Richard Hagopian’s family was one of thousands that escaped the Armenian Genocide in the early 1900s and forged a new path in the fertile San Joaquin Valley.

* This is the fifth in SJV Water’s series of videos called “Rooted in the Valley,” featuring small family farmers who continue to work the land in spite of all the challenges they face – especially water.

Small wonder that staunch supporters of Israel are now calling for paths to a sustainable ceasefire.

As Israel comes under growing international pressure to change its tactics and agree to a ceasefire in Gaza, its leaders have made clear they aren’t interested. Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said the shift would hand a victory to terrorism, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was “proud” to have blocked the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, seen by allies as the prerequisite for any sustainable peace.

Two examples from recent history – from Northern Ireland and Azerbaijan – warn that these could be catastrophic miscalculations for the state of Israel.

Ben Wallace, the U.K. secretary of state for defense until August, made the Irish comparison in an article published this month in the Daily Telegraph, a solidly pro-Israel U.K. newspaper. The Troubles, as more than three decades of sectarian bloodshed over Northern Ireland’s status are known, escalated dramatically, he recalled, after the British government tried to end them through a draconian combination of military force and a suspension of legal due process, called internment.

Internment involved the jailing without trial of thousands of people suspected of having connections to the Irish Republican Army. That in turn prompted the 1972 tragedy of Bloody Sunday, when British paratroopers shot 26 Catholics with live bullets at an anti-internment protest in the town of Derry, killing 14 of them. The result was a huge increase in membership for the Provisional IRA – a more radical splinter group of the Irish Republican Army – from a few dozens to about 1,000, funded by a boom in the group’s funding by sympathizers in the U.S. and elsewhere.

“Northern Ireland internment taught us that a disproportionate response by the state can serve as a terrorist organization’s best recruiting sergeant,’’ Wallace wrote. Two decades of intensified terrorist attacks followed Bloody Sunday, with the IRA expanding its bombing campaign to the U.K. mainland. Nothing worked to halt the violence until the U.K. government did what it said it never would and publicly opened negotiations in 1994 with the IRA’s political wing, Sinn Fein.

The price of peace was a power-sharing deal together with expanded self-government for Northern Ireland, plus the right to an eventual referendum on the region’s status, among other concessions made on both sides. The consequences for the U.K. were greater still because the deal forced it later to grant similar rights of self-government and potential secession to Scotland and Wales.

For sure, Northern Ireland is a different and in many ways much simpler case than the one Israel faces, not least because the Palestinian question plays a role far beyond Israel’s borders. The bloodshed in Gaza risks spurring recruitment not just for Hamas, but for Islamist terrorist organizations across the Middle East and beyond.

Small wonder then that such staunch supporters of Israel as France, Germany, the U.K. and the U.S. are now calling for Netanyahu to change tactics and look for paths to a sustainable cease-fire. As if to underscore the counterproductive nature of Israel’s scorched-earth tactics, the Israel Defense Forces recently acknowledged mistakenly killing three of the hostages they were sent into Gaza to rescue, even though they were waving improvised white flags of surrender.

The example of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh should be still more sobering for Israelis considering the road that Netanyahu and his government are taking. More than 30 years ago, I stood with an Armenian general at the top of a plateau as he pointed toward Mount Ararat in Turkey and territories beyond as far as Syria, which had once belonged to the Kingdom of Armenia but were now controlled by Muslim enemies. He called his predominantly Christian nation “the Israel of the Caucasus,” surrounded by sometimes genocidal hostility and obliged to rely on arms for its survival.

That was 1992. War was raging in Nagorno-Karabakh, a part of neighboring Azerbaijan that for centuries had been populated mainly by ethnic Armenians. They were now contesting Azeri control as the collapse of the Soviet Union gave sudden meaning to the USSR’s once notional internal borders. Karabakh’s Armenians wanted either to be independent or annexed, and by 1994 they had won a crushing military victory, backed by Armenia and its security guarantor, Russia. The future seemed secure, even without a political settlement to accompany the cease-fire that Armenia had forced on its defeated rival.

The U.S. and some in Armenia, including then President Levon Ter-Petrossian, worried this wasn’t sustainable. They argued for negotiating a long-term deal with Baku while Yerevan held most of the cards. The idea was that Armenians, including in Karabakh, should recognize Azerbaijan’s sovereignty over the enclave, in exchange for Baku accepting international peacekeepers, a land bridge from Karabakh to Armenia, and strong political autonomy for the enclave.

Ter-Petrossian’s proposals for compromise contributed to losing his job. He drew the ire of nationalists, including a hawkish diaspora, for whom the history of Armenian expulsion and genocide – committed by Ottoman Turkey in 1915 – required relentless vigilance and force, to ensure it could never happen again. Besides, why negotiate when Armenia had comprehensively won and enjoyed the support of regional hegemon Russia?

The answer to that question became apparent this summer. Azerbaijan’s oil and gas fields had slowly transformed the balance of forces over the years, allowing it to build and equip a military far in excess of anything Armenia could afford. Russia, meanwhile, became disenchanted with Yerevan, just as a resurgent Turkey grew willing to throw its weight behind Turkic Azerbaijan, disregarding objections from Moscow or Washington. Azerbaijan struck back in 2020, recovering many of its losses. And this year, with Moscow busy invading Ukraine, a further offensive took just a day to force Karabakh’s total surrender.

Ethnic Armenians fled, fearful of the coming Azeri revenge, and by now few if any remain in their ancestral homes. This tragic turn of events came about because Armenia fell victim to the “illusion of absolute security,” according to Thomas de Waal, a Caucasus specialist and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Times change, alliances change, and the military balance changes,’’ he said. And by the time that happens, it’s too late for diplomacy.

Getting to a settlement with Azerbaijan that was acceptable to both sides would have been difficult, even when Yerevan held the advantage. It took painful compromises for the U.K. to cut a deal with the former IRA commanders running Sinn Fein in 1998. And the hurdles to a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine would be even bigger. Years of failed peace talks, rocket attacks and Hamas’ Oct. 7 atrocities have combined to harden views on both sides, including against the very concept of a two-state solution. Yet Israel, too, may not always be in a position of military dominance, enjoying the full backing of a superpower. Palestinians and Israelis have reason to despair of each other, but neither rage nor despair is a policy. After three-quarters of a century, nobody has come up with an alternative to the creation of two separate states that offers even the possibility of peaceful coexistence.

The much-derided two-state idea proposes not a utopian Shangri-la of cohabitation, but a divorce aimed at cutting short the fundamentally genocidal dreams of extremists. The terms of that divorce would need to guarantee the security of each state against the other, taking Gaza’s administration and policing out of the hands of both Hamas and Israel. That would not be easy, but the attempt couldn’t be worse than anything Netanyahu’s effort to crush not just Hamas, but Palestinian rights and hopes, can produce.

This year’s Khachaturian violin competition was moved, for unspecified reasons, from Erevan to Beijing.

The results?

1st prize: Zou Meng (China)
2nd prize: Zeng Nigodemu (China)

3rd prize: -not awarded-
4th prize: Zhao Yinan (China)

5th prize: Bobiljun Eshplatov (Uzbekistan)
6th prize: Zhang Haoya (China)
Winner of the Best Chinese Work Award: Zou Meng (China)
Special Award: Ovsanna Harutyunyan (Armenia)

https://slippedisc.com/2023/12/armenia-moves-violin-contest-to-china-with-predictable-results/

A version of this article was originally published on HaltonHillsToday on April 24.

They are all gone now, so we can never directly hear what they have to say about Georgetown’s Cedarvale Park. But Canada and Armenian Canadians have not forgotten the role the local green space played in history. 

Dubbed the Georgetown Boys – a misnomer as there were many girls too – they were rescued by Canadians from the clutches of an orphan’s lonely death. In Georgetown, the federal government and several benefactors hoped to turn these orphans into good farmers. Cedarvale Park, then a farm, served as their home and proving ground. 

But the absence of the boys and girls today creates an undeserved illusion that Cedarvale Park is unremarkable. The painstaking work of historians, archivists and community leaders, many of whom are Armenian, keep the memory alive. Without them, visitors would miss the park’s connection with the First World War and, more importantly, the Armenian Genocide. 

“Armenians are obsessed by 1915,” said Lorne Shirinian, a descendent of the so-called Georgetown Boys. 

Shirinian is the son of Mampre Shirinian, a Georgetown Boy and Mariam Mazmanian, a Georgetown Girl. Her brother, Ardeshes Mazmanian, was also a Georgetown Boy. 

Lorne Shirinian's mother and uncle, Mariam and Ardeshes Mazmanian.

The Mazmanian siblings likely survived when their parents gave them to Turkish neighbours. Neither appeared to know how they escaped the genocide as they were too young to remember. What they do know is that they lost a brother and both parents in the chaos. 

Lorne Shirinian’s father did not talk much about his experiences with the genocide. Shirinian the younger understands that his father was alone from 1915 to 1918. 

The orphans getting picked to come to Canada was, in effect, a lottery. 

“My father tells me one day all the boys, almost a thousand boys, were lined up and the relief workers came and they asked, ‘Who wants to go to Canada?” Lorne Shirinian said. 

“They went through picking randomly. ‘You, you, you.’ And my father was randomly picked. And my uncle did come to Canada randomly.”

Ardeshes and Mariam were separated at some point. While her brother languished at a Corfu orphanage, Mariam ended up at one in Syro, Greece. Once he arrived in Canada with the first group of boys in 1923, Ardeshes pleaded with ARAC to have his sister come to Georgetown. They were reunited in 1927. Mampre Shirinian arrived in 1924 with the second group of boys. 

Mampre Shirinian and Mariam Mazmanian married in 1935 after meeting at Cedarvale Farm. Their son Lorne was born 10 years later, beginning a long life of being surrounded by the Georgetown orphans.

“The Georgetown Boys would drop in all the time. On the weekends, there would be parties. There would be making sheesh kabob on the barbecue. There were dances in the backyard, much to the chagrin of the neighbours,” Shirinian added.

What Shirinian appreciated most was “their joy and vitality for having survived.”

“I always had the feeling that they looked on me and other offspring of the Georgetown Boys as special because not only did we survive, but we are multiplying.” 

Shirinian has added his voice to multiple sources that have crystallized the memory of the orphans. Through those sources, we can tell their story and get to know who they were. 

The Ottoman Empire – the modern-day Republic of Turkey – was in decline in the late 1800s. Looking for a scapegoat to mask their economic mismanagement, the government took aim at ethnic minorities, especially the Armenians. 

Abdul Hamid II is often called the “Red Sultan” as his throne was soaked with blood.

In 1908 the Young Turks seized power from Abdul Hamid. But the Armenians were not safe. One of the Young Turks’ goals was to turn the Empire into an ethnically homogenous nation. 

After the Battle of Sarikamish ended in a catastrophic defeat for the Turkish army, they had their excuse. The war minister Enver Pasha – who planned the battle – blamed the Armenians.

On Apr. 24, 1915, Ottoman Interior Minister, Talaat Pasha, had 250 Armenian intellectuals arrested in Constantinople. The genocide had officially begun. By 1923, mass deportations, starvation and outright killing wiped out virtually all Armenians in Anatolia. Despite the best efforts of some righteous Turks to save Armenians, it is estimated that some 1.5 million people died.

The government of the Republic of Turkey denies the genocide to this day.

The work of Canadian historians has made Cedarvale Park an equally important piece of the puzzle as the genocide itself. 

Author Jack Apramian, who himself was brought to Cedarvale Farm, wrote the book The Georgetown Boys. Isabel Kaprielian-Churchill authored Like our Mountains, a book about the Armenian Canadian experience. Parts of it tell the story of Cedarvale Farm.

Cedarvale Farm today. Mansoor Tanweer/HaltonHillsToday

Through these two, we know how Canadians got involved in the lives of the orphans. Using various means, Armenian children found themselves at an orphanage on the Greek island of Corfu. The Armenian Relief Association of Canada (ARAC), with the blessing of Ottawa, brought the boys to Canada. 

It should be noted that the events are important not just to Georgetown, but also to the nation . “This is the first time in Canadian history that we helped people in need. And we help them by bringing them to the country,” said local historian Mark Rowe. 

By 1920, Canada was only 53 years old. Canadians had engaged in international humanitarian work, but only as individuals. Thanks to the ARAC and the federal government, Canadians were saving lives abroad as a nation, setting the tone for future aid to refugees. 

https://www.haltonhillstoday.ca/local-news/our-top-5-people-stories-of-23-1-marking-the-100-year-legacy-of-the-georgetown-boys-8043244

For La Crescenta resident Sarineh Ghazarian, decorating a float in the upcoming 2024 Rose Parade is a family affair.

Ghazarian, her nephew and two children spent some of their winter break volunteering to decorate the American Armenian Rose Float Association’s sixth parade float. It was the first year to decorate for the children, who are of Armenian descent, and a special memory Ghazarian will always cherish.

The 55-foot-long “Armenian Melodies” float — decorated with pomegranates, drums, and birds playing musical instruments — features aspects of Armenian culture, symbolism, history, current events and more. It’s the sixth year the association has participated in the annual Rose Parade.

The 2024 float is among a line-up of new and returning entries, special guests and performances that aim to reflect diversity represented in the parade’s theme: “Celebrating a World of Music: The Universal Language.”

At the center of “Armenian Melodies” is a mother, dressed in vibrant, traditional garb, holding her child. The figures are surrounded by important symbols of Armenian heritage, such as cranes. Cranes are known as “krunk,” which are long-depicted symbols in Armenian art and folklore, organizers said.

Armenian birds play a major role on the float — such as the crane, chukar and the little ringed plover; a bird indigenous to the Armenian Highlands — surrounding the mother and child.

The mother’s dress, called a Taraz, is designed with red Christmas mums, whole pomegranates, dried apricots, cranberry seeds and green Ti leaves. The crane and other birds are decorated with orange lentil, blue and purple statice, red cranberry, lima beans, kidney beans and yellow strawflower. Drums seen on the front and back of the float are made of flax seed, blue and pink statice, black onions, ground rice and other materials.

Float designer Johnny Kanounji, one of the founders of the American Armenian Float Association, said that cranes are often seen as a symbol of hope. He said the float’s design pays respect to both Armenian culture and current events in Armenia. All the float details, down to which fruits are represented on the float, are connected to Armenian lore.

Apricots, one of the fruits, are so often associated with Armenia that Kanounji said they are sometimes called “Armenian apples.” Pomegranates, known as “noor” in Armenian, symbolize good fortune and prosperity, especially in fertility, Kanounji said. Armenian culture is “very matriarchal.”

“The mother symbolizes everything to the Armenian community. She is the root of all that holds the family together,” said Kanounji. “Mothers show daughters what Armenian culture, music, and everything is; passing the torch from mother to daughter.”

Kanounji, a Pasadena resident, said that each year’s parade entry aims to highlight different aspects of Armenian culture, lifestyle, and even Los Angeles County — home to over 200,000 Armenians.

This year’s float called for “nearly $350,000” of fundraising, a feat Kanounji said “wasn’t easy.” But with the amount of money used towards the project, Kanounji said he wants to make sure to design thoughtful floats each year.

Past parade entries from the American Armenian Float Association have also won awards — including the President’s trophy — in 2015, 2017 and 2018, respectfully.

“We like to give back to the community,” Kanounji said. “We want to engage our people. So this has become its own community… it’s a happy occasion, not a sad occasion… we’re saying ‘Hey, we’re here.’”

Lana Ghazarian, Sarineh’s daughter, said the float’s continued presence is “a big deal because of what’s happening right now in Armenia.”

The mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh — known as Artsakh to Armenians — is in the middle of a decades-long feud between the ethnic Armenians who live and have organized there, and Azerbaijan, according to Reuters. Though Nagorno-Karabakh is geographically recognized as part of Azerbaijan, tensions in the area have risen over the past year, after reports of increasing military presence and road blockades cutting off access to goods. In September, Azerbaijan forces conducted a deadly attack on Nagorno-Karabakh, causing almost all Armenian people to flee.

“It shows how us Armenians care and that we’re strong,” Lana Ghazarian, 12, said. “We’re such a small country, and representing ourselves shows who we really are. It makes me feel really proud because (of) our community coming and helping; (it) shows how we care about the people that are struggling right now.”

Her brother Alex Ghazarian, 13, said that the mother depicted on the float, holding her child, shows “how strong the Armenian women are during the war right now, and how they took care of family members.”

The “Armenian Melodies” float pays homage to the “tapestry” of the Armenian spirit, volunteers say, while staying in the Rose Parade’s overall musical theme.

Traditional woodwind instruments are heavily featured — such as the duduk, shvi, blul and parkapzuk — some of which are native to the Armenian Highlands. The blul is deeply rooted in pastoral traditions, according to Kanounji. The crane, seen at the front of the float, plays a duduk, similar to a flute.

The dhol and nagara, both percussion instruments, round out the float’s “floral orchestra,” organizers said.

The float’s most prominent colors are red, blue and orange, representing the Armenian flag. Organizers said the purposeful use of forget-me-not flowers serves as a reminder of the Armenian genocide of 1915. Many local Armenians fear another Armenian genocide could happen in Artsakh.

“What’s happening in Armenia is not very good,” volunteer Haig Nahapetian, 14, reflected. “There’s a lot of Armenians living in this area, especially Glendale… so representing Armenia on television is always great.”

https://www.pasadenastarnews.com/2023/12/29/rose-parade-2024-armenian-melodies-float-pays-tribute-to-heritage-motherhood-and-struggle/ fbclid=IwAR1JEqfPuCDpF28s0TNYC_9WCYmM4YnF-EpqeCnFiuil2-NfEdQaFTlnNeo

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Johnathan Riley

Damariscotta businesses Bred in the Bone, Damariscotta River Grill, and Lincoln Theater collaborated in a special dinner and wine event on Thursday, Dec. 21, to celebrate a documentary made about an Armenian father-daughter team making wine.

The documentary, “Cup of Salvation,” the fourth film in the “Somm” series, directed by Jason Wise, follows Aimee Keushguerian and her father Vahe, along their journey of reviving the grapes and wines of their Armenian homeland. Their production facility, WineWorks, is in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital.

Aimee Keushguerian, who attended Great Salt Bay Community School in Damariscotta and Lincoln Academy in Newcastle, said wine was a critical component of Armenian culture until the 19th century when the nation was absorbed by the Soviet Union.

During this time, the Soviet Union directed Armenian’s to abandon their longstanding vineyards and start production on brandy, according to Keushguerian, favoring grapes better suited for that production.

Prior to the showing of the documentary at Lincoln Theater, Armenian-inspired dinners were served at both the Damariscotta River Grill and Bred and the Bone, where diners were able to enjoy cuisine that paired with wines from the Keushguerians’ vineyard.

Tim Beal, co-owner of Damariscotta River Grill, said that when Christina Belknap, the organizer of the event and executive director of Lincoln Theater, reached out about participating in the event, it was an easy call.

“It was a no brainer,” Beal said.

Keushguerian, who was in attendance at Bred in the Bone with family in friends, including her mother, Andrea Keushguerian, a Damariscotta Select Board member, spoke about each of the wines being served with dinner.

Wines included Zulal Areni, a medium bodied red wine with bright acidity; Zulal Voskehat, a dry, light to medium body white wine using Aremenia’s signature white wine grape; Keush Origins, an invigorating and fresh brut; Keush Rose, an extra brut rose aged for 22 months; and Keush Ultra, a Blanc de Noirs aged for at least 36 months.

After diners had their fill, they crossed Main Street in Damariscotta to Lincoln Theater for the documentary, where the wines served at dinner were also available for purchase.

Belknap said the event was a success and that aside from learning about a local wine connection, she got to see the community come together.

“The best part of this, aside from learning about wine and the connection with the community, was that we has such great partnership with so many businesses right here in Damariscotta,” Belknap said.

Aimee Keushguerian, who moved to Maine from Italy in 2008, said she learned a lot from living in Maine, but that community was one of the most important lessons.

And while she and her father have had to try an reinvigorate Armenia’s post-Soviet infrastructure, the lesson of living in Maine are ones she’s held close.

“Community,” Keushguerian said.” “You really can’t build a nation without a community behind you.”

Jenny Begin, co-owner of event sponsor Salt Bay Trading Co., said her kids went to school with Keushguerian, and these types of events really bring the community together.

“This is the sort of event that makes me so excited to live in this town,” Begin said.

For more information about the documentary, go to sommfilms.com/cup-of-salvation or wineworks.am to learn more about Keushguerian and her father’s efforts in the Armenian wine industry.