American Jewish Committee: First Half of 20th Century Was So Long Ago, Who
Knows Whether Genocides Took Place?
committee_first_half_20th_century_
was_so_long_ago _who_knows_whether_genocides_took_place
by Joey Kurtzman, February 22, 2008
TAGS: Armenian Genocide American Jewish Committee I’ve been sent a
recording and transcript of a public exchange that took place yesterday
between Barry Jacobs of the American Jewish Committee and AramBarry Jacobs
of the American Jewish Committee: Don’t talk to him about "genocide denial,"
he’s a pragmatist Hamparian of the Armenian National Committee. It happened
at a Washington, DC lecture on Israeli-Turkish relations.
Hamparian takes Jacobs and the AJC to task for its participation in the
world’s most successful campaign of genocide denial, i.e. Turkey’s campaign
to deny the systematic murder of over a million Armenians during World War
I. (For those tuning in late, The Armenian Genocide was the prototypical
genocide in that it compelled Raphael Lemkin, the Polish-Jewish lawyer who
coined the term "genocide," to seek ways to criminalize the mass-slaughter
of whole communities. The AJC has abetted its denial by actively supporting
Turkish efforts to prevent recognition of the genocide.)
Jacobs responds by suggesting that the AJC can’t hope to say whether the
genocide took place, because, jeez, World War I was so long ago! Then he
swiftly non sequiturs to the very different argument that it’s bad to
acknowledge past genocides unless it makes good geopolitical sense. And then
he adds that that’s not just the position of the AJC, but also the position
of "the Jewish community."
Well, all I can say is that whoever Barry Jacobs is talking about when he
refers to "the Jewish community," their positions are morally bankrupt and a
public disgrace to American Jews.
Transcript below.
Aram Hamparian, Executive Director of the Armenian National Committee of
America: Your efforts to score points in Ankara at the expense of the
Armenian Genocide issue is a transparent transaction that, I think,
squanders the moral capital of the Jewish community, undermines our
collective efforts to fight Holocaust denial, and, if the ADL
[Anti-Defamation League] experience of the last few months is any
indication, is very far outside of the mainstream of your own community, and
it’s just so painful to come and hear you echo those same themes again. I
just had to share that with you.
Barry Jacobs, Director of Strategic Studies of the American Jewish
Committee:
It’s not about the position of the American Jewish Committee and the
American Jewish community. It’s not about, we are not historians, which is a
polite, bullshit way of saying we’re not going to take responsibility, we
are not going to make a decision on 1915. But the relationship between
United States and Turkey, if we want to, I don’t know where you are, whether
you are right or left, if you’re left in the United States and want to get
out of Iraq, well, look you at the map, Brits have pulled out of Basra,
there are only two ways to get out of Iraq, you have to go south, you have
to go north, and if you go north you got to go through Turkey.
So the argument that finally persuaded Congress, and I know this is not
– I’m looking for a strong enough word – [unintelligible] but, the
message was that the bilateral relationship between the United States and
Turkey will suffer greatly if this resolution is passed. The Jewish
Community believed that also, and that’s been our position. And the world is
not made up of choices between good and bad, at least not in the Foreign
Service when I was in it, it’s made up between choices between bad and
worse. So we take practical positions, and the position of all the Jewish
organizations, including ADL, was not have a position on the facts of what
happened, or not taking a public position on what happened in 1915, we did
not think, do not think, that the United States Congress is the place to
settle this.
And that’s all I can tell you. And that’s the real world and that’s the
position of United States Government and of the Government of Israel.