Turkish Daily News

Robert Fisk is the latest ‘sympathetic researcher,’ say the fish

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Fisk’s ‘The forgotten Holocaust,’ which he wrote following a visit to
Armenia, is full of distortions and inconsistencies, giving the
impression that he is willing to create his own ‘reality’

C. Cem OÄ?uz

In the fall of 1991, Jalal Talabani, then secretary general of the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), and Peter W. Galbraith, a United
States official serving on the staff of the Foreign Relations
Committee, were chatting about Iraqi government documents that the PUK
peshmerga (Kurdish insurgents in northern Iraq) had captured from the
local offices of Saddam Hussein’s intelligence and the Ba’ath Party
during the uprisings. "This unique record of the genocide against the
Kurdish people should be moved to safety," said Galbraith. He proposed
that they be given to the U.S. for safekeeping.

Talabani opposed the idea. He said he did not trust then U.S.
President George Herbert Walker Bush. Instead, he would give the
documents to Galbraith under one condition: He did not want them "used
by those American Middle East experts whom he considered pro-Arab or
anti-Kurd." Galbraith promised Talabani he would look only for
"sympathetic researchers."

Is Fisk himself a ‘raver’?

This episode was for me the most striking part of T. E. Lawrence’s
"Revolt in the Desert" ` like Galbraith’s 2006 account on Iraq
entitled "The End of Iraq." When reading it, I was particularly
puzzled by the term "sympathetic researchers." It later came to mind
when I read the Aug. 28 editorial written by British journalist Robert
Fisk published in The Independent titled, "The Forgotten Holocaust."

Mr. Fisk’s critical thinking is indeed worth considering. In another
editorial titled "Even I question the ‘truth’ about 9/11," for
instance, he complained about the presence of "ravers" in the
audiences at his Middle East lecture. He expresses the belief that the
biggest share of responsibility in that respect goes to the U.S.
government itself since he, too, is "increasingly troubled at the
inconsistencies in the official narrative of 9/11." He eventually
wrapped up by questioning whether the following statement attributed
to President Bush’s departed advisor Karl Rove, might indeed be true:
"We are an empire now ` we create our own reality."

I am saddened to see, however, that he does not make the same
efforts to find the truth of the Armenian allegations or Turkey. "The
Forgotten Holocaust," which he wrote following a visit to Armenia, is
full of distortions and inconsistencies giving the impression that
Fisk, like Rove, is willing to create his own "reality." He seems to
be the latest example of the "sympathetic researchers" Mr. Galbraith
was referring to.

Fisk’s distortions:

I do not know where to start discussing the distortions ` there are
so many. Let’s take just one: Talat Pasha’s alleged Sept. 15, 1915
cable to his prefect in Aleppo, the wording of which Mr. Fisk claims
is "almost identical to those used by [Heinrich] Himmler to his SS
killers in 1941."

He quoted, "You have already been informed that the government¦ has
decided to destroy completely all the indicated persons living in
Turkey¦ Their existence must be terminated, however tragic the
measures taken may be, and no regard must be paid to either age or
sex, or to any scruples of conscience."

I am afraid to say that such a document never existed. Fisk is
obviously referring to the telegrams first presented in the book "The
Memoirs of Naim Bey: Official Documents Relating to the Deportation
and Massacres of Armenians." Since its publication in 1920, the book
written by Armenian historian Aram Andonian was purported to
constitute evidence that the "Armenian genocide" was formally
implemented as state policy. However, the telegrams are forgeries and
nothing more than mere war propaganda. This is a fact, not only
recognized by Turkish historians ` the alleged "deniers" ` but also by
some prominent Western academics and researchers such as Erik-Jan
Zürcher. Sensible scientists of Armenian descent have long before
given up using them.

Nazi analogy:

What disturbs me is not his ignorance but the way he justifies his
assertions of, as he puts it, "Ottoman Turkey’s attempt to exterminate
an entire Christian race in the Middle East." Like Fisk, most people
supporting the Armenian allegations, the Armenian scholars in Diaspora
in particular, are very eager to present the Armenian deportation of
1915 as the first "holocaust" of the 20th century. They claim it was
used by the Nazi leadership as the model for their own genocide
program. In nearly all his editorials on the subject, Fisk alleges,
clearly under the influence of Armenian historian Vahakn Dadrian’s
studies, that some German officers who served in 1915 in the Ottoman
army were "the main architects of the Holocaust."

According to this line of thinking, the world’s presumed lack of
reaction to the "forgotten genocide" served as a justification for
Adolf Hitler’s planned extermination of European Jewry. Hitler is
frequently quoted as having said in a speech to his generals about his
plans to wage a ruthless war against Poland in 1939, "Who, after all,
speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"

The motive behind efforts at establishing a connection between the
Armenian deportation and the tragic fate of European Jewry during
World War II is obvious. The Holocaust stands as the greatest single
human tragedy the world has ever witnessed and any relationship with
it would serve as an important tool to justify Armenian arguments.

It was, however, U.S. historian Heath W. Lowry who demonstrated that
there is no historical basis for attributing the statement to Hitler.
In his article "The U.S. Congress and Adolf Hitler on the Armenians,"
published in 1985 in the Journal of Political Communication and
Persuasion, Lowry proved that the source of the purported Hitler quote
was an article ("Nazi Germany’s Road to War") that appeared in the
Times of London on Nov. 24, 1945. The Times article was written by an
anonymous author and, in fact, was not the earliest mention of
Hitler’s alleged statement on the Armenians. Rather, "this quotation
and indeed an entire text" of Hitler’s speech purportedly made at
Obersalzberg was first published in the book "What About Germany"
written by Louis Lochner, a former bureau chief of the Associated
Press in Berlin. Lochner wrote that he obtained the speech from an
unnamed informant and since then, its provenance has never been
disclosed or investigated. What is more important, says Mr. Lowry, is
the fact that in even Lochner’s version of Hitler’s quote there is no
direct or implied reference to the Jewish people. At length he
concludes Hitler’s alleged reference to the Armenian case was merely
another piece of wartime propaganda.

How do you become a sympathetic researcher?

In social sciences, and in history in particular, what determines
the credibility of a scientist, or the reliability of his account, is
the strength of his or her methodology. There has been a great variety
of works tackling the methodology of historiography, but the most
significant contribution has come from British historian Edward Hallet
Carr. The central ideas in his influential book "What is History?"
have changed mainstream thinking in the field of history.

Carr argues that history "is a continuous process of interaction
between the historian and his facts." Facts, by their very nature,
resemble fish "swimming about in a vast and sometimes inaccessible
ocean." He then maintains, "What the historian catches will depend,
partly on chance, but mainly on what part of the ocean he chooses to
fish in and what tackle he chooses to use." He eventually urges
historians (or any researcher) "to interrogate documents and to
display a due skepticism as regards to their writer’s motives." A
sympathetic researcher, in turn, believes the part of the ocean he
chooses to fish in is the ultimate destination. And it is in this way
that I call Mr. Fisk a sympathetic researcher.

I write this piece while listening to a beautiful Goran Bregovic
song from the soundtrack to Emir Kusturica’s "Arizona Dream." At one
stage of the song, the lyrics go:

"The fish doesn’t think, because the fish knows everything."

I really wonder whether Mr. Fisk has ever listened to it. And
whether one day an investigative journalist like Fisk will at least
try to fish in other parts of the ocean as well.

(c) 2005 Dogan Daily News Inc.

Source: wsid=82592

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress