The Boston Globe
August 18, 2007
A painful truth
By Rachel Kaprielian and Alan Dershowitz
THE CONTROVERSY in Watertown over the Anti-Defamation’s League’s
anti-bigotry program, "No Place for Hate," has struck an important chord in
the historical and global struggle for human rights. Moreover, it reopened a
deep wound for the Armenian people, whose nation was devastated, half their
population murdered, and the remainder deported in what was the first
genocide of the 20th century.
The tragedy is compounded by the denial by Turkey itself. In 1915, Henry
Morganthau, then US ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, worked tirelessly to
bring the genocide to the world’s attention and warned the US secretary of
state that "a campaign of race extermination" was occurring against
"peaceful" Armenians.
The New York Times published 145 articles in 1915 and stressed that what was
happening to the Armenians was a "deliberate" "policy of extermination."
Thousands of eyewitness accounts, official government documents, and
photographs buttress the historical truths.
The Association of Genocide Scholars and the community of Holocaust
scholars, as well as numerous others, have written that this horrific event
was genocide. In 2000, 126 leading Holocaust scholars — including Nobel
Prize laureate Elie Wiesel — published a statement in The New York Times
that sought both to "affirm the incontestable fact of the Armenian Genocide
and urge Western Democracies to officially recognize it."
The matter is not subject to interpretation. In recent decades, the Armenian
genocide has been referred to as "the forgotten genocide" and to understand
it is to note that it was the template for the genocides that followed: the
Holocaust, Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia, the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and
today in Darfur. Adolf Hitler famously said in 1939 upon the commencement of
his own "final solution:" "Who now remembers the Armenians?"
For any organization or official to believe that there are differing sides
to the Armenian Genocide is as much an outrage as it would be for Germany to
say that the work of Jewish scholars, witnesses, and victim testimonies
represented merely the "Jewish side" of the Holocaust. To deny genocide
victims their history and suffering is tantamount to making them victims
again.
Justice and memory demand that we recognize the Ottoman Turkish genocide
against the Armenians for what it was: the destruction of a large part of an
ancient and vibrant community as well as the horrible model of what Hitler
did to Jews and what the janjaweed is doing to the victims of Darfur.
The Anti-Defamation League has done enormous good around the world. Its
regional chapter was courageous and correct in its decision to affirm its
position that the genocide was fact.
No Place for Hate is a wonderful project that is not limited to Watertown.
It represents the defense of human rights yesterday, today, and tomorrow and
challenges our strongest determination, our greatest will, and our most
humanitarian spirit.
To assure that "Never Again" remains more than an aspiration we must all
join together to proclaim the truth, no matter how painful or difficult.
Rachel Kaprielian is a state representative from Watertown. Alan Dershowitz
is a professor at Harvard Law School.