The Jewish Journal
2007-05-04
The Armenian Genocide debate pits moral values against realpolitik
Time to take sides?
By Tom Tugend, Contributing Editor
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Rabbis Harold Schulweis, left, and Edward Feinstein flank Armenian
Archbishop Hovnan Derderian at Valley Beth Shalom. Photo by Jeremy Oberstein
The Turkish ambassador to the United States, Nabi Sensoy, dropped in at The
Jewish Journal a couple of weeks ago for an hourlong conversation with its
editors. Last Friday evening, Archbishop Hovnan Derderian of the Armenian
Church of North America stood on the bimah of Valley Beth Shalom, hugged its
rabbi and called the occasion a turning point in Armenian-Jewish relations.
All the attention is flattering, but its underlying cause confronts the
Jewish community with choices that — perhaps oversimplified — pits its
moral values and sympathies against the realpolitik of American and Israeli
policymakers.
At the root of the split is a wound that has been festering since 1915, when
Muslim Turkey and its Ottoman Empire were fighting Russia, France and
Britain during World War I. Charging that the Christian Armenian minority in
eastern Turkey was collaborating with the invading Russians, Turkey
deported, starved and brutalized much of its Armenian population.
According to the Armenians, backed by predominant historical analysis,
between 1915 and 1923, Turkey killed 1.5 million Armenian civilians in a
planned genocide. Turkey maintains that some 300,000 Armenians died, but
that an equal number of Turks perished, and that both sides were victims of
chaotic wartime conditions, disease and famine, not a predetermined
extermination.
Turks refer to the wartime slaughter by the Arabic word mukapele, which
Sensoy translated during a phone interview as "mutual massacre."
Year after year, Armenian Americans have commemorated the beginning of the
slaughter by demanding that modern Turkey formally acknowledge the
persecutions and deaths of their ancestors as the Armenian Genocide. Just as
consistently, the Ankara government has refused.
This year, the inflammation of the old wound has intensified, marked by the
introduction of a congressional resolution that the U.S. government
officially recognize the killing of Armenians as a genocide. Both on Capitol
Hill and on the grass-roots level, the strongest outside voices supporting
the Armenian cause are those of Jews, Los Angeles Jews at that, and the
reasons seem obvious.
"How can we, the people decimated by the Holocaust, stand on the sidelines?"
asked Rabbi Harold Schulweis. "Perhaps if the world had stood up against the
first genocide of the 20th century against the Armenians, the Holocaust
might have been prevented.
"It is obscene for us, of all people, to quibble about definitions," said
Schulweis, spiritual leader of Valley Beth Shalom in Encino and long in the
forefront of social and interfaith initiatives.
In 2004, Schulweis channeled his demand for action against world genocides
by founding Jewish World Watch, focusing first on the ongoing massacres in
Darfur. This year, the nonprofit was organized well enough to expand its
reach, sponsoring a joint commemoration of "the 92nd anniversary of the
Armenian Genocide" at Shulweis’ temple.
At a dinner preceding the Friday evening Shabbat service, Los Angeles Mayor
Antonio Villaraigosa, Derderian and Janice Kamenir-Reznik, president of
Jewish World Watch, struck a common theme. Jews and Armenians, two ancient
peoples who have preserved their faiths and cultures through long diasporas,
must be as one in remembering both their genocides and preventing such
catastrophes in the future.
At the overflow dinner for 500, the majority Armenians, Rabbi Edward M.
Feinstein of the host synagogue noted other striking similarities between
the two ethnic groups.
"We both like to talk, loudly, we both like to eat and we both have
reverence for our churches and synagogues, even if we don’t attend
services," he said.
Derderian, a youthful-looking prelate at 49 and a striking figure in a black
robe and hood, pointed to some demographic similarities, as well. There are
some 450,000 Armenians in Los Angeles, compared to 550,000 Jews, he said,
and as primate of his church’s Western Diocese, encompassing 14 states, he
leads a flock of 800,000.
During the Shabbat service attended by some 1,100 Jewish and Armenian
worshippers, Schulweis summarized his position, saying, "Of genocides, we
cannot say, ‘Mine is mine and yours is yours,’ because both are ours."
The combined choirs of Valley Beth Shalom and St. Peter Armenian Church
movingly concluded the evening with the singing of the Armenian and Israeli
national anthems, both expressing the longing for lost homelands, followed
by "America the Beautiful."
The Jewish and Armenian communities will come together again on May 15, when
Jewish World Watch, now supported by 54 synagogues, will honor two Armenian
scholars and activists at Adat Ari El synagogue. The honorees of the I
Witness Award will be filmmaker Michael Hagopian and UCLA professor Richard
G. Hovannisian.
Jewish support for the Armenian grievances has not been unanimous. Rep. Adam
B. Schiff (D-Burbank), who represents a large Armenian constituency and has
introduced House Resolution 106 calling for U.S. recognition of the 1915
genocide, has sent letters to four Jewish organizations criticizing their
positions.
The Jewish legislator admonished the American Jewish Committee (AJ
Committee), B’nai B’rith International, the Anti-Defamation League and
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), which had jointly
transmitted to House leaders a letter from the organized Jewish Community of
Turkey.
In the letter, addressed to the AJCommittee, the Turkish Jewish leaders
expressed their concern that the Schiff resolution "has the clear
possibility of potentially endangering the interests of the United States"
by straining Turkey’s relations with Washington and Israel.
JINSA supported the letter’s view, while the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
quoted ADL National Director Abraham Foxman as stating that "I don’t think
congressional action will reconcile the issue. The resolution takes a
position, it comes to a judgment."
Foxman added that "the Turks and Armenians need to revisit their past. The
Jewish community shouldn’t be the arbiter of that history nor should the
U.S. Congress."
In his written response, Schiff took the action of the American Jewish
organizations as "tantamount to an implicit and inappropriate endorsement of
the position of the letter’s authors."
He added, "I cannot see how major Jewish American organizations can in good
conscience and in any way support efforts to deny the undeniable."
In a phone interview, Schiff reaffirmed his criticism of the Jewish
organizations and surmised that their opposition was influenced by Israel,
worried about harming its good relationship with Turkey.
"It would be a terrible mistake if the Israeli government became involved in
this matter," he said.
Schiff noted that his resolution, now under consideration by the House
Foreign Affairs Committee chaired by Rep. Tom Lantos (D-San Mateo), is
co-sponsored by 21 out of 30 Jewish representatives and by eight out of 13
Jewish senators in a companion resolution. He acknowledged that he is under
considerable pressure by the Bush administration and by former fellow
legislators now working for the Turkish lobby, which Schiff described as
"one of the most powerful" in Washington.
The Turkish Embassy in Washington, D.C., has also joined directly in the
struggle for the hearts and minds of the American people in general and
American Jews in particular. It has cultivated close relationships with
Jewish leaders and has retained a well-connected Jewish lobbyist to work
with the Jewish media.
The embassy recently placed full-page ads in The New York Times and Los
Angeles Times outlining a proposal to Armenia to appoint a joint commission
of historians, with full access to national archives, "to study the events
of 1915 and share the findings with the international public." In a phone
call from his embassy, Sensoy confirmed Turkey’s 2005 offer to Armenia for
establishing a joint commission and urged that the United States and other
countries participate in the investigation.
Citing the Turkish version of the 1915 events, Sensoy said that during the
Russian-Turkish battles of World War I, a large number of Armenians
supported the enemy, "and we had to relocate the Armenians in eastern Turkey
to Syria and Lebanon." The result, he said, was "a kind of civil war," in
which each side lost hundreds of thousands of lives.
"We are not saying we have all the truth, but we cannot accept guilt for the
worst of crimes without knowing what the truth is," Sensoy said.
Asked why Turkey could not put the whole problem behind it by issuing an
apology for deeds committed by a different regime at a different time,
Sensoy replied, "The Ottoman past is part of our glorious history, and we
cannot disassociate ourselves from the past."
On his special outreach to American Jews, Sensoy commented that "Jews are in
the best position to understand the problem. We also have the best relations
with Israel."
Drawing a parallel between Auschwitz and the disasters of 1915 "would be a
disservice" to the memory of the Holocaust, said Sensoy. "After all, no Jews
took up arms against the Germans and killed thousands of them."
Caught somewhat uneasily in the middle is the small, unorganized Turkish
Jewish community of 100-200 residents of Los Angeles.
Dr. Moshe Arditi, vice chair of the pediatrics department at Cedars-Sinai
Medical Center, said he is pleased by "the recent movement toward an opening
up in Turkey." He pointed to a massive rally by both Turks and Armenians in
Istanbul to protest the murder of a local Armenian journalist.
Arditi endorsed a "historical fact-finding study" of the 1915 events that
"could lead to dialogue between the parties."
But the joint commission proposal finds no resonance among critics of
Turkey. Derderian, who described himself as "a grandson of survivors,"
rejected any dialogue before Turkish recognition of the Armenian Genocide.
Schiff commented that "there is no question among historians that what
happened was genocide. It’s like asking the Sudanese government to judge
what’s happening in Darfur."
Schulweis drew a different analogy, saying, "The proposal is similar to
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calling a conference to examine the
truth of the Holocaust."