ARTICLE: OBAMA STUMBLES ON GENOCIDE AGAIN
October 24, 2014 – 12:08 AMT
PanARMENIAN.Net – After nearly a year of protests, the Obama
administration has finally agreed to permit a rug connected to the
Armenian Genocide to be publicly displayed. The long ordeal of the
Armenian Orphan Rug, held hostage to fears of angering Turkey, has
finally ended, Rafael Medoff, director of The David S. Wyman Institute
for Holocaust Studies, in Washington, D.C. says in an article published
by JNS.org.
The controversy began in the autumn of 2013, when the Smithsonian
Institution announced it would hold an event featuring a new book,
“President Calvin Coolidge and the Armenian Orphan Rug,” by Hagop
Martin Deranian, Medoff reminds.
The 18-foot long rug was woven 1925 by 400 Armenian orphan girls living
in exile in Lebanon. They were survivors of the Turkish slaughter of
approximately 1 million Armenians. The girls sent the rug to President
Calvin Coolidge as a gesture of appreciation for America’s assistance
to survivors of the genocide. Coolidge pledged that it would have
“a place of honor in the White House, where it will be a daily symbol
of goodwill on earth.”
Instead, Medoff notes, it has become a daily symbol of politics taking
precedence over combating genocide.
The White House refused to loan the rug to the Smithsonian. Neither
the White House nor the State Department would give an explanation
as to why they were keeping the rug locked up. The only plausible
explanation is pressure from the Turkish government, which to this
day denies the genocide occurred.
As a presidential candidate in 2008, then-Senator Obama said, “America
deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the Armenian Genocide.”
Yet the statements that President Obama has issued each April on
Armenian Remembrance Day have never included the G-word. Instead,
he has used an Armenian expression–“Meds Yeghern,” meaning “the
great calamity.” Fear of displeasing the Turks appears to be the only
plausible motive for that rhetorical evasiveness.
Armenian-Americans are not the only ones who should be outraged.
American Jews should be up in arms, too. Not only because of the
sympathy that all victims of genocide naturally share–but also
because if the White House can permit political considerations to
take precedence over recognition of the Armenian genocide, there is
a danger that memorialization of the Holocaust could one day suffer
a similar fate, Medoff says.
After numerous protests, the Obama administration announced that it
will permit the rug to be displayed for six days in November–kind
of a week-long furlough from its imprisonment in a White House closet.
The rug will not be part of a display concerning the Armenian
Genocide. Instead, it is being mushed together with other foreign
gifts to the White House, in a display called “Thank You to the
United States: Three Gifts to Presidents in Gratitude for American
Generosity Abroad.”
The genocide rug will be sandwiched in between a Sevres vase presented
by France to the United States after World War One, and a piece of
artwork called “Flowering Branches in Lucite” sent by Japan after
the 2010 tsunami. Grouping victims of genocide together with those
who drowned in a tsunami or were left homeless by World War One
disguises what happened to the Armenians. It blurs the distinction
between something that was inevitable and something that was not.
Weather-related disasters and damage caused by wars are inevitable.
But the Armenian genocide was different: it was an act of mass murder,
systematically planned and implemented by evil men driven by religious
and ethnic hatred, Medoff says.
The Armenian Orphan Rug is a work of great beauty. But the point of
displaying it is not for the sake of its aesthetic value. Its power
is its message. Its significance is as a symbol. It is a reminder of
the genocide that the Turks perpetrated against the Armenians. Six
days in an exhibit about gifts to the White House is no victory. On
the contrary–it is a defeat for everyone who cares about historical
truth and everyone who seeks to learn the lessons of the past so that
they will not be repeated, he concludes.
From: A. Papazian
http://www.panarmenian.net/eng/news/183952/
http://www.jns.org/latest-articles/2014/10/19/with-armenian-orphan-rug-obama-stumbles-again-on-genocide#.VEV3WBbgVuY=