January 22, 2010
Haaretz
Now you remembered?
By Yossi Sarid
The defense minister paid a visit to Turkey this week. They say it was
a success. If so, it is possible to renew the conspiracy of silence
and the silencing.
This is what happened a few months ago after Recep Tayyip Erdogan once
again poured bitter words upon us. An important Israeli personality
telephoned me and said the following: "Now you have to hit back at the
Turks, to denounce them for the crimes they committed against the
Armenians. You, Yossi, have the right to do so. Today you are a
private citizen, but even when you were a public figure you did not
hold yourself back. You expressed yourself often, in writing and
orally, against the way they shirked responsibility for the genocide."
I was filled with revulsion and my soul wanted to puke. The person who
telephoned me was an example of the ugly Israeli who had disgracefully
been at the forefront of those who denied the Armenian holocaust. He
was the one who had joined those who lashed out at the education
minister at the time, who visited a church in Jerusalem ten years ago
and told those gathered there: "The value of a human life, no matter
who the human is – Jew, Arab, Armenian, Gypsy, Bosnian, Albanian,
Rwandan – this is the value I want to inculcate all our pupils
with. In the new history curriculum I want to include a central
chapter on genocide, and as part of that, a broad reference to the
Armenian genocide. This is our duty to you, this is our duty to
ourselves."
The country was astir, and ministers began to sweat. Ehud Barak and
Shimon Peres were the first to express reservations. This declaration,
they quickly announced, was not made at the government’s initiative;
it was the initiative solely of the education minister and was his
responsibility. I was ashamed.
New tunes have recently been heard in Jerusalem: "The Turks are the
last ones who have the right to teach us ethics." It would be
interesting to know who the first ones are. There obviously are not
any when referring to the "most moral" state and army "in the world."
If the Turks try to teach us, we shall slap them – and hard.
I never understood why young Turkey, which had no hand in that
bloodshed, insists on defending the blood of its forefathers. Would
too deep an exploration of the past reveal signs of the present? When
someone tries forcibly to erase history, that history will usually
insist on being rewritten, and in blood.
But it is not only the politicians. Experts in public and political
affairs are also clamoring to take the skeletons out of the Turkish
closet, more than one million skeletons, to be exact.
Those who never wasted a word on the first genocide of the 20th
century have suddenly remembered it. This is the genocide that Henry
Morgenthau, Sr. defined as "the greatest crime in modern history." He
was the American ambassador to Ankara during those black years, and he
was a Jew.
I shall reveal to you what my response was to the agitated
caller. "Now you remembered? Only now, when they attribute crimes to
you as if you were Turks? I do not believe in a firing squad, so deal
with Erdogan yourselves; you deserve him. How sad it is that you
conceded a moral position for other interests that are brought about
by time and finished also by time."
And now I have an addendum to that response of mine: Let us assume
that Turkey will renew its ties with Israel to what they were in the
past. Then what? What then? Will we also renew our contribution to the
denial of the Armenian holocaust?