VHeadline.com
April 26 2009
The beginnings of Hypocrisy and its end result…
by Kenneth T. Tellis
VHeadline commentarist Kenneth T. Tellis writes: The Ottoman Turks
were fanatical Muslims and their acts of barbarism still echo in the
Armenian community worldwide. The 1916 ` 21 genocide of between 1-2
million Armenians by Turkey should not have been condoned … but how
could the German allies of Turkey in that period condemn it?
Thus the Turks, in a manner of speaking, got away with murder while
the whole world looked on.
When the Nazis came to power in 1933, they took this to mean that they
had a license to commit these same barbaric acts within Germany. Their
first victims were the Roma peoples and this was followed by the small
Sinti minority in Germany. The world still paid no heed to what was
happening and thus continued the genocides without let-up. But, there
was another power waiting on the sidelines that had ambitions that
were very similar, that power was Fascist Italy under `Il Duce’ Benito
Mussolini. Thus began the Abyssinian genocide of the mid-1930 … but
there was a difference here; many countries sold arms to Fascist Italy
to further its pogrom in Abyssinia aided by even the newly created
Vatican, which was the result of Mussolini’s Lateran Treaty on 1929.
If the powers that be at the time had held Turkey responsible for the
Armenian genocide, that would have put all the would-be promoters of
genocide on notice that these actions would not be tolerated and,
perhaps, what followed would not have happened … but failing the
Armenians, the result that followed was the holocaust.
I am not trivializing the HOLOCAUST, but pointing out where mankind
failed in its duty to protect minorities.
So, like or not, by our silence, we can sometimes unknowingly promote
barbarism … and the question that should now be asked is, were the
deaths of those two million Iraqi men, women and children carried out
on the orders of those like Adolf Hitler not WAR CRIMES? And, if we
deny that these acts were perpetrated we too are hypocrites.
Thus we must hold all those who commit atrocities … be they
Americans, Germans or any other nationality … be held to the same
standards of law. That being said, I have not diminished the Holocaust
in any way … but in the light of day, we have exposed the reason why
barbarism was promoted and overlooked by so many.
All life is sacred … and thus even one life taken is a loss to those
who are killed by madmen throughout the world.
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