ISRAELI SCHOLAR IS ASHAMED OF ISRAEL’S POSITION ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
/PanARMENIAN.Net/
30.06.2009 12:23 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ A special conference was held at the British
Parliament, organized by the British-Armenian All-Party Parliamentary
Group. Dr. Israel Charny and Harut Sassounian, The California Courier
Publisher were invited as guest speakers. Harut Sassounian spoke about
"The Armenian Genocide and Quest for Justice." Dr. Charny could not
attend due to illness, however, his prepared remarks were read by
Peter Barker, a former broadcaster of BBC Radio.
Dr. Charny is an internationally-known authority on the Holocaust
and the Armenian Genocide. He is the Executive Director of the
Jerusalem-based Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, past President
of International Association of Genocide Scholars, Editor-in-Chief
of Encyclopedia of Genocide, and author of several scholarly
books. Dr. Charny’s lengthy paper was titled: "Confronting denials
of the Armenian Genocide is not only honoring history, but a crucial
policy position for confronting threats in our contemporary world."
Dr. Charny’s remarks referred to the "failure of the State of
Israel, but not of Israelis, to recognize the Armenian Genocide,"
expressing his "deep regret and shame" that Israel (where he lives)
and the United States (where he was born), "have failed seriously
in their moral responsibility towards the Armenian people." He felt
"particularly wounded as well as angry at such failures by my Jewish
people when we too have known the worst horrors of being victims of a
major genocide, and therefore we should be all the more at your side
as deeply committed allies in all aspects of preserving and honoring
the record of the Armenian Genocide."
Dr. Charny announced "the happy news [that] the battle for recognition
and genuine respect for the memory of the Armenian Genocide [was
won] on the level of everyday Israeli culture." In great detail,
he explained that "throughout the year there are major statements in
our culture about the Armenian Genocide, including many full-length
feature stories and interviews in all of our major newspapers and on
our television. On April 24, there is powerful coverage, for example,
this year on Roim Olam or Seeing the World, a major TV news magazine;
there is an annual seminar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
at which this year the keynote speaker was Prof. James Russell of
Harvard University, and it was my honor to be the keynoter the year
before together with an influential member of the Knesset who was
totally knowledgeable about the Genocide and totally clear about
Israel’s error in not recognizing it; and there is of course an annual
commemoration by the Armenian Community — it was there that the two
ministers in the past announced their recognition of the Armenian
genocide. During a too-brief period, we also had two ministers
of the Israeli government who officially recognized the Genocide,
and although the governments in question promptly disavowed these
ministers’ statements as private and not speaking for the country, the
records of those ministers honoring the Armenian Genocide on behalf
of the State of Israel cannot be erased. I would say that both the
everyday Israeli man on the street and the professional scholars of
the Holocaust, such as Prof. Yehuda Bauer perhaps the ranking scholar
of the Holocaust at Yad Vashem, are basically sympathetic and committed
to paying homage to the Armenian Genocide. A few years ago four of us,
including one of the above former ministers, Yossi Sarid, Prof. Bauer,
Prof. Yair Auron, an indefatigable scholar of the Armenian Genocide
and of Israel’s denials of same, and myself traveled together to
Yerevan to lay a wreath at the Armenian Genocide Memorial."
As he has done many times in the past, Dr. Charny expressed regret that
"sadly and shamefully the pull of practical government politics still
leads to official Israel cooperating with Turkey in gross denials of
the Armenian Genocide.