Jerusalem Post
Oct 28 2007
Don’t alienate Ankara
By GIDON D. REMBA
Under pressure from the Bush administration and Turkey – a key US
NATO ally – the Congressional leadership recently performed an
about-face on a resolution condemning as genocide the mass slaughter
and wholesale deportation of Armenian men, women and children nearly
a century ago by Ottoman Turkey.
The Jewish community has been deeply divided over the moral
quandaries raised by this resolution. It has brought into play
Turkey’s role in supporting US military efforts in Iraq and
Afghanistan, Israel’s military alliance with the Turks, the
relationship between Israel and American Jews, the Jewish memory of
the Shoah – and our anguished moral consciences.
The moral question seems to have a clear-cut answer. Jewish tradition
reflects a potent strain of ethical idealism, an absolute commitment
to principle – even to the point that the consequences be damned.
Maimonides exemplified this when he ruled that "if pagans should tell
[the Jews], ‘Give us one of yours and we shall kill him, otherwise we
shall kill all of you,’ they should all be killed and not a single
Jewish soul should be delivered."
But there is another major stream in Jewish tradition which
emphasizes that the Torah was given so that we may live by it. It
implores us to choose life, raising the demand to save lives above
virtually all the other commandments – pikuah nefesh. The Jewish
commitment to the absolute inviolability of the individual and to
human rights can be summed up by an ancient, non-Jewish aphorism: Do
justice, urged the Romans, even though the heavens may fall.
But we live in a time in which the falling of the heavens is far from
a remote possibility. If we gaze at the history of the past century,
up to the present moment, we bear witness to a dark panorama of
butchery, war, terrorism and genocide. The heavens have fallen – time
and time again. And justice has, all too often not been done.
We Jews have been among the greatest victims of such barbarity. But
we are hardly its only victims. Before the Holocaust of WWII there
was another genocide, of over 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman
Turks in 1915-17. The Allied governments of Britain, France and
Russia condemned the Ottoman government for committing "crimes
against humanity and civilization," the first time such language had
ever been invoked (the term genocide had not yet been coined).
The US, seeking to avoid involvement, refused to join the Allied
declaration. Despite America’s wish to be celebrated as a global
beacon of human rights and liberal democracy, the US has often failed
to speak out against genocide, or even to take modest risks to stop
it in concert with our allies. Nor have the Europeans done much
better, for all their commitment to peace, international law and
human rights.
FROM TURKEY’S destruction of the Armenians, the Nazi Holocaust, and
Pol Pot’s Cambodian reign of terror, to Saddam’s gassing of the
Kurds, the Bosnian Serb slaughter of Muslims, and the Hutu
evisceration of the Tutsi, America, and often its allies, failed to
invest real capital into stopping genocide. Indeed, it sometimes even
directly or indirectly aided those committing it. Samantha Power
documents this sordid tale in her path-breaking book, A Problem From
Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.
More recently, the US has failed to lead the UN Security Council (or
given the UN’s impotence in the face of Chinese oil investments in
Sudan), NATO, the G-8 and the African Union, to take stronger action
to halt the continuing atrocities in Darfur. Such steps include
targeted sanctions against Sudan for obstructing the deployment of
the multinational force, provision of NATO logistical support,
equipment and additional funding necessary to provide the force with
the capacity to defend itself against attacks by armed groups and to
protect civilians. America stopped the horrors in Serbia and Bosnia;
it can stop them in Darfur.
AGAINST THE backdrop of this sorry chronicle of moral bankruptcy, it
behooves Washington to at long last to formally recognize the Turkish
genocide of the Armenians. America bears a heavy moral obligation to
do so.
And yet – must America do justice now even if the heavens will fall?
The Armenian genocide is not unfolding today; it is nearly a century
old. Were it happening today, there would be no harm to American
interests which could justify our failure to lead or participate in
effective international intervention – from potent economic sanctions
and the promise of war crimes tribunals and a willingness to arrest
and try the perpetrators, to the deployment of a NATO-led or other
multinational armed force.
But today several hundred thousand American troops are fighting deep
in Iraq and Afghanistan, heavily dependent on Turkey to permit the
transfer of weapons and material necessary to prevent an even greater
loss of life. The removal of Turkish cooperation – a realistic
prospect – could also prolong the presence of large numbers of US
troops in Iraq.
Whatever American liberals believe about the justice of these wars –
the war against the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan is surely a
just war, even if the Iraq war is not – if we hold dear the value of
human life, we cannot remain indifferent to the jeopardy into which
an untimely public recognition of the Armenian genocide would place
American forces, along with Iraqi and Afghani civilians.
But it gets worse. Kurdish separatist guerrillas are attacking
Turkish forces in Turkey, which is threatening to invade Iraq, a step
which could draw Iran into the breach and further destabilize the
Iraqi government. The guerrilla attacks, coupled with Turkish
estrangement from the US, could strike the match that sets alight a
great tinderbox, sparking a regional firestorm into which US forces
could be drawn. And you thought the Iraq war was already going badly?
It gets worse still. Turkey is Israel’s closest military ally in the
Muslim world. Turkish military cooperation is vital to Israel’s
self-defense against Iran and Syria. A serious degradation in
relations between Turkey and the US or Israel would represent a blow
to Israeli deterrence, exposing Israel to greater security threats
from Iran and Syria, increasing the risk of war with Israel.
We Jews bear a profound moral duty to recognize the genocide of the
Armenians. The United States too must right its own historic wrong.
But not when there is grave danger that the heavens may fall.
We must minimize harm to human lives here and now, and urge our
leaders to take a courageous moral stand on historical truth when the
cost to innocent lives, and world peace, is more bearable. This, I
believe, the victims of genocide would themselves demand.
The writer, based in New York City, is national executive director of
Ameinu: Liberal Values, Progressive Israel.
380674662&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFul l