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The Armenian Genocide And Israeli Recognition

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  • The Armenian Genocide And Israeli Recognition

    THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE AND ISRAELI RECOGNITION
    Harry Hagopian

    NowLebanon
    http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=277041&MID=0&PID=0
    June 1 2011
    Lebanon

    In her piece Knesset moves toward recognizing Armenian genocide on
    JPost.com on May 18, Rebecca Anna Stoil wrote that "The historical
    facts supporting the Armenian genocide are solid and well-based. There
    is still an argument between the Turkish nation and the Armenian
    nation, but this argument cannot justify even a sliver of denial
    regarding the Armenian people's tragedy. We find it difficult to
    forgive other nations who ignore our tragedy, and thus we cannot
    ignore another nation's tragedy. It is our moral obligation as human
    beings and as Jews."

    In fact, writing on Haaretz.com a day later under the title Knesset to
    discuss Armenian Genocide amid deteriorating Turkey ties, Jonathan Lis
    also explained how another parliamentarian, Zehava Gal-On, declared
    to the parliamentary assembly her belief "that it was the duty of the
    Israeli Knesset to make a clear stance on this issue, especially in
    face of the thundering silence of past Israeli governments over so many
    years." She segued, "It is important to stress - the moral obligation
    to recognize the Armenian Genocide is not a left or right issue."

    Going back to April 24, 2000, then-Israeli Minister of Education Yossi
    Sarid also spoke at the 85th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. He
    referred to The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, whose Prague-born Jewish
    author, Franz Werfel, had published his harrowing story about the
    Armenian victims of the genocide in 1933 when Adolf Hitler had just
    come to power. Sarid stated, "As Minister of Education of the State
    of Israel, I will do whatever is in my capacity in order that this
    monumental work The Forty Days of Musa Dagh is once more well-known
    to our children. I will do everything in order that Israeli children
    learn and know about the Armenian Genocide. Genocide is a crime
    against humanity, and there is nothing more horrible and odious than
    genocide. We, Jews, as principal victims of murderous hatred are
    doubly obligated to be sensitive to identify with other victims."

    Uplifting words then and hopeful exhortations now, and it still
    feels we are witnessing another deja-vu in Israel in 2011. Indeed,
    the way in which the Armenian Genocide is being horse-traded by
    Israeli politicians in geopolitical markets is not quite ethical,
    is it? Could it be that Israeli lawmakers are using this emotive
    issue to vent their displeasure at Turkey - almost to spite it -
    since relations sank to their nadir following the MV Mavi Marmara
    flotilla raid of May 2010? Would this discussion have really happened
    if the political and military alliance between Turkey and Israel had
    been as strong today as it had been a mere few years ago?

    However, I also admit that sheer political interests are structurally
    dissimilar to ethics. So it would be a huge moral, let alone political,
    achievement if Israel - the central hub of the horrendous Holocaust
    that was visited by Europe upon the Jews in Poland, Germany and
    elsewhere but for which the Arab World often carries the tab - were
    to recognize at long last the Armenian chapter of genocide. After
    all, writing on JPost.com on December 24, 2010 under the title Keep
    Dreaming: This Week in Armenia following his return from Yerevan,
    capital of Armenia, David Breakstone, chair of the World Zionist
    Organization and member of the World Jewish Executive, stated
    unequivocally that "We [Jews] cannot right the wrongs of the past,
    but we can recognize them. Doing so would go a long way toward healing
    an open wound." Breakstone added, "My visit to the genocide memorial
    in Yerevan dispels any doubt that this holocaust was every bit as
    ghastly as that experienced by the Jews a few decades later."

    So while we are all agog watching this space, let me recall an article
    by Raffi Hovannisian, former prime minister of Armenia and now leader
    of the Heritage Parliamentary Party. Under the title Turkey, Israel
    and the moment of truth on May 14, 2010, he wrote, "The Armenian
    Genocide must never be allowed to become a political football for
    selective use by two erstwhile allies to sort out their relations and
    the contents of their closets... Recognition should not be a favour,
    nor an instrument of self-serving leverage, but a matter of truth
    and equity - simple, overdue, unrequited - and nothing more."

    Whether this motion is recognized or not, I hope Armenians will
    remember that they do not need Israel or any other country to tell
    them that their forbearers underwent the Armenian genocide. Not when
    they survived this heinous crime and in fact triumphed by overcoming
    a project that strove to annihilate them. A robust people with their
    natural fortes and foibles, do they need the cloying imprimatur of
    other countries for them to realize that they defied the angels of
    death in the late 1800s as well as from 1915 to 1923 and came out
    victorious? I suggest not, since their - our - very celebration of
    life is the strongest riposte to those who tried to get rid of them -
    as will also their unflinching solidarity with all other victims of
    genocide world-wide.

    An after-thought here: Lebanon, whose parliament recognized the
    genocide in May 2000, houses many fine journalists, not least Robert
    Fisk, who enjoys an encyclopedic and sophisticated knowledge of
    the Armenian holocaust. I so would like to have a cup of tea with
    him today.


    From: Baghdasarian
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