YASSER ARAFAT: “WE ADMIRE ARMENIANS IN ALL THINGS BUT ONE”
By Minas Kaynakjian
2010/08/10 | 10:12
Feature Stories
The other day on Armenian TV, there was a program dealing with the two
visits of Yasser Arafat to Armenia back in the 70′ and 80’s. Arafat
would spend several hours in Yerevan on his way from Beirut to Moscow
for consultations with the leaders of the Communist Party.
Before parting he laid a bombshell at the feet of his Armenian hosts
on his second such visit.
According to the program, the Armenian elite at the time hosted their
famous guest with all the trappings of Armenian hospitality. The
two sides were quick to make parallels between the two peoples,
Armenians and Palestinians. Arafat even went so far to confess that
he even exhorted his people to be more like Armenians – in terms of
their industriousness and love of country.
Arafat is alleged to have told the Armenians that there was one thing
he would never tell his people to copy from the Armenian experience.
The Armenian delegation at the VIP transit lounge became anxious and
more than a bit concerned. What did the leader of the Palestinian
national movement have in mind?
Arafat got up and said that Armenians, after being evicted and
exiled from western Armenia, took foreign citizenship and started to
accumulate wealth and property in their newly adopted countries. This,
he pointed out, lead Armenians to forget about the country they had
lost, western Armenia. Palestinians, he stressed, would never become
citizens of any Arab nation they were living in for this very reason.
Is there any truth in what Arafat said? Have Armenians given up
on the dream of returning to their occupied homeland for the very
reasons cited by Abu Ammar? Has the accumulation of material wealth
and property in foreign lands served as a substitute for the lands
that 95 years ago constituted the bulk of the Armenian homeland?
A number of interesting recent incidents lend informal support to
this thesis.
We have the results of a 2009 Gallup Poll in Armenian suggesting that
Armenians yearn to leave Armenia, many for good. It would appear that
Armenians would prefer to migrate than to stay and build a new nation.
Any notion of re-establishing an Armenian presence to the west of
the Araks River, given this reality, remains the purview of fanciful
imagination.
I constantly read many Armenians, supposed political experts,
talk about the need to support Armenian claims to the ‘lost lands”
in various international tribunals based on the Treaty of Sevres –
a dead diplomatic document to be sure. There have been many in the
diaspora, over the years, clinging to such ridiculous hopes. They
have inculcated the youth under their sway to do the same.
Now I read that young people in Armenia are being similarly brainwashed
as well. In Yerevan, they will be marching on the 90th anniversay of
the Treaty of Sevres calling on the embassies of the United States,
France and italy to “remember” their promises made to the Armenian
people in 1920. These are the same Great Powers that conveniently
sold Armenia down the drain in the face of a resurgent nationalist
Turkey. It seems we haven’t learnt any lessons from the past.
The organizers of such events would do better to tell the youth to
march on the Presidential Palace and have Sargsyan declare Armenia’s
recognition of the NKR.
Why some still cling to such myths is baffling. To urge young people
to take part in such foolish folly is even worse. It displays just how
lacking Armenians are when it comes to drafting a political program
based on the realities of the day.
When it comes to drafting a comprehensive national political platform,
we Armenians, either in the diaspora and the RoA, have not yet been
able to agree on what it is we want and are willing to struggle for.
We have no set of defined national goals and thus seemingly flip-flop
on a host of issues due to the political exigencies of the day.
Then too, we lack any national leaders, with the vision and drive to
rally the people. Do we need an Armenian Arafat? Sure, Arafat was
a petty despot in his own right and his Fatah movement bilked the
Palestinian people out of millions, but what if we could conjure up
someone like him, stripped of the negative tendencies.
Levon Ter-Petrosyan wouldn’t do. He puts people to sleep with his
analyses that stretch for hours at a time. He also doesn’t believe
that democratic change should come from below, from the people in the
street. “Go home and do not worry. We will take care of everything”.
This was LTP’s advice to the people at every post 2008 rally. The
people have no part to play in the movement; it’s those at the top
who know best. This ain’t democracy.
Serzh Sargsyan? The current president and drafting a national strategic
plan of action seem mutually exclusive. The man just lacks the vision
and personal drive.
When was the last time any Armenian public leader actually addressed
the people, setting out their vision of where they wanted to take the
nation in the next ten years? The only time you’ll see our “leaders”
make such a half-hearted attempt is after winning the next in a series
of fraudulent elections. No wonder the people are apt to disbelieve
what their leaders say and no wonder such officials lack the legitimacy
to steer Armenia into the brave new world of the 21st century.
We need someone, or a group of ‘someones’, who will speak out on the
pan-Armenian issues of the exodus from the RoA, diaspora repatriation,
the rebuilding of the national economy, participatory democracy and the
rule of law, halting the environmental pillage of Armenia, a foreign
policy based on justice and national interests, the reunification of
Artsakh with Armenia, and pooling the resources of Armenians worldwide
in the cause of nation-building.
Who then? The nation awaits your list of potential candidates.
From: A. Papazian
http://hetq.am/en/hetq/37370/