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Al-Monitor: Israel Has Moral Duty To Recognize Armenian Genocide

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  • Al-Monitor: Israel Has Moral Duty To Recognize Armenian Genocide

    AL-MONITOR: ISRAEL HAS MORAL DUTY TO RECOGNIZE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

    12:47 29.04.2014

    An article by Akiva Eldar published by Al-Monitor explores the
    possibility that Israel will revisit and possibly revise its
    enforcement of Turkey's gag-rule against her open acknowledgement of
    the â?ªâ??Armenian â?ªâ??Genocide. The article is provided below:

    At the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, the message of condolence issued
    by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the Armenian people
    on April 23, the eve of the 99th anniversary of the Armenian genocide,
    was closely examined. What will Israel do now? Will it continue to
    fence-sit on the issue of recognizing the disaster that befell the
    Armenian people, caught between taking a moral stand and avoiding
    angering the Turks? If Erdogan can afford to change the Turkish
    attitude toward this sensitive issue, perhaps it's time for Israel
    to adopt a clearer and more decisive stance.

    On the other hand, how will it look for the Israeli government to
    be dragged along in the wake of a Turkish leader who doesn't miss
    a chance to lash out at it? How will the Foreign Ministry explain
    a decision to recognize the Armenian genocide, after arguing for
    years that one must examine this sensitive issue "through an open
    debate based on data and facts, and not on political decisions or
    declarations." This is what Likud Minister Gilad Erdan said in a 2009
    speech delivered at the Knesset, asking in the government's name to
    remove from the agenda the issue of recognizing the Armenian genocide.

    At that same debate, Erdan said, "Israel asks not to determine
    conventions as to what occurred, since these are â?¦ supporting
    the political position of one of the sides." Is the slaughter of
    the Armenians in fact a political matter? Twenty-two years ago,
    the deputy foreign minister in the national unity government of the
    late Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and President Shimon Peres said,
    "There are things that go beyond politics, and there are things
    that go beyond diplomacy. Holocausts of nations are a clear case
    in point." These comments were made in response to a question by
    then-Knesset member Yair Tzaban of the now-defunct Ratz party. He was
    seeking the government's reaction to reports that Israeli officials
    were cooperating with Jewish-American organizations to derail a
    congressional initiative to mark the commemoration of the Armenian
    genocide in the United States. That deputy foreign minister who
    answered the question on the part of the government was none other
    than current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

    Several months later, in April 1990, it turned out that for the Foreign
    Ministry, the genocide committed against the Armenian people was
    most certainly a diplomatic issue. Under pressure from the ministry,
    Israel's public television station backed out of its plan to air
    Theodore Bogosian's documentary "An Armenian Journey." Following the
    uproar that ensued, the board of directors of the Israel Broadcasting
    Authority ordered that the film be screened.

    Representatives of the establishment appealed the decision and the
    film was shelved.

    Despite pressure from successive Israeli governments, leftist
    politicians led by Tzaban and former Minister Yossi Sarid and a
    handful of right-wingers, among them Knesset members Benny Begin
    and Reuven Rivlin, refused to drop the matter. In 2011, Tzaban,
    this time as a private citizen, was invited to the Knesset to take
    part in a debate on the subject of the Armenian genocide, held by
    the Knesset's Committee on Education.

    "We are fighting with all our strength, justifiably so, against
    denial of the Holocaust, but we're not fighting properly and not
    doing what needs to be done on the issue of denial of the Armenian
    genocide," said the man who was formerly the minister of immigration
    and absorption. "We have interests; we're not ignoring them, but we
    cannot do the opposite of what we have demanded that others do in
    our case."

    In the 1940s, when we implored the world for help and didn't get it,
    Tzaban said, supposedly good people told us, "You're right, but we
    have interests; we have existential interests that prevent us from
    lending you a helping hand."

    Tzaban quoted the profound lines written in 1945 by poet Natan
    Alterman, in "Interests":

    "The hands of the ignorant and the wicked nurtured an illusion of
    an imaginary world, where each people were commanded to protect
    a group of interests, and to honor them with prayer, drink and
    food. Buildings and giant altars were erected to those interests (we
    will visit their ruins). In the 20th century, children were sacrificed
    for those interests. Empires bowed their heads, and eternal truths,
    bound in ropes, were sacrificed to those interests."

    The Marmara flotilla affair and the deterioration in Israel's relations
    with Turkey since the humiliation of the Turkish ambassador in the
    office of former Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon changed the
    interests map: Turkey out, the Armenian genocide in.

    In June 2012, Erdan returned to the speaker's podium with a
    new position regarding the genocide. No neutrality this time, no
    fact-checking or other fig leaves for economic and defense-related
    interests. This time, the minister determined that "There's a problem
    with turning the recognition into a political debate, and the issue
    should be looked at from the point of view of the value of human
    life." Not only that, but, "As Jews and Israelis, we should have
    a special obligation to learn about human tragedies." That same
    government representative who had previously asked to remove the
    subject from the Knesset agenda announced, "It would be fitting for
    the Knesset to discuss it in depth and if it deems it appropriate,
    to express recognition of the genocide."

    This time, he did not suggest examining the data and the disputed
    facts, saying, "There's something of the ridiculous in the debate,
    because I did not hear any historic arguments on the question of
    whether the murder occurred. â?¦ The government did not deal with
    this issue, probably out of a desire to prevent it from turning into
    a political issue, and it's fitting for the government to officially
    recognize the holocaust of the Armenian people."

    These lines are being written on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day.

    As I do every year, tomorrow I will commune with the memory of
    my uncles and aunts and their sons and daughters who perished in
    Auschwitz. I recall that there are those in the world who deny that
    my family members and my people were murdered, and I congratulate
    those fighting against those contemptible people. True, no event in
    modern history can compare to the horrors perpetrated by the Nazi
    regime against the Jewish people, but Adolf Hitler's deeds do not
    give us permission to ignore the tragedies of other peoples. We don't
    require a seal of approval from a Turkish tyrant to be moral Jews.

    http://www.armradio.am/en/2014/04/29/al-monitor-israel-has-moral-duty-to-recognize-armenian-genocide/

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