holocaust far surpasses any
genocide in the 20th century till today and that there was no intention
of drawing parallels as it was unique in human history.
However, Armenians say they expect the Israeli government not to wait
for the right time to officially acknowledge the genocide just for
acknowledgment’s sake.
In the words of Professor Terian, “if there is any country that should
be leading the way, Israel should be at the forefront of telling the
Turks how it is.”