FACING UP TO THE PAST

AZG Armenian Daily #158
Jerusalem Post
01/09/2007

Armenian Genocide

Anything from several hundred thousand to 1.5 million Armenians are
estimated by historians to have been killed by Muslim Ottoman Turks
between 1915 and 1923, in what is widely viewed as one of the first
modern instances of systematic genocide. Turkey, however, denies that
the episode should be regarded as genocide, arguing that the death
toll has been greatly exaggerated and that the deaths occurred in
the context of civil war and unrest.

The dispute has erupted afresh in recent days and weeks, in part
because of controversy within the Anti-Defamation League over how to
address the issue.

The ADL has recently recognized the massacre as "tantamount to
genocide," and reinstated a regional director who had been fired for
opposing its previous reluctance to do so. While Israel is acutely
and understandably sensitive to its relationship with the current
Turkish government, a key ally, the Jewish state, which rightly
protests Holocaust denial wherever it occurs, cannot possibly be
complicit in the denial of genocide elsewhere.

To that end, Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, has
always included the massacre of the Armenians in its educational
activities on "other instances of genocide, ethnic cleansing and
mass murder."

Similar stances have always been taken by other organizations dedicated
to Holocaust education, such as the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Dating
back to its first museum in 1979, the Wiesenthal Center has taken pains
to include presentational material relating to the Armenian Genocide.

How could it be otherwise?

The Jewish nation, the overwhelming victim of the Nazi Holocaust,
is centrally committed to learning and promulgating the lessons of
the Holocaust – to highlighting man’s capacity for inhumanity toward
his fellow man and to seeking to curb it, stressing the dangers in
order to prevent recurrences of genocide.

Unthinkably, genocide has recurred, and continues to recur, because
such lessons are not sufficiently internalized. "Never again" has
been exposed as an empty mantra, most recently in Rwanda and Darfur.

The open, good-conscience examination by affected nations of dark
episodes in their history is a key element in trying to change that
dire reality. Israel is scarcely in a position to force Turkey
to confront its dark episode, but neither can Israel signal any
acquiescence in overlooking it.

To denounce the Armenian Genocide is not to denounce Turkey and its
current government; it did not perpetrate these killings. But its
responsibilities are those of a successor government, and must not
be ducked.

Our global tragedy is that what the former Canadian justice
minister Irwin Cotler has described as a "genocide in the making"
is being perpetrated, right now, in Darfur, in an era of globalized
communication where no nation can claim to be unaware of what is
unfolding.

And the next potential tragedy is developing before our eyes as well,
similarly unobstructed by the international community. President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Iranian regime openly call for Israel’s
destruction and are seeking the means to achieve it – in open breach of
the UN’s post-World War II "Never Again" convention. Yet the Iranian
president, far from being indicted by the global body established
precisely to counter such outrages, is instead afforded a platform
by it, and his country is allowed to retain its membership in the
family of civilized nations even as it threatens the very existence
of another sovereign member. To quote comments made by Cotler to this
newspaper several months ago: "Ahmadinejad’s genocidal criminality is
as clear and compelling as any I’ve ever seen… This is advocacy of
the most horrific of crimes, Genocide; embedded in the most virulent
of hatreds, anti-Semitism; propelled by a publicly avowed intent
to acquire nuclear weapons for that purpose; and dramatized by the
parading in the streets of Teheran of Shihab-3 missiles draped in the
emblem ‘Wipe Israel Off the Map.’" What is required in facing down
those who would commit genocide, of course, is an alliance of all
enlightened nations, taking concerted action to thwart such ambitions
long before they are implemented.

Striving for a better future, however, also requires acknowledging
and internalizing the crimes of the past.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress