ISRAELI DIPLOMAT LENNY BEN-DAVID: ARMENIANS MASSACRED HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF MUSLIMS AND THOUSANDS OF JEWS
Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
Sept 6 2007
Israel’s adviser for Turkish embassy in Washington, Lenny Ben-David
called for Israel’s government and Jews in the United States to be
careful regarding Armenian claims against Turkey.
In his article "Turkey and Armenia: What Jews should do" published
in THE JERUSALEM POST the Israeli diplomat said there are reports on
massacres of hundreds of thousands of Muslims and thousands of Jews
by Armenians, but it is still unspoken.
"Israel’s government and Jews in the United States must be careful
when treading through the minefield of Armenian claims against
Turkey. Jewish leaders in Armenia reported that they have heard local
claims that Jews organized the 1915 massacres of Armenians.
There are accounts of Armenian massacres, between 1914 and 1920,
of 2.5 million of Armenia’s Muslim population.
Recently, Mountain Jews in Azerbaijan requested assistance in building
a monument to 3,000 Azeri Jews killed by Armenians in 1918 in a
pogrom about which little is known. AND WITHIN our own lifetime –
just some 15 years ago – Armenian troops massacred hundreds of Azeri
Muslims. This from Newsweek, March 16, 1992: "Azerbaijan was a charnel
house again last week: a place of mourning refugees and dozens of
mangled corpses dragged to a makeshift morgue behind the mosque. They
were ordinary Azerbaijani men, women and children of Khojaly, a small
village in war-torn Nagorno-Karabakh overrun by Armenian forces on
Feb. 25-26. Many were killed at close range while trying to flee; some
had their faces mutilated, others were scalped."," the article says.
Ben-David stressed in the end that the US Congress and the Jewish
community should encourage historians on both sides to objectively
examine what took place.