Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Israel's Recognition Of Armenian Genocide Is Political

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Israel's Recognition Of Armenian Genocide Is Political

    ISRAEL'S RECOGNITION OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE IS POLITICAL
    By Alon Idan

    Ha'aretz
    http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/israel-s-recognition-of-armenian-genocide-is-political-1.365252
    June 1 2011
    Israel

    Using the mantra of moral duty 'as a Jew and as an Israeli' is a
    guise to hide some shame the cliche' is meant to cover up.

    "This is my duty as a Jew and as an Israeli" is cliche that is
    meant to revive anyone from their dogmatic coma. Each time this
    religious-nationalist conjunction is used, accompanied by a certain
    obligation, usually moral, the listener must assume that behind
    the pomposity and the drama hides some shame that is seeking to be
    retroactively erased.

    So as not to remain in the theoretical sphere, let's examine the
    full statement made by Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin on Monday after
    he decided to hold an annual Knesset session to mark the Armenian
    genocide by the Turks. "It is my duty as a Jew and as an Israeli,"
    he said, "to recognize the tragedies of other peoples. Diplomatic
    considerations, important as they may be, do not allow us to deny
    the disaster of another people."

    Rivlin made the statement about a week after the Knesset allowed its
    Education Committee to discuss the issue for the first time publicly,
    and about a year after former Meretz chairman and MK Haim Oron was
    authorized to hold a secret meeting about it in the Knesset Foreign
    Affairs and Defense Committee. That, more or less, is how under
    the pretense "my duty as a Jew and an Israeli," 63 years of Jewish
    disregard for and denial of the slaughter of between 1 million to
    1.5 million human beings just melts away.

    And so, Rivlin decided that: "Diplomatic considerations, important as
    they may be, do not allow us to deny the disaster of another people."

    He's right, and every molecule of that rightness conceals a nucleus of
    the ridiculous. After all, diplomatic considerations, as important as
    they may be, did indeed allow us, that is, the government of Israel,
    to deny the disaster of another people for 63 years. Diplomatic
    considerations, important as they may be, for 63 years, prevented the
    state's leaders, from the indicted Ehud Olmert to the television star
    Shimon Peres - from discussing the matter, not to mention officially
    marking the genocide.

    Rivlin needed a cliche precisely because as Jews and Israelis, we were
    partners to a moral injustice of historic proportions. He inflated
    the words to cover up a spindly moral reality. After all, Rivlin also
    knows that if we have to sum up in one phrase the reason for this moral
    redress, it would be a small and trivial one: the unraveling of our
    ties with Turkey. We are now able to discuss the murder of 1.5 million
    people because of political-diplomatic circumstances, and not because
    1.5 million people were murdered. What common sense and dictates of
    conscience did not do, was accomplished by a ship by the name of the
    Mavi Marmara and statements by a politician named Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

    Discussion of the Armenian genocide permits scrutiny of the
    relationship between morality and diplomacy in Israel. Instead of
    ethical considerations trumping political ones as the foundation
    for policy, it turns out that morality is nothing but a derivative of
    politics, an appendage of narrow national interests. The dictate of the
    national conscience is the outcome of whatever we can get in exchange.

    Moral flexibility is not a one-time position having to do only with
    the Armenian genocide. One and a half million people are never a
    one-time matter and silence over their murder cannot be perceived
    as coincidental.

    In fact, the change in attitude toward the Armenian genocide should be
    seen as an indication of an overriding Israeli principle that says:
    Good is what is worthwhile, bad is what is not worthwhile. A codicil
    to this principle is: Good can always become bad; bad can always
    become good. A moral calculation as a derivative of cost-efficiency
    is, in fact, the true duty of every "Jew and Israeli."

Working...
X