A PERSONAL AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL REVIEW OF THE ORIGINS AND BEGINNING YEARS OF GENOCIDE STUDIES AND AN OVERVIEW OF THE FIELD TODAY

A Special Legacy Article

by Israel W. Charny

The following is the complete article and contains materials that have not been included in the edited version published by Genocide Studies and Prevention (GSP) – Volume 17, No. 3, pp. 1-18. The major difference as noted in the journal article (p.16) is that a fuller description of the history of the development of the International Network of Genocide Scholars (INOGS) is included and especially the story of the considerable efforts of their journal, the Journal of Genocide Research (JGR), to minimize the significance of the Holocaust.  Additionally, the present complete article includes a good number of references that were omitted in the journal version.

 This complete article will be published on the website of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide Jerusalem (www.ihgjlm.com), and the blog of Genocide Watch  (https://www.genocidewatchblog.com/post/israel-charny-a-personal-history-of-genocide-studies).

Part One: The Genesis of a New Discipline

This review came about in response to a remarkably inaccurate and misleading Wikipedia entry on genocide studies in which the unnamed author attributed to two well-known scholars virtually entire ownership of the origins of the whole field.[1]  The apparently grandiose and certainly factually incorrect article utterly amazed me and several other colleagues, and we agreed that a revision had to be prepared.

Fortunately, in time the inappropriate claim of ownership of the field was replaced by a new entry on Genocide Studies in Wikipedia, but the spark for recording a meaningful summary of the beginnings of our field had been lit in me and I was in to writing about the early history of our field.  Before long it also became clear to me that I had a lot more wanting to be said than would have fit the space of a Wikipedia entry, and I decided to continue with a book chapter-length essay. I write much of this essay in the first person given that I was one of a very small number of participants in the earliest unfolding of Genocide Studies in general and the organization of IAGS specifically.  I realized that I personally had been so deeply involved in the very beginnings of Genocide Studies that my writing was necessarily autobiographical and should be identified as such in its title and subject to critical review as such.

I am happy to note that this manuscript has also been reviewed by two very dear colleagues, veteran and outstanding genocide scholars, Samuel Totten and Gregory Stanton.

Totten is a well-known specialist in several areas of genocide studies,”[2] including field based interviews of scores of survivors of the Darfur genocide and the genocide of attrition in the Nuba mountains,[3] also the 1994 Rwandan genocide;[4] the prevention and intervention of genocide; and the development of one of the most popular texts used in genocide courses around the globe (Centuries of Genocide – five editions to date)[5]; food as a weapon of war/genocide; and the roles of bystanders.[6]

The second critical reviewer of this manuscript is the veteran genocide scholar and leader, Gregory Stanton, who was my vice president when I was president of IAGS, and who then succeeded me as president of IAGS.  Greg is the founder and president of Genocide Watch, an invaluable monitor of developing world events, and has contributed great deal to awareness of stages of development of genocide. [7] (Fuller descriptions of the works of both will follow later.)

Nonetheless, the review is clearly a statement of my personal experiences and views, and insofar as basic inaccuracies or unfair analyses appear, the responsibility is entirely mine. My greatest concern is that I have omitted important scholars inadvertently or selfishly, missed or minimized important contributions, or made statements that are unfairly embarrassing to a colleague, and as I said in all such instances the responsibility is fully mine.

The Bizarre ‘Credit-Grabbing Entry’ in Wikipedia

As noted, this review of the early history of the development of Genocide Studies was written initially in response to an astonishingly and sorely incomplete Wikipedia entry that essentially attributed the whole development of the field to two genocide scholars whose presence was not at all registered by any of us who were busy with launching the new field.[8]

Thankfully, the introductory statement in the astounding entry in Wikipedia was not without merit in attributing the basic origin of the field to the work of Raphael Lemkin, a Polish legal official himself a Holocaust survivor who escaped the Nazis but lost virtually all of his large family, and who is correctly credited with creating the term “genocide.”[9]

It was also correct in identifying the Holocaust as initially the “primary subject matter of genocide studies,” and Lemkin’s definition of genocide as both killing and physical destruction as well as “cultural genocide” is presented accurately. The emphasis and correct explanation of the concept of “cultural genocide” is especially to the credit of the authors who quote Lemkin that such genocide is “the annihilation of a group’s culture even if the group themselves are not completely destroyed.”[10] Regrettably, and in my opinion very incorrectly, many scholars of genocide have gone on to insist on exhuming actual bloody bodies before they would even consider that an action or a policy intending to destroy a culture’s continuity could be considered genocidal.[11]

However, following the opening on Lemkin, the Wikipedia entry deteriorated radically, beginning with the total omission of any and all of the seminal works in the English language that launched genocide studies 35 years later at the end of the 1970’s and in the beginning of the 1980’s.

For many years after the revealing and authoritative book by Raphael Lemkin as World War II  was coming to an end, in which he presented for the first time the word-concept “genocide,” no work on genocide appeared in the United States.[12]  There was one work in English, The Crime of State, by Pieter Drost, published in Holland in 1959,[13] but it did not receive much of a response in the U.S. as far as we know. To my amazement, it has recently come to my attention that we Americans who were to be responsible for generating the new field of Genocide Studies were preceded quite significantly by a “Congress for the Prevention of Genocide” which was the second Congress of the International Society for the Prevention of Crime (La Société Internacionale de Prophalylaxie Criminelle) in July 1967 in Paris![14] Due to space constraints I am unable to identify all of the European participants who are named in the small amount of material about the Congress that has reached me, but I am pleased to be able to identify three of the participants whose work was otherwise known to me: the American professor of social psychology, Otto Klineberg, the French historian Leon Poliakov, and an Israeli criminologist, Benjamin Mendelsohn, who is identified as the “‘father’ of victimology.”

In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s a quantum leap was made vis-a- vis the publication of four major books. Together with Lemkin’s foundational work, these books became the intellectual foundation and driving force for the development of the new discipline of genocide studies:[15]

  1. Irving Louis Horowitz, Genocide: State Power and Mass Murder, 1976[16];
  2. Leo Kuper. Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century, 1981[17];
  3. Israel W. Charny. How Can We Commit the Unthinkable: Genocide, The Human Cancer, 1982[18]
  4. Jack Nusan Porter. Genocide and Human Rights: A Global Anthology, 1982[19]

It is also appropriate to note here that just two years earlier, Helen Fein, who a decade later was to become the first president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), authored an outstanding comparative study of the fates of the Jews in the different countries overtaken by the Nazis, and while her book is devoted solely to the one genocide of the Holocaust, it is in effect a groundbreaking comparative study of the genocides of the Jews in the many countries the Nazis occupied, and very much laid a groundwork for thinking about comparative studies of genocides in general.[20]

Three of the pioneering authors noted above, Kuper, Horowitz and Charny, were  now invited by Amnesty International to a meeting in Amsterdam in 1982 to present the newly emerging concept of genocide; and it was from this meeting that Martin Ennals, then the Secretary-General of Amnesty who had led it to worldwide recognition and no less than a Nobel Prize, was recruited by Leo Kuper to leave Amnesty in order to head a new organization, International Alert, based in London. Ennals did so because he felt that it was time for Amnesty to move from the concern with individual prisoners of conscience to the subjects of large-scale group destruction, but Amnesty decided not to undertake this expansion notwithstanding the presentations made by Kuper, Horowitz, and Charny. Sadly, Ennals was to die unexpectedly a short time later, and although there was a period of several years of activity by International Alert, it failed in its efforts to materialize into the organization envisioned by Kuper.

Briefly about the four authors:

Irving Louis Horowitz was a famed sociologist and professor at Rutgers University, and also the publisher of Transaction Publishers, which in the years that followed became a powerhouse for new and varied books on genocide such as the monumental studies of the demographics of genocide by University of Hawaii political scientist, RJ Rummel,[21] and the book recognizing the first generation of pioneers of genocides studies edited by Samuel Totten and Steven L. Jacobs.[22]

Leo Kuper, a professor at UCLA, was also a sociologist. He was originally a South African who had published an earlier seminal work on polarization between warring ethnicities in Africa.[23]   As noted, in 1981-1982, Kuper published his foundational work on various genocides in the 20th century and on understanding genocide as a process,[24] and followed up in 1985 with a second volume on the prevention of genocide by the international system.[25]

Israel W. Charny, an American clinical psychologist, moved from Philadelphia in 1973 to live in Israel where he completed his major work on the victims, bystanders and perpetrators of genocide.[26] In this book, Charny together with Chanan Rappaport, then Director of the Szold Institute in Jerusalem, Israel’s National Institute for Research in the Behavioral Sciences, formulated the concept of a Genocide Early Warning System (GEWS).[27] The concept earned commendations far and wide including from the United Nations, U.S. State Department, the Chancellor of Germany, the Prime Minister of France, and the New York Times.

 

SAMPLE RESPONSES TO GENOCIDE EARLY WARNING SYSTEM

WILLIE BRANDT, Bonn, Prime Minister of Germany: “Your plan to develop concepts and proposals for disseminating the information of a genocide and human rights data indeed sounds fascinating.  I would like to assure you that I am ready to give you my moral support.”

PIERRE MENDES FRANCE, Paris, Prime Minister of France: “I congratulate you with much warmth on your initiative and undertaking to establish a center against genocide and for the protection of human rights which you propose to establish in Jerusalem.”

When Charny would be asked how he became so involved in the study of genocide, he would tell the story that five years after receiving his Ph.D. in clinical psychology he was eligible to undergo an evaluation of his knowledge and clinical skills in order to qualify for the highest accreditation of the profession, which was certification as a “Diplomate” by the American Board of Professional Psychology (ABPP).  When he went to sleep on the evening of the day on which he received the happy news that he had qualified, he dreamt a graphic dream about the horrors of the Holocaust and awoke with a pounding question, “How could they have done it?”  He then realized that although he was now certified as a full-blown expert on the psychology of human behavior that he had never been taught a thing about the extent of human beings’ evil and destructiveness, and he resolved that he would devote much of his professional life to this issue.

Jack Nusan Porter, also a sociologist, published the first anthology of genocide studies in 1982 which included his ambitiously creative effort to describe the conditions under which genocide was most likely to erupt.

The First International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide in 1982 Despite the Fierce Opposition of Turkey and Israel

It was also in 1982 that “The First International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide” took place in Tel Aviv.  The conference was originated by Israel Charny, beginning in 1979, without any organizational context or backing whatsoever, simply with letters of invitation to known human rights leaders, communication specialists, and representatives of various ethnic groups, such as Jews, Armenians, Ukrainians, Hungarians and the Bah’ai, who had suffered genocide or the threat of genocide. Charny was joined by Shamai Davidson, MD, a psychiatrist-psychoanalyst who directed a major mental health hospital in Israel and himself specialized in treating with great sympathy Holocaust survivors. Iconic Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, who was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, joined Charny in designing the historic conference on genocide, and accepted the role of president of the conference.[28]

The conference took place only in Tel Aviv following the withdrawal of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem where the conference had been planned to open – but it did take place very successfully.  Over the years several scholars and publications have mistakenly stated that the conference was canceled because of furious efforts by both Turkey and Israel to cancel it,[29] but in fact a quite substantial conference with 300 participants did take place.  In fact, this conference has been hailed many times as a decisive historical event in the development of Genocide Studies as well as a triumph of academic freedom.[30]

As the date of the conference approached, a political brouhaha erupted when Turkey put pressure on Israel to suspend the participation of the Armenian scholars of the Armenian Genocide who were scheduled to present.[31] The conference leaders – including Elie Wiesel before he resigned – absolutely refused to cancel the Armenian speakers, but subsequently, the State of Israel made many efforts to have the conference canceled altogether. See the series of reports in the New York Times at the time[32]:

 

Headlines of Five Stories in New York Times Tracking the Drama of Threat

to the Conference by Turkey and Israel, but the Conference Does Take Place Successfully

1. Special to the New York Times, June 2, 1982

“Parley on Genocide in Doubt, Pressure by Turkey Reported”

2. Special to the New York Times, June 3, 1982

“Israel Set to Oppose Parley After Threat to Turkish Jews”

3. Associated Press, June 4, 1982

“Genocide Seminar with Armenians to Go Forward”

4. Special to the New York Times, June 5, 1982, by Marvine Howe

“Turkey Denies It Threatened Jews on Tel Aviv Parley on Genocide”

5. Special to the New York Times, June 22, 1982

“Genocide Seminar, Opposed by Israel, Opens”

The conference was wounded by the powerful attacks of the Israeli government whose official diplomatic representatives contacted known registrants virtually to order them in the name of the State of Israel not to come, and then even called people who had already arrived in Tel Aviv to inform them that the conference had been canceled when it had not, and also brought heavy pressures to stop incoming financial support such as convincing one substantial donor to cancel his check before it cleared.  But when called by the New York Times, Charny announced that the conference nonetheless would take place and added that there would be a conference even if no more than 10 people were in attendance — thus invoking the traditional Jewish concept of a minyan of 10 people that is needed to conduct a full prayer service in the synagogue.

Among the scholars of Holocaust and genocide and human rights who were invited to conduct two-day pre-conference workshops and/or to serve as Section Leaders at the conference were Leo Kuper; distinguished psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, author of many studies including one of the Nazi doctors in the Holocaust; and Richard Hovannisian,[33] UCLA professor of history and Armenian studies (whose book following the conference was referenced earlier) who many described as the intellectual doyen of the Armenian community in the U.S., and who headed up the delegation of Armenian scholars at the conference which also included the fabled Armenian scholar, Vahakn Dadrian, in what was , according to their excited descriptions, the first ever international academic presentation on the Armenian Genocide.  I remember vividly how some of the Armenian speakers were so nervous – as if in their post-traumatic torment they feared that Turkish agents or their representatives would intrude on the scene – that they kept asking why there was not more visible police protection.

Sadly, a good number of other designated Section Leaders who had indicated they would participate dropped out, including Holocaust scholar, Yehuda Bauer, who later apologized that he was wrong, and law professor Alan Dershowitz who simply didn’t show up.[34]

The most dramatic exit from the conference was no less cut by our own conference president, Nobel prize-winning Holocaust survivor and writer-philosopher, Elie Wiesel. He had enthusiastically accepted my original invitation to be president of the conference, and in the early stages of Israel’s efforts to appease Turkey by removing the subject of the Armenian Genocide from the conference, Wiesel had stayed firm with the rest of us in his refusals to do so.  But then when the government of Israel put its greatest influences to work – including no less than the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister- and insisted that Turkey had threatened Jewish lives and that Jewish persons would be at risk if the lectures on the Armenian Genocide were delivered, Wiesel understandably caved in. Surprisingly to many people, although I was frustrated and certainly worried about the success of the conference, I largely understood and even sympathized with Wiesel.[35] I have been criticized by some colleagues for ‘going soft on him,’ but I really do understand how Wiesel, first and foremost a real life survivor of the hell of the Holocaust, and a truly dedicated Jew, could not go against the instructions of his heroes, the leaders of Israel, or take the risk of contributing to the deaths of Jews. Nonetheless, I have to report that Elie Wiesel did go on to behave very badly, and even nastily in efforts to have the conference canceled in its entirety. (I also describe in my book how Wiesel and I reunited once again, quite warmly, but basically our relationship never really recovered and we ended moving apart once more.)

The big question was whether there were or were not any real risks to Jewish lives either in Turkey itself or by way of ending the opportunity of Jews to escape from Iran and Syria through Turkey.  These were the two threats that had been conveyed to us by the Israel Foreign Ministry.  At first the language was about ‘threats to Jewish lives’ — the implication being threats to Jews living in Turkey.  Subsequently, references to Jews in Turkey seemed to stop but were replaced with even greater passion by the representatives of the Israeli Foreign Ministry with statements that the escape routes of Jews from Iran and Syria to Turkey would be blocked and would lead to their possible deaths.  It was an enormous responsibility for me and us now to evaluate these threats as we made our decisions, step by step, to resist the government’s demands.  I consulted with many people, including my asking for the assistance of the US State Department who responded graciously and helpfully. After a few days of studying the matter, they conveyed to me their judgment that there was little risk.

The US State Department judgment was also my judgment, with several other colleagues concurring.  Thank God, I was right, but it was only much later in these recent years, that I discovered what I describe in my recent book, Israel’s Failed Response to the Armenian Genocide[36]) based on the previously secret documents of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, that Turkey actually never made such threats!  It was Israel that manufactured the threats in order to cover its sycophantic collaboration with Turkey’s demands to evade and hide the history of the Armenian Genocide its forebears had committed.

The Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem – the First Institute on Genocide – and the First Encyclopedia of Genocide

Following this first conference in 1982, Israel Charny founded the first Institute in the world devoted to genocide studies, the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem. [37] As was the case with the 1982 conference, there were at the outset absolutely no organizational identities involved in the launch of the new institute. Charny enjoys telling how at the time he met with many people to recruit their support and participation, and how there was one group of people who responded critically – and at times very, very excitedly – that the Holocaust must remain unique and separate from other cases of genocide; while a second group criticized any explicit inclusion of the Holocaust in the title and mission of the Institute.  The two diametrically contradictory oppositions only strengthened our resolve to address both the Holocaust and many other cases of genocide all as representative of a universal problem of mass genocidal killing.

The Institute’s formal legal registration was completed by Israel Charny, Shamai Davidson and Elie Wiesel.  A truly new academic discipline was being born from scratch.

None of the above earns a peep in the Wikipedia entry to which we have been referring. As noted, in the Wikipedia entry there are altogether eleven references and one bibliographic entry, all of them from the same two scholars, Donald Bloxham and Dirk Moses, both of whom later become affiliated with an organization to be named INOGS (International Network of Genocide Scholars) that was created as a rival to the already existing IAGS (International Association of Genocide Scholars – whose history we present shortly).

Not only does the Wikipedia entry make no reference whatsoever to the above seminal books and conference, it also passes entirely over the historic creation and beginning conferences of IAGS, and makes no reference whatsoever to the first encyclopedia in the field (all of which preceded the referenced Bloxham and Moses’ work). The Encyclopedia of Genocide edited by Israel Charny, with Associate Editors Rouben Adalian, Steven L. Jacobs, Eric  Markusen, Marc I. Sherman and Samuel Totten, and Forewords by Bishop Desmond Tutu and Simon Wiesenthal was published in 1999 in the US, in 2000 in the UK, with three printings in English, and was followed by a French edition in 2001,[38] and an e-book edition in 2003.[39]

The Encyclopedia was honored by the American Library Association as

“Outstanding Academic Book of the Year.”

There were two Forewords to the Encyclopedia of Genocide on the topic of “Why is it Important to Learn about the Holocaust and the Genocides of All Peoples?,” one by the late Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, and the second by the late Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter, Simon Wiesenthal.

BISHOP TUTU, who at this writing has just passed away, was a great and successful leader in the battle of Africans against apartheid.  He wrote in the Encyclopedia:

We learn about the Holocaust and other genocides so that we can be
more human, more gentle, more caring, more compassionate, valuing every person as being of infinite worth, so precious that we know that such atrocities will never happen again, that the world will be a more humane place that is hostile to such horrendous occurrences.  We will remember them so that we are not doomed to repeat them.  The Encyclopedia of Genocide is an invaluable tool toward that end.[40]

SIMON WIESENTHAL, who like Elie Wiesel became an iconic figure of a survivor of the nightmare of the Holocaust, remained an active Nazi hunter based in Vienna at his Jewish Documentation Center, and was also an impassioned spokesman calling for attention to the fates of other peoples such as the Roma (Gypsies) in the Holocaust whom he himself saw in the concentration camp being led to the same gas chambers in which the Jews died. Wiesenthal wrote:

Right after the war, I dreamed about the formation of a brotherhood of victims that could be a fighting body against any new – or old – forms of National Socialism… I appealed to all to not always talk just about the six million Jews who had been murdered and ignore the others; this reduced National Socialism to an exclusively Jewish problem… You can imagine how all at once a chorus of hateful people accused me of wanting to reduce the meaning of the Holocaust.

I am very happy about the publication of the first Encyclopedia of Genocide that treats at great length the Holocaust along with the genocides of a great many other peoples.[41]

For me (the developer and chief editor), the cherry on the cake of the two touching Forewords by these two great men was when each of them wrote me independently, without knowing of one another’s correspondence, how honored and moved each was to produce a Foreword alongside one another.

Part Two: Genocide Studies, A New Academic Discipline: Noteworthy Early Scholars and International Conferences

As was noted, the word genocide was created by Raphael Lemkin during WWII and was publicized by him in his epochal book at the time that WWII was coming to an end in 1944.[42]  However, in the 35 years that followed there still was no field of study of genocide.  What developed, slowly but surely, was a mounting array of narratives, reports, and analyses of individual cases of genocide, particularly the Holocaust, but there were no publications or centers that projected man as a genociding animal and/or addressed the genocidal process as a universal problem, while setting out also to research the genocides of many different peoples at one and the same time.  The breakthrough came as described above 35 years later towards the end of the 1970’s and the beginnings of the 1980’s, thanks to the independent works of Horowitz, Kuper, Charny, and Porter.  It is not inappropriate to note and it is not at all coincidental that all four of these scholars were Jewish and had been deeply affected by the Holocaust but went on to see its larger meaning for all peoples:

It was also noted earlier than in 1979 Helen Fein published an award-winning book on the Holocaust which applied a comparative approach to the study of the Holocaust in the many different countries in which the murders took place.[43] In 1982 Helen Fein founded a second institute of genocide studies in New York, the Institute for the Study of Genocide (ISG).  Fein, an historical sociologist, was Chair of the Board of Directors of ISG and served as executive director for over three decades. and as noted went on to become the first president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.

Also deserving of special mention at this time, in the year following Fein’s comparative study of the fates of Jews in the different countries ruled by the Nazis, there appeared an interdisciplinary study by George M. Kren, an historian, and Leon Rappoport, a psychologist, The Holocaust and the Crisis of Human Behavior, which addressed understanding the Holocaust from both historical and psychological perspectives and sought the basic meanings of the Holocaust for the future of mankind.[44]

In 1985, a conference took place at Bentley College outside of Boston, “Genocide and Human Rights: Lessons from the Armenian Experience.” At this conference, Israel Charny and political scientist Roger Smith[45] of the College of William and Mary in Virginia met as both presented papers on denials of the Armenian Genocide and on denials of genocides in general.  Subsequently, Smith who was at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia also introduced Charny to Herbert Hirsch, a fellow political scientist at Virginia Commonwealth University. In the course of subsequent collaborations in the following years, Charny proposed to Smith and Hirsch that the two of them, Smith and Hirsch, initiate an international organization of genocide scholars, something Charny would have liked to organize himself, but this was still a period when communication from overseas was extremely difficult (the World Wide Web was not yet up and running at the time, and international phone calls were notoriously difficult to organize and prohibitively expensive), and he realized that living in Israel he would not be able to handle the communication needs of the organization.  Smith and Hirsch indeed agreed with the desirability of an international organization but did not follow through.  However, a process was in motion, and as we shall see the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) was launched in 1994.

In 1988, at a Holocaust conference in London sponsored by British news mogul, Robert Maxwell and his wife, Dr. Elizabeth Maxwell, a single session had been dedicated to genocide of other peoples in which Israel Charny, Helen Fein, Robert Melson and Roger Smith participated, and these four now well-acquainted scholars met for lunch where they decided to found the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS).  IAGS was subsequently launched in 1994 with Helen Fein as the first president.

Co-founders of the International Association of Genocide Scholars
L to R: Helen Fein, Robert Melson, Israel W. Charny, Roger W. Smith

Slowly, and then increasingly rapidly, a new contingent of top genocide scholars emerged in the 1990’s, including the three scholars who together with Charny were the founders of IAGS, each of whom also served a term as president of the organization: Helen Fein,[46] Robert Melson,[47] and Roger Smith.[48]

The growing number of additional scholars included the following (in each case we cite some representative publications of this scholar): Jack Porter,[49] Eric Markusen,[50] Barbara Harff,[51] Colin Tatz,[52] Steven Leonard Jacobs,[53]  Joyce Apsel[54] (who also became president of IAGS), and Frank Chalk[55] (who also served as IAGS president), Kurt Jonassohn, [56] Robert Jay Lifton,[57] Yves Ternon,[58] Ben Kiernan,[59] Henry Huttenbach,[60] Adam Jones,[61] James Waller,[62] Ervin Staub,[63] Alex Alvarez,[64] Alexander Hinton,[65] Jerry Fowler [66] Scott Straus,[67] Deborah Lipstadt,[68] Michael Berenbaum,[69] and Christopher Browning[70] and others. (Once again I will comment that I regret very much my inevitable omissions of additional scholars who deserve to be recognized in the unfolding early history of Genocide Studies).

Needless to say, during these early years of Genocide Studies, considerable research continued on the Holocaust largely in its traditional settings such as Yad Vashem.  What should also be noted, however, is that these years marked a meaningful upsurge in research publications about the Armenian Genocide.  Two truly outstanding scholars of the Armenian Genocide who should be cited are Vahakn Dadrian[71] and Richard Hovannisian.[72]

Two genocide scholars in the unfolding years who deserve special recognition are Samuel Totten and Gregory Stanton. Each of them was introduced earlier in this essay, but here I will add that each of them– in different ways – has pioneered a path of genuine activism in the pursuit of reducing genocide in the world along with their academic contributions.

Samuel Totten, who conducted field research into the genocides perpetrated by Sudan, has responded courageously in actual trips to Sudan to which he has brought relief supplies to the suffering people, especially in the war-torn Nuba Mountains.  In doing so, Totten has conveyed a powerful challenging message to genocide scholars in general, that our scholarly works in the safety of our ivory towers are not enough, and that we have a moral responsibility also to choose ways in which to take meaningful action against genocide in the real world. [73]

Totten is also an unbelievably prolific writer on genocide.  We have seen the masterful best-seller textbook by Totten, Century of Genocide, edited together with the late long-time chief-of-staff of the US Holocaust Museum, who previously had been a co-founder of Facing History Facing Ourselves, William S. Parsons, has appeared since 1995 in multiple editions. The book combines innovatively critical examinations of genocides perpetrated in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries together with eyewitness accounts of the genocide.

In addition to works cited earlier, Totten has produced a spectacular bibliography of the basic knowledge of genocide (close to 1,300 pages).  The following are some of the other subjects of his many publications: individual government complicity in perpetrating genocide; the bystander syndrome; moving from the academy into the field; the pedagogy of teaching about Holocaust and genocide, and genocide prevention and intervention.[74]

Totten also took over editing the series, Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review published by Transaction Publishers.[75].

Gregory H. Stanton is the founder and president of Genocide Watch and the chair of the Alliance Against Genocide. These were the first anti-genocide NGO and coalition. They have published more reports and alerts to prevent genocides than any other organization. In 1982, he also founded and directed the Cambodian Genocide Project. Over the years, he played a central role in creating the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (Khmer Rouge Tribunal), and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. The results of those institutions have been among the most powerful drivers of genocide studies.

From 2005-2007 he served as vice president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), and in 2007-2009 he was president. Over the years he has played a vital role in the IAGS including incorporating the organization, getting it tax exempt status, creating its listserv, making membership dues dependent on income, more than doubling its membership, significantly revising the IAGS Bylaws, writing over half of the IAGS Resolutions ever adopted, and making the IAGS journal, Genocide Studies and Prevention, accessible online free outside the IAGS membership. As IAGS vice-president Stanton coordinated the organization and program for the 2007 Sarajevo IAGS conference, which is still the largest IAGS conference ever held. The conference was chaired by then president Israel Charny, who also organized an extraordinary three day seminar at Auschwitz from which the participants flew to Sarajevo.

For many years, Stanton was Research Professor in Genocide Studies and Prevention at the George Mason University in Fairfax County, Virginia. He is best known for his authorship of The Ten Stages of Genocide, a model of the genocidal process that the US State Department and UN have used in predicting and taking steps to prevent genocide. His Ten Stage model is used in courses on genocide in schools and colleges around the world.[76] Genocide Watch is a voice of information about the real world in which we are living at any given moment and sounds for the world alarms about the eruption of genocidal events as well as signs and signals of processes that may lead to genocide.

Both Stanton and Totten are noteworthy pioneers in forging transitions for genocide study from the critical foundational stage of learning, research and data gathering to ambitious action projects – a sequence that characterizes many fields of science, including, for example, the field of medicine.  To date, only a few genocide scholars have pressed through to a transition to this further stage to undertake actual projects that aim at the reduction of genocide in our real world.

International Conferences on Genocide Studies

As the years went by, IAGS sponsored notable conferences in many parts of the U.S. and Canada and then also around the world. as a result, Genocide Studies has grown more and more to be an active discipline in many parts of the world.   The following are IAGS conferences held from 1995-2018:

1995 College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA, inaugural conference under the presidency of Helen Fein

1997 Concordia University, Montreal, Canada, under the presidency of Helen Fein

1999 University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, under the presidency of Roger Smith

2001 University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, under the presidency of Frank Chalk

2003 University of Galway, Galway, Ireland, under the presidency of Joyce Apsel

2005 Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida, under the presidency of Robert

Melson

2007 University of Sarajevo, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzogovina, under the presidency of Israel Charny

This conference was the first to be held by IAGS in a nation that had recently had a genocide.

It was preceded by a moving Auschwitz Seminar in Cracow, Poland, on the actual grounds of the murder installations of Auschwitz and Birkenau. The Auschwitz Seminar was initiated and organized by Charny, with management assistance by Steven L. Jacobs, and featured on-site consultants and guides, Michael Berenbaum and Deborah Lipstadt.

2009 George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, under the presidency of Gregory Stanton

2011 Universidad Nacional de Tres Febrero, Buenos Aires, Argentina, under the presidency of William Schabas

2013 University of Siena and the Kingston University, Siena, Italy, under the presidency of Alexander Hinton

2014 University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada, under the presidency of Daniel Feierstein

2015 Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, Yerevan, Armenia, under the presidency of Andrew Woolford

2017 University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, under the presidency of Andrew Woolford

2018 American University of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, under the presidency of Henry Theriault

2021 University of Barcelona, Spain (virtual conference), under the presidency of Henry Theriault

 

Since its founding, the competing organization INOGS also has been responsible for a good number of meaningful international conferences. INOGS identifies their conferences as “Global Conference on Genocide,” (https:/inogs.com/conferences/), which they have held in different locations in the world including:

2012 San Francisco State University

2014 University of Cape Town, South Africa

2016 Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute

2018 Medical Faculty of AIX-Marseille University (France)

2020 Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (a virtual conference – the university itself is located in Daytona Beach, Florida and Prescott, Arizona).

2022 Mexican Institute for Justice and University of Texas, Dallas in Mexico City

Part Three: Publications of Genocide Studies, The Development of a Conflicting Organization of Scholars, The Imbroglio over Holocaust Minimization in the Journal of Genocide Research, and an Overview of Genocide Studies Today

The earliest series of regular publications on studies of genocide appeared in human rights publications such as Hannah and Alan Newcombe’s Peace Research Abstracts in Ontario, Canada, beginning in 1967, and Laurie Weisberg and Harry Scoble’s InterNet: International Human Rights Documentation Network in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada beginning in 1976. Both were rich sources of information on peace studies in general, which included citations and abstracts that touched on the emerging subject of genocide.

Internet on the Holocaust and Genocide, 1985-1995

In 1985, Israel Charny launched the Internet on the Holocaust and Genocide,[77] a computer-generated newsletter that was published in 56 issues until 1995 when the publication was transferred to the Centre for Comparative Genocide Studies, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia under the editorship of the late Colin Tatz, with a change of title to the International Network on Holocaust and Genocide. Unfortunately, only a few issues were published before political, academic political, and budgetary processes led to the dissolution of the Centre and Colin Tatz transferred to another university.

Internet on the Holocaust and Genocide pioneered several new paths. First of all, originally Internet was launched only after gaining the integrated support of several nationalities and ethnic identities, including the Bahai, Jewish sources in Israel and America, a German government agency, and a Hungarian human rights group. At the time there were memorial publications by different peoples who had suffered genocides, but very rarely were there joint publications by or about several victim groups together. Internet now related simultaneously to the victims of different peoples’ genocides.  Internet also was directed purposefully at a multidisciplinary audience – in history, law, mental health, medicine, political science, psychology, education, the arts, and more.  In other words, unlike the publications around the world that were produced by individual ethnic groups about the tragedy of their own specific genocide, and unlike beginning literatures on genocide in separate scholarly and professional fields – especially in history- Internet was a new and major call to all peoples and to all disciplines. Moreover, unusually, Internet on the Holocaust and Genocide was distributed at no cost to all those who requested it (our financial support came from several organizations and from many subscribers who kindly acknowledged our request of a voluntary $25 subscription).

The Internet on the Holocaust and Genocide included regular columns by the giant and in my opinion the key founder of Genocide Studies, Leo Kuper, and by a very remarkable lady who had survived the Holocaust – including her working in the Sonderkammando where bodies of the Jewish victims were burned in ovens, Lily Kopecky.  Lily, who impressively also had an adjunct appointment at Emory University, now lived in Israel where she chaired a major organization of Holocaust survivors. One of the dramatic stories Lily Kopecky would tell was about her confrontation with the arch-denier of the Holocaust, Arthur Butz, a tenured professor of engineering at Northwestern University, who authored the malevolent book, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century.  The two were confronting one another on a radio program.  Butz denied that the Germans ever subjected the Jews to gassing in gas chambers and their cremation of them.  Kopecky of course retorted that she personally had been there, at which point the trapped Butz could only storm his way out of the studio.

Internet also included eight memorable Special Issues including a summary of the epochal Whittaker Report on genocide to the United Nations in December 1987; Ted Gurr and Barbara Harff on computerized data banks about minorities at risk around the world; the 75th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide; the cardinal role of power-seeking in the genesis of genocide by RJ Rummel[78]; denials of genocides, education about genocide and more.

The Series, Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review  

In 1988, Israel Charny and the Institute were invited by a British publisher, Mansell, to create a first volume that would review the emerging new discipline of Genocide Studies.   Charny designed a new format that would combine authoritative encyclopedic reviews of the subject matter in a given area of the field with a substantial annotated bibliography of publications in that area. Chapters in the first volume included Charny on the emerging field and on intervention and prevention of genocide; Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn on the history and sociology of genocidal killings; Alan Berger on the Holocaust as the ultimate and archetypal genocide; Richard Hovanissian on the Armenian Genocide; James Mace on the Ukrainian Famine Commission, a report presented to and published by the U.S. House of Representatives; David Hawk on the Cambodian Genocide; Leo Kuper on a variety of cases of genocide and “genocidal massacres” and on a review of different types of genocide; William Gay and Ronald Santoni on philosophy and contemporary genocide including “multiple genocide and nuclear destruction”; Israel Charny on the psychology of genocidal destructiveness; and Samuel Totten, on the literature, art and film of the Holocaust, genocide, and “nuclear and other futuristic destruction.”[79]

The publication in England was joined by an American edition by an American publisher, Facts on File.  As was to be true for the Encyclopedia of Genocide to be published ten years later, the first volume of the new series was the recipient of the American Library Association’s honor as “Outstanding Academic Book of the Year.”

In the following years Volume 2 appeared in 1991 with contributions by Charny on denial of genocide, Erich Kulka on denial of the Holocaust, Roger Smith on denial of the Armenian Genocide; Vahakn Dadrian on documentation of the Armenian Genocide in Turkish sources; David Kader and then in another chapter Kader together with Barbara Harff on law and genocide; Jan Darsa of the wonderful educational organization, Facing History Facing Ourselves, on teaching about the Holocaust; Samuel Totten on educating about genocide; Eric Markusen on “genocide, total war, and nuclear omnicide”; Sybil Milton on memorialization and museumology;  Totten on first person accounts of genocide;  Pearl and Samuel Oliner on righteous people in the Holocaust; and Herbert Hirsch and Roger Smith on the language of extermination.  The Foreword to the book was written by the eminent Leo Kuper.[80]

In 1994 the third volume, now published both in the US and UK by Transaction Publishers included contributions by R.J. Rummel (who presented his new concept of “democide”); Leonard Glick, in a chapter that was the first known analysis of religion and genocide (which had been promised by several known religious leaders who then in each case literally withdrew at the last moment for fear of being sanctioned by their respective religious group for daring to reveal the facts of how religions participated in so many genocides); Vahakn Dadrian on documentation of the Armenian Genocide in Turkish sources; Rosanne Klass on Afghanistan; Martin von Bruinessen on the Kurds; James Dunn on East Timor; Gabrielle Tyrnauer on Gypsies in the Holocaust; Robert Krell on psychiatric treatment of Holocaust survivors; George Kent on genocidal starvation of children; and Samuel Totten on nuclear proliferation, and in another chapter by him on non-governmental organizations working in the field of genocide.  The Foreword to this book was written by distinguished sociologist – and as previously noted one of the very first authors in the field – and publisher, Irving Louis Horowitz.

A fourth volume was published in 1997 edited by Robert Krell and Marc I. Sherman on Medical and Psychological Effects of Concentration Camps on Holocaust Survivors.  This book was dedicated as “The Eitinger Bibliography” to the Norwegian Jewish psychiatrist, Leo Eitinger who himself wrote a response to the dedication.  Both Eitinger and Krell were actual Holocaust survivors.  The Foreword of the book was written by Elie Wiesel who records emotionally that he and Leo Eitinger were together in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, and that Eitinger was the doctor who saved Elie Wiesel’s leg.

Following the above fourth volume, the editorship of the series was turned over by Charny to Samuel Totten, who in the years following produced continuing volumes published by Transaction Publishers. The titles edited by Totten were as follows[81]: Genocide at the Millennium, Vol 5, 2004; The Prevention and Intervention of Genocide, Vol 6, 2008; Plight and Fate of Women During and Following Genocide, Vol 7, 2012; Genocide of Indigenous Peoples edited by Samuel Totten and Robert Hitchcock, Vol 8, 2011; Impediments to the Prevention and Intervention of Genocide, Vol 9, 2013; Plight and Fate of Children During and Following Genocide, Vol 10, 2014; Controversies in the Field of Genocide Studies, Vol 11, 2017.

Holocaust and Genocide Studies

In 1986 the first international journal in the field of holocaust and genocide was launched under the editorship of Yehuda Bauer in Israel. It was published by Pergamon Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Council and Yad Vashem and was entitled, Holocaust and Genocide Studies– the very linkage between Holocaust and genocide that Charny had created for the first time for the First International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide in 1982.

Beginning in spring 1993, the journal’s publisher became Oxford University Press, and the journal was now published entirely under the sponsorship of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. To this day it is praiseworthy for its academic and journalistic excellence, including significant and extensive book reviews of Holocaust and genocide publications. However, the journal’s memorable title was misleading for a long time. Obviously the journal was slated to focus on the Holocaust as a major event, but at the same time it was slated to treat the Holocaust as part of a broad historical array of the genocides of many peoples, so that it would be made clear that all genocides belong to a common universal genre of calculated destructions of other peoples, but for many years it failed to do so. Regrettably, especially in the early years, the journal failed grossly to fulfill this goal (see critique by Steven Jacobs)[82], to a point where Leo Kuper, as a member of the editorial board, complained more than once to Bauer about his (Kuper) not being involved in any active way whatsoever in the development of any articles on genocide. (Ironically, when Leo Kuper passed away, the journal republished a eulogy of him written by Charny and emphasized that Prof. Kuper had been a distinguished member of its editorial board.)

Journal of Genocide Research (JGR), also the Initiation of the International Network of Genocide Scholars (INOGS)

In 1999, Henry Huttenbach, a professor of history at City University of New York, and himself a child survivor of the Holocaust, initiated the first journal devoted to genocide studies as a whole, the Journal of Genocide Research (JGR).  For some years, Huttenbach had been producing and distributing a mimeographed newsletter, and now he created a full-blown academic journal which brought new inspiration to the field.  However, in 2005 Huttenbach proceeded to transfer the journal to a new organization he was helping to create surreptitiously, without the awareness of IAGS, which was to become the International Network of Genocide Scholars (INOGS).  This organization insisted that it was committed to basic scientific study of genocide and eschewed IAGS’ adoption of various resolutions on genocidal events in the world.[83]  INOGS was to be (words used at various times) “neutral,” “impartial,” and “non-partisan” – which to my mind are the ultimate opposites of how people (including scholars at the most scientific moments of their work) should react to genocides.

Disturbingly, there was no prior collaboration whatsoever with IAGS about the development of INOGS.  Actually, the organization was originally initiated under the title European Network of Genocide Scholars (ENOGS), and when the foundational meeting of the organization took place in Berlin in January 2005 which I attended and to which I reluctantly brought the good wishes of IAGS. It was the founding president, Jurgen Zimmerer from Germany, who announced that he was going to change the organization from ENOGS to INOGS.  There then followed a passionate discussion by all those present that culminated in a resounding vote not to move from ENOGS to INOGS.  Nonetheless, when the two formal IAGS representatives who attended the foundational meeting, Frank Chalk and Israel Charny, met with Jurgen Zimmerer the following morning, Zimmerer cynically stated that he was going ahead with his intention to rename the organization in any case, and indeed he did so – the vote of the membership be damned.

For many years Zimmerer remained a ‘president for life’ of INOGS, without any elections by the members. In later years, an effort led by IAGS President, William Schabas, to merge the two organizations of IAGS and INOGS was rejected by the membership of IAGS. These two organizations have continued to function alongside one another – but very separately, and to our knowledge at times with a calculated suppression of critical remarks by scholar-members of IAGS about the other organization (INOGS), on the one hand wisely in order to avoid a more open warring rivalry in the field, on the other hand engendering an atmosphere of suppression of controversial thinking and free speech.

The subject of free speech in IAGS about INOGS brings up also a festering issue for both major organizations of genocide scholars. In both cases there have been complaints of members of outright suppression of viewpoints that in one way or another are not acceptable to the then current leaders of the organization, beginning particularly with the rejection of such papers for the journals to a point where it is ‘understood’ in the community of genocide scholars that ‘heretic’ ideas should not be submitted in the first place to that organization’s journal. In the case of JGR, there have been at least two cases of known critical readers who complain that they have even stopped receiving copies of the journal – though obviously one dare not consider these complaints solidly factual without further investigation. In IAGS there have been at least two instances where former presidents of the organization have received public “warnings” from the president and IAGS Executive Board without any due process under a “Code of Conduct” imposed by the Executive Board without any vote of the IAGS membership. The “Code” prohibits conduct that “disrespects” another IAGS member, without ever defining “disrespect.” It is a “Code” that has been used to silence criticism of the IAGS leadership. The IAGS Advisory Board withdrew one of the “warnings” because it was void for vagueness.

There were also several distinct cases over the years where posts submitted to the IAGS listserv were edited by the coordinator and the revisions were posted without having been seen and accepted by the original author of the post. I am happy to add that I wrote recently about one such incident and suggested to the current listserv editor that there be a policy of submitting any proposed revisions of a post to the author before publishing, and that his reply was that he agrees and will do so. However, what remains in force at this time is a decision to bar discussion altogether and for the listserv to become only a notice board of events and publications, a policy that to my mind is another variation of a failure to foster controversial thinking constructively and maturely.

The Campaign of JGR to Minimize Severely the Significance of the Holocaust

Over the years, from around 2010 on, the Journal of Genocide Research, the official journal of INOGS, embarked on a concerted campaign to minimize the significance of the Holocaust.[84]  A shocking article in the journal, which even became the journal’s main promotional giveaway for some years, featured British political scientist, Martin Shaw, with the claim that “pre-war Zionism included the development of an incipiently genocidal mentality towards Arab society.”  Although the author then acknowledged, “No serious scholar contends that Israel had a single policy of destroying the whole of Arab society, still less of murdering all Palestinian Arabs,” he goes on to say, “They took advantage of the war to extend the boundaries of the Israeli state beyond those allocated by the U.N., and to expel large parts of the Arab population…”

Sadly, Shaw is absolutely correct that there were several genocidal massacres by Israel and considerable forced expulsions of Arab populations from their homes,[85] but he places neither of these in any context of the frequency of such events in the course of many wars (or dare we even conclude that it is near all wars?); nor does Shaw recognize the common historical phenomenon of war and expansion of one’s borders in continuation of military successes (see, for example, the history of the United States expansion in the West).  Instead, Shaw develops explicitly the implication that from its very outset, the guiding purpose and force of Zionism was to move towards destroying the indigenous Arab population of Palestine. This allegation is absolutely not true. It was never the motivation or intention for the Jewish residents in Palestine nor for Jews around the world who, following the Holocaust, advocated for a Jewish homeland in a new state. At best, Shaw gave lip service recognition to the initiation of the War of Independence as a direct result of the Arabs’ rejection of the U.N. proposal of two independent states living side by side. But Shaw gave little or no recognition to the Zionist dream of a safe haven for an incredibly persecuted people in their historically original home.  This writer and many other scholars indeed acknowledge that (using Leo Kuper’s term) a frightening number of “genocidal massacres” by the Israelis took place in their war for independence. These atrocities must be roundly condemned.  Many other nations, including the US, Ireland, and Kenya, have had such massacres during their wars of independence on their way to becoming democratic countries.[86] But that is starkly different than characterizing Israel’s war of independence as “the genocide of 1948,” as Shaw does.

One article in JGR seemed to follow another, e.g., one article claimed that the Holocaust played no significant role whatsoever in the development of the United Nations Convention on Genocide,[87] nor was it significant for the development of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.[88] Both assertions are nonsensical “fake history.” And following the above articles, in the same issue, the editor of the journal, Dirk Moses, proceeded to write, as if an incontrovertible  fact had been established earlier, that the Holocaust did not contribute either to the formulation of the United Nations Convention on Genocide or to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights so that the evidence justifies considering the Holocaust as not particularly significant. Moses renders his ‘judicial judgment’ that “justifications for the Holocaust centrality – namely that its horror led to the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the Genocide Convention in 1948” –  has been no less than “abandoned.” He writes: “Having abandoned two previous justifications for the Holocaust’s centrality – namely that its horror led to the United Nation’s Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the Genocide Convention in 1948; and that it is the best documented and/or most commemorated genocide, i.e., the only one of world historical significance…” (p.231).[89]

Another example of JGR minimization of the Holocaust goes to such an extreme that it reminds one of the earliest deniers of the Holocaust who made blatant claims that there was no Holocaust, and/or that there were no gas chambers, and/or that there were no concentration camps, and/or that the Jews dined to the sound of symphony music in the camps where they were kept.  The article in JGR was by Gerhard Wolf about the Wannsee Conference in 1942 which is widely understood as the decisive organizational planning of the “Final Solution” for destroying the Jews, with quotas set for each of the occupied countries. Wolf writes: “The Wannsee Conference is still largely understood as the echo of an earlier decision to eliminate European Jewry.  This article questions this assumption.”  He says that the interpretation of the Wannsee Conference as aiming at the Jewish population “mistakenly concludes that because the conference targeted only Jews, it also emerged from within the narrow confines of the regime’s anti-Jewish policies.  Heydrich’s actions at Wannsee can be better understood as a response to early failures in Germanizing annexed Poland and the settlement fantasies coming out of the SS apparatus after the invasion of the Soviet Union.”  Wolf goes on to conclude, “The Wannsee Conference does not stand out in its aim.  Whether deporting Poles from the annexed territories or subjecting Jews to murderous working conditions on construction sites in the East, both contributed to the overall aim of creating German Lebensraum.[90]

Genocide Studies and Prevention, and Genocide Studies International

Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Journal of Genocide Research were then joined by the development of a third journal, Genocide Studies and Prevention, beginning in 2006.  The journal was founded by Israel Charny on behalf of IAGS together with Roger Smith representing the Zoryan Institute of Canada as a joint venture of the two organizations.  Charny was chair of the original editorial board and continued for three years, and four scholars were chosen to be the editors: Herbert Hirsch, Eric Markusen, Samuel Totten, and Alex Alvarez.

Regrettably, after some eight years IAGS and Zoryan parted ways, at which point the Zoryan Institute went on to found a new journal in 2014 under a new title, Genocide Studies International, with several of the original editors and with the same distinguished publisher, the University  of Toronto Press.[91] IAGS in turn continued its publication of Genocide Studies and Prevention online and proudly makes the journal available to all readers on the Internet without their necessarily being members of the organization.

Conclusion

In summary, what do we see in the larger picture of how Genocide Studies developed as a significant area of academic research, teaching and publication?

The outlandish and disgraceful Wikipedia entry cited earlier underscores the fact that from its inception INOGS has been overwhelmingly devoted to rivalry with IAGS, and worse to fictions that IAGS and the many scholars who have been prominently associated with it are largely irrelevant, and that their contributions have been framed through distorting lenses of overconcern with the Holocaust and with translations of genocidal events into calls for humanitarian interventions in our world today instead of staying grounded in the basic history of genocides.  In general, from its outset, INOGS continues to stand for pure research without a political view – a humanistic mot juste – on basic human rights issues.  At the same time, INOGS allowed itself to become a promoter of classical denials including minimizations of the Holocaust of the Jewish people.

The history of Genocide Studies also confirms the disturbing truth that we human beings, even when we are bona fide intellectuals and academics, are prone to many philosophical faults and logical errors, biased thinking, denials of objective consensual information, political favoritism of those who think and speak in the same tongue that we favor, and even to outright prejudice. Thus, in my opinion – and I have spoken to a number of other genocide scholars who concur – an unbelievable note of antisemitism has gained increasing prominence in the world of genocide scholars. There have even been a number of genocide scholars who have sought angrily and disparagingly to reduce attention to the Holocaust.

I am nonetheless very aware of the many significant contributions to genocide studies being made by INOGS and its journal. In no way am I characterizing all of its articles as aiming at minimizing the significance of the Holocaust as a major and prototypical event of genocide or all of its ideological intent as antisemitic. But I do stand by the severe critique of the many articles in the journal that in my opinion never should have been published, let alone never should have been written as they were.  Moreover, I remind those who have attacked me strenuously for this opinion that my conclusions were based on the responses of 130 people who examined the problematic articles, about 80 of them bona fide members of the community of genocide scholars and the remainder students in college courses on the Holocaust and genocide. The assessments of the articles and of the journal publishing them were theirs.  Because of the sensitivity of the subject we were also scrupulous about having the results analyzed and reported by an outside research group and made the results electronically available to all who wished to examine them.

It should be entirely clear that in no way am I objecting to critiques of Israel’s policies when they are deeply flawed. With all my love for Israel where I have chosen to live my life, I myself am a very strong critic both of Israel’s undue aggressions and promiscuous arms sales, but I am objecting to the adoption of an overall negativity towards Israel and its basic founding purpose and meaning to protect Jews from the murderous persecutions that have plagued them through the centuries culminating in the monstrous Holocaust in the 20th century.

In general, it has been my more than sad experience to see too much of genocide studies lose a moral urgency and genuine empathic sensitivity to the victims of the many genocides and to the emerging victims in situations in the world that may be unfolding towards genocide. Instead, a kind of ‘academization’ of the field has grown where too many scholars are concerned with the trappings of academic progress – publications, conferences, success in having their conceptions adopted by others, and increasing personal prominence. The sounds of pain at human suffering and protest at human immorality have become dulled and too often are not heard at all.  This was not the spirit in which we originally originated and developed the new field of Genocide Studies.

In my judgment, Genocide Studies should be an outstanding leader not only in forging principles of objective epistemology and knowledge, but also in generating respect and empathy for all victims of human cruelty.

In my opinion, IAGS itself as an organization would do well to sponsor projects battling against known fake news, rewriting of history, and denials of genocide, fighting hate speech and incitement, and championing respect and empathy for all victims of genocide, and sponsoring ceremonies that are devoted to multi-ethnic remembrance.

To conclude, the field of Genocide Studies should be a sterling example of the application of knowledge and science to the true protection and betterment of the human condition.  Otherwise, the study of genocide loses all meaning.

 

An Assessment by Irving Louis Horowitz

I am forever grateful to the great sociologist and publisher, the late Irving Louis Horowitz, for his assessment of my work and that of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide Jerusalem:

There are many characteristics of the work of Israel Charny that are unique – and that makes him a singular figure in the dismal ‘science’ of genocide studies.  I should like… to draw attention to three such properties: the first theoretical, the second organizational, and third, moral.  I do so not to celebrate a colleague – although he merits and has earned such encomiums but rather to highlight what social science can contribute to the course of civilization when done properly and decently….

What then are the special contributions made by Charny and his associates to this painful subject? First, there is the unity of life’s struggles as such, that is, to the unitary character of taking lives… Charny’s great virtue is that his focus… has never wavered from holding in suspension judgment as to who suffers most; while pursuing mechanisms for reducing suffering as such…

Now let me turn briefly to the organizational efforts involved in Charny’s work… for behind the theory is an organizational concept – a belief that issues of life and death frame any realignment of the social sciences… As a result of such efforts as Charny has launched through his Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, the professional review of genocide has secured a foothold in the world of social research…

The final point to note about this collective effort: the moral undertones that help inform the empirical analysis.  For without such controlled passions that distinguish right from wrong, life from death, all is lost in a bag of pure relativism… without such premises the work itself could never be conceived, much less carried out.[92]

References 

[1] Wikipedia does not name its authors, but the unbelievable exclusion of all of the known early leaders of genocide studies and the repeated references only to two scholars, Donald Bloxham and Dirk Moses, naturally raises the question whether they were also the authors of this entry.

[2] Totten has also contributed considerably to the history of Genocide Studies. See Totten, Samuel, and Jacob, Steven Leonard (Ed.) (2013) Pioneers of Genocide Studies. New York: Routledge [originally published by Transaction Publishers in 2002]. This was the first volume and included contributions by Rouben Adalian, M. Cherif Bassiouni, Israel W. Charny, Vahakn Dadrian, Helen Fein, Barbara Harff, David Hawk, Herbert Hirsch, Irving Louis Horowitz, Richard Hovannisian, Henry Huttenbach, Leo Kuper, Raphael Lemkin, James E. Mace, Eric Markusen, Robert Melson, R.J. Rummel, Roger W. Smith, Gregory H. Stanton, Ervin Staub, Colin Tatz, Yves Ternon, and the co-editors.

[3] Totten, Samuel (2014). Conflict in the Nuba Mountains: From Genocide-by-Attrition to the Contemporary Crisis in Sudan. New York: Routledge; Totten, Samuel (Ed.) (2017).  Sudan’s Nuba Mountains People Under Siege: Accounts by Humanitarians in the Battle Zone. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

[4] Totten, Samuel and Ubaldo, Rafiki (2011). We Cannot Forget: Interviews with Survivors of the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press

[5] Totten, Samuel and Parsons, William S. (Eds.) (2012). Centuries of Genocide: Essays and Eyewitness Accounts. Fourth Edition.  New York: Routledge.  The first volume in this series was in 1995: Genocide in the Twentieth Century: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts, edited by Totten, Parsons and Israel W. Charny, and published by Garland Publishing. A revised and expanded volume with a title change to Century of Genocide: Eyewitness Accounts and Critical Views was published in 1997, and a formal second edition published by Routledge appeared in 2004.  Subsequent editions were edited by Totten and Parsons until the latter’s death in 2016, and a new edition by Totten was published in 2022. Cases of genocide presented in various editions have included the Hereros, Armenians, Ukraine, the Holocaust – Jews, Gypsies, and disabled peoples,, Indonesia, East Timor, Bangladesh, Burundi, Cambodia, Guatemala, Kurdistan, Rwanda, Bosnia, Sudan, the Yazidis, Rohingya, and the Uyghurs.

[6] See some additional references to Totten’s works later.

[7] Stanton, Gregory (1996).  Ten Stages of Genocide. Genocide Watch, https://www.genocidewatch.com/tenstages

[8] In the Wikipedia entry the unnamed author(s) did not refer to any other scholar whatsoever as deserving of recognition in the original development of the field, including the scholar who in my opinion was the outstanding pioneer in the Western world, Prof. Leo Kuper of UCLA (whose major works are referenced shortly). As noted , all the references given in the entry were only to the two scholars named earlier.

[9] Lemkin, Raphael (1944). Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.  Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

[10] The reference to this quote is given as Bloxham, Donald, and Moses, A. Dirk (2010).  The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies, New York: Oxford University Press, p.35.

[11] Indeed,  many genocide scholars do not even accept masses of bloodied bodies as a basis for defining “genocide,” unless they can ‘prove’ in traditional Western academic terms the original order to kill the victims.  In my opinion, the field of genocide studies as a whole also has been characterized too much by relentless demands for a legal definition of intentional destruction of an entire people, and thereby has weakened dangerously our understanding and ability to identify the evil of many seriously destructive acts against collectives of people and massive events of actual mass murder but without the intention of killing all the victim people in the world.

See Ben Kiernan’s meaningful discussion of the “unhelpful vision [of] the way genocide is popularly understood [and] misses the main point that the “study of genocide has always involved careful scholarly navigation between the Scylla of full blown murder, and the Charybdis of less total but still definitively exterminationist and destructive actions such as massacres” (p.188), in Kiernan, Ben (2016 ).  Wall of Silence: The Field of Genocide Studies and the Guatemalan Genocide. Chapter (in English) in Brandal, Nik, and Thorsen, Dag Einar (Eds.). Oslo: Dryers Forlag, pp.169-198. Reprinted with permission on the website of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide: https://www.ihgjlm.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/BK-2016-Wall-of-Silence-Genocide-Studies-and-the-Guatemalan-Genocide-in-Den-Dannede-Oppr%C3%B8rer.pdf

[12] Lemkin, Raphael (1944). Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, ibid. 

[13] Drost, Pieter (1959).  The Crime of State. Two volumes.  Leyden: A. W. Sythoff.

[14] The notes that have reached me are from an article by Stanciu, V. (no date available). Reflections on the Congress for the Prevention of Genocide. This material also notes that for a selection of the lectures delivered at the Congress, see La Prophalylaxie du Génocide, Etudes Internationales de Psycho-Sociologic Criminelle, 11-12-13, Paris Juillet 1967. Needless to say, it is humbling that none of us incipient American genocide scholars ever knew of the above Congress and the professionals involved who to the best of my knowledge in no case appear in the subsequent unfolding of Genocide Studies in America.

[15] The ‘credit-grabbing entry’ in Wikipedia did not refer to any of the following works at all, nor to the fact that all four authors were outstanding driving forces in the development of the professional organization of genocide scholars.

[16] Horowitz, Irving Louis (1976). Genocide: State Power and Mass Murder. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.

[17] Kuper, Leo (1981).  Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century.  London: Penguin.  Republished in New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982. Note also Leo Kuper’s next book: Kuper, Leo (1985). The Prevention of Genocide.  New Haven: Yale University Press.  Together, this book and Kuper’s earlier volume emerged as the most advanced scholarship of genocide.

[18] Charny, Israel W. (1982). How Can We Commit the Unthinkable? Genocide: The Human Cancer. In collaboration with Chanan Rapaport. Introduction by Elie Wiesel. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. (Republished in paperback under the title, Genocide, the Human Cancer: How Can We Commit the Unthinkable? New York: Hearst Professional Books [William Morrow], 1983.) Translation into Portuguese, with new Introduction to this edition by the author and updated Bibliography: Anatomia do Genocídio: Uma Psicologia da Agressão Humana. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Rosa dos Tempos, 1998. Translated by Ruy Jungmann.  This book was republished by Routledge in 2020.

[19] Porter, Jack Nusan (1982).  Genocide and Human Rights: A Global Anthology. Lanham, MD.

[20] Fein, Helen (1979). Accounting for Genocide: National Responses and Jewish Victimization in the Holocaust. New York: Free Press.

[21] Two of a good number of noteworthy books by Rummel are the following: Rummel, R.J. (1994).  Death by Government.  New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers; Rummel, R.J. (1997a).  Statistics of Democide.  Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia, Center National Security Law.

[22] Totten, Samuel, and Jacobs, Steven Leonard (2002) (Eds.), Pioneers of Genocide Studies, ibid.

[23] Kuper, Leo (1977).  The Pity of It All: Polarization of Racial and Ethnic Relations. London: Duckworth.

[24] Kuper, Leo (1983). Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century, ibid.

[25] Kuper, Leo (1985).  The Prevention of Genocide, ibid.

[26] Charny, Israel W. (1982). How Can We Commit the Unthinkable? Genocide: The Human Cancer, ibid. The chapter on the Genocide Early Warning System is: Charny, Israel W., in collaboration with Chanan Rapaport (1982).  Toward a Genocide Early Warning System. In How Can We Commit the Unthinkable?, ibid., pp. 283-334.

[27] The original and first publication of GEWS was in a pamphlet published by the Szold Institute in Jerusalem in 1977: Charny, Israel W., and Rapaport, Chanan (1977). A Genocide Early Warning System: Establishing a Data Bank for Events of Genocide and Other Major Violations of Human Rights. Jerusalem: Szold National Institute for Research in the Behavioral Sciences. (Pamphlet).  See also the entry in the forthcoming citation of the Encyclopedia of Genocide: Charny, Israel W. (1999).  Genocide Early Warning System (GEWS). In Encyclopedia of Genocide, pp. 253-265.

[28] Publications about the conference included: Charny, Israel W., with Davidson, Shamai.  The Book of the International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide. Tel Aviv: Institute of the International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide, 1983.  This was followed by another book: Charny, Israel W. (Ed.) (1984).  Toward the Understanding and Prevention of Genocide (Selected Presentations at the International Conference of the Holocaust and Genocide).  Boulder, CO: Westview Press; and London: Bowker Publishing. See also the book on the Armenian Genocide that grew largely out of the conference: Hovannisian, Richard G. (Ed.) (1986).  The Armenian Genocide in Perspective.  New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.  Hovannisian, a great Armenian scholar and leader, conveys the profound significance of the conference for Armenians who had been suffering so much ignorance of the Armenian Genocide (in my opinion, overall it can be said that this is no longer the case), and endless bizarre denials of the genocide by Turkey along with realpolitik accomplices from endless quarters.  There were many (and to this day there remain some who would not use the word “genocide” out of a mistaken deference to the Turks). Thus, it took many years for the Boston Globe and then its partner, the New York Times, to adopt the phrase “Armenian Genocide” (I was very pleased to play a decisive role in the negotiations with the editor of the Boston Globe. Peter Balakian and Gregory Stanton also played a vital role in negotiations with the New York Times.)

In my recent book, which developed after we were able to access hundreds of previously secret documents of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Charny, Israel W. (2021), Israel’s Failed Response to the Armenian Genocide: Denial, State Deception, Truth vs. Politicization of History. Boston: Academic Studies Press, I bring much of the record of the Israel attempting to quash and eliminate the conference. This story also includes a series of close-up looks at Elie Wiesel and his complex role in first supporting the conference and then attempting to close it down.

[29] One of many examples of reports of the cancellation was made by a great admirer of the Institute’s work, the famed British writer for the London Independent, Robert Fisk.  See Fisk, Robert (June 2, 1997).  US Academics Join Rush to Deny Turkish Massacre of Armenians: Slaughter Viewed as Accident of First World War. London Independent.

[30] Des Pres, Terrence (1986). On Governing Narratives: The Turkish-Armenian Case, Yale Review 75(4), pp.517-531.

[31] Among the Armenian scholars who appear in the program as presenting papers were Richard Harair Dekmajian, Haikaz Grigorian, Vigen Guroian, Leo Hamalian, Marjorie Housepian Dobkin, Richard G. Hovannisian,  Gerard J. Libaridian, Vahe Oshagan, Alen J. Salerian, Avedis K. Sanjian, Ronald Suny, Shohig Sherry Terzian, and Archbishop Shahe Ajamian.

[32] Charny, Israel W. (2021). Israel’s Failed Response to the Armenian Genocide, ibid., p.7.

[33] See the several references to the works of Kuper, Lifton, and Hovannisian in the endnotes that follow.

[34] Intriguingly, certainly for Holocaust scholars, it can be noted that another very senior researcher at Yad Vashem, Yisrael Gutman, did show up at least one day at the conference, and was known to have spoken positively of the conference.

[35] Charny, Israel W. (2021), Israel’s Failed Response to the Armenian Genocide, ibid.

[36] Ibid.

[37]  See the rich summary of the history of the institute by Marc I. Sherman, longtime Director of Information Services  of the institute: Sherman, Marc I. (2021). Supplement: Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide Jerusalem—Highlights of the Story of the First Known Institute on Genocide in the World. Chapter in Israel W. Charny, Israel’s  Failed Response to the Armenian Genocide, ibid, pp. 230-247.

[38] Charny, Israel W. (1999).  (Editor-in-Chief), Encyclopedia of Genocide. Two Volumes. Santa Barbara, CA and Denver, CO, USA (December 1999); Oxford, UK (February 2000).  Three printings, and Encyclopedia of Genocide E-book on Internet, 2003.  ABC-CLIO Publishers. See also partial French edition, Le Livre de Humanité. Paris: Édition Privat, 2001.  Associate Editors: Rouben Paul Adalian, Steven Jacobs, Eric Markusen, and Samuel Totten; Bibliographic Editor: Marc I. Sherman. Forewords by Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu and Simon Wiesenthal: “Why Is It Important to Learn about the Holocaust and the Genocides of ALL Peoples?

[39] Encyclopedia of Genocide, e-book edition 2003. https://www.abc-clio.com/product/A1135C/.

[40] (Tutu) The Most Reverend Archbishop Emeritus Desmond M. Tutu (1999). Why is it Important to Learn about the Holocaust and the Genocides of All Peoples? Foreword to the Encyclopedia of Genocide, ibid., pp. lvii.

[41] Wiesenthal, Simon (1999). Why is it Important to Learn about the Holocaust and the Genocides of All Peoples? Foreword to the Encyclopedia of Genocide, ibid., p. lix

[42] Lemkin, Raphael (1944). Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, ibid.

 [43] Fein, Helen (1979). Accounting for Genocide: National Responses and Jewish Victimization in the Holocaust.  New York: Free Press.

[44] Kren, George M.  and Rappoport, Leon (1980). The Holocaust and the Crisis of Human Behavior. New York: Holmes and Meier.

[45] See Smith, Roger W. (2002).  Who is My Neighbor? In Totten, Samuel and Jacobs, Steven Leonard (Eds.), Pioneers of Genocide Studies.  New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, pp. 179-194.

[46] Fein, Helen (1979). Accounting for Genocide,, ibid; Fein, Helen. Genocide: A Sociological PerspectiveCurrent Sociology, 38, 1990, 1-126; Fein, Helen (1992). Genocide Watch. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

[47] Melson, Robert (1996). Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Melson, Robert (2005); False Papers: Deception and Survival in the Holocaust. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

[48] Roger Smith has been a major figure in the development of many aspects of the field of genocide studies, including his leadership of initiatives while serving as chairman of the board of the Zoryan Institute in Toronto to recognize and commemorate the Armenian Genocide. See in particular the penetrating glimpse into the workings of Turkish denials of the genocide in a classic paper: Smith, Roger W., Markusen, Eric, and Lifton, Robert Jay (1995). Professional Ethics and the Denial of Armenian Genocide. Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 9 (1), 1-22.

[49] Jack Nusan Porter is a sociologist who we pioneered the study of the configurations of conditions that facilitate the emergence of genocide. He also studied genocidal acts against homosexuals, and a variety of other aspects of genocide. See Porter, Jack Nusan (Ed.) (1982). Genocide and Human Rights: A Global Anthology, ibid.

[50] Markusen, Eric (1987). Genocide and Total War: A Preliminary Comparison.  In Isidor Walliman and Michael N. Dobowski (Eds.), Genocide and the Modern Age: Etiology and Case Studies of Mass Death. New York: Greenwood Press, 1987, pp.97-123; Markusen, Eric (1991). Professions, Professionals, and Genocide. In Israel W. Charny (Ed.), Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review, Vol.2, New York Facts on File, pp. 229-298; Markusen, Eric; Dunham, Jeffrey; and Bee, Ronald (1981). A Nuclear Education Campaign.  Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 37 (5), pp.39-42; Markusen, Eric and Kopf, David (1990). The Holocaust and Strategic Bombing: Genocide and Total War in the Twentieth Century.  Boulder, CO: Westview Press; Markusen, Eric and Mirkovic, Damir (1999).  Understanding Genocidal Killing in the Former Yugoslavia: Preliminary Observations.  In Craig Summers and Eric Markusen (Eds.). Collective Violence: Harmful Behavior in Groups and Governments. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 35-67; Lifton, Robert Jay and Markusen, Eric (1990). The Genocidal Mentality. New York: Basic Books; Totten, Samuel and Markusen, Eric (Eds.) (2006) Genocide in Darfur: Investigating Atrocities in Sudan. New York: Routledge.

[51] Harff, Barbara (2003).  No lessons learned from the Holocaust?  Assessing risks of genocide and political mass murder since 1955.  American Political Science Review, 97, 57-73; Harff, Barbara and Gurr, Ted Robert (1988).  Toward an empirical theory of genocides and politicides: Identification and measurement of cases since 1945.  International Studies Quarterly 32, pp.359-371.

[52] Colin Tatz was an Australian genocide scholar who researched the genocide of the Aboriginals. For many years Tatz headed an excellent major center for study of genocide, with a distinguished group of international advisors at Macquarie University in Sydney.

[53] Jacobs, Steven Leonard (2012).  Lemkin on Genocide.  Lanham, MD: Lexington Books; Bartrop, Paul R. and Jacobs, Steven Leonard (2013).  Fifty Key Thinkers on the Holocaust and Genocide.  New York: Routledge; Jacobs, Steven Leonard (2009).  Confronting Genocide: Judaism, Christianity, Islam.  Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. See also the role of Steven Jacobs in Totten, Samuel, and Bartrop, Paul R. (Eds.) with contributions by Steven Leonard Jacobs (2008). Dictionary of Genocide. Two Volumes.  Westport, CT.: Greenwood Publishers.

[54] Apsel, Joyce and Verdeja, Ernesto (Ed.)(2013). Genocide Matters: Ongoing Issues and Emerging Perspectives. New York: Routledge.

[55] Chalk, Frank and Jonassohn, Kurt (1990). History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. For many years this excellent book was the leading text of genocide studies.  See also Chalk, Frank and  Dallaire, Romeo (2010). Mobilizing the Will to Intervene: Leadership to Prevent Mass Atrocities. McGill-Queen’s University Press.

[56] Chalk, Frank and Jonassohn, Kurt (1990). History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies, ibid.

[57] Robert Jay Lifton, MD has been a superlative explorer of the human mind and how it addresses preservation and destruction of life.  His many works over the years cover a powerful range of human experience, including his studies of the survivors of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb, returning veterans from the Vietnam War, the basics of human striving for immortality, and the genocidal mentality among others. Three of the many meaningful studies by him are the following: Lifton, Robert Jay (2017). The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. New York: Basic Books (original publication 1986); Lifton, Robert Jay and Markusen, Eric (1990). The Genocidal Mentality, ibid.; Lifton, Robert Jay (2012 ). Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of ‘brainwashing’ in China.  Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

[58] Yves Ternon has been a clarion voice in French about genocide, its overall history in the twentieth century, and with particular attention to the Armenian Genocide: Ternon, Yves (1989). Enquête sur la négation d’un génocide (Arménies) (French).  Paris: Éditions Parenthèses.  Ternon, originally a physician and surgeon, was also one of the first scholars to examine the role of the profession of medicine in Nazi Germany; Ternon, Yves (2007).  Les medecins Nazis. In Les Cahiers de la Shoah. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, pp. 15-60.

[59] Ben Kiernan, Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University, has been a strong and reliable voice for genocide studies through the years.  Two of his well-known works are the following: Kiernan, Ben (2008). The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; Kiernan, Ben (2009). Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

[60] Henry Huttenbach, a professor of history at City College of New York (who in earlier years had published several studies of the Holocaust) was the founder and first editor of the Journal of Genocide Research.  It was Huttenbach who laid the foundation for the development of the International Network of Genocide Scholars (INOGS) to which he also transferred the Journal of Genocide Research.

[61] Adam Jones has been a very visible figure in the field of Genocide Studies for a good number of years, and is deservedly known as the author of a  comprehensive textbook in the field: Jones, Adam (2017). Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction. New York: Routledge. Originally published in 2006.  He is also prominently identified with gender studies and genocide. Unfortunately Jones also took on an antagonistic view of some colleagues and some approaches to genocide scholarship, including what many felt involved prejudice against Israel. My own experience with Jones includes my shock at his opposition to our Institute tracking the increasing deaths in Syria as an emerging case of genocide. He did so with absolute conviction that there was no danger of genocide in Syria. He argued that the only danger of genocide in the Middle East came from the Israelis towards the Palestinians.

[62] Waller, James (2007). Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing. New York: Oxford University Press; Waller, James (2016). Confronting Evil: Engaging Our Responsibility to Prevent Genocide. New York: Oxford University Press.

[63] Ervin Staub is one of the surprisingly few psychologists who have engaged the subject of genocide in depth: Staub, Ervin (2013). Overcoming Evil: Genocide, Violent Conflict, and Terrorism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[64] Alex Alvarez, a criminologist, is a penetrating student of genocide and violence in general: Alvarez, Alex (2001). Governments, Citizens, and Genocide: A Comparative and Interdisciplinary Approach.  Indiana University Press; Alvarez, Alex (2016). Violence: The Enduring Problem. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

[65] Hinton, Alexander Laban (2013). Hidden Genocides: Power, Knowledge, Memory (Genocide, Political Violence, Human Rights). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press; Hinton, Alexander Laban and Lifton, Robert (2004). Why Did They Kill?: Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide. Berkeley: University of California Press.

[66] Fowler, Jerry (2009). The Holocaust, Rwanda and the Category of Genocide. In Rosenbaum, Alan S. (Ed.). Is the Holocaust Unique? New York: Routledge. Fowler, Jerry was for many years the staff director of the Committee on Conscience of the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington. He authored a variety of chapters in books on genocide including the above.

[67] Straus, Scott (2016). Fundamentals of Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention.  Washington, DC: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

[68] Lipstadt, Deborah (2012).  Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. New York: The Free Press. Deborah Lipstadt emerged as a giant warrior against antisemitism on the one hand and against denials of the Holocaust on the other hand when her noteworthy book was singled out by arch-antisemite and denier, David Irving.  The latter sued Lipstadt for libel and the result was an unforgettable trial which in effect established a new legal platform for countering deniers of the Holocaust as well as other genocides.

[69] Michael Berenbaum was the second in command of the development of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC., and as Research Director was responsible for the choices of materials that were exhibited in the museum.  See Berenbaum, Michael (2006). The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust as Told in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.  He is also a scholar of note about various aspects of the Holocaust such as his works on non-Jewish victims, and on the failure of the Allies to bomb Auschwitz.

[70] Browning, Christopher R. (2017). Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland.   New York: Harper Perennial [originally published 1992]. To the best of my knowledge, Christopher Browning, an historian, has not been associated directly with the organizations and scholars in the field of Genocide Studies, but his outstanding study of the mass executions and roundups for shipment to Nazi death camps in Poland of Jewish people in 1942 certainly constitutes a breakthrough contribution to our understanding of genocide.  Browning established firmly that the killers in a German reserve police group whom he studied were essentially “ordinary people” – plain middle-aged working class men who responded to orders with thoughtless obedience to authority.  A small minority declined to participate and incurred no punishment.  To my mind, the book could well be summed up that ‘Cowards Commit Genocide.’

I also want to celebrate the work of Yair Auron who was responsible for the first systematic program of instruction on genocide to thousands of students at the Open University of Israel and also published an excellent series of books on genocide in Hebrew. See two of Auron’s books in English: The Banality of Indifference: Zionism and the Armenian Genocide. Transaction, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, 2000, 405 pp. (translation of the Hebrew edition, with revisions and adaptations). Second Edition, Transaction Publishers, 2001; third Edition, 2003. Published in Armenian in 2013; The Banality of Denial. Transaction, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, 2003.

[71] Vahakn Dadrian was a fountain of life with endless probing and penetrating studies of the heart and guts of the Armenian Genocide. He had large grants from the National Science Foundation and published a number of times in the Yale Journal of International Law, let alone lectured at endless universities all over the world, and was the respected recipient of many well-deserved academic citations and honors as well as more public recognition such as the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.  See, among others in his earlier publications: Dadrian, Vahakn (1999). The Key Elements in the Turkish Denial of the Armenian Genocide: A Case Study of Distortion and Falsification. Cambridge, MA and Toronto: Zoryan Institute; Dadrian, Vahakn (1986). The Naim-Andonian Documents on the World War I Destruction of Ottoman Armenians: The Anatomy of a Genocide, International Journal of Middle East Studies 18 (3), 311-36; and Dadrian, Vahakn (1994). A Textual Analysis of the Key Indictment of the Turkish Military Tribunal Investigating the Armenian Genocide, Journal of Political and Military Sociology, 22 (1), 133-171. A later summary book is Dadrian, Vakahn (2017).  Warrant for Genocide: Key Elements of Turko-Armenian Conflict. New York: Routledge.

[72] Richard Hovanissian is an Armenian American historian and professor emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles. For many years he has stood out impressively as the doyen or the untitled leader of Armenian scholarship in the Western world. He is known mainly for his four-volume history of the First Republic of Armenia. Hovannisian, Richard (1971). The Republic of Armenia, Vol. I: The First Year, 1918-1919. Berkeley: University California Press; Hovannisian, Richard (1982). The Republic of Armenia, Vol. II: From Versailles to London, 1919-1920. Berkeley: University California Press; Hovannisian, Richard (1996). The Republic of Armenia, Vol. III: From London to Sèvres, February–August 1920. Berkeley: University California Press; Hovannisian, Richard (1996). The Republic of Armenia, Vol. IV: Between Crescent and Sickle – Partition and Sovietization. Berkeley: University California Press. See earlier his editing of contributions to the First International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide, The Armenian Genocide in Perspective, 1986, ibid.

[73] Totten, Samuel (2014). Conflict in the Nuba Mountains, ibid.; Totten, Samuel (Ed.) (2017).  Sudan’s Nuba Mountains People Under Siege, ibid.

[74] Totten, Samuel and Kleg, Milton (1989). Human Rights. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow; Totten, Samuel (2000). Teaching about Genocide. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing; Totten, Samuel, and Bartrop, Paul R. (Eds.) with contributions by Steven Leonard Jacobs (2008). Dictionary of Genocide, ibid.; Totten, Samuel (2011). An Oral and Documentary History of the Darfur Genocide. Two Volumes, Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger Security International; Totten, Samuel (2018). Dirty Hands and Vicious Deeds: The US Government’s Complicity in Crimes against Humanity and Genocide. Toronto, CA: University of Toronto Press; Totten, Samuel (2007). The Prevention and Intervention of Genocide: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Routledge; and Totten, Samuel (2018). Last Lectures on the Prevention and Intervention of Genocide.  New York: Routledge.

[75] The titles in the series Genocide, A Critical Bibliographic Review edited by Samuel Totten and published by Transaction Publishers include: Genocide at the Millenium, Vol 5, 2004; The Prevention and Intervention of Genocide, Vol 6, 2008; Plight and Fate of Women During and Following Genocide, Vol 7, 2012; Genocide of Indigenous Peoples by Samuel Totten and Robert Hitchcock, Vol 8, 2011; Impediments to the Prevention and Intervention of Genocide, Vol 9, 2013; Plight and Fate of Children During and Following Genocide, Vol 10, 2014; and Controversies in the Field of Genocide Studies, Vol 11, 2017.

[76] Stanton, Gregory (1996).  Ten Stages of Genocide, ibid.

[77] Charny, Israel W. (Ed.) (`985-1995). Internet on the Holocaust and Genocide: An International Information Exchange Towards Understanding, Intervention and Prevention of Genocide. This was a computer printed newsletter published over a period of 10 years by the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide Jerusalem. It was distributed to subscribers all over the world and circulated further to other colleagues and libraries.56 issues were published including 8 Special Issues. Pauline Cooper was the Managing Editor; Special Issue editors included RJ Rummel, Samuel Totten, Ted Gurr and Barbara Harff, and  Israel W. Charny; regular columnists included Leo Kuper, and Lily Kopecky who headed an organization of Holocaust survivors and was herself the editor of a newsletter, The Voice of the Survivors of Auschwitz.

 [78] Rummel, R.J. (2017). Power Kills: Democracy as a Method of Non-Violence. New York: Routledge [published originally in 1997 by Transaction Publishers].

[79] Charny, Israel W. (Ed.) (1988). Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review.  London: Mansell, and New York: Facts on File.

[80] Charny, Israel W. (Ed.) (1991). Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review. Volume 2.  London: Mansell, and New York: Facts on File.

[81] Ibid., Citations of all the following volumes edited by Totten were given earlier (note 74).

[82] Jacobs, Steven L. (1998).  Holocaust and Genocide Studies: The future is now. Center for Holocaust, Genocide and Peace Studies, University of Nevada, Reno, 3 (2), 10-13.

[83] According to the IAGS website, Resolutions passed by IAGS over the years include the following: EB (Executive Board) Statement on Situation in Ukraine, 2022; Rohingya Resolution; Resolution on ISIS; IAGS Resolution on Darfur; Resolution on Zimbabwe; Armenian Genocide Resolution; Open Letter to Scholars Denying Armenian Genocide; Open Letter to the Turkish State on Denial; Letter to US Congress on the Armenian Resolution; Resolution on Syria; Resolution on Assyrian and Greek Genocide;

Resolution on Iran.

[84] A more complete read of the battle that ensued and further publications, including critiques by well-know genocide scholars of Israel Charny,  the author of the study and several of his publications, will be found on the website of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem at www.ihgjlm.com/denial-of-genocide/.

[85] Shaw, Martin and Bartov, Omer (2010).   The question of genocide in Palestine, 1948: An exchange between Martin Shaw and Omer Bartov, Journal of Genocide Research, 12 (3-4), 243-259.

[86] Raz, Adam (December 9, 2021). Classified Docs Reveal Massacres of Palestinians in ‘48 – and What Israeli Leaders Knew.  Haaretz. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.HIGHLIGHT.MAGAZINE-classified-docs-reveal-deir-yassin-massacre-wasn-t-the-only-one-perpetrated-by-isra-1.10453626

[87] Kehoe, Thomas J.(2012). Fighting for our mutual benefit: Understanding and contextualizing the intentions behind Nazi propaganda for the Arabs during World War II. Journal of Genocide Research, 14(2), 137-158.

[88] Duranti, Marco (2012).  The Holocaust, the legacy of 1789 and the birth of international human rights law: Revisiting the foundation myth.  Journal of Genocide Research 14(2), 159-186.

[89] Moses, Dirk A. (2012).  The Canadian Museum for Human Rights: The ‘uniqueness of the Holocaust’ and the question of genocide.  Journal of Genocide Research, 14(2), 215-238.

[90] Wolf, Gerhard (2015). The Wannsee Conference in 1942 and the National Socialist living space dystopia.  Journal of Genocide Research, 17(2) 153-175.

[91] I personally do not have any insight into the dynamics of the split between IAGS and Zoryan, but I felt that it was a sadly hurtful failure to achieve constructive conflict resolution. In the spirit of full disclosure, I add that as Vice-President and then President of IAGS, it  had been my responsibility to bring about the original  launching of the journal Genocide Studies and Prevention, and that I had worked very closely with Zoryan to do so. Our collaboration and negotiations were entirely amiable, and I found Zoryan to be warmly generous in assisting us to reduce costs.  We carefully created a financial arrangement that made it possible to include a modest charge for the printed journal in IAGS membership dues. When the time came for me to end my presidency of IAGS, we had more than doubled our membership and I left funds to cover some two more years of the journal.

At this point I agree with the point of view that I have heard from former IAGS president, Greg Stanton, that bygones are to be put aside, and I wish both journals major success. (Personal disclosure: I am on the editorial board of the new Zoryan journal.) The IAGS Journal of Genocide Studies and Prevention continues the original journal under the same name. It is electronic and available to all online, making it accessible to scholars, students, journalists, and activists around the world, including people with limited incomes. The IAGS journal now has a large, worldwide circulation. Both journals are vital to the development of the study of genocide in the coming years.

[92] Horowitz, Irving Louis (1994). Foreword to The Widening Circle of GenocideGenocide A Critical Bibliographic Review, Vol. 3.  Edited by Israel W. Charny.  New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, Rutgers–The State University, pp. xi-xv.

‘I Believe That the Zionist Dream Is Not Viable as Long as It Is Based on Wrongs’

Rabbi Avidan Freedman, who lives in the West Bank settlement of Efrat, rejects what he sees as Israel’s sanctification of force, supports a hostage deal and sanctions against violent settlers, and is waging a battle against the country’s sale of arms to repressive regimes.
Recommended reading: Rabbi Avidan Friedman, who heads a non-profit association in Israel devoted to bringing about a basic change in Israel’s policies in selling arms promiscuously to many different countries and groups including such that are committing genocide. Click here for the full article in Haaretz.
 
Shani, Ayelett (August 30, 2024). ‘I Believe That the Zionist Dream Is Not Viable as Long as It Is Based on Wrongs’.  Haaretz.

 

What is Genocide? Did Israel Commit Genocide in Gaza?

Israel has gone too far in its legitimate response to the Hamas genocide, and it should restrain itself from reaching a genocidal peak

 Israel W. Charny

Executive Director Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide Jerusalem;

Founder and Past President International Association of Genocide Scholars; Editor-in-Chief, Encyclopedia of Genocide

 Something insane has happened in the world’s culture.  There is no question whatsoever that Hamas as an organization, and the many additional Palestinian civilians who joined them, invaded Israel on October 7, 2023 and executed a bloody and particularly cruel and torturing genocide of about 1300 Israeli civilians – many of them young people attending a Spring festival dancing their hearts out in an appreciation of life’s joy. Hamas clearly was fulfilling its long held genocidal agenda.

There is also no question that Israel has responded understandably harshly to this brutal attack and in the process has undoubtedly killed an unknown but significant number of Palestinian civilians, including women and children who in no way were involved in the killing of the Israelis. The latter is normally called “war,” but what has happened instead is that it is now being called “genocide,” and  to add clear cut insult to injury in a huge number of cases the original actual genocide by the Hamas-Palestinians is no longer recognized and condemned for its stark evil. The number of Palestinian civilians who have been killed is considered very large, although it must be added that a significant number of US generals  testify that Israel has gone to great lengths to protect civilian life. Moreover, a huge number of the Gazans killed are the victims of a second genocide by Hamas of secreting weapons on or around its own people.

Following is an effort to identify just what really constitutes genocide. I propose definitions and give brief illustrative examples. As will be seen I move from the use of the category “Genocide” to the category of “Crimes Against Humanity” in order to avoid the bizarre charges of equivalent crimes of genocide by Hamas and Israel. Clearly scholars are welcome to devote themselves to improving definitions and examples. but here I will attempt to get the basic principle across.

____

FIRST DEGREE GENOCIDE is the intentional murder of a designated group with the explicit intention to wipe out their existence “in whole or in part.”

SECOND DEGREE GENOCIDE  is direct person–to-person extermination of targeted people, often with pre-assigned quotas of killing.

THIRD DEGREE GENOCIDE is intentional indiscriminate killing of civilian populations when genocidal weapons are positioned among civilians in order to enable murders of the targeted peoples.

FIRST DEGREE CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY is careless or uncaring overkill of the civilian population of an enemy people with whom one is at war—killings that are not militarily needed for the successful conduct of the war.

 SECOND DEGREE CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY is instances where the means and the extent of military power employed in war are excessively cruel and destructive and constitute crimes against humanity.

THIRD DEGREE CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY is  excessive  vengeful intentional retaliatory murder or self-defense against further murder in response to genocide that has been committed against one’s people.

FOURTH  DEGREE CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY is intended or inadvertent failure to provide safeguards against activation of genocidal machinery.

FIFTH DEGREE CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY is colonial exploitation of an enslaved population in which instances of genocidal murders of the civilians are tolerated, legitimated, and are afforded impunity.

Correction of My Long-Standing Position on Mass Killing that is Not Genocide

 Professionally, I have always taken the position that the creation or allowance of any situation which results in masses of dead civilian bodies is genocide, BUT I have always differentiated between intentional concentrated action to destroy the lives of a targeted group of unarmed people.  In other words, I personally chose to call all mass killing of civilians genocide, but to remain very much aware of the difference between what would be the equivalent of first degree murder or planned and intended and devoted mass destruction of a chosen target group and the many tragic variations of situations where lots of people get killed – and shouldn’t have – but not with the same malevolent total planning and devotion to the task.

Under no circumstances have I argued that more secondary forms (“degrees”) of genocidal killing are equivalent to first degree genocide.  Note that this kind of differentiation is built into much daily criminal law where first degree murder is treated infinitely more severely than the lesser degrees.

My definition of genocide is well recognized in the professional literature, and while there have been some expressions of respect for its avowed humanistic rejection of all mass killing, my definition has been roundly criticized for failing to maintain a sharp focus on genocidal intentions to a group.

I am now prepared to acknowledge that I was wrong—not in decrying all mass murder but in failing to keep, a penetrating focus on intentional genocide.

It is blatantly wrong to say that Israel is committing genocide just as the Hamas do.

Although there certainly are extreme voices in Israel that call for killing all the Palestinians, such fascist voices will be heard in virtually every culture in the world, and there has never been any indication whatsoever of a full blown Israeli government plan to destroy the Palestinian people.

 

IF HAMAS HAD NOT ATTACKED ISRAEL GENOCIDALLY

IN THEIR HORRIFIC OCTOBER 7 SLAUGHTER, WOULD

ISRAEL HAVE ATTACKED GAZA?              NO!

 

SHOULD HAMAS BE CHARGED WITH FULL BLOWN

FIRST DEGREE GENOCIDE FOR ITS MASSIVE ORGY

OF SLAYING CIVILIAN ISRAELIS AND ITS CLEARLY

STATED INTENTION TO KILL THE JEWS?              YES!

 

          In everyday parlance, I cannot agree to statements that say that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. I now believe that we need a new word to identify the less intended degrees of mass killing of civilians but at the same time holds it up for critical analysis including evaluation of illegality. I do believe that we need a language that enables us to oppose the many forms of mass killing, such as the disgusting allowance by the Israeli military of murders of plain folk and farmers.  That cannot be what the State of Israel stands for.

A wise analyst has commented that our age has brought about a new definition of genocide which comes out to be: Genocide is the cruel extermination by Jews of other people. This must be changed! The position that I have taken publicly about the Gaza-Israel War –as published already months ago in the Times of Israel on February 2, 2024)[1] —was that the war by Israel was just and justified.

However, given the already then massive loss of civilian life I proposed that Israel be ready to enter into a ceasefire in order to spare human lives.  I further stipulated that Israel make their offer contingent on a total release of all hostages, and that failing such release by Hamas the war be continued.

It is and would be blatantly wrong to accuse Israel of intentional genocidal destruction of the Palestinians but possibly correct to say that she has exacted an unduly severe human toll that, sadly, constitutes a crime against humanity.

[1] Israel W. Charny (February 2, 20240.  Gaza Fight is Humanly and Legally Just but Deserves Ceasefire If Hostages Freed. Times of Israel. https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/gaza-fight-is-humanly-and-legally-just-but-deserves-ceasefire-if-hostages-freed/

 

Gaza Fight is Humanly and Legally Just but Deserves Ceasefire If Hostages Freed

Israel W. Charny (February 2, 2024). Gaza Fight is Humanly and Legally Just but Deserves Ceasefire If Hostages Freed. Times of Israel. https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/gaza-fight-is-humanly-and-legally-just-but-deserves-ceasefire-if-hostages-freed/

GAZA FIGHT IS HUMANLY AND LEGALLY JUST BUT DESERVES CEASEFIRE IF HOSTAGES FREED

A British sociologist-political scientist, has published a scathing article in the Journal of Genocide Research (JGR) accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza. The article, entitled ”Inevitably Genocidal,” is even pointed in the direction of accusing Israel for instigating and welcoming the Gazans’ brutal opening of the war by genocide of Israelis!

This remarkable ‘scholarship” appears in an established journal in which the same author years ago identified Zionism from its original establishment as based on “an incipiently genocidal mentality towards Arab society.” At the same time the author also evaded completely recognizing respectfully the inherent intent of Zionism to rescue Jews from repeated murder, abuse, and expulsions such as from Britain and Spain over the centuries and in later years to culminate in the incredible modern ultimate of the Holocaust.

Now, currently, he blames Israel for the whole war! He writes that Israel planned and wanted the mass killing of the Gazans that is currently taking place: He says: “Israel intended this destruction.” In convoluted thinking, he posits that Israel in effect is responsible for goading Gaza into the dramatically cruel genocide it executed against Israel! He says it is “an irony that escaped most critics and reflected the field’s preoccupation with the one-sidedness of genocide. Gaza’s rulers not only launched their own genocidal assault; they also knowingly provoked Israel’s greater one. Hamas understood that its atrocities would incite Israel to its own campaign, which they must have calculated would cause global outrage that would ultimately constrain Israel.”

The critical sociologist goes on to recognize Gaza’s basic apathy to the losses of its own people, but also reaches for a crazy inference that Israel was also sacrificing its own people as hostages to Hamas. “For Hamas, thousands of Gazans were also necessary sacrifices, just as some of the hostages were for Israel.”

Some years ago a study of articles in JGR showed that 59% of bona fide genocide scholars –along with a smaller number of students in a Holocaust genocide course in a southern university in the US who gave equivalent results– evaluated the journal as purposefully intent on minimizing the significance of the Holocaust, a known technique of genocide denial. Needless to say, a huge wave of protest against the research including criticism of its purported scientific inadequacy followed, but the results –which had been collected and tabulated by an independent research organization-were plain and simple the results. In the months that followed, too late for inclusion in the study, JGR published a new article which claimed that the infamous Wannsee Conference of the Nazis on the Final Solution did not pertain to the Jews!! The present article indeed was in a welcoming home and continues a clearcut mission.

What follows is a rejoinder to the current article, “Inescapably Genocidal.” The author of this rejoinder is a well-known genocide scholar who is a committed Jew and Zionist with an overriding commitment to peace and safety for ALL the people on our Earth. The author has requested that the British author not be named in order to avoid a focus on a personality or professional conflict with him which is entirely irrelevant to the seriousness of the issues.

The following are FACTS that are not mentioned by the author:

FACT: Israel has never initiated missiles/bombing of Gaza except in response to bombings of Israel by the Palestinians.

FACT: Prior to the present war – which was initiated by an incredible genocidal attack killing any Israeli in sight including babies, women, the elderly and infirm along with many unarmed non-combatant party-going teenagers and young people, rape, and included frightful torture and mutilation, as well as kidnapping of hundreds of Israelis – the Israeli ethos and popular culture did NOT call for extermination of the Palestinians.

FACT: The fundamental official charter of Hamas seeks to kill the Jews and exterminate the country of Israel.

FACT: Hamas has placed weapon systems in the homes of civilians and in civilian institutions such as schools and hospitals in total disregard of the consequences for its people.

FACT: Zionism was and is a response to end the endless suffering of Jews from murder, and in no way called for eradication of Palestinians.

The following are also my OPINIONS:

OPINION: I agree completely that every word by Israelis of intention to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza, in whole or in part, is deeply wrong and a profound insult to true Jewish/Zionist values – however understandable it be as an emotional response to the depraved slaughter of Israelis by Hamas on October 7. I believe that Israel has erred seriously long before the genocide in allowing extreme right-wing violence against Palestinian farmers without legal consequences.

OPINION: There is no question that the extent of killing Palestinians is inhumanly excessive and if at all possible should not be tolerated by Israel for its own sake as well as out of humanity towards the many Palestinian civilians who want to live non-violently. However, there is also no question whatsoever that full attention must be given to fighting back against the overwhelming murderousness that has been assigned to or has involved Palestinian civilians and what should be life-promoting institutions such as hospitals and schools that were turned into sites of attack by Hamas. Given the tragic extent of killing, I believe that Israel should undertake to stop the war at the earliest possible time, but I would insist on a prior condition of the release of the many Israeli hostages whose kidnappings also constitute legally crimes against humanity.

OPINION: Legally what I am going to propose is a new legal concept that argues for a judgment that Israel is fighting back legitimately in Self-Defense in Response and in Self-Defense against Future Genocidal Attacks that Employ Citizens as Human Shields. The Geneva Convention specifically outlaws such provocative human shields and justifies fighting back in response as not genocidal behavior.

A striking example of the application of this concept is that following the Armenian Genocide, an Armenian, Soghomon Tehlirian, assassinated the key Turkish leader of the genocide, the Minister of the Interior, Talaat Pasha, and was brought to trial no less than in Berlin. The facts of his murder were totally clear, yet the court concluded that he was legally innocent.

Nonetheless, the extent of killings of civilians brought on by Gaza’s policies leads me to propose that Israel exercise a humanitarian gesture of offering to cease all fighting following return of all Israeli hostages, and at the same time that Israel underscore its readiness to return to massive destruction of Gaza in response to any further bombings or invasions.

In conclusion, I pray for the earliest possible ending to this war. I know that my kind of writing is very uncomfortable for people who think in more clear cut polarities of good and bad and black and white. My definite intention is to protect our Israel and to support and protect the lives of all human beings as much as is possible in the face of reality.

Prof. Israel Charny, Director, Institute on Holocaust & Genocide Jerusalem, was the founder of the Intl. Assoc. of Genocide Scholars, and editor in chief of the first Encyclopedia of Genocide

Israel Does Not Recognize the Armenian Genocide, but Once Again Uses it as a Diplomatic Tool with Turkey

Lis, Jonathan (January 14, 2024). Headline in Haaretz (Hebrew): Israel Does Not Recognize the Armenian Genocide, but Drew on it Again as a Tool to Do Battle Diplomatically with Turkey: (sub headline) Foreign Minister Spoke Officially More Firmly Against Erdogan When He Mentioned the Genocide that the Turks Executed, but a Formal Process Towards Recognition (of the Armenian Genocide) Does Not Seem Likely.  Haaretz Hebrew.

The article, by Jonathan Lis, states that Israel assigned responsibility for the genocide of the Armenians to Turkey.  It was an unusual official step on the part of Israel since its governments have been very careful in the past about avoiding attributing responsibility to Turkey for the genocide.

Foreign Minister Israel Katz was protesting the assembly of incriminating materials against Israel by Erdogan which he intended to deliver to the International Court of Justice in the Hague which is considering South Africa’s demand to identify Israel as committing genocide in Gaza.  Katz said: “The President of Turkey, the country that committed the genocide of Armenians and thought the world would keep its mouth shut, delivered materials to the court today in the Hague.  We have not forgotten the genocide of the Armenians or the butchery of the Kurdish people.”

Earlier attempts to advance Israel’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide failed.  In 2018 the head of the Meretz Party, Tamar Zandberg, proposed that the Knesset deal with the subject, but the foreign minister demanded cancellation of the proposal.  Two years earlier the Education Committee of the Knesset conducted a public hearing on the Armenian Genocide.  MK Jacob Marji, of the Shas Party, who is today the Minister of Welfare, said that it is the “moral responsibility” of Israel, and the chairman of the Knesset at the time, Yuli Edelstein, announced his support.

 

New York Times Bret Stephens Decries Genocide Charges Against Israel As Immoral

Stephens, Bret (January 18, 2024). The Genocide Charge Against Israel Is a Moral Obscenity. New York Times (excerpt)

In recent decades, as many as three million people perished in a famine in North Korea that was mainly government-induced. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians were gassed, bombed, starved or tortured to death by the Assad regime, and an estimated 14 million were forced to flee their homes. China has put more than a million Uyghurs through gulag-like re-education camps in a thinly veiled attempt to suppress and erase their religious and cultural identity.
But North Korea, Syria and China have never been charged with genocide at the International Court of Justice. Israel has. How curious. And how obscene.
It’s obscene because it politicizes our understanding of genocide, fatally eroding the moral power of the term.
It’s obscene because it perverts the definition of genocide, which is precise: “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” Notice two key features of this definition: It speaks of acts whereas part of the genocide case against Israel involves the misinterpretation of quotes from Israeli officials who have vowed Hamas’s elimination, not the elimination of Palestinians. And it uses the term as such — meaning the acts are genocidal only if they are directed at Palestinians as Palestinians, not as members of Hamas or, heartbreakingly, as collateral deaths in attempts to destroy Hamas.
***
Stephens, Bret (January 23, 2024). The Meaning of Gaza’s Tunnels. New York Times (excerpt)

Ever since Israel withdrew its soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005, critics have accused it of blockading and immiserating the territory — turning it, as they say, into an open-air prison.
According to a report this month in The New York Times, Israeli defense officials now estimate that Hamas’s tunnels measure between 350 and 450 miles in a territory that’s just 25 miles long. (By comparison, the London Underground is only 249 miles long.) Some of Gaza’s tunnels are wide enough for cars; some are more than 150 feet deep; some serve as munitions depots; others are comfortably kitted out as command bunkers.
Israeli officials also estimate that there are 5,700 separate entrances to the tunnels — many of them with access from civilian houses and some directly beneath Gaza City’s main hospital, which U.S. intelligence agencies say was also used as a Hamas command center.
The tunnels also help explain the level of destruction that Israel has wreaked on Gaza since the war began. If Hamas hides the bulk of its fighters and munitions in the tunnels, Israel somehow has to find, search and destroy those tunnels. If Hamas builds the entrances to those tunnels inside private homes, schools or hospitals, those places all become military targets.
And if there are nearly 6,000 such entrances, the destruction is all but guaranteed to be epochal — just as it was in Mosul when the United States assisted Iraq in destroying ISIS (which was much less deeply entrenched there than Hamas is in Gaza) over nine months in 2016 and 2017. I don’t recall “Cease-Fire Now” demonstrations on college campuses back then.
Something I wrote in October holds true now: Hamas bears the blame for every death in this war.

Reports from the Israel-Gaza War Describe Extreme Violence and Cruelty

International Criminal Court Prosecutor Defines the Hamas Attack of Israel on October 7 as “Serious International Crimes”
 The prosecutor, Karim Khan, of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has called the attacks against Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023 “some of the most serious international crimes that shock the conscience of humanity, crimes which the ICC was established to address.”  
 
“There can be no justification for the holding of any hostages, and in particular the egregious breach of fundamental principles of humanity through the taking and continued holding of children.  Hostages can not be treated as human shields or bargaining chips.  
 
In addition, Kahn also spoke about the Israeli response to the attacks. “Notwithstanding any ongoing violations of international humanitarian law by Hamas and other armed groups in the Gaza strip, the manner in which Israel responds to these attacks is subject to clear legal parameters.” 
 
Source: Jerusalem Post (December 4, 2023) with note of contributions by Associated Press and Reuters
***
Gaza Killings by Hamas Show Much Sexual Violence and Mutilation 
 “There were many testimonies: the scale of the mutilation described is unimaginable.”  A Jerusalem woman architect whose Israeli reserve army duty involved identifying the bodies of women from the Hamas massacre declared that she and her colleagues saw enormous violation done after death of victims including “genital mutilation – bodies whose genitals and breasts were shot multiple times. Some bodies were decapitated. Some were burned beyond recognition.  And some… were booby trapped.”
 
Another volunteer gathering the bodies described “the body of a woman that had nails and other foreign objects inserted in her genitals.  There was another whose body had been brutalized so completely that she had been rendered unidentifiable.  Another was mutilated so badly that the rescue service could not identify if the victim was male or female.”
 
Source: Dayan, Linda (6 December 2023). Rape as a weapon of war: Jewish women tell UN to confront Hamas sexual violence. Haaretz English Edition.

 

Putting the October 7 Culprits on Trial

by Steve Adler, November 10, 2023

A Jerusalem Post column, “Legal Affairs by Steve Adler” features an article, “Putting the October 7 Culprits on Trial.”  Adler who is a retired judge of the Labor Court in Israel proposes that the “monstrous acts of sadistic murder, torture, sexual violence, rape, kidnapping and other horrors that go beyond what we typically associate with terrorism or war crimes” that were committed by Hamas in the Israeli settlements in southern Israel on October 7 deserve a “special court.” “A special law and court would underscore the uniqueness of the crimes committed.”

Adler reviews the history of the Nuremberg Trials following World War II, the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials, Israel’s  Eichmann Trial, the Iraqi Special Tribunal and the Tokyo War Crimes Trial, and argues that these all provide justification for the special court he is proposing for the brutal Hamas murders of Israelis.

Please click here for the full article in the Jerusalem Post.

Hamas Mass Execution in Action… VERY hard to watch

Viewers are cautioned that the following video contains explicit footage of a massacre in process — victims are shot individually and thrown into a mass grave.

VIDEO [KW caps for the rest of this line] of actual massacre of Israelis on October 7, 2023 by Hamas.  Video received from Prof. Joseph [“Yossi”] Ben-Dak, Ph.D., D.Sc.

How does a person become a bloodthirsty and murderous Hamas member?

HAARETZ | Opinions / November 3, 2023
by Nimrod Aloni

I doubt there is a single Israeli, Jew or Arab, who does not ask himself these days the
distressing question of how someone can become a bloodthirsty and murderous Hamas
member. How does a human being consciously and with great enthusiasm go on a
monstrous journey of massacre, burning, raping, abusing, and kidnapping innocent citizens
– the elderly, women, and children. It would certainly be presumptuous to try and provide
an answer to this question. But suppressing it and renouncing a meaningful discourse on the matter may leave us with simplistic and dangerous answers, such as “they are all animals and should be exterminated “, and on the other hand, “this is an inevitable result of the Israeli occupation and oppression”.

Before forming an opinion, one must turn to the historical-cultural context of barbaric
conduct in modern times among other peoples. How does a German become a Nazi who
plans and executes the extermination of a people in gas chambers? What brings Japanese in South Korea and Serbs in Bosnia and Hutus in Rwanda to acts of mass murder and mass rape? How did the Khmer Rouge come out, enthused by their ideology, to liquidate
thousands of people in Cambodia? How do American Ku Klux Klan members, advocating
white supremacy, unite in glee to lynch blacks?

These questions have many and varied answers in the genocide discourse. Some of them
relate to the common factors, and some to the exclusive or distinct factors that characterize
mass atrocities and crimes against humanity, and are related to cultural heritage, historical
circumstances and living conditions.

As for the Hamas mentality underlying the barbaric acts of massacre, rape, and kidnapping
in the Gaza Strip, many explanations and positions have been published in the last month –
from the vantage point of researchers specializing in the Hamas movement and Islamic Jihad organizations as well as from the perspective of peace activists who have connections with the various factions in the Palestinian public in general, and with Hamas people in particular.

The answer I wish to propose here – and for sure it is partial and not exhaustive – is based
on insights from the field of education, culture, and humanistic studies. This is the point of
view of the humanists (in the fields of philosophy, psychology, education, and social work)
that the core of their theoretical and practical work is constituted by the prism of
humanization and dehumanization. Namely, to stand for the factors that enhance human
flourishing, facilitate the development of the distinct human capacities – related to thinking,
morality, politics, and aesthetics – and contribute to a common good that enables welfare
and dignity for all.

In my understanding, two dominant factors operate in the dynamics that shape the
personality of a murderous Hamas person. One is a fundamentalist religious worldview,
Revised text received Nov 8, 2023 with telephone permission to republish on Institute website which denies human rights, individual freedom, autonomous thinking, gender equality and democratic politics, in the name of the authority of ancient traditions and the religious establishment. This is the view that is often translated into jihadist motivation and a death wish for the glory of God. The second factor is the existence of a people under occupation and oppression for many years by a foreign entity, perceived as colonialist and satanic. Each of these factors is enough to provoke hostility and violence against the other, the heretic or the conqueror. The combination of these two together gives rise to something greater than the sum of its parts – monstrous behaviours and bloodlust, unrestrained and murderous cruelty like the one demonstrated by the Hamas people in the Gaza Strip.
A position of religious or ideological fanaticism is not just another way of thinking. This
position is a refusal to think. Different thinkers have reached this conclusion when analysing
the personality of a fanatical racist and of the authoritarian personality: it is the longing for
unshakable solidity and absolute truths. He worships an eternal hierarchy and an
omnipotent authority. It is a consciousness closed to rational arguments and reliable
demonstrations; a consciousness impervious to both rational reasoning and factual
evidence, resisting critical thinking, autonomous deliberation, and considering skeptical
open-mindedness as a great sin.

The “other” is viewed as an enemy that must be limited and sometimes even eliminated.
This is a clear anti-humanist position, which sanctifies religion or ideology and does not
recognize the vital sovereignty of the human being. Anyone who does not completely
identify with the collective and follows its ways is considered a traitor, and as in the days of
the Christian Inquisition, Stalinist Communism and Hitler’s Nazism, he or she is liable to
violent sanctions.

The miserable reality of Gazans’ lives under the occupation was succinctly presented 30
years ago by S. Yizhar in Haaretz newspaper (6.5.94): “”Anyone who has not been in Jabalia, in Gaza, does not understand what a human life lower than the trodden grass.” This is the Gaza of the descendants of the refugees from 1948, whose population is the densest in the world. This is Gaza whose population regularly lacks water for drinking and bathing, and electricity for lighting and sustenance; that most of its residents are unemployed, limited in educational and cultural infrastructures and supported by charitable organizations. This is Gaza which, according to all theories of human development, the pyramid of needs, humanistic education and social justice cannot provide its children with an opportunity for adequate standards of humanity and personal well-being.

The magnitude of the injustice and disaster will perhaps be clearer to some through a
demonstration outside the human-political realm. Imagine two cute puppies that came into
the world, and then were separated: one remained chained all his life outside alone with an
iron chain as a guard dog, and the other grows up in a home that loves and cares for him,
pampers him, and all his life enjoys the company of people and dogs. Imagine the
differences in repertoire in terms of dog qualities of the one who barks and threatens to
bite all his life, and the one who is considered a faithful partner and loved by the family.
Now multiply this repertoire a hundred times more when referring it to the human family,
and crippling injustice of existence in subhuman conditions and the denial of the
opportunity to exist in dignity and to develop the personality is clearly revealed.

Let us move from theory to practice. Against the background of the mass atrocities and
crimes against humanity in modern times, including the monstrous murderousness of the
Hamas people in the Gaza Strip, I believe that anyone embracing humanistic morality and
democratic culture should reject as illegitimate any position that denys others the
fundamental right to freedom of belief and opinion, and that threatens others with violent
sanctions up to torture and killings due to thoughts and expressions that are not consistent
with those promoted by government institutions. Furthermore, since in an authoritarian
and totalitarian society brainwashing means a ban on using the brain for the purposes of
free, scientific, critical and creative thinking, it goes without saying that there is no objective
validity to the opinions voiced there – because in a place where it is forbidden to search for
truth and justice, the chances of finding them are extremely slim.

Open-mindedness, free and critical thinking, the equality of value of all humans, and the
equality of opportunities for personality development and social engagement are the basic
core of human dignity. Hence, we must do everything in our power to curb anti-humanist
trends, including extreme positions of political correctness, multiculturalism, and identity
politics, which often blindly represent backwardness and oppression to progress and
freedom.

As for the reality in Gaza, where “human life is lower than trodden grass” – the challenge is
too great for us, Israelis and Palestinians, to face alone. As has already been proposed in
countless plans and peace initiatives in the past, some of which had broad international
support, it needs to be a long-term, multi-phased program agreed upon by Israelis and
Palestinians and subject to international leadership. The purpose of that plan will be the
establishment of a sovereign and democratic Palestinian state, alongside the State of Israel, and it will include adequate security arrangements and various peace-building measures.

There is no guarantee for the success of any peace plan, but if it were one that proposes to
all inhabitants between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, in the territory of
Israel and Palestine, a dignified existence in conditions of political peace – that is the
program to follow.

Prof. Aloni is a at the Kibbutzim College of Education in Israel and he is UNESCO Chair in Humanistic Education. Original publication was in Haaretz Hebrew Edition and the translation here into English was provided by Prof. Aloni. Aloni.nimrod@gmail.com

Israel’s Reactions to the Disaster in Karabakh (Artsakh)

–  Scheindlin, Dahlia (September 29, 2023). Nagorno-Karabakh’s parallels to Palestinian Nakba are haunting (cover page) (continued on page 5 with a new headline: Israel has some soul searching to do over Armenians).  Haaretz English Edition.

“All Jews should reckon with the fact that Israel has abandoned even a pretense of solidarity with Armenians due to the shared history of a horrible persecution.  Israel did not commit the assault on Karabakh last week, but it is widely presumed to be the largest supplier of arms to Azerbaijan.  Flights to and from Azerbaijan spiked in the months ahead of the assault.  Eyal Zamir, director general of Israel’s Defense Ministry, visited Azerbaijan’s defense minister literally the day before the offensive began.

“Yom Kippur is over but Israel – and I dare say the world – must ask myriad profound questions about sins, mistakes and responsibility for the past and the future…  what happened to protection of civilians?  For nine months Azerbaijan starved the civilians of Karabach as if the Geneva Convention and humanitarian law protecting civilians in conflict zones did not exist.  Will Azerbaijan face consequences for ethnic cleansing?…Do ultranationalist authoritarian autocrats like Aliyev – and those closer to home – ultimately prove to be the geopolitical winners in today’s world? And will Israel remain on the wrong side of history when it comes to answering these questions?

____

– Mammadov, Mukhtar (October 1, 2023). Azerbaijan and Armenia. Haaretz English Edition. Mammadov is the ambassador of Azerbaijan to Israel.

“Azerbaijan is not forcing anyone to leave Karabakh – it is a personal and individual decision to leave.  We have offered full-fledged citizenship and guaranteed equal rights and protection to Armenian residents of Karabakh, as well as reintegration into multi-ethnic Azerbaijan society (which is home to thousands of Jews, who have lived in Azerbaijani territory for the past 2000 years)…so far, during the last seven days hundreds of tons of food, medication, fuel and other assistance were provided to Armenian residents of Karabakh.  The next step shall be the signing of a peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan and the opening of communication and transportation lines between the two countries in order to promote the economic development of the broader South Caucausus region.”

___

Recorded from TV news broadcast on Channel I-24 (Israel), October 6, 2023): A rabbi in Afghanistan has advised all Armenian Jews in Afghanistan to leave as soon as possible “before it is too late.”

___

Editorial (October 1, 2023): The Profit Line: Ethnic Cleansing. Haaretz Hebrew Edition.

“The participation of Israel in the ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh requires a fundamental shift in Israel’s policies of arms exports and controls over sales of arms to aggressive dictatorships – as well as Israel’s aid to Armenia in the absorption of refugees.”

Recommended Reading, and a Welcome to the Ariel University Center for the Research and Study of Genocide in Israel

We are pleased to welcome a new center for research of genocide in Israel. Ariel University in Israel has established a Center for the Study and Research of Genocide under the direction of Hilly Moodrick-Even Khan, a senior lecturer of public international law in the Department of Economics and Business Administration in the University.

In the Fall issue of Genocide Studies International, one will find a very significant article by Dr. Khan: How to Win a Genocide Case: Analyzing the Triple Strategy of the Advocates of the Rohingya in Myanmar, Vol. 14, No. 2, 109-132.  A sophisticated strategy is described where the Rohingya advocates chose to litigate the case in three different contexts, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International Criminal Court (ICC), and the Federal Court in Buenos Aires “each of them having the potential to support the other in imposing state responsibility and individual criminal liability for genocide in Myanmar” (p. 124).  Dr. Kahn concludes, “The Rohingya advocates proved themselves not only to be shrewd lawyers having come up with a sophisticated strategy for their case, but also to be wise public relations people…the condemnation and eradication of genocide is perhaps the greatest mission of humanity, the battle against genocide should be fought not only in the legal field but also in all possible media” (p.125).

 

Grave Concerns are Being Expressed of a Looming Genocide of Armenian Civilians by Azerbaijan

Increasingly anguished and angry posts by many genocide watchers are being published these days about the ominous threat of a major genocide by starvation and embargo of the Armenian population in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabach).  The following are two such posts by the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem, the first by Israel W. Charny where he goes so far as to accuse rabbis who are cooperating with the Azeris with being “accessories to murder,” and the second is a moving joint statement by Charny together with Rabbi Avidan Freedman, an orthodox rabbi. –Ed.

To the European Rabbinical Conference Due in Azerbaijan,

The colloquial meaning of the perfectly nice phrase in Hebrew, am haaretz equals people of the land) is: a vulgar, boorish, bumpkin, ignoramus, uneducated person. Shockingly that’s what you European rabbis who have signed a disgraceful, uninformed and callous statement deserve to be called.

The issue is one of a life or death matter and leaves no room for saccharine courtesy or understanding.

You are asked by life to make a judgment about the impending deaths of over 100,000 Armenians in Nagorno-Karabach at the hands of Azerbaijan—which in violation of international calls and its own past pledge has sealed entry into the area causing starvation and death because food and medicines can’t reach them.

RABBIS, where do you stand? Can there be even a moment of doubt? As human beings and as Jewish spiritual leaders do you have any question as to whether the Armenians should be left to die?

The issue on which you stake your vicious disrespect of Armenians’ lives is that they have dared to call the unfolding event a holocaust, and you claim they are stealing our word. Even if they were, would that justify your rabbinical indifference to their remaining alive?

In any case, they have not stolen the word.  It is a word for the world to use –and has been used by the world for centuries before our tragic Holocaust. In the Encyclopedia of Genocide which I edited there is a major statement written by me together with Armenian historian, Rouben Paul Adalian and genocide scholar and rabbi, Steven L Jacobs where we conclude that “the word (holocaust) belongs historically to all people’s suffering, and certainly that it not“become a basis for excluding the suffering of any other people.”

We brought examples of use of “holocaust’ to describe genocidal events long before the WW11 destruction, e.g. (handful of examples from many more), the New York Times in 1909 about “Another Armenian Holocaust” in the city of Adana; Arnold Toynbee on the “Armenian Holocaust”; and even earlier such as in destruction of Jews in the Crusades, or the destruction of 1300 worshippers in a church by Louis V11 in 1833 according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

I am not naïve about  the possible wisdom of speaking with “enemies” in our troubled world in order to seek peace, but Judaism has long taught us there are boundaries beyond which we dare not corrupt our faith and values.  If as I understand it you are going to  hold a rabbinical conference in Azerbaijan, you need to commit the occasion to a firm and uncompromising call on the government to end the embargo of the Armenian population and cooperate in building the safety of their lives. If you do not fight for such a position, you are liable before the tribunals of history, including our own Jewish history, for being rabbis who were accessories to murder.

Prof. Israel W. Charny, Director, Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide Jerusalem, Past Co-Founder and President International Association Genocide Scholars

 

This Kosher Certificate for Azerbaijan Stinks

A group of 50 rabbis from the Rabbinical Center of Europe recently publicized a letter criticizing Armenian leaders for their use of “Holocaust terminology” to describe the current humanitarian crisis faced by the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, inflicted upon them by Azerbaijan. “Expressions such as ‘ghetto,’ ‘genocide,’ ‘Holocaust,’ and others are (…) inappropriate to be part of the jargon used in any kind of political disagreement.” The letter called on them to stop “belittling the extent of the Jewish people’s suffering to further any political interest through incessantly using phrases associated with the Holocaust suffered by the Jewish people.” Subsequent letters by specific rabbinic signatories, reiterated the point with statements about the sanctity of Holocaust memory which is violated by comparing any other event to it, or using it “for political means”.

We write this response as, collectively, a genocide scholar and an Orthodox rabbi, to say in the clearest terms possible that in our eyes, this rabbinic letter misrepresents the facts, misunderstands the fundamental moral significance of the Holocaust, and misses a major pillar of Jewish ethics.

First, the factual errors of this statement bear correcting. The Jewish people and our suffering do not have a monopoly on the use of the terms ‘holocaust’ or ‘genocide’. As noted in the Encyclopedia of Genocide, the word ‘holocaust’ was used to refer to the Armenian Holocaust in 1909, and even earlier in other contexts, and the word ‘genocide’ was coined in 1942 by a Polish Jewish lawyer, Raphael Lemkin, to describe the crime that had been committed against the Armenian people by Turkey, and that was then being committed by Germany against the Jews. The entry on the topic in the encyclopedia ends with the following conclusion: “the word (holocaust) belongs historically to all people’s suffering, and certainly that it not become a basis for excluding the suffering of any other people.”

But our criticism of the European rabbis’ statement goes far deeper than inaccurate facts. The claim that any contemporary comparison of the suffering of people is a desecration of the holy memory of the Holocaust, and a belittling of the Jewish people’s suffering is itself an absurd desecration of Holocaust memory. Absurd, because it prevents the use of the memory of the Holocaust to prevent another Holocaust. Are we only allowed to start using holocaust terminology once 6 million people have been wiped out, that is, once it is far, far too late? Would we not have wanted to nations of the world to heed the cries of the Jewish people about the dangers of an impending Holocaust, and to intervene? If “Never Again” becomes an axiomatic statement of fact, a statement that this episode was so unique that it can never happen again, and nothing can ever be compared to it, it ceases to be a moral imperative for all generations and all peoples. And that is a true desecration of Holocaust memory.

Actually, it is even worse than that. What the European rabbis letter does is to cynically weaponize the memory of the Holocaust in order to enable the infliction of mass suffering. After all, these rabbis do not deny that 120,000 residents of Artsakh are in danger of starvation because of the blockade imposed by Azerbaijan. They do not deny that Azerbaijan is using mass starvation as a tactic for political gain. But by silencing Armenian criticism of the Azerbaijan’s actions, they are the ones who cynically use the “Holocaust card”  for political purposes.

Shamefully, the 50 signatories to this letter are not the only rabbis who have decided to provide a “kosher certificate” for Azerbaijan’s human rights violations. The Conference of European Rabbis recently announced with great pride that they would be holding their annual conference in Baku, “graciously hosted by the President”, the dictator Ilham Aliyev, who has reined since his father’s death in 2003. While the conference’s organizers claim that the location of the conference makes no political statement, it is clear that these rabbis are being used by Azerbaijan to prove the government’s Kosher bonafides to the world, and to shut the world’s ears to the cries of the afflicted.

And this is the last thing a group of rabbis should be doing. Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik quoted his esteemed grandfather Rabbi Chaim of Brisk who responded, when asked what the function of a rabbi is: “To redress the grievances of those who are abandoned and alone, to protect the dignity of the poor, and to save the oppressed from the hands of his oppressor.” Judaism has long taught that the moral significance of our own suffering in Egypt is the moral charge to ensure that others do not suffer in a similar way. Hillel famously summed up the message of the entire Torah in the adage “What is hated to you, do not do to your fellow.” The Jewish people have experienced the world’s apathy to our suffering, including the many justifications provided to cover up decisions that were truly motivated by the desire to maintain good relations with oil-rich countries.

The decision of these rabbis to raise their voices on the side of the oppressor is a desecration of Holocaust memory and of Jewish values. In the spirit of this season of repentance, we call on the Conference of European rabbis, or at the very least, on individual rabbinic members of conscience, to have the moral courage to remember their rabbinic duty, and retract their decision.

Prof. Israel W. Charny, is the director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide Jerusalem, the co-founder and  a past President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and editor-in-chief of the Encylopedia of Genocide.

Rabbi Avidan Freedman is a Jerusalem based educator and Orthodox rabbi, and the co-founder and director of Yanshoof, an organization which promotes ethical limits on Israeli arms sales.

 

Azeri Massacre of Polish and Jewish Civilians in 1944

With the renewed attention to the threat of possible genocide of the Armenian population in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabach) these days, new attention has been focused on past historical events, among them a massacre of Jewish Poles by the Azeris during the Holocaust. –Ed.

Vartanian, Varouj (August 24, 2023). The Massacre of Jews by the Azeri Legion during the Holocaust. The California Courier. Reprinted from the Times of Israel. https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-holocausts-wola-massacre-legacy-of-the-azerbaijani-legion/

The Wola Massacre is one of the forgotten massacres during the Holocaust that we must remember today. The brutal massacre of 50,000 Polish and Jewish civilians began on August 5, 1944 – 79 years ago today. Between August 5 and August 12, 1944, German Wehrmacht soldiers and Azerbaijani Legion soldiers collaborated to “kill anything that moves” in Wola, Poland. The infamous quote from the previous sentence was uttered by Adolf Hitler as the Nazis approached Warsaw.

“Azerbaijan’s strong association with massacres and human rights crimes over a span of more than 100 years is the elephant in the room that the international community is hesitant to address due to geopolitics. But this needs to be addressed if we are to build a more peaceful and moral future.”

As early as 2020, Los Angeles Times, Time Magazine, Forbes, Chicago Tribune, Jerusalem Post, Newsweek, and RollingStone have published articles bringing attention to the fragile situation in Nagorno-Karabakh and the risks of a second Armenian genocide. If the West truly believes in democracy, human rights, self-determination, and liberal values, Europe and the United States must take a stand against Azerbaijan’s government instead of giving the dictatorship a pass to commit these crimes. Otherwise, the hypocrisy is deafening.

Israel Is Learning How Quickly Democracy Gives Way to Dictatorship

Stavrou, David (August 1, 2023). Israel Is Learning How Quickly Democracy Gives Way to Dictatorship.  Haaretz.

Over the past several months, numerous essays comparing Israel with other countries have appeared in this newspaper. It started with the obvious comparison to the illiberal democracies in Europe, voicing fears that the country is turning into Hungary or Poland. The comparisons then moved on to Turkey; some interesting exegeses followed about similarities to Afghanistan, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and even Margaret Atwood’s fictional Republic of Gilead. Comparing Israel to other countries always leads to criticism because there is not – and cannot be – absolute congruity.

It is a valuable thought experiment, however. Even if Israel doesn’t become a dictatorship, looking outward broadens and expands the debate.

I’ve written in recent years about human rights violations, murderous dictatorships, and ethnic cleansing contain good examples of countries for comparison. They illustrate what can happen in countries without a separation of powers, freedom of the press, and independent courts. I had one conversation with Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who challenged Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in the country’s last election. Our talk showed that the mere existence of elections does not guarantee democracy.

Although Lukashenko officially defeated her, the world knew the election was fraudulent. After Tsikhanouskaya filed a complaint with the country’s central election commission, the authorities detained her for several hours. She told me the security services then escorted her to the Lithuanian border. After she crossed it, footage reminiscent of a hostage video was released, in which she asked Belarusians to stop demonstrating and accept Lukashenko’s victory.

The stories of three demonstrators who managed to leave reflect what happened to those who defied the request. Valery was viciously beaten, his wrists restrained so tightly he couldn’t feel his hands. Vyacheslav was stripped to his underwear, stuffed into a holding cell with dozens of people, and starved for four days until his trial, which lasted six minutes. Alexey saw people with broken ribs and guards beating a man to death. None of the three men was a political activist. They were a software engineer, an art professor, and the owner of a technology company. They never imagined that they would end up in this kind of situation.

The brutality of the Belarusian police is one example of what happens when the criminal justice system is not answerable to an independent civil authority committed to protecting human rights. There are some citizens in China whom its government wants to eliminate. A network of “psychiatric prisons” has been established for this purpose, where people without mental illness are forcibly admitted after being abducted and having their phones confiscated.

They’re locked in rooms with mentally ill patients, where they’re given psychiatric drugs and electroshock “therapy” while fully conscious. If they resist, they’re tied to a bed, sometimes for an entire night. This is nothing compared to what’s happening in the remote northwestern Xinjiang region, where various ethnic minorities live. Reeducation camps established there combine indoctrination, torture, and medical experiments.

I haven’t mentioned these examples because of any similarity to Israel. I’ve mentioned them because conversations with people who survived and escaped these hells reveal a notable point: how quickly things turned upside down. The survivors were once teachers, physicians, and civil servants who lived entirely everyday lives. Then began the riots, terror attacks, and “lack of governance” – and with them, accusations of extremism, factionalism, and terrorism. Next came the arrival of someone who could “create order,” and order was indeed created.

First, the textbooks were replaced, and newspapers were closed. Afterward came the checkpoints, the facial recognition cameras, and restrictions on technology. Finally, passports were seized, and the borders were closed. The camps appeared then, too. Solely for reeducation, of course. It’s unlikely that Israel would act with such determination and efficiency even against the Palestinians, but this is an important lesson about a government with no oversight – and how quickly the water heats around unaware frogs.

There’s another element that must be considered: dehumanization. Last year, a young Yazidi woman named Leila told me about how she was bought and sold several times by members of ISIS, who abused her for months. She was just one victim of the trafficking of women and organized rape that became a feature of the Syrian Civil War. A few months before that, a young Kurdish man named Bejan told me about a Turkish attack on civilians in northern Syria, the product of decades of dehumanizing the Kurds.

He said he saw many dead and wounded, most full of shrapnel or missing limbs. “The thing that’s hardest to forget,” he said, “was a girl, about 8 years old, who was sitting by her dead brother, trying to wake him up.” Testimonies from Ethiopia’s Tigray Province and the mass slaughter of the Rohingya in Myanmar show to what depths it’s possible to descend: gang rape, execution by gunfire or machete, drowning babies, setting villages on fire along with their inhabitants. These occurred in the second decade of the 21st century. Nothing even close is happening in Israel, but the processes of dehumanization begin long before the overt violence in those countries.

Horrifically enough, the murderers in Myanmar, Ethiopia, and Syria don’t see themselves as grim reapers. On the contrary: in many cases, they’re ordinary people who have convinced themselves they’re the victims. Society disintegrated and descended into violent chaos with the help of racist and ultranationalist ideologies, narratives based on political interests, and social media algorithms.

Some will argue that these are examples from countries that lack a democratic tradition, and no comparison can be made – but the truth is that Israel also lacks a centuries-old parliament or generations of a democratic culture. While it’s neither a Soviet republic nor a failed state in Africa, it’s a young and vulnerable democracy possessing a formidable military, a significant minority population, and the occupation of another nation. These are not starting conditions that provide strong resilience.

That’s why, when looking at the demonstrations in Israel in a global context, you can see that they’re not about the reasonableness standard, the standing of the attorney general, or legal advisers in government ministries. They’re an eruption triggered by the actual grave dangers: ignorance, racism, ultranationalism, and unfettered governmental power. They’re about liberalism and solidarity, education and culture, and the Israeli Declaration of Independence’s “freedom, justice and peace” and “complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants.” The demonstrations are against a choice to break from the enlightened world and walk with eyes wide shut toward countries to which only Israel is willing to sell arms, cyber technology, and “security consulting.” If Israel doesn’t come to its senses, it could follow in their footsteps very soon.

In Memory of Professor Richard G. Hovannisian: Obituary from the University of Southern California

Richard G. Hovannisian was a titan in the field of Armenian Studies – an academic discipline that he shaped with his groundbreaking scholarship and professionalism. He passed away this week, at the age of 90, leaving behind a legacy that is impossible to capture.

He lived the life of a public intellectual. He became a historian with a mission – to promote the study of the Armenian Genocide as a consequential 20th century event. His research and publications cemented the place of the first Republic of Armenia in Armenian history and world history. Yet, he never lost sight of his two other responsibilities, teaching and community building. He was a professor who shaped multiple generations’ ideas and outlook on what it means to be Armenian. He and his life partner, Dr. Vartiter Kotcholosian Hovannisian, were an unrelenting, resolute presence in the developing Armenian-American community of Southern California – which always included the California Central Valley where his genocide survivor father settled.

His name has been omnipresent in academia for nearly seven decades, making space for Armenian scholars at institutions once out of reach. Hovannisian’s time at the University of California Los Angeles birthed new scholars through the graduate program he founded in Armenian history. Hovannisian also provided opportunities for students of all disciplines to have hands-on experience collecting, transcribing, and translating the invaluable oral histories of Armenian Genocide survivors. In recent years, he was also a presence at the University of Southern California, after entrusting his large collection of oral history interviews to the university for preservation and public access. The interviews were among the first to be conducted with genocide survivors.

Richard G. Hovannisian’s scholarship, mentorship, publications, and community building have touched the lives and trajectories of innumerable people, including every member of the USC Institute of Armenian Studies.

Our sincere condolences to his family, peers, friends, students, and the Armenian Studies community worldwide for this enormous loss.

Memorial Comment from the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, Jerusalem

The Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem mourns deeply the passing of Prof. Richard G. Hovanissian. In our judgment he was the pre-eminent scholar of the Armenian Genocide in the world and an outstanding leader of the Armenian people, and on a personal level was a kind and genuinely friendly person with whom it was a pleasure to collaborate.

We first met on the occasion of Prof. Hovanissian’s participation in the First International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide in Tel Aviv in 1982, and continued in a warm relationship ever since. Following the conference, which we were told was the first occasion ever that the Armenian Genocide was recognized at an international academic conference, he hosted a luncheon at the UCLA Faculty Club honoring me as the organizer and chair of the conference together with his colleague at UCLA, Prof. Leo Kuper, who in my judgment was the outstanding scholar of comparative genocide in the world and who had also played a significant role in the conference. He then edited a book on the conference contributions, The Armenian Genocide in Perspective and became an eminent member of the International Council of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide Jerusalem which we launched after the conference.

We- on a number of occasions also with his dear exceptional wife, Vart, a physician who volunteered many years in Armenia– met many times through the years in many places in the world including in Yerevan. Our last active collaboration a few years ago, when he was already ill, was his contribution of a chapter. “A Contemporary Armenian: Richard G. Hovanissian—The Armenian Genocide and Extreme Denial” to my book, Israel’s Failed Response to the Armenian Genocide”: Denial, State Deception, Truth Versus Politicization of History (the book has enjoyed several printings and will soon appear in an Armenian translation in Armenia).

With great affection and deep grief, we celebrate a great person and his enduring contributions to Armenian pride, scholarship, and development. -Prof. Israel W. Charny, Director, Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide Jerusalem

The United States Commemorates the Armenian Genocide on April 24, 2023, and we add WHERE IS ISRAEL?

On April 24, 2023, President Joe Biden issued his annual statement in commemoration of the Armenian Genocide. This is his statement in full:

Today, we pause to remember the lives lost during the Meds Yeghern—the Armenian genocide— and renew our pledge to never forget.

On April 24, 1915, Ottoman authorities arrested Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople—the start of a systematic campaign of violence against the Armenian community. In the years that followed, one and a half million Armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths—a tragedy that forever affected generations of Armenian families.

As we join nations around the world in remembering this painful history, we also reflect on the resilience and resolve of the Armenian people. So many of those who survived were forced to begin new lives in new lands—including the United States. Here and around the world, the Armenian people have met the evil of hate with hope. They rebuilt their communities. They nurtured their families and preserved their culture. They strengthened our nation. They also told their stories—and those of their ancestors—to remember and to ensure that genocide like the one that happened 108 years ago is never again repeated.

Today, let us renew this pledge. Let us recommit to speaking out against hate, standing up for human rights, and preventing atrocities. And together, let us redouble our efforts to forge a better future—one where all people can live with dignity, security, and respect.

Dr. Taner Akçam Presents New Findings on the First Decision to Commit the Armenian Genocide

Reprinted with permission from Hye Sharzhoom (Fresno State University, California).

Derkalousdian, Careen (May 2023). Dr. Taner Akçam Presents New Findings on the First Decision to Commit the Armenian Genocide  Hye Sharzhoom. https://hyesharzhoom.com/dr-taner-akcam-presents-new-findings-on-the-first-decision-to-commit-the-armenian-genocide/

On Friday, March 3, 2023, Dr. Taner Akçam, director of the Armenian Genocide Research Program at The UCLA Promise Institute, presented his new findings regarding the first decision to eradicate the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the twentieth century. The lecture, “The First Decision of the Armenian Genocide and the Role of the Kurds in Ottoman Documents,” was part of the Armenian Studies Program Spring 2023 lecture series.

Dr. Akçam is recognized as one of the first Turkish scholars to write extensively about the Armenian Genocide and the role that the Ottoman Turks played in orchestrating this atrocity. He has published several award-winning works such as A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (Metropolitan Books, 2006) and Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton University Press, 2012).

Dr. Akçam began his presentation by outlining his three main arguments. In his first argument, he explained when the first and final decisions to carry out the Armenian Genocide were made. The first decision was made on December 1, 1914 by the Central Committee of the Teşkîlât-ı Mahsûsa [Special Committee] in Erzurum for the Van and Bitlis regions, and the final decision was made by the Central Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) between February 15 and March 3 of 1915.

The date of the first decision is corroborated by two telegrams sent to the Interior Minister Talaat Pasha from the Special Committee, which outlined the beginning stages of the Genocide, which began with the targeting of Armenians in Bitlis and Van: “Those suspected of being potential leaders of the revolt or liable to carry out attacks against Muslims should be arrested and … eliminated.”

The date of the final decision is evidenced by Bahaeddin Şakir’s visit to Istanbul and Erzerum as well as the restructuring of the Special Committee during this time. The Committee was put under the authority of Şakir, and they contributed to making the final decision. Two letters of Şakir’s, written in March and April of 1915, were published by Aram Andonian, and were recently confirmed to be authentic. These letters validate the dates of when the final decision to annihilate the Armenians was made.

Dr. Akçam’s second major argument was that the provincial governors did not simply carry out orders from the central government, but they actively participated in the decision-making of the Armenian Genocide. In fact, the radical policy regarding the Armenian population was first adopted by the provincial governments and later adopted and expanded by Istanbul. This fact is evidenced by a series of written and oral discussions among provincial governors, where they explicitly shared ideas on how to carry out the extermination. According to Dr. Akçam, this was a very important discovery.

Dr. Akçam’s third and final argument was that violence against Christians was not only orchestrated by the central government, but that there was also bottom-up violence outside their control. Moreover, there is evidence in telegrams that shows how the provincial governors pushed the central government to carry out the Armenian Genocide. These governors often demanded radical measures to be taken against the Armenians, and the central government gave them permission.

Toward the end of his lecture, Dr. Akçam also presented new findings regarding the Kurdish role in the Genocide. While the Turkish gendarmes were sent to carry out the Genocide, anarchy ensued and Kurdish tribes engaged in the murder, rape, and looting of Christian settlements. During this time, the Turkish governors were sending complaints regarding the Kurdish attacks to the central government. This led Dr. Akçam to ask a very important question: “Why did the Ottoman state, which had undertaken extensive political and practical actions in order to annihilate the Armenian population, oppose and clash with the Kurdish tribes when they attacked the same Christian villages?” One answer to this question is that the Ottoman Turks were unwilling to share power with others. For example, they wanted to exploit the Christians’ wealth for their own gain and not for the benefit of other agents such as the Kurds. In addition, Ottoman officials wanted to control and censor news coverage, but the Kurds’ uncontrollable looting drew attention to the atrocities being committed against the Christian Armenian population and made censorship very difficult.

There was also a highly “patriotic” motive to deporting and killing the Armenians as it seemed a personal “accomplishment” that the Ottoman Turks took national pride in. In fact, according to Turkish governors, the Kurds were barbaric, uncivilized, and unpatriotic and thus, their looting and killing of Armenians was deemed as “unreputable.” All of these factors played a part in the clash between the Ottoman state and the Kurds.

Dr. Akçam’s presentation outlined new and critical information regarding the execution and timeline of the Armenian Genocide by the Ottoman central and provincial governments, as well as the role of Kurdish tribes in the looting and killing of Christian Armenian villages. Until the recent documentation was revealed, many might say that the three leaders of the committee of Union and Progress were the main orchestrators of the Armenian Genocide. However, now it is clear that the provincial Turkish governors not only carried out the CUP’s orders, but they also actively contributed ideas and participated in the extermination of the Armenians.

The Armenian community is grateful to Dr. Akçam for his contributions to the field of Armenian Genocide research and looks forward to his future discoveries.

Der Matossian explores genocide denialism in the 21st century

Gayman, Deann (April 10, 2023). Der Matossian explores genocide denialism in the 21st century. Reprinted from The California Courier.

In the 21st century, where information — and disinformation — is shared at warp speed, genocide denialism has spread just as rapidly.

Bedross Der Matossian, a historian of the Armenian Genocide and professor of history at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, is aiming to help explain this phenomenon and combat it with a new volume of scholarship from fellow historians that he’s edited into the book, “Denial of Genocides in the Twenty-First Century.” It will publish May 1 with Nebraska University Press.

Through state and nonstate propaganda efforts, the weaponization of publications by pseudo-historians, and the rise of social media, genocide denialism has entered the mainstream, Der Matossian said, bringing with it a rise in racism, antisemitism, and other xenophobias.

“It’s a very timely book, I think, with the rise of right-wing governments around the globe, with the rise of white nationalism in the United States, antisemitism, and with the Turkish government’s excessive propaganda after the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide that took place in 2015,” he said.

Der Matossian said the book is an important contribution to the scholarship surrounding genocides in modern history, but it is also important because denialism is a revictimization of the those killed and the survivors, and has wide-ranging unforeseen consequences.

“Scholars argue that the last stage of a genocide is denial,” he said. “Denial is killing the dead, killing the memory of dead, and many survivors live with the denial of their own genocide. The denial of genocides emboldens people to commit additional acts of violence and genocide in the future.”

In chronological order, 12 scholars including Der Matossian write about denialism of eight genocides spanning three centuries. Der Matossian said he asked scholars to contribute based on their expertise as historians of particular genocides. Among the contributors is Der Matossian’s colleague, Gerald Steinacher, James A. Rawley Professor of History, who wrote a chapter about Holocaust denial.

Chapters cover the denialism of the Armenian genocide, genocides of the Indigenous in the United States, the Holocaust, genocides in Cambodia, Guatemala, Bosnia, Rwanda, and the genocide in Syria under the Assad regime. The final chapter is written by Israel Charney, a psychologist and genocide scholar, and explains why some engage in denialism.

“These are examples of major genocides, in order to show why the 21st century is a new phase in denialism,” Der Matossian said. “It endeavors to understand the new methods of denialism that are taking place around the globe.”

While the genocides covered in the book happened, in some cases, centuries or decades ago, Der Matossian noted that the lightning speed with which information is shared today makes is harder to overcome the disinformation.

“Both state and nonstate actors obfuscate the reality through using the medium of social networks, the most important being Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, by putting their propaganda material there, and we see an increase in Armenophobia, Islamophobia, antisemitism,” he said. “All of them are using the 21st century tools to operate and to reach their agenda.”

The volume also raises awareness that genocide denialism does not end, even when countries have accepted responsibility, and it demonstrates that that denialism does not only happen under authoritarian regimes.

“There is no genocide in the course of history that has gone without being denied by states and nonstate actors, often including ‘professional’ historians and pseudo-historians… In the past decade, the rise of right-wing populist governments in Europe and the United States has intensified this trend dramatically,” Der Matossian writes in the introduction.

Der Matossian also challenges his readers to ask themselves what can be done.

“In the United States, the denial of genocide is hiding behind the First Amendment,” he said. “We invite the reader also to raise a question whether denial of genocide should be termed as hate speech.”

An Overwhelming Encounter with the Truth of Genocidal Cruelty

The following report by Harut Sassounian, publisher of the Armenian-American newspaper, The California Courier, contains a graphic account of the monstrous cruelty of a genocider — in this case in a massacre of thousands of Kurds and Armenians in Dersim, Turkey in 1937-8. The reading is painful but essential for anyone who really is caring to come to grips with the truths of this dimension of humanity – abject cruelty and profoundly unforgiving murderous behavior. – Ed.

Sassounian, Harut (April 24, 2023). Turkish Sergeant Provides Grisly Details of Massacring Dersim Alevis & Armenians. California Courier. https://www.thecaliforniacourier.com/turkish-sergeant-provides-grisly-details-of-massacring-dersim-alevis-armenians/

Turkish Sergeant Ali Oz, who participated in the massacre of thousands of Alevi Kurds and Armenians in Dersim, Turkey, in 1937-38, wrote a shocking confession about his role in those killings. It is very disturbing to read the gruesome details of the killings.

The source of Oz’s letter is the archive of Hasan Saltık who was the founder of Kalan Music which produced valuable records of Turkish and Armenian music. He passed away two years ago. Saltik had hundreds of Turkish governmental documents and photos which he shared with several researchers. One of them was Nevzat Onaran who wrote extensively about the confiscated Armenian properties. Prof. Taner Akcam gave me a copy of Oz’s letter which he had received from Onaran. Akcam thanked Nilufer, Saltik’s wife, for giving him permission to use the letter.

Sergeant Oz wrote a letter on December 17, 1946 to Minister of Interior Sukru Kaya, thanking him for having helped him get a job at the intercession of powerful General Abdullah Alpdogan, who was the Governor-Commander of the Dersim region, sent by Ataturk to organize the Dersim massacre. Oz was Alpdogan’s bodyguard in Dersim.

Oz told Minister Kaya in his letter that his army colleague, Ethem, who was with him during the Dersim massacre, had recently come to visit him. “He had lost his mind completely. He rose out of bed startled. He went out into the street screaming…. I could barely restrain him. The children they killed constantly troubled him. He couldn’t sleep or anything. With great difficulty I took him to Izmir, brought him to his family and handed him over to them. After I came back, I got the news. He cut his wrists and committed suicide.”

Sergeant Oz described the impact of the crimes he had committed in Dersim. “This incident affected me profoundly. The saddening incidents that I experienced began one by one to return to my mind. The eyes of the children I killed pounded in my head, and I too began to not sleep, to not eat. I rise up shaking, I lose myself. It has become such that I don’t know where I have gone, what I have done.”

Oz wrote that he was referred to a psychiatrist. “The doctor had me write everything that I had experienced and sign it. Now I am taking medicine. They gave me a leave [of absence] for three months. But my Minister, our General said, ‘don’t talk about what happened here [in Dersim] to any civilian, not even to your mother or father. Otherwise, you will all be hanged.’ I wrote those things and signed them. Now I have begun to fear whether something might happen to me. I asked the doctor to give me back what I wrote. It’s impossible, he won’t give it.”
Oz told the Interior Minister exactly what he had written to his psychiatrist: “I participated in the Dersim operation of 1937-38. I was the bodyguard of my General. There was a lot of conflict with the bandits. Those bandits we caught or those who surrendered we killed, whether women or children. We poured petrol on them all and burned them. Sometimes the General said to pour petrol on them alive and burn them. Yelling and screaming they burned and turned to ashes, the smell of flesh burned our whole nasal passage.”

Oz continued his horrible recollections: “News came to the General from Tersemek [Dersim]: ‘Women and children were hidden somewhere steep alongside the river, what shall we do?’ ‘Kill and burn them all,’ said the General. Two hours later the Lieutenant gave directions. But, no one wanted to harm the children. They didn’t listen to the orders. The General was very angry. We set out with a squad of soldiers. Everyone stood at attention. He began to hit the Lieutenant and the soldiers. Cursing, he said: ‘bring them all to where it’s flat.’ The women and children, yelling and screaming, wailing and moaning, begged at the General’s feet. There was nothing proper on them or their feet. He had all their hands and feet bound, their mouths gagged with cloth. ‘Now soldiers, I address you, these Qizilbash [Alevi] offspring are all the bastards of traitors, the bastards of those who killed your friends, and if they grow up they will continue to kill your brothers. They should be exterminated. We eradicated the Armenian offspring. All that’s left are these Kurds and Qizilbash. If you want your children to live happily in this country, you will kill without mercy. The government, our President, gave instructions to raze, burn, demolish. No one will be judged for the things done, I promise you,’ he said.”

The General then ordered: “‘Everyone will take turns to kill one or two people.’ There was silence in the squad. ‘Lieutenant, begin, bring two people,’ he said. They brought two children, and he shot them in the head. They both died. When it came to the third soldier, Salih from Diyarbakir, he went to the children and fell in front of them. ‘My Commander, I can’t do it, I have children too. Children are innocent,’ he said, ‘these poor things.’ The General said, ‘you fucking Kurd, it’s your race, that’s why you take pity, isn’t it?’ He shot the soldier in the forehead. He said, ‘whoever doesn’t carry out the order will end up like him.’ So, everyone started to kill one or two women and children. After each execution, the General himself shot them once or twice in the head to make sure they were dead.

Everyone had to do his duty. ‘Come to me Sergeant [Oz], it’s your turn.’ There were three little girls left. ‘You take care of them,’ he said. The children were hunched over on the ground and had soiled themselves. They were crying in their ragged state. I looked into their eyes. I killed the three of them. Their eyes pierced my depths. I can’t forget their eyes. 70 to 80 children and 30 women were executed that day. They were all thrown into the waters of the Murat. The river was soaked with blood. Many soldiers prayed for forgiveness. I killed and burned many people, but I’ve never seen eyes that pierced like those of the children.”

Sergeant Oz concluded his letter with the following agonizing note: “How can I look my children in the face?”

Anti-Defamation League and Tel Aviv University Compared Israel’s Radical Right Ideology with those of the Nazis

In an unprecedented move, the ADL and Tel Aviv University called out jointly in an annual report on global antisemitism on the juxtaposition of Israel’s right wing political ideology and policies with the Nazis. “The modern history of Germany is evidence of humans’ infinite ability, including the most educated, to commit evil.  It warns us how dangerous it is to allow bigotry and hate speech to thrive… this universal lesson applies universally…“The obvious must be stated: Racism is racism, and Jewish racism is as deplorable as other forms of racism and should never be excused or tolerated.”

Needless to say, Israel’s right wing, such as an advisor to Public Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, has hit back with criticism of the report.  However, criticism was not only from the right.  Respected Holocaust researcher, Prof. Yehuda Bauer, told Haaretz that “linking contemporary proto-fascist Jewish nationalism a la Kahane with Nazism is a distortion of history.”  – Sokol, Sam (19 April 2023).  ADL Annual Holocaust Report draws the ire of historians.  Haaretz English Edition.

A Holocaust Survivor Who Candidly Reveals the Cruelty Also of Jews in the Holocaust

Halina Birenbaum is a Holocaust survivor from Poland.  She has gone back many times guiding tours of the death camps and told her story countless times.  In a Hebrew language documentary film, “Where Are You Going?,” her son Gilad and Halina follow a mother and son to Poland.  Halina is deeply touching. She speaks with unusual clarity and directness. “Gilad sees his elderly mother standing in the shack at Auschwitz where she spent two horrible years, standing at the foot of the bunk she slept on, reconstructing the moments she realized her mother had entered the gas chamber and would never return.

What is most unusual is that Halina reports vividly the utter vicious animalistic cruelty of the police who rounded her and others up to be sent to the camp and these police are no less Jews in the Jewish police force the Nazis created.  Halina’s work is very well known and widely celebrated in Poland and barely so in Israel where, among others, she has been the object of major criticism such as by Yad Vashem who wrote her “I know there were Jews who collaborated with the Nazis, there were Jewish traitors, there were Jews who tried to save themselves at the price of the lives of others. … But where is the proportion?  You, Madam, describe the truth.  It is hard for me to believe that you have never heard about the informing, the exposing, the extortion and the active efforts by the Poles.”

Jasmine Kainy was the director of the film.  She realized she had found why Birenbaum was almost unknown in Israel.  “It’s in the politics of memory, the question of what’s comfortable for the Poles to hear and not for us…We see in the letter the attitude toward survivors in that period, and the establishment’s inability to accept the alternative narrative that Halina offered, that the Jews were part of the destruction of the Jews, that part of the Nazis’ horror was they managed to turn the Jews against themselves.  The current new chairman of Yad Vashem, Dani Dayan had said that she is the hero of her story and that “to our shame Israel did not know how to receive Holocaust survivors.” – Anderman, Nirit (20 April 2023). Haaretz English Edition.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Reveals His Basic Machiavellian Thinking

:בנימין נתניהו

היום אנחנו מקיימים שיח עם האויבים שלנו… וכך אנחנו שולטים על גובה הלהבות, תרתי משמע… ואז אתה אוסף מודיעין, עוסק בהונעה.  זו מלחמה עם טקטיקה.  מלחמה עם תחבולות… עצם השיחה הוא רמאות אחת גדולה… אתה קונה זמן… מותר סיפורים.

וייץ ,גידי- נתניהו ניצב בצומת, וכל פנייה שיבחר בה מובילה אותו לתהום.   הארץ.   (21.4.2023)

 

 BENJAMIN NETANYAHU:

Today we’re talking with our enemies… and that’s how we control the height of the flame, literally… and the way you collect intelligence, engage in fraud.  It is a war with tactics.  A war with tricks… the very conversation is one big deception… you buy time… you sell stories. -Weitz, Gidi (21 April 2023). Haaretz English Edition.

Israel’s Massive Supply of Sophisticated Weapons to Azerbaijan

With great sadness and anger, the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide is reprinting the following editorial by Harut Sassounian in the California Courier.  The editorial has since been distributed also in mailings by Prof. Michael Stone of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier, March 9, 2023

Israel’s Massive Supply of Sophisticated Weapons to Azerbaijan

The Israeli Haaretz newspaper published on March 5, an astounding article titled: “92 Flights from Israeli Base Reveal Arms Exports to Azerbaijan.”

The article reported that on March 2, Azerbaijan’s Silk Way Airlines’ cargo plane landed in Israel’s Ovda military airport, and two hours later returned to Baku via Turkey and the Georgian Republic. In the last seven years, this is the 92nd cargo flight from Baku to Ovda, the only airfield in Israel that is allowed to export explosives. These military shipments increased substantially during Azerbaijan’s attacks on Armenia/Artsakh in 2016, 2020, 2021 and 2022. Pres. Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan has described Israel’s covert relations with Azerbaijan as being like an iceberg, nine-tenths of it is below the surface.

Israel supplies almost 70% of Azerbaijan’s weapons and in return receives about half of its imported oil. Haaretz quoted foreign media sources disclosing that: “Azerbaijan has allowed the Mossad [Israel’s intelligence agency] to set up a forward branch [in Azerbaijan] to monitor what is happening in Iran, Azerbaijan’s neighbor to the south, and has even prepared an airfield intended to aid Israel in case it decides to attack Iranian nuclear sites. Reports from two years ago stated that the Mossad agents who stole the Iranian nuclear archive smuggled it to Israel via Azerbaijan. According to official reports from Azerbaijan, over the years Israel has sold it the most advanced weapons systems, including ballistic missiles, air defense and electronic warfare systems, kamikaze drones and more.”

Haaretz revealed that Azerbaijan’s Silk Way Airlines “operates three weekly flights between Baku and [Israel’s] Ben-Gurion International Airport with Boeing 747 cargo freighters.” In addition, some Eastern European countries circumvent the ban on the sale of weapons to Azerbaijan by shipping them via Israel.

The restriction of the sale of weapons by Europe and the United States to Armenia and Azerbaijan created an opportunity for Israel to earn billions of dollars in weapons’ sales to Azerbaijan.

Haaretz reported that “Israel has exported a very wide range of weapons to the country [Azerbaijan] — starting with Tavor assault rifles all the way to the most sophisticated systems such as radar, air defense, antitank missiles, ballistic missiles, ships and a wide range of drones, both for intelligence and attack purposes. Israeli companies have also supplied advanced spy tech, such as communications monitoring systems from Verint and the Pegasus spyware from the NSO Group — tools that were used against journalists, the LGBT community and human rights activists in Azerbaijan, too.”

The Stockholm International Peace Institute wrote: “Israel’s defense exports to Azerbaijan began in 2005 with the sale of the Lynx multiple launch rocket systems by Israel Military Industries (IMI Systems), which has a range of 150 kilometers (92 miles). IMI, which was acquired by Elbit Systems in 2018, also supplied LAR-160 light artillery rockets with a range of 45 kilometers, which, according to a report from Human Rights Watch, were used by Azerbaijan to fire banned cluster munitions at residential areas in Nagorno-Karabakh,” even though Israel and 123 other countries have banned the use of cluster bombs.

Haaretz reported that “In 2007, Azerbaijan signed a contract to buy four intelligence-gathering drones from Aeronautics Defense Systems. It was the first deal of many. In 2008 it purchased 10 Hermes 450 drones from Elbit Systems and 100 Spike antitank missiles produced by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and in 2010 it bought another 10 intelligence-gathering drones. Soltam Systems, owned by Elbit, sold it ATMOS self-propelled guns and 120-millimeter Cardom mortars, and in 2017 Azerbaijan’s arsenal was supplemented with the more advanced Hanit mortars. According to the telegram leaked in Wikileaks, a sale of advanced communications equipment from Tadiran was also signed in 2008.”

According to Haaretz, “Israel and Azerbaijan took their relationship up a level in 2011 with a huge $1.6 billion deal that included a battery of Barak missiles for intercepting aircraft and missiles, as well as Searcher and Heron drones from Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). It was reported that near the end of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020, a Barak battery shot down an Iskander ballistic missile launched by Armenia. Aeronautics Defense Systems also began cooperating with the local arms industry in Azerbaijan, where some of the 100 Orbiter kamikaze (loitering munitions) drones were produced — drones that Azerbaijan’s defense minister called ‘a nightmare for the Armenian army.’”

In 2021, “an indictment was filed against [Israel’s] Aeronautics Defense Systems for violating the law regulating defense exports in its dealing with one of its most prominent clients. A court-imposed gag order prevents the publication of further details. A project to modernize the Azerbaijani army’s tanks began in the early 2010s. Elbit Systems upgraded and equipped the old Soviet T-72 models with new protective gear to enhance the tanks’ and their crews’ survivability, as well as fast and precise target acquisition and fire control systems. The upgraded tanks, known as Aslan (Lion), starred in the 2013 military parade. Azerbaijan’s navy was reinforced in 2013 with six patrol ships based on the Israel Navy’s Sa’ar 4.5-class missile boats, produced by Israel Shipyards and carrying the naval version of the Spike missiles, along with six Shaldag MK V patrol boats with Rafael’s Typhoon gun mounts and Spike missile systems. Azerbaijan’s navy also bought 100 Lahat antitank guided missiles.”

In 2014, “Azerbaijan ordered the first 100 Harop kamikaze drones from IAI, which were a critical tool in later rounds of fighting. Azerbaijan also purchased two advanced radar systems for aerial warning and defense from IAI subsidiary Elta that same year…. Two years later, Azerbaijan bought another 250 SkyStriker kamikaze drones from Elbit Systems. Many videos from the areas of fighting showed Israeli drones attacking Armenian forces…. In 2016, during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Baku, Aliyev revealed that contracts had already been signed between the two countries for the purchase of some $5 billion in ‘defensive equipment.’ In 2017, Azerbaijan purchased advanced Hermes 900 drones from Elbit Systems and LORA ballistic missiles from IAI, with a range 430 kilometers. In 2018, Aliyev inaugurated the base where the LORA missiles are deployed, at a distance of about 430 kilometers from Yerevan, Armenia’s capital. During the war in 2020, at least one LORA missile was launched, and according to reports it hit a bridge that Armenia used to supply arms and equipment to its forces in Nagorno-Karabakh. More advanced Spike missiles were sent in 2019 and 2020.”

It is appalling that the descendants of the Holocaust are supplying such massive lethal weapons to Azerbaijan to kill the descendants of the Armenian Genocide.

Fascist Meter

The battle against genocide necessarily involves battling against the emergence of fascist governments. As most people know, we are having a major crisis in Israel these days in dealing with what many of us perceive as serious steps towards fascist types of governance. The following is an article that I succeeded in having published in the Jerusalem Post which will be of interest.  The headline created by the newspaper is a poor one, but the rest of the text is just fine. This is a checklist of fascist characteristics in individual people and in institutions. The list is intended to be used as a way to help us evaluate degrees of fascist or totalitarian control in the ideas and actions of selected leaders, groups and institutions.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-726666

How to Cover Up a Massacre

The world does not seem to need very much advice on  how to cover up massacres.  People are good at creating masks of indifference, unknowing, denial and distortion of evidence without needing much training.

A thoughtful and extensive review of a documentary on the catastrophe for the Arab people in the course of Israel’s War of Independence in 1948 is edifying reading.  For decent Israelis, the truths of the Nakba or catastrophic disaster for the Arabs does not take away from the heroism and beauty, let alone justice, of the young Israeli state standing up in self-protection against the Arab populations refusal to accept the United Nations partition of Palestine into two states, one for the Jewish people and one for the Arabs.  The war was an absolute survival necessity for the Jews who had nowhere else to go –  including so many of them who had literally just arrived having survived amazingly the vicious death camps of the Nazis.  But for decent Israelis the war is also a reminder that in the course of fighting for the good, we human beings seem invariably unable to maintain a tight policy of decency and avoidance of non-military losses.

Alon Schwarz is the Director of a film, Tantura, which is a location on the shore of the Mediterranean facing the town of Zichron Ya’akov in Israel.

To this day, a complex controversy rages as to whether or not the conquering Israeli troops committed an outrageously cruel slaughter of the resident Arab population.

Schwarz’ point is that once we recognize the Nakba and educate about it honestly, it will be infinitely easier to launch a dialogue with the Palestinians about the continuing conflict between the two peoples to this day.  “It would be better for us all if we understood that we must take responsibility for the massive planned expulsion that took place here, for which the current correct term is ‘ethnic cleansing.'”

Schwarz, Alon (August 12, 2022). How to Cover Up a Massacre: Zionism must evolve in order to survive, writes the director of the documentary ‘Tantura.’ Israelis should be strong enough to acknowledge the suffering of the other side. Recognizing the Nakba is a first step toward a future of peace.  Haaretz English Edition. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2022-08-12/ty-article-magazine/how-to-cover-up-a-massacre/00000182-9271-d9bc-affb-f3ff387f0000

 

Bill Proposed in Uruguay to Punish Denial of Holocaust and Armenian Genocide

A bill has been presented in Uruguay to criminalize the denial and also the trivialization of the Holocaust or of the Armenian Genocide and all other genocides that are recognized by the UN General Assembly and by Uruguay itself.  The bill defines such behaviors as “crimes of incitement to hatred, contempt or violence towards people” – California Courier, November 17, 2022

Germany Criminalizes Denials of Genocide – Including the Armenian Genocide – and War Crimes

In an important new move, the German criminal code has been expanded from criminal liability of those who deny the Holocaust now also to include those who deny the genocides and war crimes in various parts of the world. DW-the German news service, Deutsche Welle, notes that this legislation now covers the various genocides such as in Rwanda, and the ongoing genocides of the Yezidis and of the Uighurs.

Germany’s Ministry of Justice notes that when the courts are not able to confirm the historical factuality of a given genocidal event or crime against humanity, there will be no liability.  However, that is not the case when the historical facts of cases are well known and there is no need to gather evidence to prove the history of that event.

The new legislation is embodied in Article 130 of the German criminal code and provides for up to three years imprisonment for those who incite hatred and violence by denying genocide and war crimes.

Sources: Hanel, Lisa (November 25, 2022). Germany criminalizes denying war crimes, genocide. DWhttps://www.dw.com/en/germany-criminalizes-denying-war-crimes-genocide/a-63834791; California Courier (November 17, 2022). Germany to imprison or fine those who deny the Armenian Genocide.

 

Genocidal Weapons

 Haaretz columnist David Stavrou – who has also been presenting to the Genocide Seminar which is conducted by our Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide Jerusalem – has published a major new article in Haaretz entitled “And If They Used Israeli Weapons.” Stavrou describes a horrifying raid and genocidal massacre in a village in northern Myanmar, and reports that he was relieved to discover it contained no evidence of weapons purchased from Israel. However, Stavrou observes that there still is reason for a “particular concern to Israeli readers.”

He writes, “It is known that in the past, Israel had extensive ties with the regime in Myanmar, and weapons, cyber systems, vehicles and drones of Israeli manufacture were and are used by the army… Israel is one of the world’s largest arms exporters.  In spite of that, they cannot ratify the Arms Trade Treaty – a multilateral pact that regulates the international trade in conventional arms – as did most western democracies.  Israel is also refraining from setting regulations to monitor the activity of intermediaries, especially former senior defense establishment officials.”

Stavrou is aware of the work of the new non-profit organization, Yanshuf, (see story on this website) and reports that when they requested position statements on Israeli arm sales from the various political parties, only Meretz replied.

Stavrou concludes that all of Israeli society would benefit from enjoying “an international reputation as the nation of startups, drip agriculture and Copaxone, rather than as a nation of ‘masters of war.’”

For the full article in Haaretz, click here.

Ukraine! A Terribly Unjust War, A Height of Brutality, and Definitely Genocidal

This website is devoted to a certain segment of news about genocide and genocide studies in the world and is not intended as a steady source of news information about all current events.  However, it is too inappropriate for us to continue without taking the strongest note about the ongoing cruel and brutal genocidal campaign Russia is waging in the Ukraine!

The facts of the several ongoing genocides in our world today — including the Uighurs, Rohingya, Yazidi, Christians in various countries, and more in Africa such as in Yemen and Ethiopia — tell us resoundingly that to date we have failed in our hopes and pretentions of genocide prevention.  Moreover, the eruption of the Russian monster of genocide, when Russia is a key signator and permanent Security Council power, signals the overwhelming failure of the machinery that we have developed to date to reach towards “Never Again.”

A basic revision of the machinery of the world international governance system is called for.

____________________

RUSSIA’S EXTREME BRUTALITY IN ITSELF HAS GENERATED SERIOUS FEARS OF THE POSSIBILITY OF RUSSIA’S USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS, AND INDEED THERE HAVE BEEN EXPLICIT THREATS OF SUCH WEAPONS BY THE RUSSIANS

Ksenia Svetlova, a former member of the Israeli Knesset and now a policy fellow at the Institute for Policy and Strategy at Reichmann University in Israel has written:

The question is what will happen if Russia can’t achieve [her] goal using conventional weapons.  Its propagandists aren’t shy of reminding the world that Russia always has other, even more frightening and devastating options.

See Svetlova, Ksenia (April 7, 2022). Russia’s chilling manifesto for genocide in Ukraine: Over the last few days, Russia’s propaganda operation has escalated its efforts to explain the logic beyond this ‘special military operation.’ Haaretz English Edition.

Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide Jerusalem Fails to Gain Israel’s Recognition of Armenian Genocide for April 24, 2022; Jerusalem Post Editorial Supports Recognition

The several-months campaign of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide Jerusalem to influence the Israeli government to recognize the Armenian Genocide as of April 24, 2022 failed to achieve its goal, but we can hope nonetheless that it left some positive influences which will yet be helpful in the future.

We argued that the date April 24 represented Armenia’s Day of Remembrance, much as Yom HaShoah does for the Holocaust.  We recalled for the government and Knesset leaders with whom we were in contact that historically this was the day in 1915 when the Turks arrested some 250 leaders of the Armenian community: outstanding musicians and composers, actors, writers and translators, journalists and intellectual leaders, poets, mathematicians, headmasters of schools, educators, university professors, newspaper editors, doctors and dentists, pharmacists, members of councils and of the Armenian National Assembly, lawyers, merchants, bankers, clergymen, scientists, architects, and deputies in the Ottoman parliament. The overwhelming majority of these celebrated leaders and influences on the morale of the Armenian community were executed within a short period following their arrests. Third, we noted that the United States had finally completed full recognition of the Armenian Genocide which had been recognized by overwhelming votes of the House of Representatives and the US Senate (where there was a unanimous vote!) and now received final confirmation of its recognition by President Joseph Biden on April 24, 2021.  We suggested that it would be very appropriate for the State of Israel to follow through similarly this year.

A significant number of Israeli leaders conveyed their support, and we were able to make a positive contact with the senior staff of the Foreign Minister who was also the designated future Prime Minister.  Unfortunately, however, our efforts came to a grinding halt as a major political crisis unfolded in Israel and literally threatened to bring down the current government. In addition, we ran into a long recess of the Knesset during April, and there was no way that any political action could be advanced during this period.

Please see the following articles that were published prominently in English in the Jerusalem Post and in Hebrew in Haaretz.  

Charny, Israel W. (March 14, 2022). Recognize Armenian genocide by April 24 – opinion
Like Israel, the US shamefully struggled for many years with its failure to recognize the Armenian Genocide because – very mistakenly and actually meekly – the US feared Turkish anger. Jerusalem Post. https://www.jpost.com/international/article-701274

Charny, Israel W. (April 5, 2022). Israel should not fear Turkish in recognizing Armenian genocide – opinion: Many countries have been scared to recognize the Armenian genocide because of Turkey’s possible reaction. Jerusalem Post. https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-703331

Charny, Israel W. (April 23, 2022). Israel Must Recognize the Armenian Genocide. Haaretz (Hebrew). http://www.haaretz.co.il/misc/article-print-page/.premium-1.10753502

In addition, we were supported – though a few days after April 24 – by a strong editorial in the Jerusalem Post whose full text follows here.

JPost Editorial (April 30, 2022). Time for Israel to not fear Turkey and Russia and recognize genocide: Israel’s approach to the Armenian genocide is too similar to the way it has managed its position on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-705543

Last week, Israel marked Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, to commemorate the genocide and murder of six million Jews by the Nazis.

Newspapers, TV shows and radio airwaves were filled with stories of the survivors – and the country paid attention.

It makes sense. The story of the establishment of the State of Israel is intertwined with the Holocaust. Survivors flocked to the country after the war, helped build it, fought for it in subsequent wars and deserve a large deal of credit for Israel’s spectacular success.

Last Sunday, though, a day was marked around the world, that went largely unnoticed in Israel. It was the 107th anniversary of the start of the Armenian Genocide that commemorates the 1.5 million Armenians who were deported, massacred or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination by the Ottoman Empire.

US President Joe Biden issued a statement to commemorate the massacre, which he termed a “genocide” for the first time last year, in line with a promise he made on the campaign trail.

“We renew our pledge to remain vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all its forms,” the president said. “We recommit ourselves to speaking out and stopping atrocities that leave lasting scars on the world.”

Turkey, as expected, responded angrily, calling Biden’s remarks “statements that are incompatible with historical facts and international law.”

Israel was noticeably quiet, and it is a silence that is a stain on the Jewish state. It shows how once again Jerusalem is preferring diplomatic and security interests over standing up for what is true and right, especially being a people that knows genocide firsthand.

As Prof. Israel Charney, one of the founders of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, wrote in these pages last month, Israel should not fear Turkey.

“Is it so beyond our imagination as Israelis to be able to say to Turkey at this time, ‘We have every respect for you as an important country and are happy to work closely with you, but we owe our own culture the clear cut responsibility to identify with a people whose historical record shows that they were subject to governmental extermination’?” Charney asked.

The continued Israeli refusal to recognize the Armenian genocide comes as Jerusalem is renewing diplomatic ties with Turkey. President Isaac Herzog recently visited Ankara and Israel obviously does not want to undermine those efforts.

What makes this wrong is that even when Israel’s ties with Turkey had hit rock bottom due to Erdogan’s vile antisemitism, the government also refused to recognize the Armenian genocide then. The reason was that it was better not to do something that would derail the chance for rapprochement. In other words, when ties are bad the timing is bad – and when ties are better the timing is also bad.

In 2019, after the US Senate recognized the genocide, Yair Lapid – then in the opposition – called on Israel to follow suit. He even proposed a bill that would obligate Israel to mark the day.

“It’s time to stop being afraid of the Sultan in Turkey and do what is morally right,” he tweeted at the time.

If it’s time to stop being afraid of the “Sultan in Turkey,” then why did Lapid not put out a statement last week? Why did he not order the Foreign Ministry to publicly mark the day?

Is doing “what is morally right” no longer the right thing to do?

The answer is obvious. What is easy to push for in the opposition is harder to do when you are foreign minister.

This is wrong. Israel’s approach to the Armenian genocide is too similar to the way it has managed its position on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, on the one hand offering support to Kyiv but on the other hand holding back from sanctions against Russia and public condemnations of President Vladimir Putin.

Policy on Ukraine has been dictated by security interests and the need to be able to continue operating in coordination with Russia in Syria. With the Armenian genocide, Israel is again letting diplomatic and security interests get in the way of what is the right and moral stance to take.

It is time for Israel to stop being afraid of Turkey and Russia. Standing up for what is moral and right strengthens nations. It is Israel’s time to do so.

A Powerful Statement about Myanmar’s Genocide and more

The following is a report and analysis by Haaretz reporter, David Stavrou, who resides in Sweden, and writes for the paper both in Hebrew and in English.

His statement not only reports facts but evokes emotions about the horrors of genocide;  conveys so clearly the widespread occurrences of many genocides in our unhuman human world; brings up meaningfully the issue of sales – including by our Israel – of arms to genociders; and identifies powerfully the inherent prejudice that no doubt all of us suffer from of being so much more concerned not only about genocide to our own people but also to all peoples who resemble us — ‘the white folk’ – and far less to the very different peoples in what are for us remote areas of the world.

Stavrou, David (March 29, 2022). While you focus on Ukraine, this genocide goes on.  Haaretz English Edition.  https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/while-you-focus-about-ukraine-the-genocide-in-myanmar-goes-on-1.10703741

STOCKHOLM — Last week U.S. Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, declared that the United States recognizes that the Myanmar military has committed genocide and crimes against humanity against the country’s Rohingya minority. The murder of thousands and deportation of hundreds of thousands was mostly committed in 2016-2017, but according to Blinken, the troubling situation in Myanmar continues to this day, after the military seized power in 2021. Blinken spoke of “widespread and systematic” attacks and atrocities committed with the clear intent to annihilate.

This is the eighth case since the Holocaust in which the United States recognizes a genocide. The previous were the Armenian genocide during World War I, the murder of Kurds in Iraq, the genocides in Bosnia, in Rwanda, and in Darfur, the murder of the Yazidis and other minorities by the Islamic State, and the genocide in Xinxiang, China, against Uyghurs and other minorities.
In his speech, Blinken described the process preceding the murders – discrimination, stripping of rights and citizenship, incitement, imprisonment and deportation. He further went on to detail some of the atrocities – rape, executions, destruction of villages, children burned alive or trampled underfoot by soldiers, and boats sunk with families aboard.
Despite the importance of the U.S. declaration, it is not a necessarily a call for sanctions, nor does it come with an automatic international alignment against the regime in Myanmar. All this stands in sharp contrast to the U.S. attitude toward Russia following its attack on Ukraine.

It may be hard to admit, but Ukraine gets a lot more attention than countries where the suffering, devastation and death toll are no smaller. Those imprisoned and tortured in camps in Xinxiang, the ethnic groups slaughtering each other in Ethiopia, and those doing the same even closer to Israel’s border – none of these affairs have made the world hold its breath, open its heart, or change its agenda.

Why, then, does the Myanmar genocide fail to produce headlines and reactions as strong as those sparked by the brutal invasion of Ukraine? It’s not because it it’s over. The regime in Myanmar continues to oppress its people and imprison its critics. It is also hard to explain the indifference by geo-political considerations. While the effects of the Ukraine war could be disastrous, what’s happening in Myanmar isn’t a small, localized conflict either.

The Russians sell weapons to the regime. The Chinese, who do so as well, share a border with Myanmar, and have massive investments there. Not far from the border, in Bangladesh, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya populate the world’s largest refugee camp. International institutions, organizations, and courts are also involved in the conflict. Myanmar may not have nuclear weapons, but it is a larger and more populous country than Ukraine, located in a strategic area between India and China. One would have to be blind or disingenuous not to recognize the simple truth behind the world’s silence and indifference.

After all, it’s quite natural. The Rohingya, the Uighurs, and the Tigrayans are not like us. They are distant, alien, and most of us know very little about them. Unlike the Ukrainian refugees on the news, they carry colorful wheeled suitcases with them, not rag bundles. They sit en-route to the border in Mazdas and Toyotas, not on donkeys or in rickety boats.

They’re the ones wearing H&M clothes, not those manufacturing them. They are the people for whom Hungary and Poland throw their gates open, not those for whom these countries erect barbed-wire fences and station armed soldiers. It’s very human, and therefore we can, and should, admit: The Ukrainians resemble Europeans, and that’s at least one reason that Europeans have opened their hearts. Nor is moral preaching called for. Human empathy is differential. Our emotional connection to our family, our tribe, and our people is an integral part of our civilization. It is a survival tool and a source of beauty and cultural richness, not just an excuse for indifference.

Yet there is also no need to make an ideology of it. We are allowed, are able, and should do for those who are different from us, for those who are foreign and distant, and this is no mere slogan. Here are two examples:

Blinken chose to recognize the genocide in Myanmar at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, of all places, because denial is an integral part of any genocide. The purpose of the denial is not just concealment of the crime, but also denial of the very existence of the annihilated group. That is why recognizing a genocide is not only necessary to rescue or punishment – it is an act of redemption and of struggle against the murderers.

The book “The Voice of Thy Brother’s Blood” (Dror Lanefesh Press), an anthology of poetry by victims of genocide, including those in Myanmar, was recently published in Hebrew. The book, which also includes “The Poem of the Murdered Jewish People” by Yitzhak Katzenelson, shows that even when our sympathy is turned first to Jews and Israelis, we can also hear the poetry of others, teach it in schools, read it at ceremonies, and thus aid the victims and fight the murderers by, in a way, bringing the dead back to existence.
No less important: Decent people must ask themselves what part their country plays in the misfortune of others. In the case of Israel and Myanmar, the answer is clear. The Myanmar military is equipped, among others, by Israeli weapons, which it continued purchasing until at least 2018. Because it’s so obvious, it may be unnecessary to mention the tragic aspect of the Jewish state exporting arms that assist in a genocide.
But it is, however, necessary to fight  this phenomenon. The Israeli nonprofit advocacy organization Yanshoof does just that, promoting legislation against weapons exports to homicidal regimes. Israel is one of the world’s largest weapons exporters. It is not a signatory on the Arms Trade Treaty, and it sells weapons to murderous regimes as well. We should support Yanshoof’s struggle to promote legislation on the subject and by this help prevent the next genocide.

Holocaust Remembrance Day: Jews, Israelis must protect human life

Charny, Israel W. (January 24, 2022). Holocaust Remembrance Day: Jews, Israelis must protect human life.  Jerusalem Post. https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-694438. Republished in the California Courier, February 3, 2022

Our Jewish/Israeli people need new Moses-leadership courageously devoted to decency and the protection of human life in continuation of the finest values of Jewish religion and our basic tradition.
By ISRAEL W. CHARNY
Published: JANUARY 24, 2022

It is amazing that there is so much recognition of the Holocaust on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27.

All genocides are infinitely tragic and maddening. All genocides deserve remembrance and memorial. The late Israeli cabinet minister Yossi Sarid wrote with great wisdom that every “genocide” constitutes a “holocaust (shoah)” and that every “holocaust (shoah)” is a case of “genocide.” But, frighteningly and tragically, there are so many instances all through human history, including ongoing today, and who of us can bear the emotional demands of so much memorial?

Moreover, it is entirely natural that although many of us intellectually care quite a lot about every case of genocide, there are many instances in which our emotional responses are reserved or even not present – just like the news of deaths of relatives, friends and acquaintances in our individual lives touch us with varying degrees of emotion.

Yet the Holocaust has definitely broken through to take on a fundamental and archetypal meaning for humanity. Why? Clearly, our humanity is ready and desperately in need of awareness of this overwhelmingly destructive aspect of our species. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists places the time on the clock portending the destruction of life on earth at 100 seconds before midnight!

I believe that the Holocaust has “succeeded” resoundingly in finally showing us humans who and what we really are. For all that we are born “b’tzelem Elohim” or in the image of God, and indeed we are beautiful, brilliant, creative, loving and forever developing, we also are: cruel, heartless, sadistic, and indifferent to others, born killers, meaning there is a basic instinctive potential for eliminating others’ lives.

A huge number of people participated in the Holocaust as leaders, executioners, accomplices, bystanders and innovative profiteers – whether of homes and lands or gaining chairs of university and medical school departments, and more.

“Ordinary people,” as historian Christopher Browning brilliantly showed in a study of a German police unit that was devoted to killing Jews, who were not really motivated to the task but were devoted to doing what they were told to do, available to be led blindly, passively, stupidly by instructions from leaders and societal institutions.

They were mindless robots hypnotized and “intoxicated” by orgiastic group processes where they would join in the wild dances around the “golden calf” of murder.

In one way or another, many of these elements are also clearly in play in others of the endless events of genocide by humanity – and that is true to the very moment, where so many different peoples such as Uighurs, Rohingya, Tutsi, Sudanese and Christians are being exterminated. But there was something dramatically special in the intensity of the configuration that sparked Man Genocider in the Holocaust, including the striking identities of the victims and their genocidal perpetrators.

Victims: the Jews were the earliest hero people of our civilization, known as carriers of the blessing of the Almighty God, who among other things charged them explicitly with the life-changing instruction, “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” and who as a people lived lives unlike most others without weapons or violence, absorbed in prayer and endless learning.

Perpetrators: the Germans were pillars of modernity, advanced in science, industry, and a cultural richness of philosophy, music and the arts, and now it became clear that even these wonderful expressions of the fineness of humanity could not stem the tide of the evil aspects of human nature that generate massive destruction of life.

So international recognition of the Holocaust is not only a specific honor extended to the Jewish victims, but a summary statement of man’s most true encounter with his own self to date. The challenge is to reshape the evolution of the human animal toward a clear-cut dominance of the creative lifesaving aspect of human nature.

However, there is also another very neglected question that arises: do the victims emerge from their hell not only with a command, Remember, and quite certainly with a command, Be Strong, but also with an explicit moral directive to care about and help other peoples who suffer genocidal fates? We Jews, the “merciful people” in our image of ourselves, have not done so. We come through in earthquakes, tsunamis and floods, and we contribute in many ways to medical advances and services for ill people, but basically we do not give a damn for the other victims of genocides in our world.

We have excuses. We need such and such for our own security. For example we need to be in a good relationship with Turkey, a strong Muslim neighbor, and we fear that recognizing its genocide of the Armenians will cost us its possible friendship; and we need and want to be in positive relations with China, with which we enjoy increasing lucrative trade, let alone our awareness that it is a menacingly growing world power, and we won’t take a chance on enraging it about its genocidal campaign against the Muslim Uighurs.

It sounds practical and maybe makes sense for self-protection, although many of us believe very differently that a firm ethical approach to foreign policy will pay off in far greater national strength and even greater international security. But then what can be said when the Knesset votes down a proposal by a thoughtful Knesset member to recognize the genocide of the Yazidis by ISIS? What about us Jews taking clear stands on behalf of Christian minorities who are being attacked and killed in a variety of countries. “We Jews, Israelis, don’t do genocides.”

There is still another very ugly side to the story, and that is that we profit from arms sales even to ongoing genociders! See the failed efforts of attorney Itay Mack and genocide scholar Yair Auron to get the courts to release government information on the sales. Recently a grassroots movement called Yanshuf has begun to emerge from the religious-Zionist community to campaign for ethical reviews of all arms sales.

For those who sincerely worry about our security and believe that our very legitimate needs to be safe justify our accommodation and subservience to the devil of mass murder of other people, the question should be put whether we understand how other peoples in this world did not respond or take chances on fighting back for us against the Nazi murderers.

Our Jewish/Israeli people need new Moses-leadership that is courageously devoted to decency and the protection of human life in continuation of the finest values of Jewish religion and our basic cultural tradition.

The author is director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem and recently published a book, Israel’s Failed Response to the Armenian Genocide. He is past co-founder and past president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.

The Algebra of Appeasement: 1938 and Today

What can we in Israel can do to stop what we believe to be a slow and steady march toward appeasement with Iran.

Professor Elihu Richter, MD published the following article in the Jerusalem Post and gave permission for its reproduction:

Throughout my youth, I retained an obsession with the history of World War II and the Holocaust. I always asked myself: “What led to the outbreak of WWII?”

Of course, we all know that the story of the British appeasement of Nazi Germany can be seen as the event that precipitated the outbreak of the war. Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Germany (September 30, 1938) was quickly followed by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (August 23, 1939), and thereafter the Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939…read more.

The Late Elie Wiesel’s Son, Elisha, Declares His Shame about US Participation in China Olympics

In a moving story in the Forward, released by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), the late Elie Wiesel’s son, Elisha, published a moving statement of shame about US participation in the Olympics in China. “Most of the world didn’t seem to know, or care, that the host country is hosting a pageant of ‘peace and friendship’ while simultaneously terrorizing its Uighur minority.  The Chinese government’s systematic oppression of the Uighurs, a Muslim group in northwest China, is not the Holocaust.  But although we may not have seen this particular movie, we know the genre… Just like in 1936, the International Olympic Committee is unwilling to push the issue. And our community is mostly silent.

“My father believed passionately that speaking up mattered especially to the victims… I fear that China’s state-sponsored capitalism has silenced us through our greed.”

Wiesel, Elisha (February 10, 2022). When I recall my father Elie Wiesel, my shame about these Olympics only deepens.  Forward. https://forward.com/opinion/482111/father-elie-wiesel-shame-beijing-olympics-nazi-uyghurs/

Call for Israel to Boycott “Beijing’s Olympic ‘Genocide Games'”

The forthcoming Beijing winter olympics are being boycotted by a growing series of nations, today including Australia, Britain, Canada, and Japan.  The boycott is intended to express a profound protest of Chinese persecution and genocide of the Uyghur people.

In Israel, Haaretz has published an editorial page column by Rushan Abbas and Sami Steigmann calling on Israel to join the boycott and reminding Israel of how the olympics in 1936 in Berlin were a showcase for Hitler’s power and racial bigotry.

See Abbas, Rushan and Steigman, Sammy (December 29, 2021).  Why Israel Must Boycott Beijing’s Olympic ‘Genocide Games.’  Haaretz English Edition. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/why-israel-must-boycott-beijing-s-olympic-genocide-games-1.10494950

A New Non-Profit in Israel Aims to Gain Public Support to Demand a Moral Standard for All Israeli Arms Sales

A new initiative has been launched in Israel to create a public movement that will demand of the government full information about Israeli arms sales – which are today not public knowledge, and most of all will stand for a requirement that arms sales will need to be reviewed as to their ethical consequences before being approved by the government.

The initiative has been launched by two young people, (Rabbi) Avidan Freedman and Yitzhak Engelman.

The name they have given the non-profit in Hebrew is Yanshoof which is an acrostic in Hebrew for Arms, Exports, Transparency, and Supervision.  The tentative Public Committee for Yanshuf consists of Rabbi Daniel Gordis, Rabbi Yehuda Gilad, Professor Israel Charny, former member of Knesset Tehila Friedman, and Rabbi Yuval Cherlow.

For more information and for inquiries about affiliation, contact Rabbi Avidan Freedman, Founder and Chairman, +972 54-980-8706, email: avidanf[at]gmail.com, info@yanshoof.org, www.yanshoof.org.

For data about Israel arms sales, see The Database of Military and Israeli Security Export, www.dimse.info.

 

Related Stories

Mack, Itay (December 9, 2021).  Israel’s new method of ‘supervising’ cyber arms exports: Israel’s Defense Ministry is proud of a new declaration that purchases of cyber tech must sign.  But it does little to prevent human rights violations. Haaretz English Edition. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-trust-the-dictator-israel-s-new-method-of-supervising-cyber-arms-exports-1.10449545

 

 

 

 

 

Haaretz Editor and Haaretz Columnist, Gideon Levy, Do Not Expect a Meaningful Response to the New Information about Extensive Genocidal Massacres in the War of Independence

See the Haaretz editorial (December 12, 2021).  Allow the archives to speak.  Haaretz English Edition. On Haaretz website the title of the editorial was changed as follows: Editorial | Israel’s ‘Most Moral Army in the World’ Can’t Keep Running Away From Its Past.  https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/israel-s-most-moral-army-in-the-world-can-t-keep-running-away-from-its-past-1.10458062

“Prime Minister and Defense Minister David Ben-Gurion described the actions as ‘shocking,’ but in practice he covered for the army and prevented a genuine investigation.  In so doing, he laid the foundations for the culture of support and cover-up still prevalent in the IDF (and the Israel Police) regarding brutality against Palestinian and Lebanese civilians.

Columnist Gideon Levy writes that Haaretz editors are convinced that the truth that has been revealed “will provoke penetrating public discussions throughout the country,” but they are “mistaken… The spreading of lies and false propaganda, which began immediately after the war and has never stopped, has succeeded above and beyond all expectations. The door to the truth is closed to most Israelis.  Most do not see Palestinians as human beings like themselves. Levy continues, “The vast majority will adhere to the ‘truth’ that has been drilled into their heads: There was no choice, we don’t want to think about what would have happened had the situation been reversed, we were the few against the many, the Arabs started it, they rejected partition – and of course, the Holocaust.” (I can add that all of the above were literally responses that I heard from guests in my home – all fine upstanding people as seen in everyday life – the weekend the story broke – Ed.)

 

OTHER INTERESTING RELATED ARTICLES

Shenhav-Shahrabani, Yehouda (December 13, 2021).  The skeletons in Israel’s closet.  Haaretz English Edition. [Writer is a professor of sociology at Tel Aviv University and Editor of a book series on Arab literature in Hebrew].   Haaretz online changed the title: Opinion | Ironically, It’s the Israeli Right That’s Acknowledging the Palestinian Nakba. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.HIGHLIGHT-ironically-israel-s-right-raises-awareness-of-the-nakba-1.10460015

“Israel’s recognition of the Nakba is the opportunity that will give rise to a discussion that will prevent the second Nakba.”

 

 

Major Revelations of a Wide Array of Genocidal Massacres by Israel of Palestinians in the War of Independence Will Now Force a Reevaluation of the History of the Israeli Policy of “Purity of Arms”

A Jewish historian, Adam Raz, has published in Haaretz a major revelation, “Classified Docs Reveal Massacres of Palestinians in ’48 – and What Israeli Leaders Knew: Testimonies continue to pile up, documents are revealed, and gradually a broader picture emerges of the acts of murder committed by Israeli troops during the War of Independence.  Minutes recorded during cabinet meetings in 1948 leave no room for doubt: Israel’s leaders knew in real time about the blood-drenched events that accompanied the conquest of the Arab villages.”  See article by the above author and title in Haaretz, English Edition, December 9, 2021: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.HIGHLIGHT.MAGAZINE-classified-docs-reveal-deir-yassin-massacre-wasn-t-the-only-one-perpetrated-by-isra-1.10453626

The author points out that overall, Israel has sought to conceal-deny the above events which go far beyond the several genocidal massacres that have previously been known, such as in Deir Yassin, Latrun, and in general the knowledge that has emerged that in addition to Arab leaders commanding the residents of Palestinian communities to evacuate and seek safety, Israel carried significant responsibility in bringing about the mass expulsion of Palestinians from many of their communities.

Raz writes, “The heavy hand of military censorship continues to obstruct academic research and investigation.”  The details presented include atrocious cruelty such as shooting a woman with an infant in her arms, raping a young woman and then torturing-killing her, throwing old people, women and children into a well and shooting them all, placing a mass of people in a building and burning it, smashing children’s skulls with sticks.

Many members of the government protested adamantly, but “the ministers grasped very quickly that the Prime Minister [Ben-Gurion] had no interest in a thorough investigation of war crimes.

Raz comments further, “Even those that did not have the benefit of silence and a cover-up and were tried for crimes committed in the war, were finally let off the hook.  In February 1949 a retroactive general pardon was issued for any crimes committed during the war. The public at large appears not to have been disturbed by any of this.

The first Speaker of the Knesset, Joseph Sprinzak, said, “We are far from humanism.  We are like all the nations.”

 

 

 

Harut Sassounian: Exposing Fake News by Azerbajain

From our Editor: Sadly, news of fake news is an important aspect of tracking contemporary reality.  Moreover, given that the war events between Azerbaijan and the Armenian community in Nagorno-Karabach represent at least symbolically a kind of continuation of the denied Turkish genocide of the Armenians, such fake news becomes part of our continuing study of the denial of the Armenian Genocide.  Finally, with respect to Israel which continues to evade proper recognition of the Armenian Genocide today not only on the basis of political considerations vis a vis Turkey but with respect to a billion dollar arms business with Azerbaijan, it is important to know about failures of integrity by Azerbaijan and what many believe are continuing threats of further genocide of the Armenians.

“Exposing the Fake Appeal Allegedly Sent by Baku Armenians to Catholicos”
Published in the California Courier, July 15, 2021.  Reprinted in the Armenian Weekly, July 13, 2021.

http://www.thecaliforniacourier.com/exposing-the-fake-appeal-allegedly-sent-by-baku-armenians-to-catholicos/Several Azeri websites claimed that Armenians in Azerbaijan sent last October, in the midst of the Artsakh War, an appeal to “Catholicos Karekin II, Armenians of the world, and Armenians in Karabagh.”

One of the Azeri websites (Report News Agency) alleged that the “appeal was signed by a group of tens of thousands of Armenians” in Azerbaijan. Just from this one sentence alone, one can tell that this information is a complete lie as there are no “tens of thousands of Armenians” in Baku. After the brutal massacres of Armenians in Sumgait and Baku and elsewhere in Azerbaijan in 1988 and 1990 by Azeri mobs, almost all Armenians fled that country to save their lives. The few Armenians remaining in Azerbaijan are those who were married to Azeris. Living in constant fear, they use Azeri names to disguise their true identities.

I made two attempts to verify if this letter was authentic or fake. First, I checked with one of the Azeri websites that had referenced the letter. I asked for a photocopy of the letter. I wanted to see how many signers there were and their names. The Azeri website, most probably funded by the Azeri government, responded that they are unable “to conduct painstaking investigation!” The only place where the entire text of the fake letter appeared was in an Azeri website (Armenia.az) that regularly posts hundreds of anti-Armenian articles in Armenian and Russian. These articles are written by Azeris who formerly lived in Armenia and know fluent Armenian.

My next attempt to verify the letter was with the Information Department of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin in Armenia, the alleged recipient. The Catholicosate was not aware of receiving such a letter and stated that it was most probably an example of Baku’s routine fabrication.

For the amusement of the readers here are excerpts from the English translation of the fake Armenian letter posted on October 9, 2020 on the Azeri website, Armenia.az.

“Today, tens of thousands of Armenians live in Azerbaijan. In this country, all people, regardless of religion or race, are treated equally. Everyone in this country enjoys the same rights granted to its citizens by the Constitution of Azerbaijan.” In this first two sentences of the letter, there are two obvious lies: “tens of thousands of Armenians live in Azerbaijan” and they “are treated equally” like all other citizens of Azerbaijan.

The alleged Armenian letter-writers appealed to Catholicos Karekin II to use his “authority and power… to end Armenia’s policy of occupation against Azerbaijan, return the occupied Azerbaijani lands to their owners, and help prevent unjust bloodshed.” No true Armenian would make such a statement, unless his or her life was threatened.

The letter then appealed “to Armenians of the world and various Armenian lobbies so people can live in peace,” claiming that an Armenian woman by the name of Karina Grigoryan in Ganja, Azerbaijan (Gandzak in Armenian), was seriously injured during the Armenian shelling. It is highly unlikely that such an Armenian woman lives in Gandzak. One thing is certain; no Armenian in Azerbaijan would be carrying such an obvious Armenian name. Those with Armenian names who lived in Azerbaijan were either killed or fled the country over 30 years ago.

The letter went on to claim that Azerbaijan “conducts anti-terrorist operations only in its territories, wishing to liberate its historical lands from occupation.” It is the height of hypocrisy for Azerbaijan to claim that it is fighting terrorism after bringing several thousand Syrian Islamist terrorists to fight against Artsakh in last year’s war.

The letter then appealed to “Armenians living in Karabagh” (Artsakh), falsely alleging that “30 years ago, you were happy in the lands of Azerbaijan, where you live now. Your material well-being was high, and all your human rights were protected, because Azerbaijan has always treated us as its citizens. And now the mafia leadership of Armenia has turned you into a victim of its own games. We are very sorry about this. You also have the right and the opportunity to live like a human being, but Armenia has deprived you of this. Wake up, it’s not too late and refuse to be a tool in this game. Azerbaijan will protect all your rights, including your safety. We are a clear example of this.” The content of the letter reads more like a comedy than a credible appeal. Those who concocted this letter are so delusional that they think Armenians will believe such obvious lies.

The letter finally appealed to Armenian mothers: “Do not close your eyes to the death of your children in the lands of Azerbaijan, because you did not bring them into the world to become victims of the game of certain forces.” It is very touching that the Azeri Government, masquerading as Armenians in Baku, would care so much about the well-being of Armenian mothers and their children!

The only good thing about this appeal is that the government of Azerbaijan is wasting a lot of money to pay Azeris, who would otherwise be unemployed, to prepare such useless letters and websites. No Armenian is going to believe a word of such fake news appearing in the website of Armenia.az (az stands for Azerbaijan). I suggest that the government of Azerbaijan also establish a TV and radio station to broadcast programs in Armenian in order to waste more of the money that their leaders have not yet stolen!

I do not think this was a real appeal issued by Baku Armenians. However, even if there is a shred of truth in the claimed letter, it means that Azerbaijan has adopted the Turkish policy of forcing its Armenian and other minorities to issue false propaganda statements in order to cover up its grave violation of human rights.

         

News of Note for Students of Genocide Studies

GERMANY ACKNOWLEDGES FIRST GENOCIDE  OF THE 2Oth CENTURY, THE HERERO AND NAMA

Hambira, Kavenam, and Gleckman-Krut, Miriam (July 8, 2021). Germany Apologized for a Genocide. It’s Nowhere Near Enough. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/08/opinion/germany-genocide-herero-nama.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

ED NOTE: This acknowledgment by Germany, at long last, is of great importance to students of genocide, and an important breakthrough in respect of combatting long-lasting denials of the perpetration of a genocide.  For all of us who are concerned with denials of the Armenian Genocide, this is an encouraging example of  a government that has long sidestepped and denied its commission of a known genocide coming full around to acknowledgment and to some process of financial compensation as well. However, it should not in any way be taken as a disappointment by the many who unknowingly erred and would refer to the Armenian Genocide as the first genocide of the 20th century. The enormity of the Armenian Genocide is in no ways reduced by its not being the first in an historical period. At the same time, the Herero-Nama Genocide now joins the Armenian Genocide as early scenarios – some say “rehearsals”– of wanton exterminationist killing by Germany which then goes on to perpetrate the Holocaust in the 1940’s.

 

“THE FAMILY OF GENOCIDES REPRESENTS A UNIVERSAL SICKNESS OF MANKIND”: A conversation with Professor Israel Charny

The Family of Genocides Represents a Universal Sickness of Mankind. A Conversation with Professor Israel Charny by Alessandra Pellegrini De Luca (June 22, 2021). In GARIWO website, Milan, Italy [GARIWO=Garden of the Righteous Worldwide.] https://en.gariwo.net/interviews/the-family-of-genocides-represents-a-universal-sickness-of-mankind-23905.html 

Israel Charny is an Israeli psychotherapist and a well-known genocide scholar. He is a specialist in the treatment of Holocaust survivors, with a long career in clinical practice and professional leadership as a clinical psychologist and family therapist. Professor Charny is also the director of the Institute on the Holocaust & Genocide in Jerusalem, which he founded together with Elie Wiesel. He is also the co-founder and past president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the author of award-winning books on the subject of genocides, such as Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review (1988), Encyclopedia of Genocide (1999-2000), and Fascism and Democracy in the Human Mind (2006). In April 2021, he published his last book, entitled Israel’s Failed Response to the Armenian Genocide: Denial, State Deception, and Truth versus Politicization of History. Together with Yair Auron, historian and Associate Director of the Institute on the Holocaust & Genocide, Professor Charny won the President of Armenia Prize “for his decades-long academic work on the Armenian Genocide and activities contributing to its international recognition, as well as for his significant research into the field of Genocide denial.” In this interview, Professor Charny tells us about Israel’s attempts to cancel an international conference on genocides in 1982, Israel’s relationship with the Armenian and other genocides, and his personal involvement, as a psychotherapist, with genocides. This interview has been edited for clarity and flow.

 

APDL: Professor Charny, let us start with your new book, entitled Israel’s Failed Response to the Armenian Genocide: Denial, State Deception, Truth versus Politicization of History, where you focus on Israel’s attempts to foil an academic conference on the Shoah and the Armenian genocide in 1982. The book contains lots of information and archival sources, including your personal letters to Shimon Peres, who aligned with Israel’s official policy of denying the Armenian genocide. Could you tell us more about this episode, which you defined as a “moral failure” of Israel?

IWC: In 1982, I and others organized an international conference in Tel Aviv. The conference, entitled International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide, was the first conference that had ever been designed about the notion of genocide that we know of in the world. Most importantly, it was the first conference linking the notions of Holocaust and genocide, connecting the Holocaust to previous and ongoing genocides of all other people to “project genocide as a universal problem in the history and future of all peoples” and to “reconcile the specifically Jewish victims with the universality of all victims”. We originally had a pre-registration of 600 people, but, due to the enormous pressure that was put on people not to come, only about 300 people took part in the conference. Members of the Israeli government personally called those registered to the conference and asked them, in the name of Israel, not to take part in the conference. In some cases, Israel even fabricated stories about Turkey’s having threatened Jewish lives to convince participants not to go. Israel’s goal was to have the conference canceled. In the end, the conference took place nonetheless, and 300 people decided to come when they learned that we were going ahead with the conference. It was a very moving occasion. The atmosphere was electric: the participants were aware of our struggle against the government and identified with us, with our courage and persistence in standing up against the attempts to cancel the conference.

APDL: Why do you think the conference was necessary, and what can we learn from it?

IWC: That conference was the first known effort to bring minds and hearts together to look at genocide as a universal problem of humanity. Over the years after our conference, other universities have combined the Holocaust and the notion of genocide. I am delighted about that. The Holocaust has its specialness, but it is also part of a terrible family called genocide, in which nobody is superior to others or needs to be separated from the others. The family of genocides represents a universal sickness of mankind from the beginning of history. It is a tragic aspect of human history, and just as we organize ourselves to fight against threats of diseases like cancer or to handle ecological problems that are threatening the existence of our planet, we must also fight the natural availability of genocide in the human repertoire: genocide arises over and over again.

APDL: As a psychotherapist and an expert on genocides, your perspective on Israel’s relationship with other mass atrocities is unique and peculiar. As the title of one of your books suggests – Fascism and Democracy in the Human Mind: A Bridge between Mind and Society –, mechanisms that are typical of the individual psychic life can be applied to the collective and social sphere. Regarding Israel’s relationship with the Armenian genocide, how do you think these two levels intertwine with each other? What are, in your view, the mechanisms at the origin of Israel’s denial of the Armenian genocide and, more in general, of Israel’s tendency to separate the Shoah from other genocides, refusing any comparison with them?

IWC: This is the result of a complex combination of two unconscious drives. On the one hand, there is the emotional, experiential basis of the survivors, who see their unbearable sufferance as unique and unprecedented, not comparable to anyone else’s. This is an entirely human mechanism, which is fully justified, and I would never argue with that. On the other hand, unfortunately, this drive dovetails with another unconscious process, which is quite dangerous and involved paradoxically in creating genocides, to begin with. Namely, the unconscious need to make oneself – oneself being here the collective self – superior to others and to make others inferior to us. There is an essential dirtiness to this concept: superior is different from excelling, winning, and being outstanding. Superiority has to do with domination, with being more than the other, with creating a context where the other is lesser than us. These are two distinct aspects, which can combine easily because they both involve an emphasis on our values. Feeling superior to others is in itself a human drive, which inhabits us since childhood: but as we grow up and become adults, we learn to overcome this drive, reaching a higher level of coexistence with others, based on equality, on honor, and reciprocal respect.

APDL: How does this higher level of coexistence come about?

IWC: We shall look at Israel from the point of view of the development of the individual. Typically, the infant has needs, desires, and imperatives. Slowly, hopefully, in the process of caring interaction with the mother, the father, the siblings, the grandparents, and other children, the infant develops a sense of meaningfulness and value of other people. This closely links with the ability to build empathy: when children see someone else getting hurt or sick, they get hurt by it, becoming concerned and alarmed. During life, slowly but surely, our circle expands to caring about friends and other beloved subjects: this is how one becomes able not only to pursue someone sexually but to connect with others emotionally, in a caring and mutual way. Slowly but surely, our world expands to an awareness that we live in a given village or city or state or country, that the members of our family – call it religion, nation, or political party – care about values in a shared way with us. If we are fortunate, this development process leads people to become aware that there are so many other human beings in this world that are just like us and need the same fundamentals of protection and development that all of us look for. A higher level of coexistence with others, then, can only be reached through the cultivation of love: love of ourselves and, consequently and more maturely, of other people, realizing that we are all children of the miracle. It is an enormous job, but a very exciting and wonderful one.

APDL: Let us bring all this at a social and collective level: what went wrong in this development process, in the case of Israel? And what are the agents of a possible change? At Gariwo, for example, we focus on the figures of the Righteous – of those who chose the good in extreme circumstances – to educate society to active citizenship and responsibility. But how about Israel? Do you think this is a task for politics and leadership, for educational institutions? How to create a different culture, one that builds on empathy and connection with the other?

IWC: Like every collective group, Israel faces the universal challenge of dealing with others. Yet, Israel has its own burden of a history of so much persecution of the Jewish people that the understandable need to re-strengthen ourselves – which is at the core of the Zionist miracle, of the re-building of Israel – has occupied so much of Jewish history. And to do that while at the same time maintaining and developing a genuinely universal attitude of caring for other people is a huge challenge. Many parts of the Jewish people have moved constructively with it. A line in the Shabbat prayer says, “you have chosen us above other people”: this has been part of the prayer for thousands of years. Many of us have changed that prayer: now we hold our glasses of wine, and we sing, “you have chosen us along with other people”. Other parts of the Jewish people, however, have not moved constructively with this challenge. And this, to take now your question about leadership, includes the Orthodox religious leadership of Israel. Even though the Jewish tradition offers some beautiful statements about caring for the stranger and taking care of other people, the Orthodox establishment has become a fiercely self-centered, antagonistic leadership that encourages degrees of disdain for other people. This is against everything that Judaism stands for. In light of this, I believe that all of the factors you mentioned are absolutely relevant to build a culture of mutual respect and empathy with others: good leaders and good educators are all central to the fulfillment of this task.

APDL: Let us now focus on the Armenian genocide specifically. Why, in your view, does Israel refuse to recognize the Armenian genocide? Recently, a lively debate took place in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz: some argue that this happens because of religious and cultural reasons; others believe it all boils down to politics. What do you think?

IWC: It is a combination of several factors. The first factor is very practical and has to do with Israel’s relationship with Turkey. There are so many people in every state department or foreign ministry in the world who believe that foreign relations are based on doing what is good for your people, getting the fullest advantage that you can, and caring very little about considerations of a moral nature. It’s called realpolitik, and I don’t like it. I believe that foreign relations should be based on the practicality of self-protection, but as much as possible, and simultaneously, they should also be based on morality and decency. The second factor has to do with the cultural process we have been speaking about: so many people have insisted that the Shoah can never be compared or linked in any way to the genocides of other people. Hence, Israel’s non-recognition of the Armenian genocide starts with practicality and continues with the emotional quest for superiority by the exclusion of other people: this is a pretty powerful combination.

APDL: What about the UN? Following Rafael Lemkin’s coinage of the notion of “genocide”, the UN played a central role in turning it into an international, judicially defined crime. Yet, the UN has never taken an official position on what happened in Armenia between 1915 and 1918, nor does Armenia appear on the UN’s official description of the origin of this notion. Moreover, the spokesman of UN’s secretary-general Antònio Guterres recently said: “We have no comment, as a general rule, on events that took place before the founding of the U.N.”. What do you think?

IWC: The UN does recognize the Armenian genocide, and any statement otherwise is wrong. For many years, the UN did not recognize the Armenian genocide, along the lines that you spoke about. In 1985, however, the UN created a commission headed by Benjamin Whitaker. The Whitaker commission produced a wonderful report on genocides in general, which recognized the Armenian genocide without any reservation whatsoever. So, from the point of view of history and legality, the UN did recognize the Armenian genocide.

APDL: The Whitaker report lists the Armenian genocide in one paragraph [paragraph 24, Part I, section B], together with other genocides, stating that some of them are legalistically not genocides but can be nevertheless defined as such. Shall this be taken as a formal recognition of the Armenian genocide by the UN?

IWC: Yes, absolutely.

APDL: One last question: how did you personally get interested, as a psychotherapist, in the Armenian genocide and genocides in general?

IWC: I will give you two personal stories. The first story is this: many years ago when I still lived in America, I was a consultant to a psychiatric hospital for teenagers. One day, we had a study day, and two guests arrived: a Turkish psychiatrist and a Turkish psychologist, and I did not know anything about them. By complete chance, I was seated next to them at the workshop, so we spent the whole day together, sharing coffee and lunch breaks. During the afternoon coffee break, I suddenly remembered that I had just recently learned about the Armenian genocide in a very famous article that appeared in a magazine called Commentary Magazine. So I ask them about it, saying that I would have loved to know more about that. Within seconds, each of these people turned around and walked away from me. They would not speak to me again for the rest of the day. From that day on, I could not help but be interested in the denial of the Armenian genocide.

The second story I want to tell you is this: once upon a time, after receiving my doctorate and after five years of postdoctoral experience, I went through a very advanced examination process to be recognized as a “specialist”. Specialist means, for example, that when you sign an insurance form for a patient, this form is automatically recognized in all the states in America, even those in which you are not licensed. It means many other things that define you as an expert in human behavior. I passed the examination. After receiving the notice, I went to sleep, and I had a dream. The dream was about the Holocaust: I saw the Nazis killing the Jews, particularly babies. In the dream, I said to myself: they say I am an expert in human behavior, but do I understand why human beings can behave this way? And the answer was: no, I don’t, and haven’t been taught anything whatsoever in all of the training that I had, which has now qualified me as a specialist. That was a turning point for me: I knew I would be busy with this subject for the rest of my life.

 

ABOUT GARIWO

Gariwo is the acronym of Gardens of the Righteous Worldwide. We are a Non-Profit Organization based in Milan, with international coworkers. Since 1999 we have worked to make the people aware about the Righteous: we think that the memory of Good is a powerful educational tool and can help prevent cases of genocide and crimes against Humanity.

This is why we create Gardens of the Righteous worldwide and use the communication means, social networks and public events to spread the message of responsibility. From the European Parliament we have obtained the establishment of the European Day of the Righteous – 6 March.

Our activity is supported by institutions, schools, volunteers, an International Scientific Committee and our ‘Ambassadors’.

The Gardens of the Righteous
The Gardens are like open books that tell the Righteous’ stories. They are public spaces, places of memory, meeting and dialogue. Here it’s possible to organize initiatives for students and citizens, to keep alive the examples of the Righteous all the year round, not only by planting new trees.

The Garden of Milan was born in 2003 at Monte Stella Park. The Association for the Garden of the Righteous – formed by Gariwo, Milan City Hall and UCEI – was created in 2008, and it takes care of the Garden activities. Every year, a lot of Gardens arise in cities and schools in Italy and all over the world.

Our aim is to create a widespread network to connect everybody who believes in these topics.
Contact: redazione@gariwo.net

 

Review of Israel’s Failed Response to the Armenian Genocide by German Genocide Scholar, Tessa Hofmann

The full length review of the book written by distinguished German genocide scholar, Tessa Hofmann can be found here by clicking this link.

A somewhat briefer version of this review was published in the California Courier on May 6, 2021.

Book Review: “One is either for human life or not!”

A review of Israel Charny’s New Book, Israel’s Failed Response to the Armenian Genocide: Denial, State Deception, Truth versus Politicization of History (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2021, 267 p.)

In this extremely remarkable anthology, Israel Charny describes with obvious pain, palpable even after nearly 40 years, how a first conference on the Holocaust and genocide, including the Armenian Genocide, initiated by him and others, was blocked, obstructed, and nearly prevented by the Israeli government in the spring of 1982. National institutions such as Yad Vashem played a decisive and deeply deplorable role in this process.

Charny reproduces many previously secret and classified documents of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Promises made were revoked, which naturally put the organizers under enormous logistical and time pressure. Only now, based on newly declassified state records, Charny found that the boycott campaign was essentially spearheaded by the Israeli government itself, while the protest and attempts at prevention of lectures on the Armenian Genocide on the part of Turkey served Israel as a welcome pretext and reason for its interventions.

Allegedly, Jewish lives and the escape route of Jews from Iran and Syria via Turkey were threatened by Turkey should the planned conference result in the presentation of six “Armenian” lectures – among a total of 150! The Israel Foreign Ministry demanded of Charny and his colleagues compliance, and as the tension mounted the Foreign Ministry also commanded disinviting all Armenian speakers. This was out of the question for Israel Charny. With exemplary civil courage he resisted all attempts at intimidation.

The international conference, nevertheless well attended by 300 participants, took place despite all Turkish and Israeli interventions and became a milestone in the history of genocide studies, since it was not only the first academic conference on the Holocaust and genocide but also on genocide research. And for the first time, renowned Armenian scholars addressed the genocide committed against their ancestors on such an occasion.

But what motives underlie the Turkish and Israeli obstruction of academic and memorial events for genocide victims in the first place? To this day, not only the government of the Republic of Turkey, but also a large part of Turkish opinion leaders deny that there was an Ottoman genocide of indigenous Christians, i.e., of fellow citizens at all; according to official Turkish interpretation, there is no evidence of a state intention to exterminate. Nevertheless, as dissident Turkish academics such as Taner Akçam have pointed out, the state-planned, organized, and executed extermination of Armenians, Greeks, and other indigenous Christians constitutes the founding crime of the Republic of Turkey. In Chapter 7 of the book reviewed here, Turkish human rights activist, publicist, and publisher Ragıp Zarakolu explains the efforts of his country to deny this crime, which was so central to the formation of the Republic of Turkey, with fear of a return of survivors: “The 1915 genocide became the backbone of the nation and national state building in Turkey. Recognition of the Ottoman Genocide could do great damage to the myths of the state-founding nationalist ideology. I defined another aspect of Turkish denialism as ‘Israel syndrome,’ that is: ‘One day the Armenians may come back to their homeland like the Jews.’”

In fact, the crucial difference between ‘mere’ expulsion across the nearest state border and deportations to the distant Anatolian interior was already established by the Young Turkish regime during the Balkan Wars: The Greek Eastern Thracians who had merely been expelled to Greece returned undesirably after the end of the war. Of the Eastern Thracian Greeks deported to Anatolia, however, almost one-half died of epidemics, starvation, and forced labor. This genocidal test run served as a blueprint for the deportations of Armenians that were carried out almost nationwide as death marches
behind the smokescreen of the Great War.

Turkish scholars, publicists and human rights advocates who dared to critically research and comment on the genocide(s) of roughly three million Christians in the Ottoman Empire and in Ottoman-occupied northwestern Iran in 1914 and 1918 risk prosecution, imprisonment or exile, as the biographies of Taner Akçam and Ragıp Zarakolu make clear.

But what drove the Israeli government as well as government-affiliated or government-dependent institutions such as Yad Vashem to obstruct an academic or historical-political discussion of the Ottoman genocide since 1982? Israel Charny suspects that the real driving force is the antagonism between those who consider the Holocaust a unique and therefore singular event and ‘heretics’ who, like Charny himself and numerous other prominent Jews, consider the extermination of European Jews in World War II to be a quite comparable or even repeatable crime. For these ‘generalists,’ each genocide has both individual unique characteristics, but at the same time also commonalities with
other genocides.

The inclusive, generic approach represented by Israel Charny, Yair Auron, Benny Morris, Dror Ze’evi, and other Israeli and Jewish colleagues, respectively, can draw on prominent antecedents regarding the comparability of the two serial World War II genocides: Russian Jewish poet Ossip Mandelstam emphasized the kinship of fate between Jews and Armenians, calling Armenia the “younger sister of the Hebrew Earth.” Centuries of persecution and diaspora were meant by this. The Austrian Jewish novelist Franz Werfel also saw in the Ottoman extermination of Armenian Christians a warning to European Jews of the danger they were about to face. For the Polish-Jewish jurist and historian Raphael Lemkin, who became the principal author of the United Nations Genocide Convention, the ‘religious genocide’ of the Armenians, along with the Shoah, provided the empirical basis for Lemkin’s definition of genocide. Of the five offenses that have been considered genocide under international law since 1948, all the rest, with the exception of birth control, were committed against the Ottoman Christians as early as World War I.

I have not only read the book edited and to a large extent also written by Israel Charny with great interest, but find it important and useful reading for all those who deal theoretically or practically with questions of memory culture, history policy, genocide prevention and related educational work. Above all, the personal principles of the author, scholar and distinguished colleague Israel Charny are impressive and inspiring. It consists in addressing even the darkest and most agonizing chapters of one’s own national history. “Charny is a brave scholar-one of the rare academics who risks speaking about Israeli crimes such as the State of Israel selling weapons to other governments that commit genocide or about crimes toward the Palestinian people during the War of Independence-the Nakba,” writes Yair Auron, author of The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide in his Foreword.

Israel’s sales of weapons to states that commit genocide or are considered potential perpetrators of genocide or are engaged in wars of aggression have included Guatemala, whose “Silent Genocide” against the Maya took place in 1981-1983, Rwanda, Serbia, Sudan, and currently Myanmar, as well as Azerbaijan, which is apparently seen by Israel as a strategic partner against Iran and whose Jewish population may be playing the role of hostage. The drones that Israel provided to Azerbaijan (along with Turkey) played a crucial role in the war of aggression against the Armenian-populated Republic of Artsakh.

Israel Charny, Yair Auron, Michael Berenbaum, and Ragıp Zarakolu show us the way to achieve academic and human rights integrity, revealing at the same time the adversities its bearers may face. An exclusive understanding of the genocide of the European Jews leads, as Israel Charny convincingly demonstrates, not only to questionable decisions regarding the Ottoman genocide in terms of remembrance policy; other genocides committed in more recent times are not recognized either. In terms of remembrance and history policy, Israel apparently takes a generally indifferent, passive position when it comes to the suffering of non-Jews.

The justifications for the Israeli government’s refusal to ‘recognize’, or better condemn genocides other than the Shoah appear arbitrary. In November 2018, when the Knesset rejected a motion to recognize the genocide of the Yazidis, the Israeli deputy foreign minister justified his government’s rejection on the grounds that – allegedly – the United Nations had not yet ‘recognized’ this genocide. In the case of the refusal to recognize the Ottoman Armenian Genocide, however, it did not help that the United Nations had already passed a resolution to that effect in 1985.

To conclude, this book by Israel Charny strongly renews the call for recognition of the Armenian Genocide. It is remarkable and inspiring writing and warmly recommended as a good read.

Obituary to a Great American Armenian, VARTAN GREGORIAN

Obituary to a Great American Armenian, VARTAN GREGORIAN

Vartan Gregorian, President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, formerly President of Brown University, Provost of the University of Pennsylvania, and President of the New York Public Library has passed away at the age of 87.

Dr. Gregorian was the recipient of the American Presidential Medal of Freedom. He was born to Armenian parents in Tabriz, Iran, went on to receive his secondary education at the Armenian College in Beirut, Lebanon, and in 1956 moved to attend Stanford University where he was awarded a PhD some years later.

The Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide Jerusalem celebrates Dr. Gregorian’s outstanding intellectual leadership and inspiration.  As director of the Institute, I recall with great appreciation my first meeting with Dr. Gregorian at his office at the New York Public Library where we sat together and formulated a preliminary basic list of ‘instructions’ for how to deny a genocide.  Over the many years that followed of my work on the process of denial of the Armenian Genocide and any and all specific genocides, this serious-satirical series of templates, and the warmly inspiring spirit of Dr. Gregorian, continued to be a major basis for the development of further understanding of denial.

In more recent years, as president of the Carnegie Foundation, Dr. Gregorian was the driving force in generating substantial financial support for development by our Institute of a new model for communicating news about genocide and genocide scholarship around the world (our web magazine from 2010-2012, GPN Genocide Prevention Now – selections from this website can be seen at https://www.ihgjlm.com/a-classification-of-denials-of-the-holocaust-and-other-genocides-updated-2012/.

The New York Times commented, “Dr. Gregorian was a fighter: proud, shrewd, charming, a brilliant historian and educator who rose from humble origins to win… sheaves of honors” (April 16, 2021).

“Templates for Gross Denial of a Known Genocide: A Manual,” in The Encyclopedia of Genocide, volume 1, page 168.

1. Question and minimize the statistics.
2. Attack the motivations of the truth-tellers.
3. Claim that the deaths were inadvertent
4. Emphasize the strangeness of the victims.
5. Rationalize the deaths as the result of tribal conflict.
6. Blame “out of control” forces for committing the killings.
7. Avoid antagonizing the genocidists, who might walk out of “the peace process.”
8. Justify denial in favor of current economic interests.
9. Claim that the victims are receiving good treatment.
10.Claim that what is going on doesn’t fit the definition of genocide.
11.Blame the victims.
12. Say that peace and reconciliation are more important than blaming people for genocide.

United States Completes Full Recognition of the Armenian Genocide

April 24, 2021

Today, April 24, 2021, Armenian Genocide Memorial Day, is now also the historic day on which the United States of America has completed full recognition of the Armenian Genocide after many years of evasion.

In the past there have been sparks of recognition from one or another senior level of American governance, for example the use of the term “Armenian Genocide” once by President Reagan, or earlier votes of recognition of the genocide by the House of Representatives, but at no time has there been a unity or a completeness to the American recognition.  Now in the last year the House of Representatives voted by a huge majority to recognize the Armenian Genocide, the US Senate amazingly voted unanimously for recognition and now President Joe Biden has completed the sequence by becoming the first president to make this designation. The Washington Post commented, “Since the 1980s, Congress and various U.S. presidents have resisted lobbying by Armenian Americans for an official statement of recognition, for fear of upsetting a long-standing alliance with Turkey. ‘People are beginning to wake up to the fact that this is going to cause us hard times with Turkey,’ a congressional staffer told the New York Times in 1989. ‘Sure, there’s sympathy for the Armenian people, but it’s only prudent also to focus on the implications of this thing.’ For this reason, congressional resolutions on the Armenian genocide have languished year after year” (April 24, 2021).

President Biden’s statement of course was immediately denounced by Turkey.  The Turkish Foreign Minister said, “We cannot change or rewrite history.  We have nothing to learn from anybody on our own past… we entirely reject this statement based solely on populism” (Guardian, April 24, 2021).

The Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide Jerusalem applauds and celebrates warmly the United States’ Recognition of the Armenian Genocide, and recommits itself to its continuing long-term efforts to gain recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the State of Israel.

Proposed Letter to the Editor Haaretz English Edition

Thank you Ofer Aderet and Haaretz for your meaningful article on May 3, 2021, “How Israel Quashed Efforts to Recognize the Armenian Genocide.” The article definitely succeeds in painting the picture of government – in this case Israel’s Foreign Ministry – lying blatantly, manipulating, invading academic freedom, putting out fake news and more. In this instance the subject was efforts to close down an international scholarly conference on the Holocaust and Genocide because the subject of the Armenian Genocide was included among all the cases of genocide under discussion, and Israel was out to cater to Turkey’s demands to stop that discussion. However, it is obvious that such behaviors may very well be found in various government agencies, and that the challenge to all of us is to stand up against them.

However, ‘a funny thing happened on the way to this article,’ especially in its original Hebrew edition in Haaretz on April 30. There two big and bold headlines announced that “in the summer of 1982 the government succeeded in closing down a conference on the subject of genocide out of a concern about a confrontation with Turkey,” and the second headline continuing this story on another page announced definitively, “thus did the Foreign Ministry close down a conference in Israel on the subject of the Armenian Genocide.”

What may well have happened is that the reporter, who I know was checking the formerly secret Foreign Ministry cables (that I report in my new book, Israel’s Failed Response to the Armenian Genocide), came across the Foreign Ministry lies about the attendance at the conference which they had dispatched to Turkey to comfort and console them that the conference had been virtually reduced to nothing. Here is what I write in my book:

“For the humor of it all, now the newly discovered Foreign Ministry documents also show that once the conference nonetheless was underway, Israel lied to the Turks repeatedly that there were absurdly small numbers of attendees at the conference. In one memorandum to Ankara—apparently when we held five pre-conference seminars, each with twenty participants—they reported a participation of four people; and when the larger full conference assembled with 300 participants, they reported to Ankara in one communication twenty-three participants and in another memo a hundred participants. What do you know? Liars (Turkey) can’t even trust fellow liars (Israel)” (p.61).

Writing in Haaretz, best-selling author Amos Elon (author of The Israelis) strongly criticized “that Jews should comply with the Turks in denying the Armenian Genocide” and applauded the conference for being “faithful to principles.” In the Yale Review, Terrence des Pres (author of The Survivor: An Anatomy of Life in the Death Camps) applauded the conference’s “intellectual courage” and celebrated “the kind of men and women who, against some very ugly pressures, went ahead with the Tel Aviv conference …”

Prof. Israel W. Charny, Director, Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide Jerusalem

How Israel Quashed Efforts to Recognize the Armenian Genocide – to Please Turkey

by Ofer Aderet |  Haaretz English Edition | May 2, 2021

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-how-israel-quashed-efforts-to-acknowledge-the-armenian-genocide-1.9766390?lts=1620128020482

Decades before the U.S. president formally recognized the horrors of 1915, Israel’s Foreign Ministry sought to foil an academic conference on the subject, fearing reprisal from Turkey. ‘We continue to act to reduce and diminish the Armenian issue to the extent of our ability by every possible means’

Armenian leader Papasyan viewing the aftermath of murders that took place in a Syrian concentration camp for Armenians, 1915-1916.
Armenian leader Vahan Papazian viewing the aftermath of murders that took place in a Syrian concentration camp for Armenians, 1915-1916.Credit: Bodil Katharine Birn / National Archives of Norway

In the summer of 1982, Israel’s Foreign Ministry set to work on a special mission. “We continue to spare no effort on this issue, which is currently a central one on our agenda,” an internal ministry document says of the mission. “We shall leave no stone unturned, whether or not this thing succeeds,” another document says. “Intensive treatment that encompasses both institutions and public figures in Israel and abroad… feverish and tireless efforts… at the highest diplomatic levels,” other documents add.

The mission that so occupied the Foreign Ministry personnel 40 years ago had nothing to do with the First Lebanon War, which had just begun, but with another much larger and deadlier war: the Armenian genocide in 1915, during which an estimated 1.5 million people were killed by the forces of the Ottoman Empire.

An Armenian refugee from genocide in Syria mourns her dead child in a photo taken by the aid organization Near East Relief (for Armenian refugees), taken between 1915 and 1919
An Armenian refugee from genocide in Syria mourns her dead child, in a photo taken between 1915 and 1919.Credit: American Committee for Relief in the Near East

Following U.S. President Joe Biden’s formal recognition on April 24 of the genocide, it’s particularly interesting to see how Israel not only denied the horrific mass murders – a policy to which it still adheres – but also tried to influence others to act in the same manner.

A recently released file from the National Archives reveals Israeli efforts during that summer four decades ago to thwart an academic conference due to be held in the country, focusing both on the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide. The documents in question offer a lesson in realpolitik and the willingness to sacrifice fundamental values of the type that any democratic society – especially one established after the calamity of the Holocaust – is supposed to hold dear, on the alter of political and security-related interests, among other reasons.

Beginning in April 1982, from the day the conference was first announced, the Foreign Ministry’s efforts to sabotage it never ceased. These efforts, which went on for two months, bore fruit.

A man holds a placard as members of the Armenian diaspora in the U.S. rally to mark the anniversary of the 1915 genocide, in Los Angeles, last week.
A man holds a placard as members of the Armenian diaspora in the U.S. rally to mark the anniversary of the 1915 genocide, in Los Angeles, last week.Credit: DAVID SWANSON/ REUTERS

The Yad Vashem Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem withdrew its initial sponsorship of the event, Tel Aviv University declined to take part, the Henrietta Szold Institute pledged not to provide funding for it, Holocaust survivor and then-future Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel resigned his post as conference chairman, and a number of prominent historians, including Prof. Yehuda Bauer, said they would not to attend. The conference did ultimately take place, but in a much watered-down and unofficial framework.

“We continue to act to reduce and diminish the Armenian issue to the extent of our ability by every possible means,” according to one Foreign Ministry document from the summer of 1982.

Removing the ‘Armenian section’

“Reduce and diminish” – as if this was not about the murder of well over a million people that also involved uprooting, plunder, expulsion and death marches. “We continue with intensive and comprehensive efforts to get the conference canceled or to at least have the Armenian section removed from the agenda,” the document adds. The “Armenian section” – two simple words that stand for a huge genocide.

Aside from the successful attempts to damage the prestige of the event by making the list of participants shrink significantly, the Foreign Ministry also tried to get it canceled outright. This is evident from the negotiations conducted by ministry personnel with the conference organizers, headed by Israel Charny, an American-Israeli psychologist. The talks were an attempt to reach a compromise whereby the event would be canceled, but the Foreign Ministry would provide organizers with “compensation for the actual damage – on the basis of receipts.” But the proposal didn’t go very far.

Holocaust survivor, author and Nobel Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel
Holocaust survivor, author and Nobel Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel. Backed down under pressure as chairman of the conference in 1982, and also discussed ways “to cancel the Armenian section” of it.Credit: Michal Fattal

Meanwhile, the ministry enlisted embassies around the world to help persuade potential participants to cancel their attendance in the conference, as one document states: “We are currently trying to dissuade the invitees from taking part.” The most important guest was Elie Wiesel, who was supposed to chair the event. “I propose that we instruct the general consul to contact Wiesel and request that he disassociate himself from the conference,” wrote Elyakim Rubinstein, the legal adviser of the Foreign Ministry at the time, and the future attorney general, cabinet secretary and Supreme Court justice.

After Wiesel agreed to pull out, he shared internal information about the conference with Foreign Ministry personnel, and even took part in the effort to foil it. For one thing, Wiesel met with Naphtali Lau-Lavie, Israel’s general consul in New York and a Holocaust survivor himself, and discussed ways “to cancel the Armenian section” of the confab. One idea proposed was “to prevent such a discussion in the plenum” and to transfer it to “workshops” on the sidelines, so it would not be given publicity. “We could say that the conference did not designate the Armenian issue as a subject for discussion,” Lau-Lavie suggested.

Israeli ambassadors around the world were called upon by the ministry in Jerusalem to use their ties to keep the conference organizers from finding a replacement for Wiesel. “We request that you call [Lewis] Samuel Feuer and convince him not to accept the presidency of the conference,” Ambassador to France Meir Rosenne was told. Feuer, an American sociologist, has “an international reputation and broad personal authority and his non-participation in the conference will lower the level of the conference and reduce its dimensions to the minimum,” Rosenne was informed.

For his part, Lau-Lavie reported to the ministry that he had spoken with Jack P. Eisner, who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and was actively involved in Holocaust commemoration. Eisner had received an offer to chair the conference but Lau-Lavie said he turned down the offer, “ceased funding the conference and had just halted a transfer of money for the event.”

The Israeli consulate in Stockholm was asked, meanwhile, to contact Per Ahlmark, a renowned Swedish writer and politician, and to let him know that Wiesel “would be greatly appreciate it if he did not attend the conference.”

 

American-Israeli psychology professor and author Israel Charny.
Prof. Israel Charny. Argues in his new book that the Turkish threat to holding the 1982 conference in Israel on the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide was “an invention.” Credit: Emil Salman

Targeting Yad Vashem

The list of people whom Foreign Ministry emissaries contacted to persuade them not to participate included local officials such as Yad Vashem chairman Yitzhak Arad and Yad Vashem council chairman Gideon Hausner, the prosecutor in the Eichmann trial two decades earlier. The idea was to try to persuade the Holocaust remembrance center of the problematic nature of the conference, which, in dealing with both with the Shoah and the Armenian genocide, would detract from the uniqueness of the former.

‘Turkey cannot conceive of a conference being held in Israel in which it will be presented in the same category with Nazi Germany’

“Our first objective is to neutralize Yad Vashem as an official national body from taking part in including the Armenians in the conference,” one of the newly publicized documents says. “This should be possible because the inclusion of other peoples in the same line with the Jewish Holocaust would place Yad Vashem in a controversial position in the world and in terms of international public opinion. If we succeed in getting Yad Vashem out of the conference in which Armenian issues will be discussed, it will be an important and significant achievement since no official public government body will then be standing behind it.”

The next target was Tel Aviv University rector and future president Prof. Yoram Dinstein. Moshe Gilboa, director of the Foreign Ministry’s Diaspora Department, reported that he met with Dinstein and explained to him “the background for our objection to the inclusion of the Armenian issue.” The meeting was a success, and yielded a letter from Dinstein’s office detailing concerns about the event.

Behind the scenes, Israel boasted to Turkey about its activities, according to one archival document: “We put an emphasis on our efforts to cancel the conference completely or to at least remove the Armenian issue from it… It was explained to the Turkish representative in Israel that, in the present circumstances, the conference has shrunk to tiny proportions and will be run by a small group of private individuals, without any official government or public support.”

Ministry officials also instructed Israel’s representatives in Turkey to inform their local counterparts about the efforts being made and to add – perhaps apologetically – that “in a democratic regime, as we have here [i.e., in Israel], we cannot prevent private individuals from holding conferences and discussing any subject they wish.”

To assuage the Turks, the Foreign Ministry also proposed to plant articles in the press that would be critical of Israel’s attempts to prevent the conference from taking place. These articles would “serve as our alibi, in the Turks’ eyes,” ministry officials hoped.

Eventually, as in a military operation, the Foreign Ministry even “spied on” the event that was held: “No Armenian clergy were spotted… A certain Armenian speaker gave a talk about the Armenian issue. A film on the subject that was supposed to be screened was not shown because the projector didn’t work. No more than six or seven people were seen in the conference rooms. The [Armenian] Patriarch was seen walking around,” according to a report.

There is no one clear answer as to what was behind the Foreign Ministry’s obsession with foiling this academic conference. Officially, ministerial representatives told people that Turkey could potentially harm Jews from Iran and Syria who would try to immigrate to Israel via Turkey.

“All of the Foreign Ministry’s activity to prevent the holding of the conference is intended solely to save Jews from lands where they are in distress,” one of the archival documents says. That account is supported by another source, describing how a Foreign Ministry representative in Turkey, Alon Liel, was summoned to the Foreign Ministry in Ankara, in April 1982.

Elyakim Rubinstein, former Supreme Court Justice and attorney general, who was Foreign Ministry counsel in 1982
Elyakim Rubinstein, Foreign Ministry counsel in 1982. “There was a constraint here, a concrete interest, that we had to pay attention to, because the Turks could be tough,” he says today.Credit: Olivier Fitoussi

“Turkey cannot conceive of a conference being held in Israel in which it will be presented in the same category with Nazi Germany,” Liel was told.

“The Turkish people find this especially surprising given the fact that Turkey aided Jewish refugees who managed to escape the arms of the Nazis in World War II,” the summary of the meeting says. “The Turks display extreme sensitivity, bordering on irrationality, regarding the Armenian issue, and are unwilling to admit that the events of 1915 constitutes the Armenian genocide.”

The bottom line, as Liel warned in his report to Jerusalem, was that “if the Armenian section is included in the conference, it will have grave implications for Israeli-Turkish relations.”

‘An invention’

Last week, Elyakim Rubinstein recalled his involvement on behalf of the Foreign Ministry in preventing the event from taking place. “I would have been much more comfortable, as a proponent of academic freedom, to sit on the other side of the barricade. But there was a constraint here, a concrete interest, that we had to pay attention to, because the Turks could be tough,” he told Haaretz. “I think we acted correctly. Israel has responsibility vis-a-vis the Jewish issue everywhere.”

But where did the threat to hurt would-be Jewish immigrants passing through Turkey come from? Prof. Charny, the organizer of the 1982 conference, has just published a new book entitled “Israel’s Failed Response to the Armenian Genocide: Denial, State Deception, Truth Versus Politicization of History.” In it, Charny argues that the Turkish threat was “an invention.” He bases this view on a 1982 document in which Israel’s general consul in Istanbul at the time, Avner Arazi, wrote that the fear of a severe Turkish reaction to the conference was highly exaggerated.

Former Yad Vashem chairman Yitzhak Arad
Yitzhak Arad, Yad Vashem chairman at the time. He was among the list of people Foreign Ministry emissaries contacted to persuade them not to participate in the 1982 conference.Credit: Tomer Appelbaum

“I would like to touch on a point that I believe served as the basis for our concerted efforts to get the conference canceled, i.e., the hints about the passage of Iranian and Syrian Jews via Turkey,” Arazi wrote. “I was not aware of this issue. Here in Turkey, there were no signs of a connection between this issue and the conference. Anyone familiar with Turkey’s dedication to its tradition and its principles, which include not extraditing refugees, would never imagine that it could endanger Jews’ lives by turning them over to the Syrians and Iranians… At a time when Turkey is making every effort to improve its image in the world, it is not reasonable to think it would commit such an injustice and thereby also invite harsh criticism from the Free World,” he added.

A report in Haaretz on the low number of participants at the conference.
A report in Haaretz on the low number of participants at the conference. Credit: Ministry of Foreign Affairs / Archival

Other evidence shows that the Israeli “handling” of the confab was just one front where Israel was active on the subject of the genocide: Michael Birnbaum, one of the founders of the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, writes in Charny’s new book that people at the Israeli Embassy tried to convince him “not to include the Armenians in the museum.”

Charny, who is today 90, told Haaretz that the Foreign Ministry’s conduct in the episode made him “put an end to the naivete with which we ascribe good intentions to our leadership,” and that “seeing the dirt, the contemptible behavior, the manipulations, the wickedness and destructiveness of a key division of government – it’s just astounding.”

Review of “Israel’s Failed Response to the Armenian Genocide” by well-known genocide scholar, Tessa Hofmann (Germany)

“One is Either for Human Life or Not!”

A major part of this review will also be published in the California Courier.

Review of Israel Charny’s New Book, Israel’s Failed Response to the Armenian Genocide: Denial, State Deception, Truth versus Politicization of History.

 Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2021.

.by Tessa Hofmann 

Review of Israel Charny: Israel’s Failed Response to the Armenian Genocide: Denial, State Deception, Truth versus Politization of History. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2021, 267 p. by Tessa Hofmann

In this extremely remarkable anthology, Israel Charny describes with obvious pain, palpable even after nearly 40 years, how a first conference on the Holocaust and genocide, including the Armenian Genocide, initiated by him and others, was blocked, obstructed, and nearly prevented by the Israeli government in the spring of 1982. National institutions such as Yad Vashem played a decisive and deeply deplorable role in this process.

Promises made were revoked, which naturally put the organizers under enormous logistical and time pressure. Only now, based on newly declassified state records, Charny found that the boycott campaign was essentially spearheaded by the Israeli government itself, while the protest and attempts at prevention of lectures on the Armenian Genocide on the part of Turkey served Israel as a welcome pretext and reason for its interventions. Allegedly, Jewish lives and the escape route of Jews from Iran and Syria via Turkey were threatened by Turkey should the planned conference result in the presentation of six “Armenian” lectures – among a total of 150! The Israel Foreign Ministry demanded of Charny and his colleagues compliance, and as the tension mounted the Foreign Ministry also commanded disinviting all Armenian speakers. This was out of the question for Israel Charny. With exemplary civil courage he resisted all attempts at intimidation.

The international conference, nevertheless well attended by 300 participants, took place despite all Turkish and Israeli interventions and became a milestone in the history of genocide studies, since it was not only the first academic conference on the Holocaust, but also on genocide research. And for the first time, renowned Armenian scholars addressed the genocide committed against their ancestors on such an occasion.

But what motives underlie the Turkish and Israeli obstruction of academic and memorial events for genocide victims in the first place? To this day, not only the government of the Republic of Turkey, but also a large part of Turkish opinion leaders deny that there was an Ottoman genocide of indigenous Christians, i.e., of fellow citizens at all; according to official Turkish interpretation, there is no evidence of a state intention to exterminate. Nevertheless, as dissident Turkish academics such as Taner Akçam have pointed out, the state-planned, organized, and executed extermination of Armenians, Greeks, and other indigenous Christians constitutes the founding crime of the Republic of Turkey.

In Chapter 7 of the book reviewed here, Turkish human rights activist, publicist, and publisher Ragıp Zarakolu explains the efforts of his country to deny this crime, which was so central to the formation of the Republic of Turkey, with fear of a return of survivors: Zarakolu writes: “The 1915 genocide became the backbone of the nation and national state building in Turkey. Recognition of the Ottoman Genocide could do great damage to the myths of the state-founding nationalist ideology. I defined another aspect of Turkish denialism as ‘Israel syndrome,’ that is: ‘One day the Armenians may come back to their homeland like the Jews.’ Turkish nationalism had this fear before the Israel Republic was born. One of the signers of the Lausanne Peace Treaty, Dr. Riza Nur, wrote in his memoirs, which were kept at the British Museum, ‘Topal Osman mobs were burning and destroying the churches and cemeteries in Pontos region, I approve this, to finish the hope of comeback.’” (p. 172)

The crucial difference between ‘mere’ expulsion across the nearest state border and deportations to the distant Anatolian interior was already established by the Young Turkish regime during the Balkan Wars: The Greek Eastern Thracians who had merely been expelled to Greece returned undesirably after the end of the war. Of the Eastern Thracian Greeks deported to Anatolia, however, almost one-half died of epidemics, starvation, and forced labor. This genocidal test run served as a blueprint for the deportations of Armenians that were carried out almost nationwide as death marches behind the smokescreen of the Great War.

Turkish scholars, publicists and human rights advocates who dared to critically research and comment on the genocide(s) of roughly three million Christians in the Ottoman Empire and in Ottoman-occupied northwestern Iran in 1914 and 1918 risk prosecution, imprisonment or exile, as the biographies of Taner Akçam and Ragıp Zarakolu make clear.

But what drove the Israeli government as well as government-affiliated or government-dependent institutions such as Yad Vashem to obstruct an academic or historical-political discussion of the Ottoman genocide since 1982? Israel Charny suspects that the real driving force is the antagonism between those who consider the Holocaust a unique and therefore singular event and ‘heretics’ who, like Charny himself and numerous other prominent Jews, consider the extermination of European Jews in World War II to be a quite comparable or even repeatable crime. For these ‘generalists,’ each genocide has both individual unique characteristics, but at the same time also commonalities with other genocides.

The term Holocaust itself, of course, originated in U.S. and European journalism of the late 19th/early 20th centuries and referred to the Armenian persecutions under Sultan Abdül Hamit II and the Young Turks, which often included the burning alive of Christian victims. Zionist activist Eytan Belkind, who served as an officer in the Ottoman army, described one such holocaust in World War I, which he witnessed: “Armenians were ordered to gather thistles and thorns and pile them up into a high pyramid. Then they tied all the Armenians there hand to hand, about five thousand of them, and arranged them into a ring around the thorn pyramid and set it on fire…. The cries of the unfortunate victims, burning to death in the great fire, could be heard for miles around.”[1]

As Elie Wiesel told the German genocide researcher Gunnar Heinsohn in a letter, Wiesel adopted the term Holocaust for the Shoah in 1958, which was initially related to Armenian or Christian victims.[2] Wiesel will presumably have known that the term Holocaust was a paraphrase of the Armenian extermination in earlier decades and frequently used long before Lemkin’s design of the term genocide.

The inclusive, generic approach represented by Israel Charny, Yair Auron, Benny Morris, Dror Ze’evi, and other Israeli and Jewish colleagues, respectively, can draw on prominent antecedents regarding the comparability of the two serial World War II genocides: Russian Jewish poet Ossip Mandelstam emphasized the kinship of fate between Jews and Armenians, calling Armenia the “younger sister of the Hebrew Earth.” Centuries of persecution and diaspora were meant by this. The Austrian Jewish novelist Franz Werfel also saw in the Ottoman extermination of Armenian Christians a warning to European Jews of the danger they were about to face. For the Polish-Jewish jurist and historian Raphael Lemkin, who became the principal author of the United Nations Genocide Convention, the ‘religious genocide’ of the Armenians, along with the Shoah, provided the empirical basis for Lemkin’s definition of genocide. Of the five offenses that have been considered genocide under international law since 1948, all the rest, with the exception of birth control, were committed against the Ottoman Christians as early as World War I.

I have not only read the book edited and to a large extent also written by Israel Charny with great interest, but find it important and useful reading for all those who deal theoretically or practically with questions of memory culture, history policy, genocide prevention and related educational work. Above all, the personal principles of the author, scholar and distinguished colleague Israel Charny are impressive and inspiring. It consists in addressing even the darkest and most agonizing chapters of one’s own national history. “Charny is a brave scholar-one of the rare academics who risks speaking about Israeli crimes such as the State of Israel selling weapons to other governments that commit genocide or about crimes toward the Palestinian people during the War of Independence-the Nakba,” writes Yair Auron, author of The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide in his Foreword. (p. XVIII).

Israel’s sales of weapons to states that commit genocide or are considered potential perpetrators of genocide or are engaged in wars of aggression have included Guatemala, whose “Silent Genocide” against the Maya took place in 1981-1983, Rwanda, Serbia, Sudan, and currently Myanmar, as well as Azerbaijan, which is apparently seen by Israel as a strategic partner against Iran and whose Jewish population may be playing the role of hostage. The drones that Israel provided to Azerbaijan (along with Turkey) played a crucial role in the war of aggression against the Armenian-populated Republic of Artsakh.

Israel Charny, Yair Auron, Michael Berenbaum, and Ragıp Zarakolu show us the way to achieve such academic and human rights integrity, revealing at the same time the adversities its bearers may face. An exclusive understanding of the genocide of the European Jews leads, as Israel Charny convincingly demonstrates, not only to questionable decisions regarding the Ottoman genocide in terms of remembrance policy; other genocides committed in more recent times are not recognized either. In terms of remembrance and history policy, Israel apparently takes a generally indifferent, passive position when it comes to the suffering of non-Jews. Charny writes: After seeing previously secret and classified documents of Israel’s Foreign Ministry that detail Israel’s policy efforts with regard to the inclusion of information about the Armenian Genocide—and for that matter the inclusion of information about any other people’s genocide—also in the influential US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, I am shocked to the core by the realization that much of our policy is indeed generated and backed up not only by a misunderstanding of the significance of the Holocaust in relation to other genocides. It is also more generally a powerful entree into understanding much more deeply the construction of genocidal thinking and practice in the human mind and behavior, where we identify open and shut arrogance, disregard for historical truths, and, frankly, ugly efforts to achieve a national/cultural superiority over other peoples” (p. 103).

The justifications for the Israeli government’s refusal to ‘recognize’, or better condemn genocides other than the Shoah appear arbitrary. In November 2018, when the Knesset rejected a motion to recognize the genocide of the Yazidis, the Israeli deputy foreign minister justified his government’s rejection on the grounds that – allegedly – the United Nations had not yet ‘recognized’ this genocide (p. 114). In the case of the refusal to recognize the Ottoman Armenian Genocide, however, it did not help that the United Nations had already passed a resolution to that effect in 1985.

Caveat

As a German reviewer, I find it difficult to reproduce Israel Charny’s criticism of the Israeli government without a cross-reference to my country too. Against the historical background of millions of crimes against the Jews of Europe – the official Israel’s doctrine of the uniqueness and incomparability of the Holocaust is in force in German bourgeois media and among mainstream intellectuals. There exist further similarities: Germany has very belatedly recognized, 101 years post factum, the genocide of its Ottoman WW1 ally against its Armenian, Syriac, as well as the Greek Orthodox nationals (usually paraphrased as ‘other Christians’), but to this day has not brought about legislative recognition of the first genocide of the 20th century. I am referring here to the genocide of up to 100,000 Herero, 10,000 Nama and an unknown number of San in the then German colony of “Southwest,” today’s Namibia, in the years 1904-1908. This led to the accusation in the critical German public that the German legislature was pointing its finger accusingly at third states, but was not self-critical enough to measure its own genocidal guilt and responsibility with the same yardstick. It should also be mentioned that, although Germany officially and fully acknowledges its historical responsibility toward the Jews without reservation and accordingly engages in intensive educational work in and out of school, a growing proportion of the population nevertheless believes that it is now enough to admit guilt, repent and atone.

As a researcher and as a human rights activist who has been dealing with the crime of genocide for more than 40 years and who has worked for the reappraisal or ‘recognition’ of the Ottoman genocide crimes, similar to my colleague Israel Charny, I have been exposed to Turkish disruptive and obstructive maneuvers many times. The Struggle Committee Against Baseless Armenian Genocide Claims (ASIMKK), established in Turkey in 2000, requires, among other things, Turkish diplomats abroad to prevent, if possible, all public events about the Ottoman genocide in their respective jurisdictions. When I, together with a Turkish and an Armenian colleague, submitted a petition to the German Bundestag in April 2000 for legislative condemnation of the Armenian Genocide, the result was a defamation campaign in the largest Turkish daily newspaper, “Hürriyet”; among other things, I was referred to as the head of the German secret service, who had the special mission of fomenting interethnic hatred among the peoples of Turkey and the South Caucasus. Politicians and academics in Germany with similar ambitions of genocide ‘recognition’, especially those of Turkish origin, have faced similar experiences of defamation and intimidation. The German government and its authorities generally watched this extraterritorial activity of the Turkish NATO ally impassively. The first Bundestag resolution on the Ottoman genocide, passed in 2005, at least admitted German “complicity” in the “massacres” and “expulsions,” as the Ottoman genocide was paraphrased in Germany at the time. Only two months after the Bundestag had pronounced the G-word, so feared by Turkey, in a second resolution on June 2, 2016, government spokesman Seibert, to reassure Turkey, declared this resolution to be legally non-binding.

To conclude, this book by Israel Charny strongly renews the call for recognition of the Armenian Genocide. It is remarkable and inspiring writing.

About the reviewer:

– Prof. h. c. Dr. phil. Tessa Hofmann is a philologist (Slavic and Armenian studies), sociologist and genocide researcher with a focus on the Ottoman genocide. She has numerous publications on the history, culture and contemporary situation of Armenia.

[1]   Quoted from the letter to the editor by Hannes Stein (Jerusalem), published in the FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINEN ZEITUNG, 4 August 1998. Eytan Belkind was the brother of the Palestinian-born Zionist Naaman Belkind (1889-1917) and joined him in the Nili espionage group founded in 1915 to support the British; it was crushed by the Ottoman authorities in the fall of 1917.

[2] Heinsohn, Gunnar: Lexikon der Völkermorde. Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1998, p. 174f.

 

New Book: Israel’s Failed Response to the Armenian Genocide

by Israel W. Charny

When the Turkish government demanded the cancellation of all lectures on the Armenian Genocide at Israel’s First International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide, and that Armenian lecturers not be allowed to participate, the Israeli government followed suit. This book follows the author’s gutsy campaign against his government and his quest to successfully hold the conference in the face of censorship. A political whodunit based on previously secret Israel Foreign Ministry cables, this book investigates Israel’s overall tragically unjust relationship to genocides of other peoples.

The book also closely examines the figures of Elie Wiesel and Shimon Peres in their interference with the recognition of other peoples’ genocidal tragedies, particularly the Armenian Genocide. Additional chapters by three prominent leaders—a fearless Turk who has paid a huge price in Turkish jails (Ragip Zarakolu), a renowned Armenian American who was one of the earliest writers on the Armenian Genocide (Richard Hovannisian); and a Jew, who was responsible for the selection of all the materials in the pathbreaking U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington (Michael Berenbaum)—provide added perspectives.

April 2021 | 270 pp.; 14 illus.
9781644696026 | $26.95 | Paperback

For orders directly from Academic Studies Press, please use the following link: https://www.academicstudiespress.com/theholocaust/israels-failed-response-to-the-armenian-genocide or write to Academic Studies Press at 1577 Beacon Street, Brookline, MA 02446, USA. [Tel: +1 (617) 782-6290, Email:press@academicstudiespress.com

Click here for the attached form that can be used to accompany payments sent by mail. Be sure to complete the billing/shipping information (name, phone, email).

The book can be purchased directly from the publisher, ACADEMIC STUDIES PRESS, or from a variety of booksellers in including AMAZON, BARNES & NOBLE and EUROSPAN. In each case, please check the cost of the book and shipping.

Author: I have learned that outside the US – e.g., in Israel, Armenia, Russia, France, and elsewhere — EUROSPAN does not charge for shipping, and that the paperback is available from them at $21.50. https://www.eurospanbookstore.com/africa_m_east/israel-s-failed-response-to-the-armenian-genocide.html?store=africa_m_east&from_store=default

PRAISE

“Israel Charny has single-handedly produced at least half of the seminal ideas in the history of genocide studies and genocide prevention. I wish there were a Nobel Prize in Genocide Studies. If there were, he should get the first one.” —Gregory
H. Stanton, Founding President Genocide Watch, Research Professor in Genocide Studies and Prevention, George Mason University

“Israel Charny has brilliantly captured over a hundred years of evasions and denials by the Turkish Government for the genocide that extinguished the lives of a million and a half Armenian souls. I heartily congratulate Charny for deftly exposing the many contradictions in our world towards our nation’s Genocide, and pray that this book will serve the purpose to wake up Israeli politicians.” —Archbishop Nourhan Manoogian, Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem

Recommendations of Israel’s Failed Response to the Armenian Genocide

Endorsements by GREGORY H. STANTON, ARCHBISHOP MOURAN MANOOGIAN -Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem, YAIR AURON, SHMUEL REISS MD, HARUT SASSOUNIAN, SAMUEL TOTTEN, TANER AKÇAM, NAOMI CHAZAN, and ROBERT WILLIAM FISK.

’Nobel Prize’
GREGORY H. STANTON, Founding President Genocide Watch, Research
Professor in Genocide Studies and Prevention, George Mason University
Israel Charny has single-handedly produced at least half of the seminal ideas in the history of genocide studies and genocide prevention. I wish there were a Nobel Prize in Genocide Studies. If there were, he should get the first one.

Brilliant
ARCHBISHOP MOURAN MANOOGIAN, Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem
You have brilliantly captured over a hundred years of evasions and denials by the Turkish Government for the Genocide that extinguished the lives of a million and a half Armenian souls. Armenians also lost a thousand years of their culture. This monumental crime against the Armenian nation must be recognized. To do less calls into question the integrity of all those victims of similar crimes, regardless of origin. It is ironic that the person who coined the word “Genocide” in 1944, Rafael Lemkin, was himself of Jewish faith, and the State of Israel should have been the FIRST nation to recognize the Armenian Genocide, and I am sure things since then would have been different in the world. I heartily congratulate you for deftly exposing the many contradictions in our world towards our nation’s Genocide, and pray that your book will serve the purpose to wake up Israeli politicians.

Important, Original and Brave
From the Foreword by YAIR AURON, Prof. Emeritus, Open University of Israel, author of The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide
This is a very important, courageous and original book. The attitude of the book towards the Armenian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust is the closeness between the two. The two consist of a paradigm of genocide and evil in our world. The book describes Israeli government leaders who succumbed to Turkish demands and attempted to close down the 1982 conference that was a milestone event in the struggle against denials of historically known genocides. With intellectual integrity, Charny criticizes the disrespect of the State of Israel to other genocides. When you deny another’s genocide, you betray your own genocide; when you deny genocide of the present or of the past, you prepare the ground for a new one. It also presents a particularly fascinating in-depth picture of Elie Wiesel’s complicated role in the process. .Charny is a brave scholar — one of the rare academics who risks speaking about Israeli crimes such as the State of Israel selling weapons to other governments that commit genocide or about crimes toward the Palestinian people during the War of Independence –the Nakba. This is a significant text that will probably be of wide interest in the world, and at the same time it will probably be an unexpected text for many people in Israeli society.

Relentless Yet Respectful
SHMUEL REIS, MD, MHPE, Family Physician; Academic Director, Center for Medical Education, Professor, Faculty of Medicine, Hebrew University Jerusalem; Conference Coordinator, International Workshop on Study of Medicine in and after the Holocaust
We applaud Prof. Charny’s relentless yet respectful crusade and especially this seminal book that sheds disturbing light on our country’s deplorable mishandling of the issue, yet nevertheless upholds a hope for its positive transformation. Like many others I am unable to comprehend official Israel turning a blind eye to the Armenian Genocide by Turkey. No realpolitik can justify such immoral conduct, nor the false claim that it may cost Jewish or Israeli lives. As a scholar of Medicine’s role in the Holocaust, my colleagues and I summon health professionals to become Genocide Watchers and do their utmost to identify and prevent such calamities. We also call on all health professionals to incorporate in their professional identity the dangers of the inherent potential for abuse of power in HealthCare. These obligate a full and transparent acknowledgement of the Armenian Holocaust (in which unfortunately once again physicians played a decisive role).

Fascinating, Patriotic, Yet Honest
HARUT SASSOUNIAN is the Publisher of the California Courier, an outstanding Armenian-American newspaper; he is formerly President of the United Armenian Fund and currently President of Armenia Artsakh Fund which have contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to the development of Armenia
Dr. Israel Charny dissects the Israeli government’s unscrupulous and shameful non-recognition of the Armenian Genocide with the precision of an academic scalpel. He uses the Israeli Freedom of Information Act to reveal the ugly political untruths from never before seen archival documents of Israel’s Foreign Ministry about the Israeli government’s dishonest response in a failed attempt to block an academic conference held in 1982 in Israel on the Jewish Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, and other genocides. Even though he is a patriotic Israeli citizen, Dr. Charny places his humanitarianism ahead of his nationalistic feelings. This book vindicates him as an honest scholar and a good human being who exposes the lies of his own government, insisting that Israel should have been the first country to recognize the Armenian Genocide, not the last!

A Classic –Fascinating, Revelatory
SAMUEL TOTTEN, Prof. Emeritus, University Arkansas, author Genocide Pioneers, and a pioneer of field work in an ongoing genocide
Israel’s Failed Response to the Armenian Genocide is bound to be a classic in the literature of genocide studies. It is a fascinating, disturbing and revelatory work. The book addresses the planning and implementation of the first international conference ever held on the subject of genocide (other than the Holocaust), and (2) Turkey’s all-out efforts to pressure the State of Israel which capitulated and pressured Charny to disinvite all Armenians who accepted an invitation to speak and attend the conference. To assert that Charny’s stance was courageous doesn’t even begin to speak to the courage he displayed. A must read for anyone interested in what it means to take a moral stand and not bend, and for anyone interested in the history of the founding of the field of genocide studies.

A Must Read, Intensely Poignant and Meaningful
TANER AKÇAM, Professor, Genocide Studies, Clark University, author of Killing Orders: Talat Pasha’s Telegram’s and the Armenian Genocide
The book you are holding is a must-read. Here are the Turk, Armenian, and Jew coming together to deliver an intensely poignant and meaningful message to us all: Those who would deny the reality of a genocide perpetrated upon others largely lose their credibility when speaking of genocides perpetrated against themselves. These writings and documents show us those who would deny the Armenian genocide on the pretext of “national security” are indirectly admitting their own capability of potentially carrying out precisely such a crime themselves.”

Unwavering Equality of All Human Beings
NAOMI CHAZAN, Prof. Emerita, Political Science, Hebrew University Jerusalem, Past Deputy Speaker Israeli Knesset and Former Director Truman Peace Institute, Hebrew University Jerusalem
Israel Charny’s book revisits one of the turning points in the study of human barbarity: The First International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide held in Tel Aviv in 1982. In what amounts to a historical whodunnit he shows how systematic attempts to isolate the Holocaust experience of World War II from the Armenian genocide that preceded it at the height of World War I were deflected and a new norm of comparative genocide studies was established. Since then, the specificities of each attempt at eradicating a group because of its beliefs, ethnic background or geographic origin—be they Jews, Armenians, Yazidis, Bosnians, Tutsis, Rohingyas or any other people—are studied within the context of features common to a long list of efforts to eliminate marginalized and discredited communities. This change—which now has been picked up by Black Lives Matters and similar movements—owes a great deal to the courage of Professor Charny and his colleagues, who stood up to immense political and pschological pressures to insist on the unwavering equality of all human beings—not only in life and sickness, but also in death and remembrance.

Fierce Indignation –A Great Piece of Work
ROBERT WILLIAM FISK, Middle East Correspondent of the London Independent
Israel Charny is one of those indefatigable scholars – Jonathan Swift is another – whose fierce indignation are necessary to our age and who fight the most necessary battles at the right moment. Charny’s latest work proclaims that every genocide is unique but that none has the right to claim unique suffering; and that denial is the final stage of genocide. He thus speaks to the future as well as the past. . He holds his own Israeli government to account for its failure to acknowledge the 1915 Armenian mass murders as a genocide. He even proves that the Israeli authorities invented threats to the Jewish community in Turkey in 1982 in a vain attempt to curtail a Jerusalem Holocaust and genocide conference he helped to arrange — and thus curtail all discussion on the Armenian genocide. At the same time, he makes no cheap shots–he admires Israel even when he undermines its outrageous denial.

Major Importance, Revealing, Moving
BEN KIERNAN, Whitney Griswold Professor of History, Yale University, Founding Director of the Genocide Studies Program, 1994-2015
This book tells an important and fascinating story. Drawing on revealing, newly-declassified Israeli documents, it deals with a major moment not only in the formation of the field of genocide studies but in global intellectual history, not to mention behind-the-scenes diplomatic skullduggery. This was a key point at which states, scholars, and public figures were challenged to come to terms over the past and future of genocide, the meaning for its surviving victims, and its continuing threat to humankind. The book movingly illuminates these challenges, interactions, successes and failures, personal and political. The author deserves congratulations on his pioneering role in the unfolding events, and for assembling this conclusive, multifaceted account. The Foreword and the various contributed chapters are written by a stellar team of highly qualified, respected scholars and authors. I very strongly recommend this book.

News Stories and Reviews of “Israel’s Failed Response to the Armenian Genocide”

Note: date above has been forced in order to place post in a proper sequence.

Israel Charny Looks Back on the Momentous Conference That Almost Wasn’t
by Alin Gregorian, Editor, Armenian Spectator-Mirror (Boston), April 20, 2021
https://mirrorspectator.com/2021/04/20/israel-charny-looks-back-on-the-momentous-conference-that-almost-wasnt/

Prof. Israel Charny, a longtime champion of recognition of the Armenian Genocide, is looking back at the uphill battle he has waged in his country for the recognition of that genocide, the cost to him personally and professionally, and why he keeps on doing what he does.

The book details the efforts by the Israeli government to thwart the first International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide, organized by Charny, in 1982. The conference was notable for including for the first-time scholars presenting papers on the Armenian Genocide in a conference on the Holocaust… read more

 

Book Review: Israel’s Failed Response to the Armenian Genocide
by Alin Gregorian, Editor, Armenian Spectator-Mirror (Boston), April 20, 2021
https://mirrorspectator.com/2021/04/20/book-review-israels-failed-response-to-the-armenian-genocide/

The new book by Prof. Israel Charny, Israel’s Failed Response to the Armenian Genocide: Denial, State Deception, Truth Versus Politicization of History, is a brave effort taking on wrong doing in one’s own backyard, among one’s own people, who for a variety of reasons, thwarted — or tried to thwart —justice.

Charny has succeeded in presenting the background of a major conference that was almost derailed but went on thanks to the moral backbone of several actors. It is an important addition to the study of the Armenian Genocide and genocides in general, showing how good people can make very bad decisions. It is also important in offering an insider’s view of how the Israeli government regards the Armenian issue…read more

An Open Letter regarding the Fighting in Nagorno Karabakh (Artsakh)

Logo Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Armenian Studies at the Hebrew University

The following represents the personal views of a group of Israeli scholars of Caucasian and associated studies from different institutions of higher learning, and does not reflect the positions of the Hebrew University nor its Armenian Studies Program.

We the undersigned write to express our deep concern with the fighting that has flared up in the region of Nagorno Karabakh (Artsakh). From a reading of independent accounts and analysis we have concluded that this outbreak of violence in the last few days is due solely to aggression of the Republic of Azerbaijan, supported by Turkey and backed up by fighters from elsewhere in the region. This belligerence has been directed towards military and civilian targets in the Republic of Artsakh and its mainly Armenian population, and deserves to be condemned in no uncertain terms. The response of the Republic of Artsakh and the Republic of Armenia is clearly one of defense of population, property and territory, and should enjoy the support of those who cherish the principle of self-determination of peoples.

We call for an end to this aggression, and a cessation of the fighting. The long-term answer to tension in the region is on-going negotiations that will aim to resolve the claims of various ethnic groups, leading to a mutually agreed upon political arrangement. Clearly, violence of any type will not resolve ethnic and other tensions.

It is with dismay that we address the matter of Israeli arms sales to Azerbaijan in recent years, this being one component in the massive armament process in that country. We call upon the Israeli government to cease immediately the sales of arms to Azerbaijan, pending a review of the issue by the government and Knesset. Matters of would-be Realpolitik, as reflected here in arm sales, are not the only basis for foreign policy. Certainly, one needs to question Israel’s role in an armament effort aimed mainly against a people that like the Jewish people suffered genocidal attacks in the twentieth century. We call upon other Israelis to raise their voice on this important issue.

Prof. Reuven Amitai
Prof. Yair Auron
Prof. Israel Charny
Ms. Moran Deitch
Prof. Benjamin Z. Kedar
Mr. Yoav Loeff
Prof. Benny Morris
Dr. Yakir Paz
Prof. Eli Richter
Prof. Donna Shalev
Mr. Marc Sherman
Prof. Michael Stone
Dr. Yana Tcheknanovets
Prof. Dror Zeevi

Channeling Anger and Hate for Protecting Human Life

I am pleased to share with you a new publication, “Channeling Anger and Hate for Protecting Human Life,” which has been published in a book entitled Perspectives on Hate edited by Robert Sternberg, a distinguished psychologist and former president of the American Psychological Association (who in the past was the author of a theory of love which I found enormously helpful in my clinical work with couples).
 
My essay on treating emotionally based violence, including in tumultuous situations where there are actual threats of weapons and blows, is based on a concept of the healthfulness and legitimacy of angry and violent feelings for us human beings but at the same time they must be anchored by a clear commitment to non-violence in action.
 
The essay can be found here.

Israel Should Rethink Its Relationship with Azerbaijan

The following article was written by Alex Galitsky and published in the Jerusalem Post on July 21, 2020.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/azerbaijan-is-not-a-true-friend-of-israel-635729

Azerbaijan, a close ally of Turkey and fellow denier of the Armenian Genocide, has actively sought the eradication of the region’s indigenous Armenian inhabitants and traces of their millennia-old civilization.

Azerbaijan’s burgeoning relationship with Israel has long been predicated on the false narrative that Azerbaijan is a “country of tolerance.” Azerbaijan has often paraded the existence of a small, but vibrant, Jewish community in the country as a testament to its commitment to diversity and tolerance.

However, Azerbaijan, a dictatorship based on petrodollars that has been ruled by the same family for over a half-century, is anything but that.

Azerbaijan, a close ally of Turkey and fellow denier of the Armenian Genocide, has actively sought the eradication of the region’s indigenous Armenian inhabitants and traces of their millennia-old civilization.

Throughout Soviet occupation, the Azerbaijani SSR denied cultural, political, linguistic and economic rights to the Armenians of Artsakh (also known as the Nagorno-Karabakh) and Nakhijevan, and in the late 80s and early 90s, Azerbaijani authorities started to engage in government-backed pogroms and massacres of Armenians in Azerbaijan to suppress calls for Artsakh’s independence. These pogroms also targeted Jewish communities, which began to flee Baku en masse in response to the increasing incidents of harassment.
Azerbaijan’s assault on the region’s Armenians ultimately culminated in a full-scale war which ended with a ceasefire that effectively secured the establishment of an independent and democratic Artsakh.

For the last 30 years, the Azerbaijani government has frequently deployed rhetoric advocating for the ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Artsakh and the Republic of Armenia itself – regularly referring to Armenians as enemies of the state – and denying the thousands of years of Armenian civilization in the region.

Throughout the early 2000s, some 28,000 Armenian cultural monuments in Nakhijevan were destroyed by Azerbaijan as part of an unprecedented cultural genocide. Independent reports have also found that Armenophobi – or anti-Armenian sentiment – has become so entrenched in government, media, and state institutions that an entire generation of Azerbaijanis have grown up listening only to hate speech towards Armenians.

This dissemination and inculcation of hatred has incited shocking incidents of violence against Armenians, including that of Ramil Safarov, an Azerbaijani soldier who murdered a sleeping Armenian soldier during a NATO English-language training program in Hungary.
Safarov was extradited to Azerbaijan six years into a life sentence handed down by Hungarian courts – but upon his arrival was pardoned, promoted in rank and lauded by the media as a national hero for doing his Azerbaijani patriotic duty by killing an Armenian.
Over the course of this week, Azerbaijan has engaged in major acts of aggression against the Republic of Armenia itself, targeting civilian populations with heavy artillery and drones. In Azerbaijan, tens of thousands came to the streets chanting “Death to Armenia” and calling for a war with Armenia. These scenes, the result of the Azerbaijani government’s decades of propagating Armenophobia, are all too reminiscent of the virulent antisemitism expressed in neighboring Iran.

The institutionalization of state-sponsored racism towards Armenians should be an immediate cause of concern for any nation that has not only experienced genocide, but continues to struggle against the promulgation of racist and discriminatory rhetoric by those who deny it its fundamental right to exist. But in addition to Azerbaijan’s flagrant disregard for minority rights, the country has also long worked against the strategic interests of Israel.
AZERBAIJAN HAS been found to have funneled substantial amounts of money into sanctioned Iranian businesses as part of the “Azerbaijani Laundromat” corruption scandal.
Similarly, Azerbaijan’s major oil pipeline is 10% owned by Iran – allowing the country to bypass international sanctions and to profit from Azerbaijan’s oil industry.

Additionally, despite its overtures to Israel with respect to weapons contracts, oil supply and the monitoring of Iran, Azerbaijan has succumbed to regional pressure when it comes to issuing political support for Israel – particularly in the forum of the UN.

Azerbaijan has also refused to open an embassy in Israel due to regional pressure. On the other hand, Armenia has consistently taken tangible steps towards good faith relations with Israel – including a commitment to establish an embassy in Tel Aviv.

Given that Armenia has been made partially reliant on Iran due to the fact that 80% of its borders are under illegal blockade by Turkey and Azerbaijan, it is clear that – unlike Azerbaijan – Armenia will not succumb to the pressure of malign regional actors when it comes to building relations with Israel.

Armenia, like Israel, has long fought for its very right to exist in a hostile region of states that would revel in its destruction, and has – against all odds – established vibrant democratic states in a sea of dictatorships.

The nations share a history dating back millennia, with Jerusalem being home to the first Armenian diaspora. So integral to the cultural milieu of Jerusalem, the Armenians occupy their own quarter of the Old City, separate from the Christian Quarter. Both nations are bound by the tragedy of genocide and survived its unimaginable horrors.

And it was thanks in large part to the contributions of prominent members of the Jewish diaspora that the world became aware of the torment inflicted upon Armenian people; from former US ambassador to the Ottoman Empire Henry Morgenthau’s eyewitness accounts, Raphael Lemkin’s coining of the term “genocide” in reference to the Armenian Genocide and Holocaust, to the outspoken advocacy of Elie Wiesel and the monumental academic contributions of Israel Charny, Yair Auron and many others. Israel and Armenia are bound in many intangible, human ways that have prospered despite Israel’s refusal to recognize the Armenian Genocide, and its partnership with Azerbaijan.

Israel has chosen to take Azerbaijan at face value, accepting its oil in exchange for arms that have been deployed against Armenian civilians in ongoing border confrontations.
Peer beyond the facade Azerbaijan presents, and Israel will find a regime that has consistently supported its adversaries, and is hellbent on eradicating the region’s native Armenian population – a clear affront to what the promise of Israel represents; self-determination and sanctuary for the persecuted and marginalized.

Israel knows first-hand the challenges Armenia faces, and has long fought against the type of state-sponsored racism Azerbaijan propagates.

The two nations share an ancient history, and are bound by their experiences as long-stateless diasporic people whose resilience has allowed them to not merely survive, but to prosper. In light of this, it’s time for Israel to rethink its relationship with Azerbaijan.
The writer is communications director of the Armenian National Committee of America – Western Region, the largest Armenian-American grassroots advocacy organization in the United States.

Still Another Minimization of the Holocaust

You may be interested in seeing a new publication in the peer-reviewed Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism: “The Journal of Genocide Research Featured Still Another Minimization of the Holocaust.”

The new article just published analyzes a still more recent major review essay in JGR which is also minimizing any anti-Jewish motivations on the part of the Nazis and attempting to understand major aspects of the Holocaust as part of the larger Nazi worldview that was not really focused on the Jews even when it is specifically Jews who are being transported by the hundreds of thousands to Auschwitz.

Abstract:

The Journal of Genocide Research came under scrutiny in two research studies of readers who are genocide professionals (N=67) and a smaller number of students of Holocaust and Genocide courses (N=39), together N=106. These studies evoked considerable controversy. The present review essay is in response to a subsequent multi-author review in the book forum of the Journal of Genocide Research of two books on the Holocaust, in which both the review essay and the books under discussion are shown to be strong minimizations of the significance of the Holocaust: The thesis advanced is that the extermination of the Jews was not a product of ancient antisemitism-hatred of Jews, but a function of the Nazi vision of creating a new world.

Click here to see the latest article.

For the full history of minimization of the Holocaust by the Journal of Genocide Research, click here.

 

Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum Includes a “Genocide Gallery”

The new Dallas (Texas) Holocaust and Human Rights Museum, which opened in September 2019, includes a “Genocide Gallery.”  The museum was designed by Edward Jacobs and Michael Berenbaum (Berenbaum Jacobs Associates). Jacobs is a gifted creative designer who lives in Jerusalem and is partnered with Berenbaum who is widely known and respected for his having been responsible for the selection of all the materials on display in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.

The Genocide Gallery composes 10 sculptures, 18 foot high, each corresponding to a different genocide as well as emphasizing a distinct stage in the characteristic development of a genocidal event.

These stages are based on the excellent summary prepared by Gregory Stanton on “Ten Stages of Genocide” which he first presented to the U.S. State Department in 1996.

http://www.genocidewatch.org/genocide/tenstagesofgenocide.html 

These stages were in turn based to a large extent on the earlier work of Israel W. Charny and his colleague Chanan Rappaport who conceived of the Genocide Early Warning System – GEWS,  which won high praise from world leaders such as Willie Brandt of Germany, Pierre Mendes-France of France, and by Roberta Cohen, Human Rights Officer of the US Department of State. It was described in Choice, the American Library Association review magazine, as “brilliant,” and in the New York Times Book Review as a “noteworthy contribution to thinking about the condition of humanity on the earth”; and it was recognized by a United Nations study on genocide. (GEWS was first published as a monograph by the Szold National Institute for Research in the Behavioral Sciences in Jerusalem in 1977 and in a fuller fashion appeared in Charny’s 1982 book, How Can We Commit the Unthinkable? Genocide the Human Cancer.

 Accompanying the ten sculptures in the Genocide Gallery are ten highly original “graphic novels,” which people will recognize as comic books’ style, and which like the classic presentation MAUS by Art Spiegelman tell the tales of the ten genocides in a language which is designed to touch a wide range of ages and audiences.

Click here to view the text by Edward Jacobs and Michael Berenbaum that is distributed at the museum about the Genocide Gallery.

Turkey joins Nobel ceremony boycott in protest against Handke

Ahlander, Johan; Koleka, Benet; Erkoyun, Ezgi. (December 9, 2019). Turkey joins Nobel ceremony boycott in protest against Handke. Reuters.
https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1YD1HA

(Reuters) – Turkey said on Monday it would join Albania and Kosovo in boycotting the Nobel awards ceremony in protest against 2019 literature prize laureate Peter Handke, who has been criticized for backing late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic.

The Swedish Academy’s choice of the Austrian Handke has been widely criticized since he expressed support for and attended the funeral of Milosevic, the former Serbian president who died in detention at the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague in 2006.

Milosevic was charged with war crimes in connection with atrocities and ethnic cleansing committed by Serb forces in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo during the 1990s wars triggered by the disintegration of federal Yugoslavia. He died in jail before a verdict was reached in his five-year-long trial.

Turkey’s ambassador to Sweden, Hakki Emre Yunt, told Turkish broadcaster Hurriyet on Monday he would not attend the awards ceremony on Tuesday, joining Kosovo and Albania in the action.

“Consistent with our initial reaction, we have also instructed the Ambassador of Albania to Sweden to boycott the Nobel Prize ceremony for (Peter) Handke,” Acting Albanian Foreign Minister Gent Cakaj wrote on Twitter.

“Justification of war atrocities during the Yugoslavia break-up must not be rewarded. This will solely strengthen the state of denial that must be overcome and strongly condemned,” he said.

A spokeswoman for the Albanian Foreign Ministry confirmed it was the country’s official position.

Handke will be formally handed the 9 million crown ($935,000) award on Tuesday, before attending the traditional Nobel banquet later the same day. All ambassadors to Sweden are invited to the ceremony and the banquet.

A defiant Handke on Friday dismissed questions about his support for Milosevic during a news conference in Stockholm.

The prizes for achievements in science, literature and peace were created and funded in the will of Swedish dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel and have been awarded since 1901.

(Reporting by Johan Ahlander in Stockholm, Benet Koleka in Tirana and Ezgi Erkoyun in Istanbul; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

 

Greece Holds a Remarkable Conference Honoring the 100th Anniversary of the Pontian Genocide and Devoted to Memory and Prevention of All Genocides of All Peoples

by Israel W. Charny

An excellent conference has been held in Athens, Greece, December 6-8, entitled “International Conference on the Crime of Genocide.”

The conference, which was sponsored by the Pan-Pontian organization of Greece which sports a remarkable 450 or so branches in Greece and around the world, was dedicated on the one hand to the 100th anniversary of the Greek Genocide of the Pontians, and by extension to the genocide of the Greeks in Anatolia as well.   Approximately 350,000 Pontian Greeks were victims joined by 1,150,000 Greeks in Anatolia for a total of 1.5 million dead.  The Pontian Greeks date the 100th anniversary of their genocide differently than the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide in 2015 because the Greek Genocide hit its higher intensity in the years after the Armenian Genocide had lessened.  However, both genocides overlap a great deal, in many cases were executed simultaneously in adjacent areas for the two peoples, and both obviously were executed by the same perpetrator in an overall genocide devoted to the removal of non-Muslim Turks.  Both genocides were carried out by both the Ottoman Turks and then continued by the emerging new Turkey led by Ataturk.

The conference was also explicitly dedicated to mark the “UN International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime 9 December,” a day in memory of the genocides of all peoples of our world.  It was thanks to Armenia that the resolution for this International Day was introduced in the UN several years ago.

Indeed, much of the conference proceedings were devoted explicitly to the universal theme of preventing genocides to all peoples in the world.  For Greeks, the participation in the conference of the Prime Minister of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, was electrifying.   This was the first time that the government played a full and influential role in a conference on the Greek Genocide, and at the same time the Prime Minister indeed referred explicitly and powerfully to the wish that the proceedings will contribute to the lessening of genocides in our contemporary and oncoming world.

The Prime Minister spoke as follows:

Welcoming the conference, Mitsotakis said its key contribution lay in its focus on the future, or “how we shall learn from it, how we shall prevent the reliving of similar tragedies in our own lives, anywhere in the world.” The historic event, he said, must lead to “results that will arm the modern world to avoid experiencing such brutality again. This will be a heritage for all of humanity, not just Pontian Hellenism.”[1]

Some 300 people participated in the conference which included presentations by a wide variety of Greek scholars and activists as well as invited scholars from other countries among whom were Alfred-Maurice De Zayas, Tessa Hoffman, Steven L. Jacobs, Harut Marutyan, Vassilios Meichanetsidis, Nikos Michailidis, Benny Morris, Dror Ze’evi, Henry Theriault (by Skype), and Samuel Totten (by Skype), and the author of this report.

The conference included a dramatic ceremony in the evening on Mount Pynx which faces the mountaintop Acropolis in Athens in which a Declaration of the conference was proclaimed.  The declaration was further entitled, “Submitted to the International Community for the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and the Prevention of this Crime, December 9, 2019,” in honor of the UN Day devoted to the victims of all genocides in the world. The declaration focused on the “Genocide of the Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians and other Christian populations” and on the continuing “denialist behaviour on behalf of the Turkish state,” and also singled out the current ongoing Yazidi genocide and called for “the immediate release of the Yazidi hostages.”

The plenary session of the conference featured a proposal by Israel W. Charny from the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem for a “Worldwide Campaign for Life: ‘Respect, Protect Life.’”

It will be happily noted that the representation of  International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) was strong, including a significant presentation on denials of genocide by the current IAGS President, Henry Theriault, and there were indeed many references to the important pacesetting roles of IAGS, first in its resolution to recognize the Armenian Genocide soon after IAGS was launched during the presidency of Helen Fein, and then in the resolution to recognize co-victims of the Armenians including the Greek Genocide in a process that spanned the presidencies of Israel Charny and Gregory Stanton.

The following are materials from the conference:

  • A full video of all presentations to the conference will be found in two parts. (See A below)
  • The text of the Declaration of the conference  (See B below)
  • Partial List of Other Participants in the Conference in Addition to those Named Earlier (See C below)
  • A TV news interview regarding my plenary, “A Worldwide Campaign for Life: ‘Respect, Protect Life,’” and a transcript of the text of this interview. (See D below)

I am very happy to report that the organizers have written since the conference to convey that a decision has been made to implement the proposed project:  “In the next few years we will try to implement this very plan of yours, ‘Respect, Protect Life’, we‘ve been discussing the previous months. We will get there step by step.”

  • See also the unpublished Op Eds, in English and Hebrew, that were submitted by Profs. Israel Charny and Yair Auron to Israeli newspapers but were not published. The Op Eds include a strong criticism of Israeli Jews for not recognizing and relating to the genocides of many other peoples in the world and makes a painful comparison with the way in which the world did not respond to the Holocaust when it was taking place. (See E below)

_________

A.

Videos of Full Conference

Part 1 – International Conference on the Crime of Genocide, Athens, Greece, December 7, 2019   full proceedings of conference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_-ck4klT1U&t=2965s

Part 2 – International Conference on the Crime of Genocide, Athens, Greece, December 8, 2019  full proceedings of conference cont’d
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOB1lGVRxmY&t=6865s

B. Declaration on behalf of the International Conference on the Crime of Genocide on top of Pynx Hill facing the Acropolis in Athens, Greece on December 8, 2019 https://www.ihgjlm.com/2019/12/19/declaration-read-by-prof-israel-charny-pynx-hill-athens-greece-december-8-2019/

C.
Partial List of Other Participants in the Conference in Addition to those Named Earlier

Cengiz Aktar
Hripsime Haroutounian
Matthew Smith
Carl Wilkens
Savvas Anastasiadis
Panayotis Giatagantzidis
George Kotanidis
Lambros Couloubaritsis
Georgios Parcharidis
Mary Stylidi
Angelos Syrigos
Konstantinos Fotiadis
Benjamin Weinthal

D.
TV Interview of Prof. Israel W. Charny on the proposal of “A Worldwide Campaign for Life: ‘Respect, Protect Life’

  1. TV Live Media News Interview (English) https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=kx_zQs5Wf0U&feature=emb_logo
  2. Transcript of text (slightly edited)
    https://www.ihgjlm.com/2019/12/24/ live-media-news-interviews-professor-israel-w-charny-in-athens-greece

E.
Op Ed calling for recognition of Armenian Genocide by Israel and reporting on the conference in Athens – submitted in English to Jerusalem Post and in Hebrew to Haaretz but not published by either. https://www.ihgjlm.com/2019/12/24/if-not-now-when-will-israel-recognize-the-armenian-genocide/

[1] ANA (December 9, 2019). Greek PM Mitsotakis at Pontian Genocide Conference: Greece Has Always Overcome the Storms of History. National Herald. https://www.thenationalherald.com/272846/greek-pm-mitsotakis-at-pontian-genocide-conference-greece-has-always-overcome-the-storms-of-history/

DECLARATION on behalf of the International Conference on the Crime of Genocide on top of Pynx Hill facing the Acropolis in Athens, Greece on December 8, 2019

http://efxinospontos.gr/genoktonia/5773-declaration-of-the-international-conference-on-the-crime-of-genocide

DECLARATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE CRIME OF GENOCIDE 6 – 8 December 2019, Athens, Greece

Submitted to the International Community for the «International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime December 9th, 2019

Honourable Ladies and Gentlemen of the International Community,

December 9th 2019, a day of remembrance and dignity of the genocide victims as well as a day of prevention of the crime, finds us all in front of modern challenges that tarnish the face of humanity.

1).The International Community ignores and permits such atrocious crimes of Genocide as the one of the Yazidi Genocide which occurs since 2014 up until today. Apathy and lack of intervention hold thousands of women hostages in an unprecedented crime that continues to this day.

2).The lack of recognition and the indifference of the International Community against those crimes committed in the past, allows for the revival of anti-democratic and Neo-Nazi behaviours and movements to interfere in the international scene, trivializing the democratic institutions, the human rights and the fundamental values of humanity.

3).The Genocide of the Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians and other Christian populations has been perpetrated by the Committee of Union and Progress of the Young Turks movement. The successor of the perpetrator, the modern Turkish state, denies any crime committed in the past. In fact, the representatives of the modern Turkish state are allowed to participate in international political forums without offering an official apology for the historically confirmed Genocide of the Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians. The denialist behaviour on behalf of the Turkish state reproduces an expansive, aggressive and destabilizing foreign policy towards neighbouring countries in the Eastern Mediterranean, that runs against International Law. The denialist Turkish position perpetuates racist and oppressive policies against the citizens of Turkey.

We want to remind the International Community that we must be more sensitive and rigorous on issues related to human life, dignity, democracy and freedom of speech.

The priority of an International Community that respects the dignity of the Genocide victims should be:

  1. The immediate release of the Yazidi hostages.
  2. Condemnation of the Genocides that have taken place in the past, especially of those remaining without universal recognition such as the Genocide carried out by the Ottoman Turks against Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians and other Christian minorities.
  3. Taking further action that will effectively prevent and prohibit the crime of Genocide, and intensify efforts to place the commemoration day of December 9th in the center of international attention and conscience.

On behalf of the International Conference on the Crime of Genocide,

Israel W. Charny, Head of the Academic Committee

The Pan-Pontian Federation of Greece

Athens, Greece

8 December 2019

 

Live Media News Interviews Professor Israel W. Charny in Athens, Greece December 7, 2019 at the International Conference on the Crime of Genocide on “A Worldwide Campaign for Life: ‘Respect, Protect Life'”

Transcript of Text (slightly edited):

Interviewer: Professor Charny, It’s an honor.   Thank you so much for being here. We would like a brief summary of your speech that you have prepared for the conference.

My speech is a dream of action for the future.  All of our peoples have to remember our own past deeply, but the fuller meaning lies in the question when are we human beings, all of us, going to put a stop to this ugly madness of people killing endlessly?

My speech is about a Worldwide Campaign for Life, a campaign that should take place over many years, all over the world, in the different languages, in the languages of the different cultures where the TV programs and the performances will take place. The program that  I have in mind begins with bringing together the religious leaders of many faiths. This has been done in a number of 1, 2, or 3 day conferences which were very beautiful, where you see an imam from Iran and a rabbi from Israel and a Catholic priest literally end up dancing together affirming the preciousness and the holiness of life, but nobody knows about these wonderful events.  I would like to have programs on television, where all over the world leaders of the different faiths appear together, convey that they are fellow human beings, respect one another, care about the lives of all of us, and I would like them joined by all sorts of additional culture heroes.  I’d like the football heroes to come —  I am waiting to invite Messi and Ronaldo. I want the health heroes to come. I want the industrial giant heroes to come. I want the surgeons who just created the best surgery for an illness that we haven’t been able to treat.  I’d like the people of different colors and different appearances.

These will be the leaders in our world who are well known, and they divide roughly into two groups:  One group  is those who have international identities and that’s terrific because their images are known through much of the world, but also I want the program to bring in  the local leaders who are present in every culture, and first of all, for all these leaders to stand together and be together and speak of the dignity and preciousness of human life.

And then I want the musicians to create songs about life until we will get the musicians who create the hit songs that people all over the world will be singing. And I’d like the advertisers to create a motto, a name, like Coca Cola.  Drink Coca Cola sells the drink everywhere. We want the motto, Respect Life, Protect Life  to sell a new reverence for human life..  We have clever artists in all fields.

This project  is not a one time thing.  It’s not for one year.  It’s not for five years.  It’s not for ten years. It is for many many decades. It will need a very proud leadership.  It will need funding from international sources such as the United Nations, such as international health agencies, such as international businesses. We have major businesses now that are valued in billions of dollars and a number of them have leaders who really wish to devote some of their incredible profits to the betterment of man’s situation on Earth.

We need a leadership, a sponsorship that will take on the job of organizing it.  It will take a few years.  What I am proposing tomorrow is that Greece take on the task of being a leader in creating such a  worldwide campaign for all peoples. This is the Greece that gave us the concept of democracy. This is the Greece that gave us the fundamentals of thinking and philosophy.  It would be a wonderful further development for Greece to give us leadership in a Worldwide Campaign for Life. That’s what I’m speaking about tomorrow.

 Interviewer: Do you think this conference is a step towards what you just mentioned?

Yes, I’ve been to many conferences.   This one has been unusual from the very beginning. I sensed it in the correspondence to me.  I’ve heard it now in person since I arrived in Athens.  I can’t tell you how pleased I was to hear it from the voice of the Prime Minister of Greece.  Namely, this is a conference dedicated to the memory of the 100th anniversary of the genocide of the Pontian Greeks, clearly heartfelt and moving and important. And at the same time from what your people have suffered, it is a conference dedicated to a Greek contribution to making this a world that is free of a good deal of the genocide that takes place all the time to so many different peoples.  Genocide continues and continues.

And now I have a very painful comment to make. I am Jewish, originally an American and I still am an American citizen, but I moved to Israel and I am also an Israeli citizen. I love my Jewishness and Israel. I love my cultural heritage. I believed and prayed that Israel would be the leader for helping the world move to an anti-genocide position in favor of Life. Israel has failed in that respect. Israel has gotten trapped in the belief that the memorial of the Holocaust, which is precious and holy, should draw almost all energy, and there is little energy devoted collectively, by the government, and by the institutions, to the caring about stopping genocide in the world.  So, I am inviting Greece to take on the leadership of this task.

Interviewer: And we shall respond.  Thank you very, very much, and do you believe that – we spoke about Israel and Greece – should Turkey just take up and finally recognize the crimes held in the past, for everyone’s sake?

That is hardly a question. What is obvious is obvious.  The wrongness of what Turkey is doing and has done for 100 years is overwhelming. It is an enormous task for them to free themselves, and an enormous task for all of us to move forward as human beings because we are all in the same boat.

Interviewer: Thank you very much.

If Not Now, When Will Israel Recognize the Armenian Genocide?

The following was submitted as an op-ed in English to the Jerusalem Post by Israel Charny, and similarly in Hebrew to Haaretz with the additional signature of Yair Auron, but in both cases was not published.  There is no real basis for judging why op-eds are not accepted by newspapers, but we cannot help wondering whether this strong critique of Jewish/Israeli policy and especially the comparison of our people to the peoples of the world who remained silent during our Holocaust was ‘too much’ for the Israeli editors.

The electrifying news of the U.S. Senate voting unanimously – yes, unanimously – to recognize the Armenian Genocide, now completes the sequence of the resolution of the House of Representatives in October recognizing the Armenian Genocide.

The U.S. Congress had the guts to overcome the so-often repeated orders of the administration not to embarrass, upset or defy Turkey.

This leaves us in Israel with a deep underscoring of our long-standing shame in not completing recognition of the Armenian Genocide even when our Knesset Committee on Education approved it a few years ago, and even when there was a clear-cut majority of voices in the Knesset for recognition.  Each time, our administration would step in and utilize its administrative and political powers to squelch the completion of a successful vote on the resolution.

Spiritually, we the Jewish people, have failed miserably in this and other instances of recognizing forthrightly not only past genocides of other peoples but ongoing genocides of peoples in our world.  Like the goyim who remained silent during our Holocaust, we have been the goyim of our age failing to recognize and speak up for other peoples undergoing the hells of genocide – such as the Yazidi at the hands of Da’ash, the Rohingya in Myanmar, the Christians in Syria and in other countries, or the Uighurs in China.

IWC: I have just returned from Athens where an International Conference on the Crime of Genocide took place December 5-7, and I then spoke in Thessaloniki on December 10 after my wife and I had spent the day meeting members of the remnant Jewish community and visiting two synagogues and the Jewish Museum, in all of which we learned a great deal of the spectacular tragedy of Thessaloniki Jews in the Holocaust.

The Greeks are now marking the 100th anniversary of both the Pontian and Anatolian genocides.  While the genocide of the Greeks began in various pogroms and then in parallel with the heightening of the Armenian Genocide in 1913 and onward, the Turks intensified their murders of the Greeks at the time that the Armenian Genocide was grinding to a halt.  The Armenians therefore marked their 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide in 2015 and the Greeks mark their 100th anniversary now in 2019.

What was outstanding for me was that along with the depth of feeling for their own memories and their own tragedy, the conference and the public meeting in Thessaloniki were simultaneously genuinely committed and dedicated to the lessening and prevention of genocide to all other peoples.

Halevai aleinu (wish that were true for us)!

Both events in Greece were dedicated to the United Nations worldwide “International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime- December 9.” Was there any recognition of this day in our Israel? By the government, educational system, press and media?

It is time for us to be true to the finer parts of Jewish tradition of respecting and protecting human life – whoever and wherever.

 

Professor Israel W. Charny, Director, Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, Jerusalem, author of The Genocide Contagion (Winner of the Spirituality and Practice Book Award)

Professor Yair Auron, Associate Director, Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, Jerusalem, author of The Holocaust, Rebirth, and the Nakba: Memory and Contemporary Israeli–Arab Relations

 

United States Congress Votes Resoundingly for Recognition of Armenian Genocide

Beginning with the U.S. House of Representatives voting 405 to 11 on October 29, 2019 to recognize the Armenian Genocide, and continuing with an unprecedented unanimous vote of the U.S. Senate on December 21, 2019 to confirm recognition of the Armenian Genocide, the Congress of the United States has unambiguously gone on record, “recognizing and condemning the Armenian Genocide, the killing of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire from 1915-1923, and providing relief to the survivors of the campaign of genocide against Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Syriacs, Arameans, Maranites, and other Christians.” [Text of House of Representatives Resolution 296 in the 116th Congress].1

Both the overwhelming vote in the House and the remarkable unanimous vote in the Senate convey very clearly a joining together of Democratic and Republican lawmakers in a most unusual display of collaboration and unity in a period where the American political system is overwhelmingly polarized along party lines.

The votes are all the more memorable given the fact that the administration of President Donald Trump opposed vigorously the passage of the legislation.  The UK’s Guardian headlined the story of the Senate vote, “US Senate defies Trump in unanimous vote to recognize Armenian genocide.”  Following the House vote, the Turkish strongman leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he believed “the Senate will act prudently and will not repeat the mistake the House of Representatives made… If the U.S side really wants to act fairly, it should refrain from taking a political stand on a matter that historians should decide,” Erdogan explained disingenously.2  Following the vote, The New York Times reported from Reuters that the “Trump Administration Refrains from Endorsing U.S. Senate Measure on Armenian Genocide.”3

The following is the very clear and compelling text of the House of Representatives bill.  It includes a review of a number of instances in the past when the House and/or a President have recognized the Armenian Genocide, but the processes in each case never reached the status of full recognition by the United States.

 

1 Editor’s Note: Although there is no question that the bulk of victims of the Armenian Genocide were Christians, and it has made sense when proposals have been made to refer to the genocide also as the “Christian Genocide,” there were also several non-Christian peoples, such as the Yazidi and others who were murdered by the Turks.  To many scholars, the organizing and motivating concept of the genocide was the elimination of all non-Muslim Turks, with a great deal of emphasis on the loyalty to Islam and the exclusion of all infidels, but also an implicit or explicit intent of ethnic cleansing of all non-Turks. https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-resolution/296/text

2 Günerigök, Servet (November 14, 2019). US Senate will not pass Armenia resolution: Erdogan – ‘If the U.S. side really wants to act fairly, it should refrain from taking a political stand,’ says Turkish leader. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/us-senate-will-not-pass-armenia-resolution-erdogan/1644911

3 Reuters (December 17, 2019).  Trump Administration Refrains From Endorsing U.S. Senate Measure on Armenian Genocide. New York Times. 
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2019/12/17/us/politics/17reuters-usa-turkey-armenia.html

 

Colin Tatz: A rebel with a cause and a teacher with heart

 

Colin Tatz of Sydney, Australia was a dear and esteemed colleague in genocide studies for many years.  He was, for me, a clear thinking, decent, rational, and very constructive thinker and leader.  As  a Jew, I also appreciated and enjoyed with him his loving Jewish identification and fine ethnic humor – in general, he was a person who was fun to be with even as we dealt with serious topics of genocide, but of course our true bond was in the absolute commitment to the universality and oneness of all humankind.  Colin Tatz’s major work over many years was indeed about the powerfully underprivileged Aboriginal minority of Australia.  The following is an obituary selected by his dear wife, Sandra Tatz, for publication on our website at this time.

***

THERE ARE A LOT of teachers in the world who are admired or respected by their students, but it takes a pretty special teacher to be truly loved. Professor Colin Tatz was one of them.

We loved his sense of humour and his generous imparting of wisdom; we felt at home sharing a meal, or coffee and cake, at his and Sandra’s dining table, accompanied by engrossing conversation or career guidance.

We loved that Colin was a rebel with a cause. His rebellious streak was as endearing as it was genuine. He never shied away from taking on the orthodoxy – on suicide, on Aboriginal history – and calling things for what they were. He would never stay silent in the face of injustice, no matter the consequences.

Colin was a father, a ‘zeida’ and a husband, and those precious, private aspects of him belong only to his family. To them, and to history, we offer these thoughts about the legacy he left in younger generations through his role as a teacher and mentor.

Meher Grigorian*
Professor Tatz was one of those rare individuals who left an indelible mark on others. He certainly did with me.

As a final year undergraduate student at Macquarie University in 1997, I was in his thrall. His lectures were a masterclass in how a speaker should engage with their audience – intellectually, morally, emotionally. Professor Tatz didn’t just communicate the facts about the Holocaust and other great crimes. He exuded an uncompromising intolerance of such injustice.

He struck a primal chord in me as a young Armenian.

Throughout my upbringing, I had imbibed a sense that the world had forsaken us – our ancestors had been murdered, our homeland stolen, our monuments razed and our place names supplanted. And instead of an apology and redress from the perpetrators, there was unrelenting denial, placated by an uncaring world that had long since moved on.

But here was a non-Armenian who cared, who laid bare my own history and railed against those who sought to pervert it. Through his example, I undertook to delve into the suffering of other groups, while still prosecuting my own people’s plight. And he showed me the value of collaboration – of opening one’s heart and mind to others, and supercharging activism through building like-minded coalitions.

Professor Tatz was the most righteous and inspiring man I have ever known. I will forever cherish the time I had with him.

Nikki Marczak*
Colin mentored me like he was teaching me to ride a bike. He held on to the back of my seat as long as I needed and then when he judged I was ready, he’d give me a little push and off I’d go, cycling on my own. Then I’d turn around and cycle right back to show him how well I’d done, and he’d celebrate my achievement as though he’d had nothing to do with it. But I’d never have been able to do it without him.

We had the “Jewish connection” – a feeling of being understood and understanding – but he was never Jewish-centric. He was a true believer in human rights who fought against all racism and persecution. He always had a Yiddish saying that fitted the circumstances perfectly: emailing a tardy colleague with the subject line “Nu?” or making me laugh about a frustratingly lengthy publishing process by likening those responsible to a Hanukkah dreidel: “That’s what these people do! Spin around, from side to side, then droop.”

Compared with Colin, though, we were all “dreideling around” – not one of us, even those many decades his junior, could keep up with him. In an email exchange in 2016, Colin told me he’d begun a new book (which ended up as Australia’s Unthinkable Genocide) and had completed three chapters in three weeks. Responding to my admiration of such rapid work, he wrote, “When you get to my age and state of health, you know there is only today, and so today it has to be written.” It was a philosophy he lived up to the very end of his life.

Colin Tatz taught by example. He taught us to be brave; to stand up; he modelled solidarity and encouraged us to challenge our own views and the views of others.

His penchant to speak truth to power was a recurring theme among the memories shared by colleagues and family at his funeral and minyan on Sunday 24 November 2019. For example, Professor Konrad Kwiet, Resident Historian at the Sydney Jewish Museum, told those gathered that while academics are typically afflicted with a broken spine when forced to confront their paymasters, Colin had no qualms in telling university management what he really thought!

His principles were his principles, something to be fought for and never compromised, irrespective of potential repercussions. We hope that we inherited even a fraction of his courage.

We write today in grief but also in celebration of a man whose legacy will live on in all of his students. In us, a group of people who have been taught by Colin in different ways, but with the same core values, his memory will endure, and his influence will grow and thrive.

 

* Nikki Marczak is an Australian genocide scholar and survivor advocate, and a member of the Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Meher Grigorian is a founding member of the Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Yad Vashem Doesn’t Have the Courage to Be a Global Beacon of Conscience

Yad Vashem is, understandably and with much justification, an ‘untouchable holiness’ in Israel, never to be criticized or regarded negatively.  It is almost as if doing so would constitute speaking disparagingly about the awful and terrible Holocaust which of course no decent person would do.

Nonetheless, there have always been significant criticisms by many Israelis as well as Jews from other countries that Yad Vashem not only failed but adamantly refused to reach out to recognize and honor memorially the genocides of other peoples, and that it failed to play any role in projecting the understanding that genocide is a universal problem for all of mankind that has occurred, and is occurring, and tragically will continue to occur in the future to an extent that is beyond our human ability to bear.  Thus, the brilliant genocide scholar, the late R.J. Rummel, a political scientist at the University of Hawaii, who did painstaking research on the numbers of fatalities of many genocides in the 20th century, came to the conclusion that a conservative estimate of the number of human beings murdered by their fellow human beings in the century reached a total of 260 million!

Now Haaretz has published one of the rare public critiques of Yad Vashem.  Gideon Levy is a daily contributor to the paper whose work I personally do not at all like because he writes relentlessly negatively against all of the State of Israel and has never been known to acknowledge even a single aspect of the wonders and decency of so much of Israeli life along with its significant errors and weaknesses.  However, I am bringing this article by him to the attention of our web readers because I believe that along with the specific story of emotional hurt to fine people, Levy does get to the overall point accurately when he says, “Alongside its important, impressive and tireless work to document and perpetuate the memory of the Holocaust, this grand establishment is guilty of the sin of Jewish and Israeli ultra-nationalism and condescension. Yad Vashem could have become a global beacon of conscience.  It could have used its prestige around the world to behave as a universal institution rather than a provincial one, speaking out against crimes against humanity throughout the world, even when its victims aren’t Jews, crying out against the injustices done to persecuted minorities everywhere.”

Levy, Gideon (November 24, 2019). Yad Vashem Doesn’t Have the Courage to Be a Global Beacon of Conscience. Haaretz English Edition.https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-yad-vashem-doesn-t-have-the-courage-to-be-a-global-beacon-of-conscience-1.8166136

U.S. House of Representatives Votes Overwhelmingly to Recognize the Armenian Genocide

 

Overwhelming Bipartisan Passage of Armenian Genocide Resolution Reflects the Best of America

Rouben Adalian

October 29, 2019

http://bit.ly/2q2MeTY

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Armenian Genocide resolution, H.Res.296, was adopted today by an overwhelming favorable bipartisan vote of 405 to 11 in the U.S. House of Representatives, reported the Armenian Assembly of America.

“The passage of H.Res. 296 by the House of Representatives reflects the best of America. It honors a proud chapter in U.S. history of humanitarian intervention. It recalls the extraordinary contributions of America’s front-line diplomats, philanthropic leaders and relief workers in helping save a people from annihilation,” stated Armenian Assembly of America Executive Director Bryan Ardouny.

“Today’s watershed vote for human rights represents the culmination of decades of tireless work by Members of Congress, the Armenian Assembly of America and the Armenian American community from across the country. The purpose of this resolution is crystal clear. It formally acknowledges the Armenian Genocide. It condemns genocide denial in any form. It encourages human rights education to help prevent future genocides,” Ardouny added.

The Armenian Assembly of America has worked vigorously since the 1970s to combat the dangers of genocide denial and fully supports affirmation of the U.S. record on the Armenian Genocide.

Speeches in support of the resolution were given by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA); House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD); House Rules Committee Chairman James McGovern (D-MA); House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel (D-NY); House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA); Democratic Caucus Vice Chair Katherine Clark (D-MD); Congressional Caucus on Armenian Issues leaders Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), Jackie Speier (D-CA), and Gus Bilirakis (R-FL); House Foreign Affairs Committee Subcommittee Ranking Member Brad Sherman (D-CA), Senior Member Chris Smith (R-NJ); Member David Cicilline (D-RI), Member Ted Lieu (D-CA), and Member Jim Costa (D-CA); Armenian-Assyrian Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA); Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR); Rep. Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA); Rep. Brenda Lawrence (D-MI); Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX); Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY); Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA); Rep. John Sarbanes (D-MD); and Rep. Donna Shalala (D-FL).

Established in 1972, the Armenian Assembly of America is the largest Washington-based nationwide organization promoting public understanding and awareness of Armenian issues. The Assembly is a non-partisan, 501(c)(3) tax-exempt membership organization.

 

Samantha Power: A Belated Recognition of Genocide by the House

June 3, 2016

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/29/opinion/turkey-armenian-genocide-congress.html

On Tuesday, by a vote of 405 to 11, the House of Representatives defied the Turkish government’s intimidation and, for the first time in 35 years, passed a resolution that recognized the Armenian genocide.

In acknowledging the Ottoman Empire’s killing of more than one million Armenians as “genocide,” the House follows more than two dozen countries and 49 of 50 states.

This resolution matters hugely to Armenian-Americans. But it is also a reminder of how important truth-telling is to American foreign policy, and how ultimately self-defeating it is for the United States to bend to autocratic pressure tactics, whether from Turkey or anywhere else.

The facts of the Ottoman campaign have long been established. At the time of the slaughter, which began in 1915, the American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau, cabled Washington that a “campaign of race extermination” was underway, while the American consul in Aleppo, in what is now Syria, described a “carefully planned scheme to thoroughly extinguish the Armenian race.”

The word “genocide” did not then exist, but in 1944, Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jewish lawyer galvanized by the slaughter of Armenians and by Hitler’s extermination of the Jews, coined the term.

Today about two million Armenian-Americans live in the United States, and most are descendants of genocide survivors or victims. Because I have written about the Armenian genocide and argued for recognition, including (unsuccessfully) as a member of the Obama administration, I have joined Armenian-Americans at numerous commemorative events.

There, I have seen how large this history looms, and how much sorrow they feel over the murder and displacement of their long-lost family members. This sorrow has been compounded by Turkey’s denial of the killings; and while the House last recognized the genocide in 1984, Congress and successive administrations, both Republican and Democratic, have refused to use the word “genocide” for fear of offending Turkey.

Through the years, as Armenian genocide survivors in the United States neared their deaths, they often asked their loved ones to carry on the fight to get the American government to acknowledge the historical fact of the genocide. For Armenian-Americans who have labored tirelessly to secure recognition, Tuesday’s vote elicited tears of relief.

Although Turkish officials may see the vote as retaliation for Turkey’s recent forced displacement of Syrian Kurds, that operation — as well as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s sweeping human rights crackdown in Turkey and his purchase (over American and NATO protests) of a Russian air defense system — simply reduced the impact of Turkish blackmail.

The road to the House resolution offers two lessons that go beyond the United States and Turkey.

First, as a baseline rule, for the sake of overall American credibility and for that of our diplomats, Washington officials must be empowered to tell the truth.

Over many years, because of the fear of alienating Turkey, diplomats have been told to avoid mentioning the well-documented genocide. In 2005, when John Evans, the American ambassador to Armenia, said that “the Armenian genocide was the first genocide of the 20th century,” he was recalled and forced into early retirement. Stating the truth was seen as an act of subordination.

When I became ambassador to the United Nations in 2013, I worried that I would be asked about the Armenian genocide and that when I affirmed the historical facts, I could cause a diplomatic rupture.

Second, when bullies feel their tactics are working, they generally bully more — a lesson worth bearing in mind in responding to threats from China and Saudi Arabia. The Turkish government devotes millions of dollars annually to lobbying American officials and lawmakers: more than $12 million during the Obama administration, and almost as much during the first two years of the Trump presidency. Turkish officials have threatened to respond to genocide recognition by suspending lucrative financial ties with American companies, reducing security cooperation and even preventing resupply of our troops in Iraq.

On Friday, the Turkish ambassador warned that passage of the “biased” House resolution would “poison” American-Turkish relations, and implied that it would jeopardize Turkish investment in the United States which provides jobs for a “considerable number of American citizens.”

It is easy to understand why any commander in chief would be leery of damaging ties with Turkey, an important ally in a turbulent neighborhood. But Turkey has far more to lose than the United States in the relationship. The United States helped build up Turkey’s military, brought it into NATO and led the coalition that defeated the Islamic State, which carried out dozens of attacks on Turkish soil. Over the past five years, American companies have invested some $20 billion in Turkey.

If Mr. Erdogan turns further away from a relationship that has been immensely beneficial for Turkey in favor of deepening ties with Russia or China, it will not be because the House voted to recognize the Armenian genocide. It will be because his own repressive tactics are coming to resemble those of the Russian and Chinese leaders.

The House vote was overdue. Now the Senate, and President Trump, should follow suit. The facts of what occurred a century ago demand it.

More on “Does Yad Vashem Have a Problem with the Bosnian Genocide?”

On September 19, 2019,  I posted on the IAGS listserv excerpts from an article by Daniella Peled, who is identified as “Managing Editor of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting,” in Haaretz English Edition on August 16, 2019.  At the same time I reported that we were unable to recover the Haaretz article from the Internet and that apparently Haaretz had removed the article from their website (we had no clue why).

In the responses that followed on the listserv, Eyal Mayroz wrote quoting a response (it is not clear from where) by Yehuda Bauer to his having been quoted by Peled as having “denied that the Srebrenica atrocities were genocide, arguing that there had been ‘mass murders on all sides’ in Bosnia.”  Bauer replied, according to Mayroz, that he was responding to “an ‘unpublished’ (published) Op-ed based on ‘published’ (unpublished) article he and others have access to by a journalist he does not know, who in turn might have partially (and misleadingly?) referenced something he may have said or wrote which he can’t go back to and check.” All a pretty good satire on much of our academic convolutions, I dare say.

So I am very happy to report that without explanation Haaretz reprinted the Peled article on October 6, 2019 under a new headline, “Why are Israel’s Top Holocaust Scholars So Willing to Deny the Srebrenica Genocide?” It has been suggested by some that perhaps the original disappearance of the article was to remove the criticism of Yad Vashem that was so prominent in the headline, with Yad Vashem now replaced by “Israel’s Top Holocaust Scholars,” but we don’t know.  The subtitle of the article reads further: “I expected solidarity with fellow victims of a 20th century European genocide. But I found senior Israeli Holocaust experts happily co-opted into Serbian revisionism and denial.  The reasons aren’t pretty.”  The link for the article in its entirety is as follows and is reprinted below:

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-why-are-israel-s-top-holocaust-scholars-so-willing-to-deny-this-genocide-1.7677900

According to Mayroz, Professor Bauer argued that “the Serbs targeted all the 40,000 Muslims in Srebrenica but in fact they killed 8000…  The Convention does not address the issue of numbers, or in other words, the problem of ‘in part.’  Much larger numbers of victims in other situations were not considered genocide.”  According to Mayroz, Bauer continues and acknowledges that a genocide did take place in Bosnia, but he says, “I did express doubt in the past as to whether the murder of the 8000 alone would have qualified as genocide, but always in the context of the above conclusion.”

Peled also refers to the fact that Israeli scholar, Efraim Zuroff of the Wiesenthal Center, “has repeatedly insisted that what happened in Srebrenica was not genocide.”  Another colleague in genocide studies here in Israel has reported to me that in conversation with Zuroff the explanation he was given was that it could not be genocide because after all the Serbs had separated out the women and children from the men.

I disagree firmly with all of the above denials of Srebrenica as genocide, whether on the basis of ‘small numbers’ or on the basis that not every one of the victim group was to be killed.  As I have written any number of times in the professional literature, I object strongly to what I call “definitionalism” or obsessive and belabored efforts to arrive at an absolute and clear cut definition of genocide that excludes many cases of mass deaths of unarmed civilians.  For me, a healthy and sensible “generic definition of genocide” is an identification of any instance in which there are masses of unarmed dead bodies that have been killed by human beings.  A healthy definition of genocide then should go on to a wide variety of sub-classifications such as of “intentional genocide-total”; “intentional genocide-partial,” which is to include “genocidal massacres” (a concept given us by Leo Kuper for smaller events of genocide); “implied or emergent intentionality of genocide”; “not intentional genocide, e.g., genocide as crimes against humanity or manslaughter,” and a good number more concepts.

We have no right to exclude from the universe of our study and from our ethical concern and protest any event where masses of human beings are exterminated by other human beings.

Israel W. Charny

 

———————————————

The following two publications by me may be of interest to others who are concerned with the issue of definition:

Toward a generic definition of genocide. In Andreopoulos, George (Ed.), Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994, pp. 64-94.

[Presented originally at the Yale University Law School Raphael Lemkin Symposium on Genocide, February, 1991.] https://www.ihgjlm.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/1994-TOWARD-A-GENERIC-DEFINITION-w-TITLE.pdf

 

Worksheet for Describing and Categorizing a Genocidal Event: A New Tool for Assembling More Objective Data and Classifying Events of Mass Killing. Soc. Sci. 2016, 5(3), 31; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci5030031 https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/5/3/31/htm

Supplementary Materials for the Above

Israel Charny’s Worksheet for Describing and Categorizing a Genocidal Event: Data Collection & Analysis of Genocides in Multiple Sub-Categories.  Soc. Sci., 2016, 5(3), 31

www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/5/3/31/s1

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THE ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN HAARETZ ENGLISH EDITION

By Daniella Peled

Opinion Why Are Israel’s Top Holocaust Scholars So Willing to Deny This Genocide? October 6, 2019.  This is a republication of the same article in Haaretz on August 16, 2019, that later disappeared from the newspaper’s website, that was titled, Does Yad Vashem Have a Problem with the Bosnian Genocide?

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-why-are-israel-s-top-holocaust-scholars-so-willing-to-deny-this-genocide-1.7677900

 

I expected some solidarity with fellow victims of a twentieth century European genocide. I found, instead, senior Israeli Holocaust experts happily co-opted into Serbian revisionism and denial. The reasons aren’t pretty.

The Potocari memorial center sits amidst lush countryside and thickly forested hills. On a hot summer’s day, the scent of cut grass and clover drifts over the graveyard where thousands of plain white tombstones stretch out into the distance.

 

Each year on July 11, the memorial day for the Srebrenica genocide, more fragments of human remains unearthed from the ongoing excavations of mass graves are laid to rest here. This year, there were 33 burials, two and half decades after the victims’ deaths.

 

A former factory complex, Potocari  was where the UN’s Dutch battalion was stationed in 1995 and to where local Muslims fled in the vain hope of protection when Bosnian Serb forces moved on the Bosnian Muslim enclave.

 

The ensuing days saw the systematic murder of more than 8,000 men and boys in several locations, an atrocity which the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia subsequently found to be an act of genocide.

 

The organization I work for, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, was formed amid the Balkan wars of the 1990s. I spent many years observing, reporting and editing stories from the Tribunal. War crimes trials tend to be hours of dull legalese, interspersed with moments of grim drama. Their dry detail did not prepare me for this, my first visit.

 

I am shown around by Srebrenica by H, a survivor of the genocide, who grew up there. It used to be a lively regional centre, with a popular spa hotel and thriving mining and forestry industries.

 

Only a thousand or so people live here now. The hotel is derelict, and many houses are similarly abandoned. There is a Srebrenica hostel and local tourism centre, but it’s unlikely that the visitors come for the hiking.

 

He and I walk down a street in the centre of town lined with earth banks. These were once Muslim-owned shops and houses, all leveled by the conquering army.

 

He points out the building where he spent the night as a 19-year-old, debating with his cousins whether their chances of survival were better staying in Potocari or attempting to flee to the Bosnian Muslim-held territory of Tuzla. His cousins chose the former, he the latter.

 

Then he shows me the path into the forest he took the next morning, embarking on a journey that lasted six days and nights, without food or sleep.

 

It turned out to be a death march; only 3,000 of the more than 10,000 men and boys who left Srebrenica survived. The rest were ambushed en route or lured out of the forest by Bosnian Serb forces posing as UN peacekeepers. They were either killed on the spot or taken away to be shot dead elsewhere.

 

Among the victims were most of the men in H’s immediate family, including his father and twin brother. A decade later, he buried them; or at least, he buried the bones that had been found in mass graves.

 

“Civilized Europe has not learned any lessons,” he says.

 

For those for whom, as Avram Burg once put it, the Holocaust forever buzzes in their ear like a mosquito, it seems familiar. The ghettoization; the piles of lost possessions; the cowed, emaciated victims, although in this case they are depicted in color and in grainy VHS footage.

 

There was a selection in Potocari too, when the men and boys were separated from the women and girls and led away to almost certain death. That also took place in front of the UN, and no-one intervened.

 

At Potocari, I ask about visitors from Israel, whom I perhaps expected might be interested in solidarity with other victims of a twentieth century European genocide.

 

I asked about collaboration with Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Authority, Yad Vashem, naively assuming that the intersection of the rarefied world of genocide studies and the small club of nations who’ve experienced would have produced some form of relationship. A niche area of education and awareness-raising where all would be keen to share best practice and collaborate over resonance and impact.

 

But I am told that there is no relationship or interest. I find this strange because the Jewish diaspora, and its Holocaust memorial institutions and museums, have a much more universalist outlook on this darkest chapter of Jewish history – and practical collaborative relationships based on work against hate, racism and mass murder. Their work is to memorialize but also to warn, educate and prevent.

 

To further embitter matters, those who want to manipulate atrocity for their own ends in this part of the Balkans have already landed on the Holocaust as a ripe target for exploitation, and its researchers and experts as convenient enablers.

 

Bosnia and Herzegovina is now divided into two entities; the Federation, dominated by Bosnian Muslims and Croats, and Republika Srpska , which is largely Bosnian Serb. Their narratives of what happened during the war often diverge, to put it mildly.

 

Earlier this year, Republika Srpska appointed Israeli historian Gideon Greif – who has worked at Yad Vashem for more than three decades – to head its own revisionist commission to “determine the truth” about Srebrenica, no matter that the Bosnian war is possibly the most forensically documented in history. (My emails to Yad Vashem to query Greif’s role in the “truth commission” have gone unanswered).

 

To add insult to injury, another Republika Srpska commission will investigate the wartime suffering of Serbs in Sarajevo – besieged by Bosnian Serb forces for nearly four years, the longest of a capital city in the history of modern warfare – and it is also headed by an Israeli academic, Hebrew University professor Rafael Israeli.

 

Depressingly, other Israeli Holocaust scholars are also happy to be co-opted into such denial. Ephraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre has repeatedly insisted that what happened at Srebrenica was not genocide.

 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, he has been awarded numerous accolades from Serbia – including a nomination for a Nobel peace prize – for what former president Tomislav Nikolic (an on-the-record Srebrenica genocide denier) describes as his “exceptional achievements.”

 

In a 2015 interview, academic advisor to Yad Vashem, Yehuda Bauer, also denied that the Srebrenica atrocities were genocide, arguing that there had been “mass murders on all sides” in Bosnia.

 

Cosily, Republika Srpska is one of the very few entities to base its Israeli representative office in Jerusalem, not Tel Aviv.

 

In the UK, Holocaust Memorial Day is marked each year on January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Explicit in the project’s remit is that victims of other genocides and mass atrocities are always included; they include Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

 

Similarly, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum campaigns over atrocities in South Sudan, against the Rohingya, in Syria, in Zimbabwe.

 

In Israel, it seems, the Holocaust must only be viewed as a unique event in human history. Maybe this is because it is yoked to the narrative of the redemptive power of Zionism: in this telling, the genocide ended and a free state for its survivors was born from the ashes. But that arc is a problematic enough lens for the Holocaust; for other victims, it has no relevance at all.

 

In Rwanda, survivors live in a police state. Bosnia remains dysfunctional and communally fragile nearly 30 years later. The fact that one of Srebrenica’s destroyed mosques was rebuilt and the call to prayer is heard there again – or that H has moved back in defiance to the town he fled in July 1996 – is a small and hollow victory.

 

Redemption is not the quid pro quo of genocide. There really isn’t one. Memorial and justice are the very least we owe the victims, and it feels particularly grievous if those values cannot be recognized as universal.

Armenian Assembly of America Mourns the Passing of Yossi Sarid, Recalls His Efforts in Israel for Official Armenian Genocide Recognition

The following story dating back to 2015 was just sent to us by Dr. Rouben Adalian, Director of the Armenian National Institute (ANI) in Washington, DC.
The photo of the delegation at the Eternal Flame at the Armenian Genocide Memorial and Musuem in Yerevan is of particular importance to Israelis, so that it is widely known that three senior representatives of the Israeli academia and an officer of the government and Member of Knesset, Minister of Education Yossi Sarid, conveyed the fullest recognition by Israelis of the Armenian Genocide despite the fact that the politics of the government of Israel have repeatedly led to failures to adopt full formal recognition–in one case even after such recognition was voted by a major committee of the Knesset. –Editor

 

Armenian Assembly of America Mourns the Passing of Yossi Sarid, Recalls His Efforts in Israel for Official Armenian Genocide Recognition

Arsinée Khanjian, Rima Varzhapetyan, Deputy Foreign Minister of Armenia Gegham Gharibjanian, Dr. Yair Auron, Yossi Sarid, Dr. Yehuda Bauer, Dr. Israel Charny, Lavrenti Barseghyan, Greg Sarkissian, ANI Director Dr. Rouben Adalian, and Armenian Assembly Regional Director Arpi Vartanian at the Armenian Genocide Memorial Complex (Tsitsernakaberd) for the 90th Armenian Genocide Commemoration in Yerevan, Armenia; April 20, 2005.

ARMENIAN ASSEMBLY OF AMERICA
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: December 15, 2015
Contact: Taniel Koushakjian
Telephone: (202) 393-3434
Email: taniel@aaainc.org
Web: www.aaainc.org

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Armenian Assembly of America (Assembly) mourns the passing of former Israeli Minister of Education and Member of the Knesset Yossi Sarid, a prominent advocate and supporter of Armenian Genocide recognition in Israel. He passed away on Friday, December 4 at the age of 75.

The Assembly recalls Sarid’s tireless efforts to include the Armenian Genocide in Israeli school curricula and to secure official recognition in Israel. His courage to speak publicly about the need for the government of Israel to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide began the movement toward official recognition.

As Minister of Education, Sarid delivered a ground-breaking speech on April 23, 2000 at the 85th Armenian Genocide anniversary commemoration in Jerusalem’s Armenian Quarter. There he announced his decision to educate the children of Israel about the first genocide of the 20th century. During the commemoration, Sarid stated that he would ensure the Israeli school system teaches “the murder of the Armenian nation” by introducing them to Franz Werfel’s “The Forty Days of Musa Dagh.”

Dr. Rouben Adalian, Dr. Israel Charny, and Yossi Sarid at the Armenian Genocide Memorial Complex in Yerevan, Armenia; April 20, 2005.

“I will do everything in order that Israeli children learn and know about the Armenian Genocide. Genocide is a crime against humanity and there is nothing more horrible and odious than Genocide,” Sarid said during his speech. “One of the objectives of our education – our main objective – is to instill sensitivity to the harm to the innocent based on nationality alone. We, Jews, as principal victims of murderous hatred are doubly obligated to be sensitive, to identify with other victims.”

A month following his remarks, Sarid reached out to the Assembly and wrote about his education plans. In the May 22, 2000 letter to the Assembly, he wrote “I fully intend to allow Israeli pupils to learn the lessons of your tragedy, which is ours and the world’s, as well. Israelis are the last people who can afford to forget the tragedies of this magnitude.”
Yossi Sarid’s announcement prompted Congressional Caucus on Armenian Issues Co-Chair Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) to deliver a statement in the U.S. Congress. “Considering Israel’s vulnerable position in the Middle East and its need to cultivate relations with Muslim nations, the action by Education Minister Sarid was a true profile in courage, a real statement of principle,” Rep. Pallone said on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives on May 23, 2000.

Despite his best efforts, Yossi Sarid was unable to fulfill his goal to include the Armenian Genocide in Israel’s state curricula.

“During my stint as education minister, I held the view that, in failing to include genocide studies in the curriculum, the Israeli school system was neither fulfilling its role nor furthering its own goals and that, as a result, Israeli high-school students knew nothing about the Nazi regime’s non-Jewish victims: gypsies, homosexuals, political prisoners, patients of mental health hospitals, persons with physical handicaps, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Poles, Russian prisoners of war and ‘other victims,'” Sarid wrote in Haaretz on April 16, 2003. “And it is not just the victims of the Nazis who are forgotten. What interest is shown here in this country in the genocide suffered by the Armenians, Bosnians and Rwandans?”

Yossi Sarid and Zoryan Institute President Greg Sarkissian planting a tree at the Armenian Genocide Memorial Complex in Yerevan, Armenia; April 20, 2005.

However, this did not discourage Sarid from honoring the memory of the Armenian Genocide. In 2005, Sarid spoke at an international conference in Yerevan, Armenia, convened by the National Commission on the 90th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide and the Zoryan Institute. He also visited the Armenian Genocide Memorial and planted a tree at the site in honor of the genocide victims.

“Yossi Sarid was one of the most vocal and consistent champions in recognizing the Armenian Genocide in Israel. I credit Sarid for opening this discussion after many years of pressure from Turkey on Israeli authorities to remain silent,” said Armenian National Institute (ANI) Director Dr. Adalian. “Following in Sarid’s footsteps, President of Israel Reuven Rivlin and the Speaker of the Knesset Yuli Edelstein raised the issue and joined the world community in affirming the Armenian Genocide in April this year.”

During an April 13 briefing, Rivlin congratulated Pope Francis on describing the mass killings of Armenians as the “first genocide of the 20th century,” adding that this was an important issue for all human beings. A month later, on May 12, 2015, Israeli Knesset speaker Yuli Edelstein called on the government of Israel to re-examine its official position and recognize the Armenian Genocide.

“The State of Israel must thoroughly re-examine its official position because history, as we know, cannot be changed,” Edelstein said. “We cannot, and are not permitted to cover up the great disaster that gripped the Armenian people and the depth of the moral blow that humanity suffered.”

“Although Yossi Sarid has passed, his legacy and efforts towards educating Israelis about the Armenian Genocide continues,” stated Assembly Executive Director Bryan Ardouny.
Established in 1972, the Armenian Assembly of America is the largest Washington-based nationwide organization promoting public understanding and awareness of Armenian issues. The Assembly is a non-partisan, 501(c)(3) tax-exempt membership organization.

Haaretz Book Review Magazine Interviews Yair Auron

Estricher, Noa (September 9, 2019). Genocide: Five Books on Genocide.  Haaretz Book Review (Hebrew).

An interview of Yair Auron in Hebrew with reference to five books on genocide in Hebrew: Franz Werfel, 40 Days of Musa Dag; Ora Achimeier, Araratim; Ambassador Morgenthau’s Diary, Israel Charny, Genocide -“And You Shall Destroy the Evil Inside of You”: We are the Human Beings who Commit Holocaust and Genocide; Yolande Mukagasana,  Death Does Not Desire Me

Click here to see pdf of the interview in Hebrew.

 

UN Sends a Stunning Letter Questioning Turkey on the Armenian Genocide

June 25, 2019

BY HARUT SASSOUNIAN

http://www.thecaliforniacourier.com/un-sends-a-stunning-letter-questioning-turkey-on-the-armenian-genocide/

Twenty-nine years ago the United Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities adopted a report acknowledging the Armenian Genocide as a case of genocide. Until recently, there has been no other activity at the UN on this issue. Unexpectedly, on March 25, a surprising letter was sent to Ambassador Sadik Arslan, Turkey’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. The letter was sent by three UN entities: Bernard Duhaime, Chair-Rapporteur of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances; David Kaye, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression; and Fabian Salvioli, Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence.

The joint UN letter asked the Turkish Ambassador to provide answers within 60 days to the following seven questions:

  1. Please provide any information and/or comment(s) you may have on the allegations: …violations attributable to Turkey in relation to the tragic events that affected the Armenian minority from 1915 to 1923, and their consequences for the population concerned.
  2. What policies have been put in place by your Excellency’s Government to respond to these allegations?
  3. What measures has Turkey taken to establish the facts, including the fate or whereabouts of Armenians who were subjected to forced internal displacement, detention, extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances during the period of 1915 – 1923?
  4. What measures have been taken to ensure the right of victims and of society as a whole to know the truth about these events, and to ensure the right of victims to justice and reparations for the damage suffered?
  5. What measures have been taken to locate, insofar as possible, the bodies of Armenians who died as a result of these events?
  6. Please provide information about the reasons for the adoption of the 2017 legislation preventing lawmakers from making certain expressions. Please explain how this is compatible with international human rights law, in particular with Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
  7. Please provide detailed information about the cases in which Article 301 of the Criminal Code has been applied to punish individuals for statements made alleging crimes against Armenians.

The joint UN letter described in detail the atrocities committed against Armenians “from 1915 to 1923:”

The Ottoman Empire and its succeeding Turkish Republic [which] implemented a policy of mass relocation of the Armenian minority living in the eastern part of the country. Hundreds of thousands (estimates range between 600,000 and 1,500,000) of persons belonging to that minority were subject to that policy, which resulted in widespread violence against that population. Their forced deportation reportedly started in March 1915 mainly in Anatolia but also in other parts of the country. Armenians were expelled from their ancestral lands. On the night of 24th April 1915, hundreds of political and intellectual leaders were arrested in Constantinople and then transferred to other places. As a result, Armenian elites disappeared almost completely. This was followed by a systematic policy targeting the entire Armenian population in each province and in each Vilayet, the official objective of which was to displace by force the Armenian population from the eastern provinces of Anatolia to Aleppo and camps in the Syrian Desert. Armenians were subjected to forced marches. Most of them allegedly died progressively from exhaustion, starvation, diseases or from massacres, and in most cases their remains were abandoned. Upon arrival, the few surviving people were detained in camps in conditions which may have amounted to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; most of them were subsequently killed. The process persisted through 1923. It is alleged that these actions could constitute enforced disappearances to the extent that:

(i) Armenians in Turkey were subjected to arrests, detentions, or abductions or were otherwise deprived of their liberty;

(ii) These acts are reportedly attributable to officials or different branches or levels of government;

(iii) The Government has not disclosed so far the fate or whereabouts of the persons concerned.

The UN letter also criticized Turkey’s denial:

It is also reported that Turkey not only refuses to acknowledge these events, but also intentionally engages in denial and obstruction of the truth about the fate or whereabouts of the victims…While we do not wish to prejudge the accuracy of these allegations, we wish to express our concern at the reported denial, and ensuing lack of progress in establishing the truth and ensuring justice for the forcible deportation of Armenians between 1915 and 1923, which resulted in massive suffering, ill-treatment and deaths. The lack of progress in establishing and acknowledging the relevant facts, not only affects the dignity of victims and their descendants, but can also hinder the possibility of initiating measures aimed at preserving the memory and establishing the truth.

On May 17, within 60 days of the UN request, the Turkish Ambassador responded with a three-page letter stating that the UN letter “will be left unanswered by the Government of Turkey.” Ambassador Arslan further stated, “My authorities were rather baffled by the communication,” which he described as “ill-intended and politically motivated.”

Other than denying the statements contained in the UN letter, Arslan also quoted the UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon and his spokesman Farhan Haq, claiming that the UN had never taken a position on events that took place before the UN was established. Both the Secretary General and his spokesman are wrong, because the UN had set a special day to commemorate the Jewish Holocaust which had occurred before the UN was founded in 1945. Furthermore, I interviewed Haq and asked him about the 1985 UN Sub-Commission’s Genocide Report, which had acknowledged several genocides, including the Armenian Genocide, all of which had taken place before the UN was established. Haq told me that he was aware of the UN Sub-Commission’s Genocide Report, but he was referring to the lack of acknowledgment by the UN General Assembly.

In addition, the UN authors attached to their letter an annex quoting from the International Humanitarian Law, which stated that:

Principle 2 of the updated Set of Principles for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights through Action to Combat Impunity establishes the inalienable right of all persons to know the truth about past events concerning the perpetration of heinous crimes and about the circumstances and reasons that led to them. Full and effective exercise of the right to the truth provides a vital safeguard against the recurrence of violations. Principle 4 stipulates that victims and their families have the imprescriptible right to know the truth about the circumstances in which violations took place and about the victims’ fate.

Finally, Arslan repeated the same untruth about Armenia not responding to a letter from Turkey in 2005 proposing “to establish a joint commission consisting of historians and other experts to study the events of 1915.” This is a lie. Armenia did respond, suggesting that the proposed commission review all outstanding issues between the two countries, not just the Armenian Genocide. Turkey was the one that never responded.

As a next step, now that the Armenian Genocide issue has been raised at the UN once again, it is incumbent on the Republic of Armenia to formally place the UN letter and the Turkish denialist response on the agenda of the UN Human Rights Council and pursue compensation and justice for the million and a half victims of the Armenian Genocide.

Some Orthodox Jews Protest Israel’s Arms Exports to Regimes That Commit Genocide

Haaretz English Edition has published an account of a 40-year old orthodox mother of six children who regularly confronts Israeli officials about the immorality of arms sales.

Esther Merchavy defiantly asked the former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, “Why does Israel send arms to a country known for its human rights abuses against the Rohingya.

Merchavy is a member of an activist group that wants increased regulation over Israeli arms sales that it believes perpetuates war crimes.  Although the group is small in number, it has made its presence known regularly in recent years.

For the fuller story, see Nieberg, Patty (September 12, 2019). The unlikely Jewish ‘holy war’ on arms exports: The sale of weaponry to murderous regimes goes against all Jewish religious teachings, charge members of No 2 Arms [name of organization: No to Arms]  https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-the-religious-activists-waging-a-holy-war-against-israel-s-arms-exports-1.7831957 .   Haaretz English Edition.

See also “arms sales” for previous stories on this website.

Azerbaijan Destroys a Major Armenian Cultural Monument that was to be Considered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site

Djulfa is a site in Azerbaijan which boasted the world’s largest collection of exquisitely carved medieval cross-stones as remnants of the areas once-thriving community of Armenian Christians.  The site had stood for centuries.  In December 2005, Azeri soldiers armed with sledgehammers, dump trucks and cranes destroyed the site, pounding the medieval headstones into rubble and then dumping their pulverized remains into the river.

The author of a report on the destruction in the California Courier, Simon Majhakyan, writes: “This erasure is part of a state-sanctioned war on history…yet unlike the cultural crimes of ISIS or the Taliban, few have heard of it.”

Source: Majhakyan, Simon (July 18, 2019).  This year’s UNESCO session was an insult to World Heritage: Djulfa, a sacred site for Armenian Christians is disqualified for consideration because the host of this year’s UNESCO World Heritage Committee session, the government of Azerbaijan, has erased its existence and destroyed tens of thousands of Armenian cultural monuments.

For a further report, see Sawa, Dale Berning (1 Mar 2019). Monumental loss: Azerbaijan and ‘the worst cultural genocide of the 21st century’:

Armenian cultural heritage, including the destruction of tens of thousands of Unesco-protected ancient stone carvings.  Guardian.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/mar/01/monumental-loss-azerbaijan-cultural-genocide-khachkars

Proposal for California Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Fails to Include Both Armenians and Jews

Neither the Armenian Genocide nor the Holocaust were included in a recent draft proposal of the California Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum.  Needless to say, a wide range of protests have reached the state including a partnering of Armenian, Greek, and Jewish organizations.

Source: This article was read in the California Courier: Taub, David (August 22 2019). Armenian, Jewish Groups Upset Over Exclusion in State Curriculum.

The original article dated August 13 can be found online at GV Wire: https://gvwire.com/2019/08/13/armenian-jewish-groups-upset-over-exclusion-in-state-curriculum/

Armenian Assembly of America and Armenian National Institute Pay Tribute to Vahakn Dadrian (1926-2019)

The Armenian Assembly of America (Assembly) and the Armenian National Institute (ANI) join in paying tribute to Dr. Vahakn Dadrian, the internationally renowned scholar of the Armenian Genocide who passed away on August 2 at the age of 93.

The author of a set of critically important books and articles on the Armenian Genocide, Dr. Vahakn Dadrian was a central figure in the emergence of the field of genocide studies in general.

He wrote several groundbreaking works which forcefully demonstrated the state-wide mechanisms the Young Turk regime implemented in the course of World War One in order to eradicate the Armenian population of Armenia and Anatolia.  The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus (1995); German Responsibility in the Armenian Genocide: A Review of the Historical Evidence of German Complicity (1996); and Warrant for Genocide: The Key Elements of the Turko-Armenian Conflict (1998), among other works, constitute the landmark studies that transformed the discipline of genocide studies by introducing a compelling body of evidence hitherto unexamined by scholarship.

With his formidable grasp of sources in multiple languages he erected a mountain of evidence extracted from archival repositories, and augmented by a wide reading of documentary and testimonial evidence, including the commissioners of the crimes themselves. In a number of articles in academic journals and in the series edited by Dr. Israel Charny titled Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review, Dadrian laid out the evidence from German and Austrian sources, which he regarded central to proving the conspiratorial nature of the Young Turk regime since Germany and Austria-Hungary were joined with the Ottoman Empire as allies during WWI and thereby had greater access and insight into the plans of the Turkish government.

By methodically constructing this body of evidence and demonstrating numerous parallels with the genocidal policies of the Nazi regime in conceiving and implementing the Holocaust as a crime specifically intended to destroy the Jewish populations under their rule, Dadrian single-handedly began to forge the comparative study of the problem of genocide. In the face of early skepticism about his theories, over the course of the years he successfully argued his case in multiple academic venues until such time as by the year 2000, 126 Holocaust specialists joined him in a public petition affirming “the incontestable fact of the Armenian Genocide” and urging “Western Democracies to officially recognize it.”

Firmly persuasive in his scholarship, Dadrian also fearlessly challenged deniers by using official Turkish documents to make the point. By the same skill and patience with which he built his evidence, he demolished the false arguments and exposed the distortion of facts and evidence that formed the basis of a persistent denial of the Armenian Genocide by Turkish authorities and their academic cohorts. He summarized his finding in The Key Elements in the Turkish Denial of the Armenian Genocide: A Case Study of Distortion and Falsification, published in 1999 by the Zoryan Institute, where he served for many years as Director of Genocide Research.

Dadrian’s authoritative investigations were published in a number of legal journals, including the Yale Journal of International Law. His 1989 book-length article, Genocide as a Problem of National and International Law: The World War I Armenian Case and its Contemporary Legal Ramifications proved a watershed event in historical and legal disciplines, securing his reputation as an internationally-recognized authority.

Speaking on behalf of the Assembly, its Board of Trustees Co-Chairman Van Z. Krikorian, reflecting upon the Yale Journal article said as follows: “This seminal publication also played a remarkable political role in altering United States policy and distancing it from echoing the Turkish government’s views. I remember Congressman Charles Pashayan of California handing President George H.W. Bush a copy of Dadrian’s publication and I am convinced of its contributive role in bringing about an improvement in U.S. policy by destroying the credibility of those in the U.S. government denying the Armenian Genocide which reduced their position to no longer denying the historical facts. The brilliance of this work was an exposition of Turkey’s own trial records in unprecedented detail demonstrating the guilty finding of the indictments of the intentional annihilation of the Armenian people by the Young Turk leadership. Every person frustrated by the denial of the Armenian Genocide owes Professor Dadrian a debt of gratitude for countering this insidious practice.”

Admired by colleagues, sought out by researchers from around the world, and a public lecturer who was given the podium at universities and the halls of parliaments, Dadrian was honored with many awards in his lifetime. Upon hearing of Dadrian’s passing, Dr. Israel Charny recalled his friendship by writing: “I hail his greatness – the audacity of his researches, the steadfastness of his contributions, and his deep devotion to his people and to justice.” Upon hearing the news of Dadrian’s passing, Dr. Michael Gelb, Associate Editor of Academic Publications and Assistant Editor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, stated: “it is indeed no mere formality to say that his influence on the field was inestimable.”

Dr. Bedross Der Matossian, President of the Society for Armenian Studies, described Dadrian as “the preeminent scholar of the Armenian Genocide” as well as “the founder of the field of Armenian Genocide Studies and one of the founders of the field of Comparative Genocide Studies.” President of Armenia, Dr. Armen Sarkissian, recalling the honorary doctorate bestowed upon him by the Armenian Academy of Sciences, described him as the “acclaimed researcher of the Armenian Genocide.”

Dadrian’s publications were translated into several languages including Turkish, effectively making them some of the first works to introduce the subject in Turkey where an unofficial silence was maintained over the decades. Garo Paylan, a current Member of Parliament in Turkey, himself of Armenian background, noted: “His books published in Turkey played an important role in the international recognition of the Armenian Genocide.”

“It is customary for younger generations to honor the memory of an authority of the stature of Vahakn Dadrian by speaking on how they stand upon the shoulder of giants,” remarked ANI Director Dr. Rouben Adalian. “Vahakn Dadrian, however, was a giant of such immense stature and stands so tall that no one can even think of climbing upon his shoulders.”

In May 1976, along with other prominent scholars such as Richard Hovannisian, Avedis Sanjian, Shavarsh Toriguian, and Dennis Papazian, Vahakn Dadrian testified before Congress on the Armenian Genocide. He spoke eloquently and prophetically of the continuing threat of genocide in front of the then Subcommittee on Future Foreign Policy Research and Development of the Committee on International Relations of the House of Representatives.

Clearly, we are moving in a direction where parallel to the shrinkage of financial, technical and administrative prerequisites to fashion a genocidal apparatus of destruction, the global vulnerability of vast masses of people to such destruction is increasing. This inverse relationship between reduced resources and amplified risks, symbolizing the explosive marriage of modern industrialism with nationalism, is perhaps the greatest challenge presenting itself to our present system of international relations.

Dr. Vahakn Dadrian, 1976

Dr. Vahakn N. Dadrian, 1926-2019

NAASR joins with the Armenian and scholarly communities in marking the death of genocide scholar Dr. Vahakn Dadrian on August 2 at the age of 93. Dr. Dadrian was known all over the world as a pioneer in genocide and comparative genocide studies and in particular for his voluminous writings on the Armenian Genocide.

Vahakn N. Dadrian was born in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1926 and was educated at the University of Berlin, the University of Vienna, the University of Zürich, and received a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago. Since 1999 Dadrian had served as the Director of Research at the Zoryan Institute.

“The more I research on Armenian Genocide, the more new documents come to light from the Ottoman Archives, the more I am convinced of his sharpness and analysis,” reflected Prof. Taner Akçam. “There is no doubt that whatever discussions we’ll have in the future will be built on the body of knowledge that Dadrian has provided for us.”

“When we look at the remarkable development of Armenian Genocide scholarship in the past two decades, it must be understood that this was made possible by the foundation created by Dadrian’s groundbreaking work,” commented NAASR Director of Academic Affairs Marc A. Mamigonian. “More than anyone else at the time, Dadrian raised the study of the Armenian Genocide to the academic level, and everyone who has come after him is indebted to his work–even those who disagree with him.”

Dadrian was the author of several noteworthy books including The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus (1995), Warrant for Genocide (1999), and Judgment at Istanbul: The Armenian Genocide Trials (co-authored with Taner Akçam, 2011), as well as dozens of scholarly articles published in numerous languages around the world. He reflected on his own path as a scholar in the volume Pioneers of Genocide Studies, edited by Samuel Totten and Steven L. Jacobs (2002).

Dr. Dadrian was the recipient of many honors and awards, including the Khorenatsi Medal, Armenia’s highest cultural award. He was inducted into the ranks of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia in 1998.

 

Stages of Denial of Genocide

In a lecture at Fresno State University in California, Dr. Taner Akcam, holder of the chair in Armenian Genocide Studies at Clark University, presented a summary of the stages of genocide as identified by Professor Michel-Rolph Trouillot in Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History.[1]

People in power silence or delete history in 4 stages.  The first stage is “fact creation.”  In this stage deniers creates their own sources of evidence or documentation.

The second stage is “fact assembly” where the denier creates their own archives.

The third stage is “fact retrieval” where denialists create narratives for their forged documentation.

Once narratives are created, the denialist reaches stage 4, the moment of “retrospective significance,” where their narratives and documents become well-known history.

For the case of denialism against the Armenian Genocide, Taner Akcam adds a fifth stage to Trouillot’s theory.  In this additional stage, denialists destroy documents and/or try to prove the falsity of critical documents.

Taner Akcam himself has been at the forefront of major new researches authenticating critical Turkish documents that contain explicit orders to kill Armenians, including documents with the signature of the dread Minister of the Interior at the time of the Armenian Genocide, Talat Pasha.

Excerpted from the newspaper of the Armenian Studies Program at Fresno State University: Pambukyan, Christine (May 2019). Dr. Taner Akcam Presents New Research on the Denial of the Armenian Genocide by Turkey.

 

[1] Trouillot, Michel-Rolph (1995). Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide Jerusalem Mourns and Salutes the Great Researcher of the Armenian Genocide, the late VAKAHN DADRIAN

The Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem

Salutes the Memory of the Great Researcher

of the Armenian Genocide,

Professor VAHAKN DADRIAN

We celebrate the masterful significance of Vahakn Dadrian’s numerous researches of the Armenian Genocide.  He was a brilliant and resolute authenticator of the validity of the documentation of the genocide at a time when denials of the Armenian Genocide were not only numerous but also seemed to be earning measures of popular recognition and a belief in their being possibly a legitimate “other side of the issue” that in all fairness were to be considered.

There is also a personal side to our mourning and honor of Professor Dadrian.  We first met when he arrived to participate in the groundbreaking 1982 First International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide in Tel Aviv.  I remember poignantly the day of his arrival. We stood together on the steps outside the Tel Aviv Hilton and Vahakn inquired anxiously why he did not see a contingent of police protection around us.  He and all of us indeed were daring to take a never before step of recognizing the Armenian Genocide in an international academic conference, and he was indeed correct that the Turks would show up and make an effort to disrupt proceedings – but not to an extent that we needed police protection.

I also had the pleasure of any number of personal contacts with Vahakn over the years, and remember in particular how he sweetly and caringly extended himself to take care of me and my wife on our first visit to Yerevan in 1990.

It has been a regret to see his productivity weaken in his aging years and it is personally and professionally so sad to mourn the passing of a wonderfully great man who loved his people deeply and who was a champion of truth and justice.

-Israel W. Charny

Why Sam Totten Risks His Life to Truck Food to People in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains

by Joe Levine

Retrieved from Teacher’s College at Columbia University. https://www.tc.columbia.edu/articles/2019/january/driven/

The Nuba

Betwixt, Between and Mostly Ignored

Sudan, Africa’s third-largest nation, won independence from Great Britain in 1956, but has been the scene of two subsequent civil wars between the primarily Arabic, Islamic north and the black African and Christian south. Though located in the north, the Nuba — a group of some 50 indigenous peoples — sided with the south, and endured repeated scorched-earth bombing campaigns that caused mass starvation.

Map of Sam Totten's travels through Nuba
ROUGH ROADS Sam Totten typically secures a vehicle in YIDA, South Sudan, and loads food for Nuba Mountains villagers. His route takes him past the Mother of Mercy Field Hospital, near GIDEL, where in 2015 he brought a boy killed by a bomb. Totten often drops food at the battlefront in KAWALIB. Villagers hike in at night to make pick-ups.

Yet when the Republic of South Sudan won independence in 2011, the Nuba were excluded from a referendum that would have allowed them to join the new country. The Sudanese government of Omar al-Bashir has since conducted several additional bombing campaigns against the Nuba while barring all international aid organizations.

Sam Totten has sought to bring international attention to this little-known region, whose plight he charges has been ignored by both the United States and the international community.

Two years ago, on one of his many trips to deliver food to besieged civilians in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains, the genocide scholar Samuel Totten (Ed.D. ’85) was implored by a crowd in a village market to transport a wounded boy.

The only fully operational hospital with a surgeon lay 45 minutes away, through brutal heat and over jarring dirt roads. The route was vulnerable to aerial attacks by Antonov bombers that were exacting almost daily retribution against the indigenous Nuba for opposing Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, in the nation’s decades-long civil war.

Totten, then 67, was practiced at sprinting for cover at the sound of an approaching plane, but recently the government had switched from slow, retrofitted cargo planes to Sukhoi fighter jets that appeared with virtually no warning. Two days earlier, in a town that he and his long-time Nuba driver and translator, Daniel Luti, had passed through, a Sukhoi missile had sheared a young man in half. Totten and Luti set off with the injured boy, his sister and family friends. When they reached the hospital, the boy — who had thrown a rock at an undetonated bomb — was dead. Totten drove the boy’s body first to his parents’ village.

Sam Totten and his wife, Kathleen Barta
THE HOME TEAM Kathleen Barta, Totten’s wife of 25 years, is a painter and former nurse educator. Where others have criticized him for selfishness toward her in repeatedly putting his life at risk, Barta believes he is motivated by his compassion for people in desperate straits.

“The father walked to the back of the truck, looked down at his son, and without a word…walked off into the field alone,” Totten writes in his book, Sudan’s Nuba Mountains People Under Siege: Accounts by Humanitarians in the Battle Zone. “When the boy’s mother saw [this], she let out an agonizing scream and fell flat on her face.” Later, when the mother remained in the truck weeping, “I reached out and touched her hand. She grabbed my hand, glanced up at me, and moved her hand a little higher, latching onto my wrist.”

Two days later, acutely dehydrated after delivering tons of food to the Nuba, Totten passed out, cracking his head against a cinderblock wall. He was taken to a Doctors Without Borders field hospital in South Sudan and airlifted to Nairobi Hospital in Kenya.

Actively Standing By

The spectrum in genocide studies runs from critical theorists, who argue for detached objectivity in order to scrutinize the field’s own biases, to scholar-activists, who focus on documentation to prevent further crimes.

And then there is Sam Totten.

Responding to an emailed query, The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof calls Totten “a leader in galvanizing public opposition to genocides,” adding “I’ve been awed to see him sneak into the Nuba Mountains to bear witness to the bombings and deprivation. He’s the Professor Indiana Jones of genocide scholarship.”

Eric Weitz, Distinguished Professor of History at the City College of New York, says that “ideologically, Sam belongs to the school of putting himself in a hell of a lot of danger. He’s also the field’s community organizer, pushing the rest of us to take public stances.”

And Roger Smith, Professor Emeritus of Government at the College of William & Mary, says simply, “I’ve often wondered if he isn’t a saint.”

Not that Totten, Professor Emeritus at the College of Education and Health Professions at the University of Arkansas- Fayetteville and 2011 recipient of Teachers College’s Distinguished Alumni Award, isn’t scholarly. He’s co-founded a refereed journal and published a dozen books, delving deeply into Sudan’s ethnic, religious and political makeup.

Still, Totten, a tall man with a deep belly laugh, is far from being your stereotypical tweedy professor. He does what he does, he says, because he has “a visceral disdain for bystanders.” The real bystanders — “outsiders with the means and freedom to act — are never innocent,” he says.

“It’s easy to point fingers from afar at people living under a dictatorship and say, ‘They should have stood up to Hitler,’” says Totten, who served as the lead author of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Teacher Guidelines for Teaching About the Holocaust. “Hutus [members of Rwanda’s majority ethnic group, which carried out genocide against the minority Tutsi] have told me that they were afraid to help anyone for fear their families could be killed. That puts things in a vastly different light.”

Totten speaks worldwide, is a frequent radio guest, writes constantly to reporters, editors and U.S. and U.N. officials, and publishes countless opinion pieces.

In 2004, he served on the U.S. State Department’s Atrocities Documentation Project in eastern Chad, interviewing recent survivors of the Darfur genocide. The Project’s findings — including a woman’s account (below, from Totten’s 2011 book, An Oral and Documentary History of the Darfur Genocide) of being gang-raped by members of the Janjaweed, the al-Bashir government’s proxy militia — prompted then-Secretary of State Colin Powell to declare that Sudan had indeed perpetrated genocide.

“There are so many people nobody thinks of. The international community focuses on the big issues but not on what it means to be on the ground, suffering every single miserable day.”

—Sam Totten

One of the men said, “We will not only rape you, but impregnate you with a child.” I told them, “Instead of raping me, it is better to kill me.” Immediately, one of the men hit me on the neck with a knife and ripped off my tob, and sliced off my underclothes with the knife and threw me to the ground and started raping me. The other women screamed and screamed. After all three had raped me, they took the cooking oil and poured it on the ground. Then one said, “You are rubbish! Get out of here.” As I got up, one said, “We could rape you anywhere. Even in your village.”

“There are so many people out there that nobody thinks of,” Totten said, when I asked him about the interviews. “The international community focuses on the big issues but not on what it means to be on the ground, suffering every single miserable day. So I flinch when people call me an expert on genocide. No. You’re not an ‘expert’ until you’ve lived through it.”

The Home Front

Totten knows about living in abject fear. When he was growing up in southern California, not a week passed when he and his younger brother were not beaten, whipped, choked or otherwise terrorized by his father, a policeman.

The elder Totten tore the house apart; held the family at gunpoint; broke his wife’s arm twice in a single evening; and meted out emotional abuse.

“Once I got a D in math,” Totten recalls. “He said, ‘I’m not gonna concern myself with your future, because I really think you’re mentally retarded.’”

Totten found respite in literature and earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English. After teaching in Australia and Israel, he became a student in curriculum and teaching at TC to focus on educating about social issues.

He was influenced by Maxine Greene’s notion of “wide-awakeness” and Lawrence Cremin’s concept of the “configurations of education,” or the multiple ways, beyond the classroom, that people in a democratic society become educated. “That idea has driven what I’ve done throughout my career,” he says. “Careers” would be more accurate.

Over time, though, that balance shifted. When Totten wasn’t interviewing refugees or conducting research in the Nuba Mountains, he was in Rwanda, on a Fulbright, creating and teaching in a master’s degree program on genocide that enrolled members of Parliament and the Supreme Court. A few years ago, when a new department chair at Fayetteville told him to shelve his focus on genocide, he drew his line in the sand.

“I said, ‘This work is at the core of my being, and I’m not giving it up for you or for anyone,’” Totten recalls. Soon afterward, after more than 30 years on the university’s faculty, he left.

End Games

In mid-summer, Totten was in Fayetteville, scrambling unsuccessfully to salvage yet another mission to the Nuba Mountains. These trips require him to seek funders and supplement their contributions with his own money; find local “fixers” to contact the rebels and secure a vehicle; cadge last-minute rides on UN and cargo planes; and wangle letters of passage from rebel paramilitary organizations. This time, he would need to take an even more perilous route — up the Nile by boat, past potential ground fighting along both river banks (one on the Sudan side, the other on the South Sudan side). His biggest anxieties were possible actions of both the Government of South Sudan’s troops and rebel forces, which at this point, he says, are equally murderous and sadistic.

“I oscillate between being really geared up and thinking, ‘Is this how I want to die?’” he told me.

Totten’s missions have prompted even his admirers to accuse him of narcissism, of having a savior complex, and of selfishness toward those who worry about his safety. Kathleen Barta, his wife of 25 years, takes a different view.

“There are people who throw up their hands in a panic and say, ‘Somebody do something,’” Barta, a retired nursing professor, told me. “Well, Sam is that somebody. And when he commits, his follow-through is deep.

“People say, ‘Isn’t it time to stop?’ or ‘Let someone else take over.’ Well, who? If we all thought that way, where would the world be? So, no – as long as I’m ambulatory, I’ll continue.”
—Sam Totten

“He told me early on he wants to squeeze himself dry, until there’s nothing left,” she added softly. “I don’t want to say, ‘Don’t go out and do all this good for all these people,’ just because I’m afraid.”

Not long after that conversation, she sent me lyrics from a song called “Compassion,” by Lucinda Williams:

For everyone you listen to

Have compassion

Even if they don’t want it

What seems cynicism is always a sign

of things no ears have heard

of things no eyes have seen

You do not know

What wars are going on

Down there where the spirit

meets the bone

“That makes me think of Sam,” Barta wrote. “His heart’s so big, though he can have a tough exterior.”

Certainly Totten carries scars. He decided, decades ago, not to become a father, afraid that he carries too much anger. Not a day passes, he says, when he doesn’t think about genocide or berate himself for not doing enough. Ultimately, though, he believes his personal demons are beside the point.

“People say, ‘Isn’t it time to stop?’ Or ‘Let someone else take over.’ Well, who? If we all thought that way, where would the world be? So, no — as long as I’m ambulatory, I’ll continue, because I can’t stand the thought that I’m healthy and not helping the most desperate of the desperate. For me, that’s cowardice.”

 

Memorable! When the World Jewish Congress Called on the U.S. in 1944 to Bomb Auschwitz and the War Department Refused

Would you believe this quotation from the War Department Reply?:

“There has been considerable opinion to the effect that such an effort, even if practicable, might provoke even more vindictive action by the Germans.”

WORLD JEWISH CONGRESS

August 9, 1944

Hon. John J. McCloy
Under Secretary of War
War Department
Washington, D.C.

My dear Mr. Secretary:

I beg to submit to your consideration the following excerpt from a message which we received under date of July 29 from Mr. Ernest Frischer of the Czechoslovak State Council through the War Refugee Board:

“I believe that destruction of gas chambers and crematoria in Oswiecim by bombing would have a certain effect now. Germans are now exhuming and burning corpses in an effort to conceal their crimes. This could be prevented by destruction of crematoria and then Germans might possibly stop further mass exterminations especially since so little time is left to them. Bombing of railway communications in this same area would also be of importance and of military interest.”

Sincerely yours,

A. Leon Kubowitzki
Head, Rescue Department

 

14 August 1944

Dear Mr. Kubowitski:

I refer to your letter of August 9 in which you request consideration of a proposal made by Mr. Ernest Frischer that certain installations and railroad centers be bombed.

The War Department had been approached by the War Refugee Board, which raised the question of the practicability of this suggestion. After a study it became apparent that such an operation could be executed only by the diversion of considerable air support essential to the success of our forces now engaged in decisive operations elsewhere and would in any case be of such doubtful efficacy that it would not warrant the use of our resources. There has been considerable opinion to the effect that such an effort, even if practicable, might provoke even more vindictive action by the Germans.

The War Department fully appreciates the humanitarian motives which promoted the suggested operation, but for the reasons stated above it has not been felt that it can or should be undertaken, at least at this time.

Sincerely,

John J. McCloy
Assistant Secretary of War

The Milestone First International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide in 1982 DID TAKE PLACE QUITE FULLY AND VERY SUCCESSFULLY

By Israel W. Charny

Once and For All for History:

Repeatedly, there are articles that report or suggest that the milestone First International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide in 1982 never took place at all or, alternatively, it is reported that the conference deteriorated severely and just about evaporated.

Thus, the California Courier (June 14, 2018) republished an editorial by the New York-based Jewish Week Media Group (June 6, 2018) in which it was reported that “in 1982, Israel, under pressure from Turkey cancelled the Holocaust conference in which Armenian’s would have described their people’s genocide.  Nobel Peace Laureate Elie Wiesel pulled out of the gathering, reportedly after Turkey threatened reprisals against Turkish Jews.”

Thus, too, in a review of a new book in Hebrew by Professor Yehuda Bauer (An Insolent People in the Global Village), a senior correspondent, Hanoch Marmari, wrote correctly in the Haaretz Book Review Magazine that the opening of the conference that had been planned to take place at Yad Vashem was cancelled in response to the demand of Israel’s Foreign Ministry — which was responding to the pressures of the Turks to prevent the participation of Armenian scholars and deliberations about the Armenian Genocide.  However, Marmari then continued, “In the wake of the cancellation of the program at Yad Vashem, the majority of scheduled participants in the conference cancelled, among them the Holocaust historian who was already well-known at the time, Yehuda Bauer.  Even if several spontaneous sessions did take place, the conference as a whole evaporated.”

The following is intended as a decisive formal correction and restatement of the accurate facts of the important success that the conference achieved even in the face of extreme pressures by the government of Israel which, as noted, was complying with the demands of the Turkish government.

 

For the Formal Record

The pioneering and famous conference on “Holocaust and genocide” in 1982 did take place outstandingly successfully despite very intense efforts on the State of Israel to bring about its cancellation in favor of Turkey’s demands that there be no recognition of the Armenian Genocide.  What is more – all the Armenian scholars who had been invited DID participate.  Terrence des Pres wrote in the Yale Review, “The heroes of knowledge withstood the minions of power.”

What really happened to the conference which I had initiated and was directing in association with a noted Israeli psychiatrist who specialized in treating Holocaust survivors, Shamai Davidson, together with Elie Wiesel who had agreed to be the president of the conference, is that the intense pressures of the Israeli government led to Wiesel’s announcement to the New York Times correspondent in Paris that he was withdrawing. Nonetheless it is extremely important to note that until his resignation Wiesel did not waver from his agreement with Davidson and myself to oppose the demands of the Israel Foreign Ministry to exclude the speakers on the Armenian Genocide and thus to allow the conference to go on.

The Paris bureau of the New York Times called me to confirm that the conference was aborted given Wiesel’s resignation, but I replied – in full kitsch but with resolute intent – that the conference would take place even if only a proverbial ten people were to attend (referring to the Jewish tradition that requires a minimum of ten men to be present for proper prayer in the synagogue).

The conference took place with an attendance of 300 people – out of an earlier expectation of an attendance of 600 before the Israeli government literally called people listed in the preliminary program urging them to cancel. The conference included the screening of films on the Armenian Genocide by Michael Hagopian, and 6 papers by scholars including Richard Hovannisian, Vahakn Dadrian, and Ronald Suny.  We were extremely proud and happy with our success – which was fully reported in the world press, including the New York Times and Jerusalem Post. In addition to praiseworthy editorials and columns in newspapers, it was hailed in many professional articles, books and magazines as a sterling victory for academic freedom. Moreover, the conference was especially celebrated by the world Armenian community as the first academic conference in the world up until that time that gave recognition to the Armenian Genocide. We also enjoyed a very large number of salutes of respect and appreciation from a great number of participants from all over the world.

Nonetheless, as noted there are periodic references in the press and even in scholarly articles declaring that the conference died. It’s a little like the obscenities of denials of the Armenian Genocide or the Holocaust, or whichever genocides of other peoples.

 

Israel W. Charny is Director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem.  Most recently he has published the award-winning The Genocide Contagion: How We Commit and Confront Holocaust and Genocide which looks at human beings years before a Holocaust or genocide.

 

Tribute to Samuel Totten: A Genocide Scholar’s Pioneering Activism

Hightower, Lara Jo (April 14, 2019). Samuel Totten – Words led to action. Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette,  
Retrieved from https://www.nwaonline.com/news/2019/apr/14/samuel-totten-20190414/

Professor Samuel Totten is a Distinguished Fellow of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem. We are proud to reprint the following tribute to him.

On the wall outside internationally known genocide scholar Sam Totten’s home office in Springdale hangs a watercolor painting of a group of five young men standing on a beach. Next to them are their surfboards, which have been planted in the sand. The men are tan and fit and wearing swim trunks. They have long-neck beer bottles in their hands, and some tilt the bottles up to their mouths.

The story of this painting is rather fantastic, and Totten is animated as he tells it. His vast range of knowledge on a grim subject that many of us do our best to block from our minds might make him intimidating, if he weren’t so gregarious, wasn’t such a good storyteller. He explains that a close friend found the painting in an art gallery in California and realized the artist had used a photograph of Totten and his buddies from Laguna Beach as models. Amazed, he purchased the painting and gave it to Totten as a gift.

Self-Portrait

Sam Totten

Something most people do not know about me: I aspire to becoming an accomplished author of fiction. Currently, I am preparing to submit my first book of short stories about genocide to City Lights Publishers in San Francisco.

Most fascinating places I’ve been on earth: The holy city of Benares/Varanarsi in India; the ancient suq in Hebron, on the West Bank; Kathmandu in the late 1970s; and the Kalahari Desert, where I camped, along with a group of anthropologists, with nomadic Bushmen.

Qualities that best describe me: Tenacious and resilient

Qualities I wish I had: Brilliance, patience and more kindness

Greatest accomplishments: Marrying my wife, Kathleen Barta, and one more still to come!

What you fear most: That there actually may be a hell, seeing my loved ones and friends suffer as they approach death, and not doing enough for those in desperate need.

That which motivates me: The desire to constantly strive to become a better person, and my scorn for becoming/being a bystander.

Guests I would most like to have for dinner: My wife, Kathleen Barta; novelist Nikos Kazantazkis; Jesus; Buddha; the Berrigan Brothers; Dorothy Day; Reverend William Sloane Coffin, my pastor while I was a graduate student at Columbia University in New York City; Dr. Israel W. Charny, who was my mentor in the field of genocide studies; M. Gandhi; Professor Ervin Staub, a survivor of the Holocaust and now a renowned scholar of genocide studies; Professor Robert Jay Lifton; Reverend Lowell Grisham; Professor Cornell West; Professor Dick Bennett; Professors Charlene and Michael Carter; novelist Kurt Vonnegut; Muhammad; and William F. Buckley (I guess I’ll need to have it catered, and to purchase a much larger dining room table.)

For someone who has just made his acquaintance, it’s difficult to reconcile the painting — a depiction of late 1960s relaxed insouciance — with the man standing in the hallway today. Consider the contents of his office, just steps away from the painting, to understand the contrast: The 26 books that he’s either edited or written about genocide are displayed on tables. When writing about the atrocities of genocide was no longer enough, Totten started making aid trips on his own to try and help survivors, and mementos from his missions to war-torn areas of the world line his walls and bookshelves. Among them are two or three hunks of dangerously sharp shrapnel, the kind he had to dive into trenches to avoid as war planes flew above him.

“I was so impressed with someone who came out of the Ivory Tower — and I respect the Ivory Tower — bringing facts, research, scientific rigor to complex human and political problems, but then moving with sacrifice and courage to try and make a difference in one of the most difficult situations in the world,” says the Rev. Lowell Grisham of Fayetteville.

Into The Darkness

What could have turned a young man, who once spent his days “surfing, partying and chasing girls,” into someone whose entire existence has become about fighting genocide? It’s a fascinating question. Totten, luckily, is introspective enough to help trace the path.

For one, he says, the “brutality of his father at home” — the elder Totten was a police officer, abusive to his two sons and wife — instilled an early hatred of bullies and dictators. Later, in junior high, Totten would be struck by the idea that he could use his own skill set — including an innate talent for writing that revealed itself early — to make big changes in the world.

“I read Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle,” remembers Totten. “As I read the preface to the book, I was very taken by the notion that a writer could have a profound impact on the policy of a government, the work lives of people, etc. It was at that point in time, after reading the novel and reflecting on the preface, that I knew that someday I would be an author who wrote with the intention of impact, change, for the betterment of humanity.”

And then, nearly a decade later, it was the discovery of an essay written by Amnesty International activist Rose Styron that would help the young Totten narrow his focus.

“This was about six months after I had graduated with a degree in English,” remembers Totten. “And I thought I was well-read, and I was absolutely astonished that I had virtually no knowledge about how pervasive the use of torture was across the globe. And that was what she had written on — torture in Chile, actually. And I was so astonished that the very next day, I went to the Amnesty International office and volunteered.”

Totten charts that experience as “the beginning of my real concern that continues through today about international human rights and the protection of human rights.”

While teaching at the American School in Israel, he made an acquaintance that would shift his path for a final time.

“I happened to meet an individual who was working on, really, one of the first books on a genocide theory,” says Totten. Totten and his new friend, psychologist Israel Charny, would eventually create several books together. “We got to know one another. Slowly but surely, I started thinking: ‘There are so many people in the United States and across the globe who are vitally concerned about international human rights and the protection of international human rights. But you don’t hear that many people talking about genocide.’ And so I thought, ‘Maybe I should go in that direction.'”

Totten had become interested in creating curriculum that would meld the teaching of international human rights issues with history and English and, armed with Doctor of Education and Master of Education degrees from Columbia University in New York, he was hired by the University of Arkansas College of Education and Health Professions in 1987. There were already signs, however, that Totten’s recognition as a genocide scholar on the national level was rising.

“I was invited to work with the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, which was the predecessor to the museum,” he says. “This group basically conducted studies about, “Well, how are we going to develop programs?'” Totten’s curriculum would eventually be used in the classroom of every teacher who sought guidance from the museum when he served as the lead author for the “Teacher Guidelines for Teaching About the Holocaust.”

While genocide was increasingly taking focus in Totten’s work, genocide studies was not what he was hired at the University of Arkansas to teach. His work with the university included teaching guides, curricular resources and instructional processes for teaching. The way Totten scrupulously took great pains to make sure that he delineated his university work from his genocide studies is a testament to his stamina and work ethic.

“I was really fired up about genocide,” he says. “There’s no doubt about it. And so what I started to do — I mean, it sounds crazy in retrospect — but I basically ended up having two separate careers. I would go into my office, some days as early as 2:30 in the morning, but mostly about 3:30 a.m. or 4 a.m. And I would work until 8 or 9 a.m., because that’s when the secretary showed up. And I thought, ‘All right, well I’m on the clock to do education,’ and the rest of the day I dedicated to doing what I was hired to do.”

This worked fine for a time: Totten had several deans over the years who were supportive of his dual focus, and, as he continued to publish in both areas, his career certainly shined a positive light on the university. But then an incoming chairman took issue with his extracurricular activity and asked him to focus solely on education.

“I said, ‘What you’re asking me to do is to gut the core of who I am, and it’s not going to happen,'” remembers Totten.

Into The War Zones

Totten says he loved teaching, but at 62, he ended over two decades of work at the university by retiring to focus on field research. He had felt the pull toward that as far back as 1994, when he was asked to serve as an investigator on the U.S. State Department’s Darfur Atrocities Documentation Project. Long-simmering conflicts there had peaked in 2003; mass murders and rampant torture would eventually lead the United Nations to call the situation “one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world.” Totten and the group with which he traveled to Chad were responsible for gathering information that would inform the United States whether the government of Sudan was committing crimes against humanity or genocide. In teams of two, eight-page questionnaires in hand, they would interview refugees who had, in some instances, fled the violence of their country just days before. Some were missing family members. Some had seen their family members brutally murdered in front of them.

“The very first person I interviewed, I thought, if this is the way it’s going to go, I’m going to have a hard time,” says Totten. “It was a woman who was living by herself. She fled her village. She didn’t know where her husband was. She didn’t know if he was alive. She didn’t know if he was still up in the mountains in Sudan or in another refugee camp. Her son and she were sitting there, and, maybe a half hour, 45 minutes into this interview, she went quiet, absolutely quiet. She had just started telling us that she had been attacked, and the way she put it was that she was forced to dance in lewd ways. And the interpreter figured out that she was talking about being raped, but she didn’t want to put it that way. So here we are, and she’s gone silent, and, you know, I know what my job is — to get the interviews — but, hey, this is a human being. And I told her, ‘Look, if you don’t want to talk anymore, we can end it, no problem.’ And she would say, ‘No, no, no, wait.’ And we would sit there 15 minutes. It was agonizing, because you could see it was agonizing for her.”

It was far from the worst story that Totten would hear. For over a month, he listened to the stories of people who had experienced the worst possible atrocities you could imagine. Many times, he says, bearing witness to their trauma was excruciating.

“Sometimes, the people would start to emote, crying, not being able to talk,” he remembers. “And as an interviewer, I mean, generally, you don’t want to emote because if you do, the whole thing will shut down. So what I literally did was bite down as hard as I could on my lip, and I would just listen. And that’s the way I got through it.”

Totten would use what he learned through this experience to publish several books and was ultimately asked to give expert testimony about the Darfur genocide for the International Criminal Court. His work and the work of his fellow researchers was used in Colin Powell’s testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2004, when Powell officially classified what was happening in Darfur as genocide.

This wasn’t Totten’s first experience with field interviews, but it was the first time he had spoken with survivors for whom the horror was so immediate, so fresh. And, suddenly, it was personal for him in a more intense way than it had been before. Galvanized by the fact that very little international aid was being given to this area of enormous need, he started doing what he could, all on his own, returning to the Chad/Darfur border again and again and, later, to the Nuba Mountains, located in South Sudan. His goal was to continue recording the stories of survivors, as well as to deliver whatever food and other supplies he had been able to bring with him through fundraising.

Traveling under his own auspices — no protection from a large aid organization or government entity — requires feats of nimbleness the average person would find impossible. Totten must find his own funding, interpreters, hosts, drivers and transportation. And many times, he’s traveling in areas that are under siege.

“The way that people were getting killed, initially, was that the shrapnel would fly, and they would be running, and it would shear off an arm, shear off a leg, or gut them like hamburger,” he says matter-of-factly. “If you’re traveling, what you do is, you jump out of the vehicle and you make a run for it out in the desert. You try to find a trench or something to jump into.

“One day I’ll never forget, because five times we did that within about an hour and a half. Each and every time I thought, ‘Well, this could be it.'”

“I know him, I know that he has a heart for other people who are suffering from war,” says George Tutu, a native of the Nuba Mountains who now lives in the United States. Tutu and Totten helped form the End Nuba Genocide (ENG) organization that has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in supplies and donations. “He tries to help, and he does a lot to help other people. In the Nuba Mountains, where I come from, he helps some of the students who were kicked out of their school because they didn’t pay. He took over [supporting] them and [helping] them finish their education. Sam travels a lot to West Africa, especially Uganda, finding some families with kids that have stayed at home because they don’t have funds that support schools. Sam has given them money to continue their schooling.”

Totten has funded these missions with a combination of his own money and donations from other activists and scholars but, he says, Arkansans, in particular, have been incredibly generous. Totten says former students, the Omni Center for Peace, Justice and Equality and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church have all been big supporters of his work.

Into The Future

If Totten is a hero — and given his life’s work, it’s difficult to argue the point — then that title must also extend to his wife, Kathleen Barta. An artist and a retired nursing professor — the two met at a computer lab on the UA campus during Totten’s first years at the university — Barta is wholeheartedly supportive of Totten’s dangerous work, even though, he says, she dreads each time he leaves.

“Sam is my greatest teacher,” says Barta. “I’ve learned to live in the mystery of holding two opposing desires in loving tension and not need to reconcile them. My brother recently asked me if I have a red line when it comes to Sam’s trips. I’ve thought about it, and I do not want to throw a tantrum and say, ‘Stop caring about other people, and stay home with me.’ Some people are afraid of dying. Sam is afraid of not truly living. The trips are not easy for him. I try to support him to live what Maxine Greene calls a ‘wide-awake’ life and do what he can as long as he can. While he’s gone, I try to keep a regular schedule of sleep, exercise and creative activity so I can be ready to support him from a distance if necessary. I also try to use my concern for his safety to empathize with the many young families of our deployed military personnel coping with the absence of their loved ones who are in so many dangerous situations.”

Totten will be leaving soon for a visit to a refugee camp in Uganda. Nearing 70 , he claims he’s slowing down, although there’s no evidence of that — he’s still taking trips, delivering aid and recording the painful stories of displaced people. He’s got several books in the works. Age, however, has brought multiplying health problems, exacerbated by the difficult travel conditions to which he submits himself.

“[Kathleen] has also literally been my lifeline, arranging to have me med-evaced out of a Doctors Without Borders hospital (i.e. an open airplane hangar along the Sudan/South Sudan border) to the Nairobi Hospital in Kenya, where I remained another week due to passing out and hitting my head in a makeshift cement block shower in a refugee camp,” says Totten of one frightening incident.

But listening to him talk about the evolution of his career and mission, it seems unlikely he’ll stop any time soon.

“What bothered me immensely is that, over the years, I’ve read over and over again criticism of so-called bystanders that are living in the society where the crimes are being perpetrated,” says Totten. “And I started thinking, “It’s easy to point a finger at those people, but I would like to see the rest of us, say, in a Rwanda — where if anybody were caught helping a Tutsi, they would be hacked to death with a machete — how many people would not be a bystander in that situation?

“The real bystanders are those of us on the outside who live in a nation where you can say anything you want, attempt to raise money, attempt to get help. And so I have this special disdain for bystanders, and I’m pointing my finger at myself, because I’m thinking, ‘hey, is it enough to write about this? Is it enough to educate?’ And I came to the conclusion that, no, it’s not.”

Totten says he’s working on several fiction projects right now, an attempt to escape the darkness the last three decades of his career have brought him. But it’s clear that it’s not that easy: Two of those fiction projects are still centered around that familiar subject. He shares a short story from a collection he’s working on; it’s a first person narrative about a survivor of the Rwanda genocide. It’s full of haunting, heartbreaking details — some, no doubt, that Totten heard first hand — of a Tutsi who survived the violence, though his family did not. These are stories that are always present with Totten, they are stories that, once heard, cannot be dismissed, and there is little doubt that Totten is haunted by them.

“Before I die, I want to be just immersed in fiction and move away from this darkness, because it does start to engulf you,” he admits. “I do it seven days a week, and I have for years. No matter how much work I do, how much research I do, you never get inured to the horrors.”

One moment, he suggests there is an eventual end to his mission, but, later, his words make it clear that, while some who study and write about genocide can find a way to detach from their subject, Totten cannot. In fact, he constantly wonders if he should be helping in other areas of the word where genocide survivors need support.

For Totten, even his enormous contributions — unimaginable to the average person — are never enough.

“If I don’t do it, who will?” he asks, rhetorically. “I am always told — by family members and dear friends — ‘Let somebody else do it.’ Not going to happen. If everybody had such a mentality then this world would be a much, much poorer place.”

Resolution against Denial of the Armenian Genocide and for its Recognition in the U.S. House of Representatives

Excerpted from Asbarez, April 9, 2019.

New Armenian Genocide Resolution Locks-In Official Recognition, Rejects Turkey’s Denial, Encourages Public Education. Representatives Schiff and Bilirakis joined by over 70 U.S. House Colleagues in Launching Bipartisan Resolution

WASHINGTON—On the eve of the Capitol Hill Armenian Genocide Observance, Congressmen Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Gus Bilirakis (R-FL)  were joined by more than 70 of their U.S. House colleagues in introducing a new Armenian Genocide Resolution aimed at establishing, as a matter of U.S. policy, 1) the rejection of Armenian Genocide denial, 2) ongoing official U.S. government recognition and remembrance of this crime, and 3) the importance of education about the Armenian Genocide in preventing modern-day atrocities, reported the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).

“All who oppose genocide welcome today’s launch of legislation locking-in U.S. recognition of the Armenian Genocide and – once and for all – locking-out Turkish denials of this crime,” said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian. “This bipartisan measure – spearheaded by Representatives Adam Schiff and Gus Bilirakis – also permanently locks down – as official U.S. policy – that future generations should be educated about the facts of this crime, America’s noble relief efforts for its victims, and – most urgently – the relevance of the Armenian Genocide to modern-day crimes against humanity.”

Rep. Schiff highlighted the genocide prevention role of the legislation. “Over 100 years ago, the Ottoman Empire undertook a brutal campaign of murder, rape, and displacement against the Armenian people that took the lives of 1.5 million men, women, and children in the first genocide of the 20th century,” said Rep. Schiff. “Genocide is not a relic of the past, but an ever present threat. Its denial is not only a continuing injury to the survivors, but makes its repetition against another people more likely. It is therefore all the more pressing that the Congress recognize the historical fact of the Armenian Genocide and make clear that we will never be an accomplice to denial.”

THE NEW ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RESOLUTION 

1: LOCKS IN U.S. RECOGNITION
Resolved, That is the sense of the House of Representatives that it is the policy of the United States to (1) commemorate the Armenian Genocide through official recognition and remembrance;

2: LOCKS OUT TURKISH DENIAL
(2) reject efforts to enlist, engage, or otherwise associate the United States Government with denial of the Armenian Genocide or any other genocide; and

3: LOCKS DOWN EDUCATION
(3) encourage education and public understanding of the facts of the Armenian Genocide, including the United States role in the humanitarian relief efforts, and the relevance of the Armenian Genocide to modern-day crimes against humanity.

To see the full story: http://asbarez.com/178851/schiff-bilirakis-introduce-armenian-genocide-resolution/

Harut Sassounian: Azerbaijan’s destruction of Armenian monuments exceeds ISIS crimes

“A groundbreaking forensic report tracks Azerbaijan’s destruction of 89 medieval churches, 5,480 intricate cross-stones, and 22,700 tombstones,” is the subtitle of an incredible article by Simon Maghakyan and Sarah Pickman, published in the Hyperallergic Magazine last week. The article is titled: “A Regime Conceals its Erasure of Indigenous Armenian Culture.”

In April 2011, when the U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan wanted to visit Nakhichevan, an Armenian territory classified by the Soviets as an “autonomous republic” of Azerbaijan, to verify the destruction of thousands of historical medieval Armenian khachkars (cross-stones), he was blocked by Azeri officials who told him that reports of their destruction was fake news.

Under Azeri oppression, the longstanding Armenian community of Nakhichevan had dwindled to zero. Not content with ethnic-cleansing, the Azeris proceeded to eliminate all traces of Armenian monuments, claiming that no Armenians had ever lived in Nakhichevan.

“In December 2005, an Iranian border patrol alerted the Prelate of Northern Iran’s Armenian Church that the vast Djulfa cemetery, visible across the border in Azerbaijan, was under military attack. Bishop Nshan Topouzian and his driver rushed to videotape over 100 Azerbaijani soldiers, armed with sledgehammers, dump trucks and cranes destroying the cemetery’s remaining 2,000 khachkars; over 1,000 had already been purged in 1998 and 2002,” reported Maghakyan and Pickman.

The flattened land, where the khachkars stood for centuries, is now a military rifle range. The “demolition was the ‘grand finale’ of Azerbaijan’s eradication of Nakhichevan’s Armenian past,” wrote the two authors.

Maghakyan and Pickman reported that “the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) employed remote sensing technologies in its pioneer investigation into cultural destruction. Their 2010 geospatial study concluded that ‘satellite evidence is consistent with reports by observers on the ground who have reported the destruction of Armenian artifacts in the Djulfa cemetery.’”

“Absolutely false and slanderous information … [fabricated by] the Armenian lobby,” proclaimed Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, who makes frequent threats against Armenia and distorts its history.

The authors also quote from public decree No.5-03/S on December 6, 2005, by Nakhichevan’s “local autocrat” Vasif Talibov, a relative of Pres. Aliyev, “ordering a detailed inventory of Nakhichevan’s monuments. Three years later, the investigation was summed up in the bilingual English and Azerbaijani ‘Encyclopedia of Nakhchivan Monuments,’ co-edited by Talibov himself. Missing from the 522-page ‘Encyclopedia’ are the 89 medieval churches, 5,840 intricate khachkars, and 22,000 tombstones that [Armenian researcher Argam] Ayvazyan had meticulously documented. There is not so much as a footnote on the now-defunct Christian Armenian communities in the area—Apostolic and Catholic alike. Nevertheless, the official Azerbaijani publication’s foreword explicitly reveals ‘Armenians’ as the reason for No. 5-03/S: ‘Thereafter the decision issued on 6 December 2005 … a passport was issued for each monument … Armenians demonstrating hostility against us not only have an injustice [sic] land claim from Nakhchivan, but also our historical monuments by giving biassed [sic] information to the international community. The held investigations once again prove that the land of Nakhchivan belonged to the Azerbaijan turks [sic]….’”

Any Azerbaijani who dares to speak out in defense of Armenians is also attacked as an enemy of Azerbaijan. A courageous Azerbaijani writer, Akram Aylisli, paid a hefty price for telling the truth about the destruction of Armenian monuments in his hometown of Agulis (known today as Aylis). The well-known novelist was furious that the Azeri government was destroying Armenian churches. In his novel, “Stone Dreams,” the protagonist, an intellectual from Agulis, refers to memories of the town’s eight of the 12 medieval churches that had survived until the 1990’s, and protects a victim of anti-Armenian pogroms in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku. Pres. Aliyev revoked Aylisli’s pension and title of “People’s Writer.” His writings were removed from school curricula, his books were publicly burned, and his family members were fired from their jobs. He has been under de facto house arrest since the release of his novel. Aylisli protested the destruction of the Armenian churches in Agulis and resigned from his position as Member of Azerbaijan’s Parliament. He fearlessly sent a telegram to Pres. Heydar Aliyev in 1997, calling the destruction of the Armenian churches in Aylis an “act of vandalism being perpetrated through the involvement of armed forces and employment of anti-tank mines.”

The two authors spoke with Russian journalist Shura Burtin who after interviewing Aylisli in 2013 traveled to Nakhichevan and reported that he didn’t see “a trace of the area’s glorious past.” Burtin concluded: “Not even ISIS could commit such an epic crime against humanity.”

The authors reported that Aylisli’s 2018 non-fiction essay in Farewell, claimed “that a mosque built five years ago on the site of one of the destroyed churches has been boycotted by locals because ‘everyone in Aylis knows that prayers offered in a mosque built in the place of a church don’t reach the ears of Allah.’”

Argam Ayvazyan, a native of Nakhichevan who spent decades photographing the local Armenian monuments before their destruction, was quoted by Maghakyan and Pickman as decrying the world’s silence: “Oil-rich Azerbaijan’s annihilation of Nakhichevan’s Armenian past make it worse than ISIS, yet UNESCO and most Westerners have looked away.” ISIS-demolished sites like Palmyra can be renovated, Ayvazyan argued, but “all that remain of Nakhichevan’s Armenian churches and cross-stones that survived earthquakes, caliphs, Tamerlane, and Stalin are my photographs.”

Reprinted with permission from Sassounian, Harut (February 28, 2019). Azerbaijan’s destruction of Armenian monuments exceeds ISIS crimes.  California Courier.

Israeli and Polish Students Together Memorialize the Holocaust at Auschwitz

A report of a remarkable ceremony at Auschwitz in March 2019 tells of Israeli and Polish students standing side by side reading out the names of their relatives who were murdered in the Holocaust at Auschwitz-Birkenau and other death camps.

As is widely known, the Polish government in recent years has gone to an extreme of seeking to deny any and all involvement of Poles alongside the Nazis in the execution of the Holocaust, and it has been emphasizing a narrative that focuses on the Polish victims of the Nazis and not only the Jewish victims.  The joint ceremony of Israeli and Polish young people avoids the effort at denying Polish persecution and murders of Jews while at the same time achieving a touching and legitimate reconstruction of the fates of so many Poles too.

Intriguingly, it is reported that when this project was first proposed to the Israel Education Ministry, “They called me a traitor, they accused me of introducing Israeli teens to anti-Semites, to the children of murderers.”

The Israeli students who participated in this project also went on to the memorial at Jedwabne whose inhabitants murdered hundreds of Jews who came home after the Holocaust – as described by the world famous Polish-Jewish historian Jan Gross.  These students reported that when they arrived they were greeted with the hostility of the locals whose attitude was, “it’s not us, it’s the Germans.”

For the complete story, see Aderet, Ofer (March 26, 2019).  Two peoples, one ceremony: Israeli, Polish students hold memorial at Auschwitz.  Haaretz English Edition.

https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/.premium-two-peoples-one-ceremony-israeli-polish-students-hold-memorial-at-auschwitz-1.7059463

 

ELIE WIESEL GENOCIDE AND ATROCITIES PREVENTION ACT SIGNED INTO LAW

On January 14, 2019, President Donald Trump signed the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act, a ground-breaking genocide prevention law, overwhelmingly adopted by the Senate and House, which codifies earlier measures including those implemented by the Obama Administration, and puts in place a set of clear policies and processes to prevent new atrocities.

The law states that U.S. must regard the prevention of genocide and other atrocity crimes as a core national security interest and moral responsibility. To that end, it calls for the creation of a task force to strengthen State Department efforts and assist other agency efforts at atrocity prevention and response. The law also calls for the training of Foreign Service Officers “on recognizing patterns of escalation and early warning signs of potential atrocities, and methods of preventing and responding to atrocities, including conflict assessment methods, peacebuilding, mediation for prevention, early action and response, and appropriate transitional justice measures to address atrocities.”

As part of the new provision, the President is required to transmit a report to Senate and House Committees on Foreign Affairs and Appropriations, offering a review of countries and regions at risk of atrocity crimes, the most likely pathways to violence, specific risk factors, potential perpetrators, and at-risk target groups.

The law also calls on the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development to support programs and activities to prevent or respond to emerging or unforeseen foreign challenges and complex crises overseas, including potential atrocity crimes.

This bill states that it is U.S. policy to regard the prevention of genocide and other atrocity crimes as a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility.

The President shall instruct the Department of State to establish a Mass Atrocities Task Force to strengthen State Department efforts and assist other agency efforts at atrocity prevention and response.

The Foreign Service Act of 1980 is amended to provide for the training of Foreign Service Officers in conflict and atrocity crimes prevention.

The Director of National Intelligence is encouraged to include in his or her annual testimony to Congress on threats to U.S. national security: (1) a review of countries and regions at risk of atrocity crimes; and (2) specific countries and regions at immediate risk of atrocity crimes, including most likely pathways to violence, specific risk factors, potential perpetrators, and at-risk target groups.

The bill establishes the Complex Crises Fund to enable the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development to support programs and activities to prevent or respond to emerging or unforeseen foreign challenges and complex crises overseas, including potential atrocity crimes. Fund amounts may not be expended for lethal assistance or to respond to natural disasters.

The bill was signed into law by President Trump a few days before International Holocaust Day on January 27. Entitled formally the “International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, ” the day was designed by a UN General Assembly resolution adopted on November 1, 2005.. On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops liberated the biggest Nazi concentration camp in the then occupied Poland, Auschwitz-Birkenau.

From: CONGRESS.GOV: Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act of 2018 115th Congress
S.1158 — 115th Congress (2017-2018)
Introduced in Senate (05/17/2017)
Sponsor: Sen. Cardin, Benjamin L. [D-MD] (Introduced 05/17/2017)
Committees: Senate – Foreign Relations
Latest Action: 01/14/2019 Became Public Law No: 115-441https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/1158 S.1158 – Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act of 2018 115th Congress (2017-2018)

The State of Israel and the U.N. International Day of Commemoration of Victims of Genocide and of its Prevention – December 9

Includes link to article in Hebrew  by Uriel Levy in Davar Rishon, 25.1.2019, “לא לעמוד מנגד” – Do Not Be a Bystander and a discussion of the new U.S. law, Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act (see also the post on this law on this website).

The Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem, under the direction of Professors Israel Charny and Yair Auron submitted proposals for Op-Eds to be published in the Haaretz Hebrew Edition and in the Haaretz English Edition and the Jerusalem Post, but all of these submissions went unanswered.  (In the interest of self-disclosure, it is only fair to add that as we return to the text of our submissions in English we find in our computer files that one paragraph came through as gibberish and could have spoiled it all.)

Along with the (non-gibberish) text of the Op-Ed to the English newspapers (see below), we are also mounting an excellent article in Hebrew by Uriel Levy of the Combat Genocide movement in Israel about the INTERNATIONAL DAY OF COMMEMORATION IN MEMORY OF VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST, January 27 (Levy’s article was published in the Hebrew weekly, Davar Rishon, updated January 25, 2019). Click here to read full text.

Levy emphasizes and celebrates the larger meaning of memorial of the Holocaust of the Jewish people as an “actual commandment” to all peoples everywhere, “Never Again.”  He reviews the “devastating historical chronicle” of one event of genocide after another in our world since the Holocaust, including Biafra, Burundi, Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia, and more, and calls on all of us and our world as a whole to take notice and to take action to stop genocide.

***

To the Editor

INTERNATIONAL DAY OF COMMEMORATION OF VICTIMS OF GENOCIDE AND OF ITS PREVENTION

December 9 is a day proclaimed by the United Nations as a memorial to all the victims of genocide of all peoples:

December 9 is the day that in 1945 the United Nations passed the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

Moreover, it is interesting to note that the proposal for this memorial day was introduced by Armenia. The Armenian people were the greatest victim of genocide in the 20th century before our Holocaust, and to many researchers, the Armenian Genocide paved the way for the Holocaust. It should also be noted that Armenia passed this decision after it managed to enact such a memorial day for all the victims of genocide in the world in the Armenian calendar.

To the best of our knowledge, until now, in the first years since the proclamation of the UN international day of commemoration of all victims in 2015, the State of Israel has not participated in any meaningful way.

It seems to us that it is appropriate to participate actively in this memorial, beginning with the Jewish tradition that places so much emphasis on the value of life of every created being, and as a further expression of our ‘special role’ as a chosen people for suffering, and of course based on our understanding of the grim lessons of our own Holocaust.

We, Jews and citizens of the State of Israel, wholeheartedly applaud Armenia for the initiative.

We extend through the media in Israel a declaration congratulating Armenia on its initiative to enact an International Day of Remembrance for all the victims of genocide worldwide.

At the same time, we note that we call upon the State of Israel to formally recognize the Armenian Genocide that claimed the lives of 1.5 million Armenians and a similar number of Assyrians, Yazidis, Greeks, and others.

During the Armenian Genocide period, members of NILI, an organization devoted to pursuing the Zionist goal when Palestine was still part of the Ottoman Empire, warned the Yishuv (that of course was under Turkish control) that a similar fate could and probably awaited the Jews. And indeed few people know or remember there were two actual periods of expulsion of Jews by the Turks in Palestine and the deaths of several thousand of them under the stresses of the expulsions. Sara Aharonson of Nili, who was later hung by the Turks, was a direct witness to the murder of the Armenians in Turkey, and among other things she described trains loaded with people and bodies that had been discarded and replaced by other Armenians.

Needless to add, beyond any practical political considerations, we are deeply ashamed of a Holocaust-stricken people for not recognizing the factual nature of the Armenian Genocide. Moreover, the attempt to legislate recently in the Knesset to recognition of the recent genocide of the Yazidi people (and there are reports that this genocide continues to this day) was rejected as if it were out of lack of interest and not from any consideration of realpolitik.

When all is said and done, we Israelis-Jews are earning for ourselves an identity as leading deniers of genocides.

Sincerely,

Prof. Israel Charny and Prof. Yair Auron

Chairmen of the Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Genocide, Jerusalem     engygeno@gmail.com

It should be noted that we were both awarded the Armenia Prize and the Gold Medal from the President of Armenia for our contributions to international recognition of the Armenian Genocide

 

 

 

 

Armenian Dress Rehearsal: Jerusalem Post Letter to the Editor by Israel Charny

February 4, 2019 

The news and anticipation that relationships between Israel and Armenia are developing constructively is good news indeed (“Are Israeli-Armenian Relations Warming Up,” January 9), if only because the Armenian people are our true brothers in suffering major genocides in the 20th century. As the Armenian Genocide is considered by many scholars to have been a “dress rehearsal” for our Holocaust, there should be respectful and helpful relationships between the two peoples and their countries.

Dr. Chen Bram, the research fellow at Truman Institute, is so right when he calls for Israel’s foreign policy to be both value-based and in response to the realities of realpolitik. Even if Azerbaijan is an important ally for us, we should never put off recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

A correction to one major error in the valuable article: the expulsion and genocide of the Armenians by the Ottomans in 1915 was not in response to Armenians favoring the Russians in their war against the Ottomans. In fact, the Armenian Genocide really began in 1895 with the murder of 200,000 Armenians by the Ottomans – a fact that tells you that the subsequent continuation of the genocide sprang from demands for the exclusivity of pan-Turkism. Does the demand for exclusivity sound familiar?

PROF. ISRAEL CHARNY 
Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide 
Jerusalem

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Feburary-4-2019-No-one-wanted-to-see-it-579585

Review of A DEMOCRATIC MIND and PSYCHOTHERAPY FOR A DEMOCRATIC MIND

Review of A Democratic Mind: Psychology and Psychiatry with Fewer Meds and More Soul . Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017; and Psychotherapy for a Democratic Mind: Treatment of Intimacy, Tragedy, Violence and Evil. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018.

Reviewed by Michael Berenbaum

I have known Israel Charny for years and worked with him directly on the Encyclopedia of Genocide. We have fought on the same side within the Jewish establishment and the Israeli government to affirm the Armenian Genocide. In fact, we have a most unusual and very early connection. I have been a student of his father, who was the Principal of my Elementary and Middle School, and later of his brother, who was the renowned Israeli poet T. Carmi, at the Hebrew University. In fact, I studied the very same material with both as did he. I have followed Charny’s writings on genocide but not his psychological publications. At least in the technical sense, I am not professionally qualified to review much of this material, but as one who has worked deeply in the field of the Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and as a person who for family reasons has seen the limits and the problems with contemporary psychotherapeutic practices, I may have something worthy of to say about Charny’s work.

Charny makes bold claims. He argues that a) mental health must include both how a person is suffering and what harm he/she is causing to others as well as themselves; b) He is pushing for therapy that goes beyond relieving symptoms and seeks to cultivate people who can enter into respectful egalitarian relationship with others; c) He offers new concepts of psychotherapy for those who have been victims of violence and catastrophic loss, and d) He seeks to bridge between traditional therapy and the politics of fascism [tyranny] terrorism and genocide. His works succeeds in presenting these issues. Points a and b are central for him. He convinced me. Whether he can convince the field is another matter. He is quite experienced at c both as an Israeli who has had to deal with victims of terrorism and war and as a therapist of a certain age who has been required to deal with Holocaust survivors. His experience and his expertise have also placed him in a position to deal with victims of other significant genocides.

His writing is lucid and interesting. There is a fine mixture of theory and praxis and his work is passionate and lively. He has interesting things of say and he says them in a compelling manner. I am less persuaded by the fascist/democratic dichotomy; these are political historical terms which are applied in a psychotherapeutic context, and some may read them as name calling, yet I can appreciate the strength of his polemic. Psychotherapists, he argues, cannot be value neutral. They must treat the whole human being. They also must have criteria for successful treatment that are larger than merely working productively and living one’s intimate life successfully. We don’t need more Eichmann and Mengeles; we do need those who will resist them. He demands that therapy also confront the issue of the harm that a person may do, that it face the reality that some practitioners are merely supplying drugs to treat the symptoms without dealing with the underlying causes. His guidance in these matters is persuasive and compassionate.

I also respect the fact that this work has been written by a man who is now 86 years old who is knowingly closing in on the end of his natural life. So this book has the feel of final words of wisdom – and indeed they are wise – and things he wished to say but perhaps was too constrained to say because he did not want to ruffle feathers, disturb friends, add ammunition to the counterarguments of intellectual foes, but must say now before it is too late. Throughout, he is saying that “I have something to say and by golly I will say them directly, lucidly, without anger and malice but pointedly, directly and without fear.”

The organization of his writing makes sense; chapters flow from one another and I looked forward to reading the next chapter. Clearly written with passion, his passion drives the work and gives it vitality. The repeated challenges to the DSM Manual may become problematic to the layman but perhaps not to the professional reader. As a client/patient and the former spouse and father of client/patients my one encounter with the DSM was for insurance coding. I learned that arriving at a diagnosis is an art as well as a science.

I suspect that I am not alone in wondering about the “elephant in the room,” that remains virtually unmentioned and that is the economics of the insurance industry and not just the drug companies, since treatment is deeply affected by what insurance companies are willing to pay, and what treatments they will finance. Otherwise, drug therapy becomes a necessity and turns out to be far less expensive than years and even months on the therapeutic couch.

I heartedly endorse his breaks from the orthodoxies of his profession including not merely individual therapy but calling in families, parents, spouses and children so that the full dynamics can be explored and also the insight into “those, who while appearing sane, drive others around them crazy.” We all have known people like that and can identify with the problem, if not its solution.

In the areas of Holocaust and Genocide Studies that I know well, Charny’s research is well up-to-date. He has considered the latest works and his assessment of their importance and what can be learned from them is well balanced and well researched. Given what I have read in psychology, I presume that he is equally responsible and well sourced in that disciplined but I am not the source to vouch for that.

The writing held my interest throughout, I read it chapter by chapter and despite its length when I finished a chapter I was ready to move to the next. The writing is by a man who not only loves life, but loves the life that he has led despite having the scars and bruises that come with a life of intensity and living with the historical pain of struggling with genocide and the personal pain of encountering people in pain, himself included. Anyone who is not embarrassed to live in our age is embarrassing.

The greatest strengths of this work are its candor, its clarity and its courage. He is not holding back but challenging many in his profession. His writing is clear, his points well-made and he is unrestrained is espousing his point of view, generous to his teachers and mentors and those who research he respects and highly critical where criticism is warranted. I suggest that the greatest weakness is using political and historical categories in a therapeutic context also. The DSM is the boogey man in the room and I would say that as long as he neglects to deal with the economics of his profession and without dealing with it, too little real progress is possible.

In sum, Israel Charny provides a candid and critical exploration of the limits of contemporary psychotherapy and a passionate plea to expand its agenda to not only treat the individual but the impact that a person has on his/her family, community and world and the necessity of cultivating open, compassionate and engaged people who embrace life. I would read it again and assign it to my gifted students.

 

Michael Berenbaum was responsible for the excellence of the design of the exhibits at the US Holocaust Museum during its development and early years.  Today, together with a design artist, Eddie Jacobs, he directs new projects for building Holocaust museums in many cities. In this review he evaluates knowledgably the link between psychological diagnosis and therapy to interpersonal relations and critical social issues, and although himself not a psychotherapist draws candidly on his personal experiences with therapy for him and his family. Word count 82

 

A Deadly Serious Satire on Israel Failing to Recognize Other Genocides

The Knesset voted down a bill on Wednesday that would have recognized that the Yazidi people, a Kurdish religious minority with a presence in Iraq and Syria and the surrounding region, had been victims of genocide.

Fifty-eight Knesset members voted against the bill, which was sponsored by Zionist Union Knesset member Ksenia Svetlova, while 38 voted in favor. In addition to conferring official Israeli recognition that the Yazidis had been victims of genocide, the legislation would have established a memorial day to the Yazidis and would have mandated that their case be made part of the country’s school curriculums.

Lis, Jonathan (November 22, 2018). Israel Votes Down Recognition of Yazidi Genocide, Citing UN.  Haaretz English Edition.

 

SATIRE:

Dear Reader, If you stay with the fantastic mix up of names that follows you will certainly get the point that our Israel is now a leader in denials of other peoples’ genocides (e.g., the Yazidi – the Knesset just turned down a resolution to recognize the Yazidi genocide, and the long-standing denial of the Armenian Genocide.) Here goes:

There are continuing reports of Jews being rounded up in communities in Russia immediately after the arrival of troops from Nazi Germany.  According to some sources, Jews have been marched out of town to nearby forests and ravines where they have been ordered to undress and then were systematically shot and fell into mass graves.

Nazi atrocities and killing of Jews have been mounting over the several last years particularly since a night that has been designated “Kristallnacht” on November 1938 when seemingly spontaneous mobs throughout Germany descended on Jewish places of business and Jewish people, beating them and murdering nearly 100.  The authorities then dispatched many of them to concentration camps.

The governments of Armenia and Yazidi land have introduced a resolution in the United Nations to identify the Nazi mass murder of Jews as a genocide.  However, unexpectedly, the resolution has encountered considerable resistance including an announcement by the State of Israel that they would not recognize the genocide by Nazi Germany.It has been noted that Israel has a very profitable economic and political relationship with Germany. For many Jews Israel’s failure to recognize the genocide of the Jews is deeply disappointing.  End of irony.

Comment

One writer for an Anglo-Jewish press, jewishpress.com, has concluded that there are many Israelis and Jews “who would like Israel to show the same leadership on the issue of genocide-prevention that it displays in its responses to humanitarian disasters around the world. (“Knesset confused on Yazidi genocide, Ben Cohen, November 27, 2018)

The Art of Denying Denial: Telling the Truth but Simultaneously Evading It

Lynne Tracy, Ambassadorial nominee to Armenia, confirms “the mass killings that ended 1.5 million lives,” but will not use the big G-word and say the profanity “Genocide.” 

In a forceful editorial, “U.S. Ambassador to Armenian Should Call the Armenian Genocide a Genocide,” Harut Sassounian, publisher of the California Courier, reproduces the amazing dialogue of denial of denial that was heard during the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing on the nomination of Lynne Tracy as a U.S. ambassador to Armenia.

In her opening statement at the hearing, Tracy avoided using the term Armenian Genocide:

“Mr. Chairman, the horrific events of 1915, the Meds Yeghern or Great Calamity, when 1.5 million Armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in the final years of the Ottoman Empire, must never be forgotten. As President Trump stated on Armenian Remembrance Day this year: ‘As we honor the memory of those who suffered, we [must] ensure that such atrocities are not repeated.’ If confirmed, I pledge to do everything in my power to remember the Meds Yeghern victims and uphold that solemn commitment. We must also look to the future and the opportunities for Armenia’s next generation. Progress toward reconciliation with Turkey can help reduce Armenia’s isolation and bolster its economy. Towards that end, we encourage Turkey and Armenia to acknowledge and reckon with painful elements of the past. If confirmed, I will do my best to support Armenian and Turkish efforts to forge a more peaceful and productive relationship.”

Instead of upholding the U.S. historical record on the acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide, Tracy cleverly resorted to the old Armenian term “Meds Yeghern” to avoid using the correct term Armenian Genocide. She described “Meds Yeghern” inaccurately as “Great Calamity” which actually means ‘Great Crime.’

After Tracy’s opening statement, Sen. Ed Markey (Dem.-MA) asked her: “It seems unlikely that the Trump Administration will change its long-standing U.S. policy on how we refer to the Armenian Genocide. How do you address calls by the Armenian-American community to call what the 1915 slaughter was, a genocide?”

Tracy answered: “The Trump Administration and I personally acknowledge the historical facts of what took place at the end of the Ottoman Empire — of the mass killings, the forced deportations and marches that ended 1.5 million lives and a lot of suffering. And I will, if confirmed, do everything in my power to acknowledge and respect the losses and the suffering and commit myself to participating in any remembrance activities.”

 Sen. Markey concluded: “It’s time for us just to stand up and call it what it was. It helps us in the future to have credibility.”

Sen. Bob Menendez (Dem.-NJ) then followed up with a series of questions to ambassadorial nominee Tracy on the Armenian Genocide: “Do you acknowledge that from 1915 to 1923, nearly 1.5 million Armenian men, women and children were killed by the Ottoman Empire?”

Tracy responded: “Yes, Senator. As I stated, the Administration and I acknowledge the historical facts that you have mentioned.”

 Menendez: “Do you acknowledge that on May 24, 1915, the Allied Powers — England, France, and Russia — jointly issued a statement explicitly charging for the first time ever another government of committing ‘Crimes Against Humanity and Civilization?’”

Tracy: “Senator, I am not aware of that particular event.”

 Menendez: “I commanded it to your attention and you give me your written response after you read it. Do you acknowledge that the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, an independent Federal Agency, unanimously resolved on April 30th 1981, that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum would document the Armenian Genocide in the Museum and has done through the examination of the public record?”

Tracy: “Senator, I will provide a written acknowledgment to you on that.”

Menendez: “Do you acknowledge that Henry Morgenthau, the United States Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire at the time, said that the Turkish government’s deportation order for the Armenians was ‘a death warrant to a whole race,’ and ‘made no particular effort to conceal in their discussions with him.’”

Tracy: “Yes, Senator. I acknowledge the facts of that reporting of Ambassador Morgenthau.”

Menendez: “Would you discipline or otherwise punish an employee of the U.S. Embassy in Armenia for an honest remembrance of the Armenian Genocide?”

Tracy: “Senator, I would expect that, as with myself, we follow the policy of the Administration. And, the policy is that we acknowledge the historical facts of the events of 1915 as a mass atrocity and that we participate in any remembrance activities. And, I’ll just say, as a senior leader in the Foreign Service, I am always open to debate on my team. I don’t punish people for expressing their viewpoints. But, as members of the Executive Branch, at the end of the day, we support the President’s policy.”

Menendez concluded: “This is the problem with nominees who come before us, and it’s not you particularly. In fact, we have a historical reality: 1.5 million people were massacred. That’s a genocide. And yet, we send an Ambassador to a country and have them go to a memorial of a holocaust of the Armenian people and yet they won’t be able to call it a genocide. It’s pretty ironic. If we are not able to acknowledge the past, we are destined to relive it. So I hope that the Department [of State], this is not unique to this Department. It’s been going on for a while. We need to change that reality. I gave you a series of questions because I try to give you all the other elements. But the reality is that it seems we cannot have the words come out of our lips — Armenian Genocide. That’s what took place. That’s what history shows. That’s what the world recognizes. That’s what our own Federal Agencies recognize like the Holocaust Museum. So I hope you can look at all the other questions and give me answers in order to get to a better place.”

See Harut Sassounian’s complete editorial:

U.S. Ambassador to Armenia Should Call Armenian Genocide, a Genocide

Harut Sassounian | December 13 2018

http://www.thecaliforniacourier.com/u-s-ambassador-to-armenia-should-call-the-armenian-genocide-a-genocide/

 

 

DISHONORABLE QUOTES — IN DENIAL OF EVIL AND GENOCIDE

ONLY VICTIMS OF THE GAS CHAMBERS CAN GIVE PROOF OF THE GAS CHAMBERS

Lyotard [French philosopher, sociologist, and literary theorist] used the example of Auschwitz and the revisionist historian Faurisson’s demands for proof of the Holocaust to show how the differend operates as a double bind (a dilemma or difficult circumstance from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting or dependent conditions). Faurisson would only accept proof of the existence of gas chambers from eyewitnesses who were themselves victims of the gas chambers. However, any such eyewitnesses are dead and are not able to testify. – Cited with slight revisions from Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois_Lyotard#The_Differend

 

BOMBING AUSCHWITZ MIGHT ONLY MAKE THE GERMANS MORE VINDICTIVE

There has been considerable opinion to the effect that such an effort, even if practicable, might provoke even more vindictive action by the Germans.
-This was the reply of John J. McCloy, an Assistant U.S. Secretary of War to
A. Leon Kubowitzki, Head, Rescue Department, World Jewish Congress, who had requested of the U.S. State Department:

“I believe that destruction of gas chambers and crematoria in Oswiecim by bombing would have a certain effect now. Germans are now exhuming and burning corpses in an effort to conceal their crimes. This could be prevented by destruction of crematoria and then Germans might possibly stop further mass exterminations especially since so little time is left to them. Bombing of railway communications in this same area would also be of importance and of military interest.”

U.N. International Days of Commemoration – All Victims of All Genocides and International Holocaust Day

INTERNATIONAL DAY OF COMMEMORATION AND DIGNITY OF THE VICTIMS OF THE CRIME OF GENOCIDE AND OF THE PREVENTION OF THIS CRIME

In September 2015, the United Nations General Assembly established 9 December as the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime.

The 9th of December is the anniversary of the adoption of 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the “Genocide Convention”).

The proposal for this day of memory for all victims of all genocides in the world was made to the U.N. by Armenia.

INTERNATIONAL DAY OF COMMEMORATION IN MEMORY OF THE VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST On January 27 each year, the United Nations (UN) remembers the Holocaust that affected in particular people of Jewish origin during World War II.  This day is called the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust.

Editorial Statement on recognition in Israel of the INTERNATIONAL DAY OF COMMEMORATION OF VICTIMS OF GENOCIDE AND OF ITS PREVENTION

December 9 is a day proclaimed by the United Nations as a memorial to all the victims of genocide of all peoples: INTERNATIONAL DAY OF COMMEMORATION OF VICTIMS OF GENOCIDE AND OF ITS PREVENTION.

December 9 is the day that in 1945 the United Nations passed the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

It is interesting to note that the proposal for this memorial day was introduced by Armenia. The Armenian people were the greatest victim of genocide in the 20th century before our Holocaust, and to many researchers, the Armenian Genocide paved the way for the Holocaust. It should also be noted that Armenia passed this decision after it managed to enact such a memorial day for all the victims of genocide in the world on the Armenian calendar.

To the best of our knowledge, until now, in the first years since the proclamation of the UN international day of commemoration of all victims in 2015, the State of Israel has not participated in any meaningful way.

It seems to us that it is appropriate to participate actively in this memorial, beginning with the Jewish tradition that places so much emphasis on the value of life of every created being, and as a further expression of our ‘special role’ as a chosen people for suffering, and of course based on our understanding of the grim lessons of our own Holocaust.

We, Jews and citizens of the State of Israel, wholeheartedly applaud Armenia for the initiative.

We extend through the media in Israel a declaration congratulating Armenia on its initiative to enact an International Day of Remembrance for all the victims of genocide worldwide.

At the same time, we note that we call upon the State of Israel to formally recognize the Armenian Genocide that claimed the lives of 1.5 million Armenians and a similar number of Assyrians, Yazidis, Greeks, and others.

Needless to add, beyond any practical political considerations, we are deeply ashamed of a Holocaust-stricken people for not recognizing the factual nature of the Armenian Genocide. Moreover, the attempt to legislate recently in the Knesset to recognition of the recent genocide of the Yazidi people (and there are reports that it continues to this day) was rejected as if it were out of lack of interest and not from any consideration of realpolitik.

When all is said and done, we Israelis-Jews are earning for ourselves an identity as leading deniers of genocides.

Prof. Israel Charny and Prof. Yair Auron
Chairs of the Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Genocide, Jerusalem

It should be noted that we were both awarded the Armenia Prize and the Gold Medallion from the President of Armenia for our contributions to international recognition of the Armenian Genocide

Nili members will remember that during the Armenian Genocide period they warned the Yishuv that of course it was under Turkish control, that there is still a similar fate for the Jews, and indeed there were two periods of divorce of Jews by the Turks in Palestine and the deaths of several thousand people.

Sara Aharonson of Nili was a direct witness to the murder of the Armenians in Turkey, and among other things she described trains loaded with people and bodies that had been discarded and replaced by other Armenians …

Prof. Yehuda Bauer, a leading Holocaust historian, appearing in the Knesset Committee in December 2011, said:”I would suggest that the Education Committee approach the Ministry of Education and ask for a very warm recommendation to teach the Armenian genocide in all schools, in all communities and in all sectors, and to recommend to the academy to do the same thing.” I also propose that on April 24, To pass a resolution in the Knesset to recognize the Armenian genocide.”

Editorial: What Yad Vashem Doesn’t Understand and Doesn’t Present

The Armenian studies program and the Henry Madden Library at Fresno State University, California together with the Memorial de la Shoah of Paris are exhibiting “Genocides of the Twentieth Century.” The exhibition was designed, created and distributed by the Memorial de la Shoah in Paris – curators Georges ben Soussan, Joel Kotek, and Yves Ternon. The exhibition is a presentation of a comparative approach to three cases of genocide during the 20th century – in chronological order, the genocide of the Armenians by the Ottoman Empire, the Holocaust of the Jews by the Nazis, and the Rwandan genocide of the Tutsis by the Hutu. According to the organizers, whose basic function is memorial to the Shoah, “Knowledge about the Holocaust helps to fight against all forms of racism and intolerance.”

For many years Yad Vashem has resisted any display or serious reference to any other genocide other than the Holocaust. The fact that Yad Vashem is an arm of the Israeli government devoted brilliantly to research and remembrance of the Holocaust is entirely correct, but for many of us our dream as Jews and people has been that the understanding and memory of the Holocaust would serve as a major tool for the prevention of other genocides in our destructive world.

Yehuda Bauer Decries Israel’s Approval of Polish Censorship of Holocaust Information as “Betrayal, Betrayal, Betrayal…,” and also Calls Israel’s Failure to Recognize the Armenian Genocide a “Betrayal”

Professor Yehuda Bauer, doyen of Holocaust studies in the world, who is academic advisor to Yad Vashem said in a radio interview about Poland’s newly announced position of suspending criminal penalties in a law that criminalized blaming Poles for Nazi crimes, that Yad Vashem/Israel’s approval of the correction “borders on betrayal”

Bauer said about the Polish legislation itself that it constitutes “betrayal, betrayal, betrayal, betrayal of the great Polish liberals out there, truly wonderful people, who are telling the truth, who are investigating.”

He also used the occasion to weigh in on Israel’s failure to recognize the Armenian Genocide and described this failure also as a “betrayal.”

Jewish Telegraphic Agency (July 4, 2018). Holocaust scholar Yehuda Bauer slams Israel’s detante with Poland. JTA.

A Resounding Commitment to Democracy by New Armenian Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinyan, who Is Hailed by Time Magazine as One of Four People Who Have Fought to Defend Democracy

Armenia’s new prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, led the protests that toppled the previous government of Armenia.  He insists, “I had no personal motivations.  All I wanted was to win freedom and happiness for my homeland and people… From the very first day, we kept saying we would not to resort to violence against anyone, even if we were met with brutality…I am convinced that we will move forward in building democracy, fighting corruption, establishing an independent judiciary and rule of law, and protecting human rights and economic competition.  For us democracy is not a component of regional interests or foreign-policy orientation but a reflection of values and convictions.  I believe Armenia will be one of the strongest democracies.”

Excerpted from Walt, Vivienne; Bajekal, Naina and Perrigo, Billy (July 19, 2018). TIME Hails Pashinyan ‘Crusader of Democracy.’   California Courier.

Roger Smith Awarded Doctor of Letters Degree by Saint Andrews University

Roger W. Smith, a member of the International Council on the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem, was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters (D.Litt) degree by St. Andrews University in December 2017 in recognition of his contributions to genocide studies and political theory. St Andrews is Scotland’s oldest university (1413), and it appears that the Winter Graduation ceremony has changed little in over at least the past 300 years. As we left the graduation hall (me in my ‘medieval’ robe) we were led by the piper, followed by three mace bearers with their fifteenth century maces, the Chancellor, and the rest of us in academic regalia of many colors. It was a bit cold and windy, but a wonderful occasion and experience. My wife and I have never received more gracious and elegant hospitality than that at St Andrews. A lot of memories to keep. –Roger Smith

Israel Yields to Poland’s Narrative

Excerpts from article on June 28, 2019 in Haaretz in response to Poland’s law forbidding reference to Polish participation in the Holocaust.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave Poland a real treasure in return  recognition of Poland’s narrative. The joint declaration, which (for good reason) the two leaders read in English rather than in their voters’ languages, made it clear that Warsaw has scored a real victory in the battle for the historical narrative.  Israel has acknowledged that the Polish nation and state, as a whole, were not involved in the Holocaust and did not collaborate with the Nazis.

Israel also recognized that the Polish government in exile and the Polish underground acted to rescue Jews. In addition, it appreciates and respects the action of “many Poles” who saved Jews, including, of course, about 7,000 Polish Righteous Among the Nations. These points are not historically disputed. Israel’s reservation concerning the phrase “Polish extermination camps” is also clear and acceptable.

The problem begins with the part of the declaration dealing with the most painful, difficult and sensitive issue: the part many Poles played in persecuting, turning in and murdering Jews – before, during and after the Holocaust.

Not a word about burning Jews alive after locking them up in a barn; no mention of “hunting down Jews” in the fields and selling them to the Germans for a beer bottle. Moreover, this is followed by a reservation, saying that the “cruelty” wasn’t linked to the criminals’ Polish origin – or even to their religion or “world view” – but was simply conduct practiced by “certain people” – so the statement said – in various places. In other words, “there are bad people everywhere.”

The joint statement lacks an honest reckoning on Poland’s part of the findings arising from numerous historic studies, including those carried out in Poland itself.

Examining these studies shows that the Polish collaboration with the Nazis was so extensive, under any criterion, that in almost every village, township and city there were Poles who agreed to sell their soul to the devil.

Excerpted from Aderet, Ofer (June 28, 2018). Israel yields to Poland’s narrative. Haaretz English Edition.  

To read the full article

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-is-yielding-to-poland-s-holocaust-narrative-1.6219825

Poland Removes Jail Penalties for Statements on Polish Participation in the Holocaust But Retains as Civil Crime

Davies, Christian (June 27, 2018). Poland makes partial U-turn on Holocaust law after Israel row: Threat of jail removed for those who attribute crimes of Nazi Germany to Poles. Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/27/poland-partial-u-turn-controversial-holocaust-law

Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, has signed a legal amendment to decriminalise the false attribution to Poland and Poles of crimes committed by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust, signalling a partial retreat on contentious legislation enacted this year…Anyone who “publicly and against the facts” accuses the Polish state or nation of being “responsible or complicit in” Nazi crimes will be guilty of a civil rather than a criminal offence.[1]

 

INTERPRETATIONS

  • Shmuli, Itzik, Member of the Israeli Knesset (Zionist Union) (June 14, 2018). Despite Netanyahu, Knesset to vote on Armenian Genocide motion. California Courier.

“The day on which the prime minister of the state of the Jewish people agrees to be a collaborator with the denial of the genocide of another people, who were slaughtered in concentration camps and on death marches, this is a black day and a deep moral stain on all of us. What would we have said if the world had refused to recognize the Holocaust because of diplomatic unpleasantness and economic interests? If we become partners in the denial of the tragedies in history we will never succeed in preventing those that may come in the future. I call on the government to set aside political considerations and do the necessary historic justice.”

Six months after its approval in parliament, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced on Wednesday his intention to backtrack the controversial Holocaust law, which criminalized anybody accusing the Polish nation of complicity in Nazi crimes… His office stated that the government feels the law did not achieve its goal of “defending the good name of Poland”: Morawiecki wants the law amended, so as not to impose criminal responsibility and a prison sentence on violators…The prime minister’s office also stated that the Institute of National Remembrance would continue to fight for the “historic truth” using the “civilian” tools at its disposal.

Speaking on a news show on Israel’s most distinguished radio station, Reshet Bet, Yehuda Bauer, who is considered the world’s preeminent scholar of the Holocaust, spoke up impassionedly and angrily that by signing a joint agreement with Poland, Israel had no less than “betrayed” the Holocaust.  He said that Israel had now legitimized the Polish law which retains civil charges against anyone speaking up about Poles’ participation in the Holocaust. “Were they born on the moon?”, Bauer asked furiously.  “It’s Poles.”

Bauer emphasized the Poland would still impose civil law on scholars who spoke truthfully about Polish murders of Jews.  Haaretz quoted Bauer as saying, “They will demand money from them, they will impoverish them, they will keep funding from them.  And we are legitimizing [this]… They will say:”What do you want, the Israelis agreed to this, why are you making noise?”

Robert Fisk Joins International Council of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide

The Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem is proud to announce that the iconic English writer for the London Independent has joined the International Council of the Institute.  Robert Fisk has been Middle East correspondent for some 40 years, much of the time based in Beirut.  He is an Arabic speaker and was among the few Western journalists to interview Osama bin Laden (on three occasions).  He has been honored with numerous awards including British Press Awards, International Journalist of the Year, and Amnesty International.

 

Who Sent the Jews to the Ghetto?

The Associated Press  and Aderet, Ofer  (March 22, 2018). Poland Disavows PM’s Father’s Claim That Jews Moved to Ghettos to Get Away From non-Jews. Haaretz English Edition. https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/poland-disavows-pm-s-father-s-ghetto-claim-1.5935141.

In a revealing sequel to the original legislation criminalizing any reference to Poles as perpetrators in the Holocaust which was stewarded by Poland’s Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, the father of the prime minister, Kornel Morawiecki, claimed in an interview that “Jews were not forced into ghettos by Germans but went willingly because ‘they were told there would be an enclave where they could get away from the nasty Poles.’  He also said that Jews had abetted the Germans.”

Morawiecki, the father, also asked, “Who sent the Jews to the Umschlagpatz?” referring to the gathering of Jews from a ghetto for transport to the concentration/death camps.  “‘Was it the Germans?  No, the Jewish police.'”

The Polish government subsequently stated that the father’s claims “do not reflect the position of the government.”

USC Shoah Foundation Acquires Testimonies from Armenian Genocide Survivors

Published in the California Courier (March 15, 2018).

The USC Shoah Foundation announced the receipt of one of the largest collections of testimonies from survivors of the Armenian Genocide.

The testimonies were recorded over several decades beginning in the 1970’s by Richard Hovannisian, a leading scholar on the genocide and the son of a genocide survivor.  The collection includes more than 1,000 interviews, making it the largest non-Holocaust-related collection added to the Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive.  It is also the archive’s only audio-only collection.

The collection also includes documents and photographs relating to each interview, along with transcripts and translations.  Many of the testimonies were recorded in Armenian, but about 20 percent are in English and some are in Turkish and Spanish.

An estimated 1.5 million Armenians died in the World War 1-era genocide.  “The figure ‘a million and a half’ can roll right over our shoulders,” Hovannisian said.  “But it’s different when you take those individual interviews and start listening to them one by one.  And then it becomes a million-and-a-half individuals and the loss of a civilization, of a way of life, a space where people lived for more than 3,000 years, and everything that space contained.”

The Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education includes 55,000 testimonies from eyewitnesses to the Holocaust and other genocides.

Israel and Poland Find It Difficult to Acknowledge the Facts of History

Fisk, Robert (15 February 2018). In the cases of two separate holocausts, Israel and Poland find it difficult to acknowledge the facts of history. London Independent.
Reprinted with permission of the author.

While Poland has decided to outlaw any claims that their countrymen participated in the  extermination of the Jews, Israel continues to ignore the Armenian genocide.

The Israelis have been mighty pissed off with the Polish government these past few days. I don’t blame them. In fact – and I’m not referring to the racist, extremist military occupation government of Benjamin Netanyahu – the Israeli people and Jews around the world are quite right to be enraged at Poland’s latest Holocaust denialism.

The Polish decision to criminalise any accusation of Polish complicity in the Holocaust, passing a law which effectively prevents any Pole from acknowledging that Poles themselves assisted in the genocide of six million European Jews, is iniquitous. Its purpose is not to elicit the truth, but to bury it. It certainly constitutes part of the denialism of the Jewish Holocaust.

But – to give a taster to what this column is also about – I will say one word: Armenia. And reveal henceforth one of the most remarkable coincidences in recent publishing history. It involves century-old telegrams – hitherto regarded as forgeries, but in fact real – ordering the mass extermination of more than one million Christians, a truly courageous Turkish historian, and a total denial of the Armenian Holocaust by the one nation which should acknowledge its existence. But first, Poland.

So let’s get the facts – “just the facts, Ma’am, just the facts,” as Sgt Joe Friday never actually said in Dragnet – out of the way. Jews accounted for 10 per cent of the Polish population in 1939. Pre-war Polish governments took anti-Semitic measures to exclude Jews from important state posts. When the Germans invaded, they regarded the Poles as Slavic “untermenschen”, but understood all too well how latent anti-Semitism stained the Christian nationalist state of Poland.

Poland lost two million non-Jewish citizens at the hands of the Nazis. Polish Jews were virtually annihilated. Many Poles hid Jews from the Nazis and fought alongside them against the Wehrmacht and the SS.

But the Germans used Polish police forces to guard Jewish ghettoes, the last transit point before the Jews were sent in their tens of thousands to the extermination camps on Polish soil. No, they were not “Polish death camps” – both the Poles and the Israelis agree on that – but Polish collaborators (the “Blue Police”) did enforce curfews against Jews and assisted in the liquidation of the ghettoes.

There is clear and unimpeachable evidence that some (perhaps more than “some”) Poles blackmailed Jews in return for keeping their hiding places secret. In eastern Polish towns, Poles in a few cases participated in the murder of their Jewish neighbours. The massacre at Jedwabne comes to mind. But Poles were the first to reveal the facts of the Jewish Holocaust to the Allies, and at least one Polish resistance group saved thousands of Jewish lives by producing forged papers and finding escape routes for Jews.

As in most German-occupied European nations, morality – or immorality – was coloured grey. Think Vichy, and the French “maquis”. Think Italian fascism, and the Italian communist resistance.

In 2015, Ukraine passed laws that forced its citizens to honour nationalists who briefly collaborated with the Nazis and participated in the mass killing of Jews. No uproar from the West, of course, since we currently support brave little Ukraine against the Russian beast that has gobbled up Crimean Sevastopol.

But now to the incredible timing of the Polish legislation. For even as this disreputable law was actually passing through the parliament in Warsaw a few days ago, that most brave of Turkish historians, Taner Akcam, was publishing a short but revelatory book (Killing Orders, published by Palgrave Macmillan) which proves, finally and conclusively, that the extermination orders of Talat Pasha, a leader of the Young Turks and one of the Three Pashas who ruled the Ottoman Empire in the First World War, to destroy the entire Armenian Christian population in 1915 were real.

Not forgeries as Turkey’s apologists and denial historians would have the world believe. Not concocted by Armenian counterfeiters, or fiction created by a non-existent Ottoman official, as these wretched people would have us think. But as copper-bottomed and terrible as the Nazi documents which prove Germany’s responsibility for the Jewish Holocaust – and the evidence that proves Poles sometimes joined in the slaughter.

The facts of the Armenian Holocaust – for “Shoah” (holocaust) is the very word that many honourable Israelis use for the Armenian genocide – are well known but need, however briefly, to be repeated. In 1915 and in the immediate years that followed, the Ottoman Turks deliberately set out to liquidate a million and a half of their Armenian Christian citizens, sending them into the desert on death marches, butchering the men, raping the women, spitting the children on bayonets or starving them to death with their mothers and other family members in what is now northern Syria.

The Kurds, sorry to say, assisted in this barbarity. Taner Akcam has written extensively and with immense authority on this appalling period of Turkish history – which the Turkish government, to this day, shamefully denies – and has as a result been abused by hundreds of right-wing Turkish extremists who have even tried to place him on an American “terrorist” list (he teaches at Clark University in the US).

Akcam’s new book contains a dark and haunting – almost frightening – geography, for most of the 1915 massacres he writes about took place in or near towns which carry their own fearful message of slaughter and horror to us today: Mosul, Raqqa, Deir ez-Zour and, yes, Aleppo.

It was in the Baron Hotel in Aleppo – still standing today, the descendants of the then owner Mazlouiyan still (just) occupying its lobby – that a set of original telegrams from Talat Pasha, along with other liquidation messages memorised by an Ottoman official, Naim Bey, were handed over to an Armenian Holocaust survivor called Aram Andonian. He paid cash for the documents. We don’t know how much.

Until now, Turkish historians and their supporters in the West have regarded these vital papers as false. They claimed that Naim Bey did not exist, that Andonian was a forger, that the cypher in which Talat’s telegrams were written did not match the Ottoman cypher system of the time. They ignored the mass of evidence presented to the existing but quickly suppressed post-war trials in Istanbul, archives which subsequently went missing. And they held up telegrams – real enough but deliberately misleading – that “proved” Talat had the best interests of the Armenians at heart when he deported them.

Akcam’s unravelling of the truth is both a detective story and a volume of sudden, inconceivable horror. He proves the cypher numbers were real, that Naim Bey did indeed exist; an Ottoman document on a corruption investigation – in which Turkish officials accepted bribes from Armenians in return for their lives – identifies him as “Naim Effendi, the son of Huseyin Nuri, 26 years of age, from Silifke, former dispatch official for Meskene, currently the official in charge of Municipal Grain Storage Depots”. And more powerfully than any previous historian, Akcam proves – along with papers from the archive of a dead Armenian priest – that the Ottoman authorities were sending two sets of telegrams about the Armenians. One set expressed the government’s insistence that food and tents should be provided for Armenian deportees and that their confiscated property should be recompensed. The other set insisted upon their secret liquidation, preferably away from the cameras of prying US diplomats (America was neutral until 1917) and German officers allied to the Turkish army.

The Nazis told their Jewish victims that they were going to be “resettled” in the east rather than gassed. They also tried to cover the traces of the gas chambers of Treblinka before the Red Army arrived. But the “double” instructions sent by Talat Pasha and his 1915 genociders demonstrate that the pretence of humanitarian resettlement was conceived even before the organised genocide began. Some of the young German officers who witnessed the killings of 1915 turned up 26 years later in the Soviet Union, overseeing the slaughter of Jews.

And here is one very short account (courtesy of the Turkish historian Akcam) of an Armenian witness to his people’s destruction, which could – if the identities and locations were changed to the Ukraine or Belarus – have been written during the Second World War: “In order to eliminate the last remaining Armenian deportees…between Aleppo and Deyr-i Zor [sic] who had managed to survive…Hakki Bey…evicted all the deportees along the Euphrates, starting from Aleppo… Close to 300 young men and boys…surviving in the camp Hamam were sent to the South in a special convoy… Solid reports about them arrived that they had been killed in Rakka [sic]… Elsewhere, we learned in no uncertain terms that in the area around Samiye, 300 children were thrown into a cave opening, gas was poured in and they were burned alive.”

So here’s the real hypocrisy of this story. The Israeli government, so outraged by Poland’s Jewish Holocaust denialism, refuses to recognise the Armenian Holocaust. Shimon Peres himself said that “we reject attempts to create a similarity between the [Jewish] Holocaust and the Armenian allegations. Nothing similar to the Holocaust occurred. What the Armenians went through is a tragedy, but not genocide.”

The Americans, I should add – Trump included, of course – have been equally pathetic in their failure to acknowledge the Armenian truth. But oddly, not Poland.

For 13 years ago, the Polish parliament passed a bill which specifically referred to the “Armenian genocide”. The speaker of the Polish parliament, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, said at the time that the Armenian genocide did indeed take place, that responsibility fell on the Turks, and that Turkish documents – though not yet those which Akcam has just revealed – “confirm” this.

So there you have it. Poland punishes anyone who speaks of Polish participation in the Jewish Holocaust, but accepts the Armenian Holocaust. Israel insists that all must acknowledge the Jewish Holocaust – and Poland’s peripheral guilt – but will not acknowledge the Armenian Holocaust.

Mercifully, Israeli scholars like Israel Charny do so. And mercifully, Turks like Taner Akcam agree. But how many times must the dead die all over again for nations to accept the facts of history?

 

Shamai Davidson, MD 1926-1986

Professor Shamai Davidson, MD, at the time of his death, Director of the Shalvata Mental Health Hospital and Center, and Associate Director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem, was one of the three founders of the Institute – together with Eli Wiesel and Israel Charny.

Shamai Davidson dedicated himself in particular to psychiatric treatment of survivors of the Holocaust. We remember very clearly his descriptions of how he would drop everything at the hospital when he learned that a Holocaust survivor had been admitted as a new patient. As a person whose close relatives perished in the Nazi death camps, and as a committed Zionist, Shamai Davidson elected to leave his home in Ireland – where he also received his medical training, and made aliyah to the relatively newly founded State of Israel. Sadly, his productive and creative work was brought to an unexpected halt when he suddenly in surgery.

A collection of Shamai Davidson’s work on treating Holocaust survivors was published posthumously: Shamai Davidson (1992).  Holding on to Humanity – The Message of Holocaust Survivors: The Shamai Davidson Papers. New York: New York University Press.

 

The following biography and appreciation of Shami Davidson was published in Hebrew in and Israeli journal of psychotherapy: Witzomb, Eliezer and Margolin, Jacob (March, 2017).  Shamai Davidson, 1926-1986.  SichotIsraeli Journal of Psychotherapy,  31(2), 162-167 (Hebrew).

Read the full text here.

Uproar Continues: IAGS Censors Critique of Journal of Genocide Research and Denies Scientific Validity of Study of Bias in the Journal, but Leaves Intact Major Criticisms of the State of Israel

Listserv of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) Publishes a Report on Polish Criminalization of References to the Holocaust, Allows Criticism of Israel as a Denier of Genocides and Seller of Arms, but Censors Critique of the Journal of Genocide Research.

On February 7, 2018, an article was posted on the IAGS Listserv about an interview with Israel Charny (on TV station i24 that broadcasts internationally in English from Israel). See on this website: Poland Seeks to Criminalize any Reference to Polish Participation in the Holocaust.

However, the editor of the Listserv chose to censor a sentence which referred to denials of the significance of the Holocaust in the Journal of Genocide Research (the post was subsequently published in full in the California Courier). In contrast, the Listserv left intact the strong critiques of the State of Israel as a denier of the Armenian Genocide as well as currently the genocide in Myanmar, and as a shameful exporter of arms to countries engaged – or seen as threatening to engage – in genocide. These comments were left on the post, but even a brief reference to the studies that refer to JGR publishing denials of the Holocaust such as that the Wannsee Conference in no way pertained to Jews was erased by the editor.

Charny filed an appeal of the IAGS censorship.

The following is the reply he received from the IAGS Advisory Board on April 11, 2018, followed by his response to the Advisory Board.

 

DECISION BY IAGS ON APPEAL TO CANCEL CENSORSHIP

April 11, 2018

Dear Dr. Charny,

We are writing with the decision of the IAGS Advisory Council regarding the appeal filed on February 13, 2018, in reference to a line that was removed from a post you submitted to the IAGS Listserv prior to this date (no date was given in the appeal documents). Here is the originally submitted message, as you presented it to us, with the text that the Listserv moderator removed in bold and highlighted:

When asked by the television interviewer, Tracy Alexander, whether denials were particularly common among right-wing bigots, Charny replied that regrettably denials are very widespread and are to be found in quite unbelievable places, such as Israel’s denials of several genocides including the Armenian Genocide and currently the genocide in Myanmar, as well as the shameful record of Israel’s sales of arms to several countries even as those countries were committing genocide. Denials are even to be found among bona fide genocide scholars and academic institutions such as the Journal of Genocide Research which published a series of articles minimizing the significance of the Holocaust, even including an article which denied that the Wannsee Conference in any way addressed a Final Solution specifically to the Jews.

On February 11, 2018, IAGS Listserv Moderator Geoff Hill apologized for not discussing with you removal of the sentence before posting the modified submission. While the rules do not strictly require that the Moderator communicate with the author regarding a post, the Advisory Council agrees that this is appropriate editorial practice and is in the process of developing revisions for Listserv Rules that would include this requirement.

As to your appeal that the submission should be published on the IAGS Listserv in its original form, our decision is not to grant your appeal. There are a number of factors that weighed in our decision.

(1) While the Listserv Moderator did fail to communicate with you about removing the line ultimately removed, this in itself does not warrant publication if his grounds against publication of the full post have merit, and we have found they have merit.

(2) Listserv Rule #2 prohibits Listserv posts that “include personal attacks or insults.” This terminology clearly refers to publications, organizations, etc., in addition to individual people. The 2015-17 IAGS Executive Board and Advisory Council found there existed too great a risk to the Association if our listserv were to act as a republisher of your article. Instead, they opted to allow you (through your editor) to announce the publication of the article and to direct interested readers to an external site. In absence of any further discussion of your article on the listserv, and after the initial conflict generated by its publication external to the listserv, including international publicity that was unflattering to the IAGS, the moderator elected to close further discussion of the matter. We see no compelling reason to reopen this debate now.

(3) The IAGS Listserv is a moderated listserv. The moderator does have discretion regarding what is published on it, similar to the role of a newspaper or journal editor. What is more, the IAGS Listserv Moderator has a responsibility to ensure that what is published on the Listserv is consistent with the mission of IAGS. While clearly open debate and discussion among scholars is generally a positive thing for the organization, extending a discussion after all sides have had a fully adequate chance to state their cases not only does a disservice to IAGS members by adding repetitive posts to their email inboxes, but can actually chill discussion and debate, when members stop participating because of this repetition. You have had ample opportunity to post on this issue to the Listserv in the past, and the Moderator in fact made a decision to close debate on this issue as of a certain date, after which he has rejected numerous posts on this issue, the majority in support of those you have labelled deniers. Similarly, the Moderator has a responsibility to exclude attacking or insulting comments without proper scholarly foundations, because publishing (or even republishing) such comments opens IAGS to legal sanction and can contribute to a negative public image that reflects poorly on all members, not just the individual making such comments. Finally, an important goal of IAGS is to maintain respectful relations with all legitimate related organizations and publications. The insufficiently supported accusation of denial your submission included threatened to increase tensions with the editors of the Journal of Genocide Research and the membership of the International Network of Genocide Scholars that published it. While the leadership of IAGS is ready and willing to take clear stands against proven denial, your accusation of genocide denial is based on what experts consulting for IAGS have determined to be a flawed survey methodology.

We wish to add that the Advisory Council has tremendous regard and gratitude for your service to IAGS and founding role in our discipline. But, we must decide any appeal based solely on the evidence, without regard to the person or people involved.

With deepest respect,

The IAGS Advisory Board

 

REPLY BY ISRAEL CHARNY TO IAGS ADVISORY BOARD

April 17, 2018: Response to the IAGS Advisory Board via Henry Theriault

Dear Colleagues,

Thank you for your serious and hard work in response to my appeal of February 13, 2018, and the detailed and thoughtfully prepared reply from you of April 11.

I also certainly want to acknowledge with much appreciation your warm salute to me for my “service to IAGS and founding role in our discipline.”

I do understand, and respect, the stipulation that posts on the IAGS listserv must remain respectful to colleagues and colleague organizations – even and the more so in the context of controversy.  Yet, I will ask does this mean that if a colleague organization of genocide scholars engages in out-and-out denials of genocide(s) that there should not and cannot be strong and persistent criticism of such denials?  Thus I will ask hypothetically if Noam Chomsky were to be a member of a genocide study association, it would or would not be appropriate to criticize his positions and indeed him himself for his “serial denials” — or at least serial associations with deniers of genocides – including the Holocaust, Cambodia, and Rwanda! (Adam Jones: “Why on earth has Pilger – together with Chomsky – warmly endorsed a tract co-authored by none other than Edward Herman which brazenly denies the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994?”).

In the case of the Journal of Genocide Research (JGR), we are talking about a series of denials including categorical statements that the Holocaust played absolutely no role and had no influence on the proceedings of the United Nations in the development of the U.N. Convention on Genocide and somewhat later the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, and a ‘learned article’ devoted brazenly to the thesis that the Wannsee Conference in which the Nazis formulated their “Final Solution” and established their statistical quotas of victims was not intended towards the Jews.

Further, I resent very strongly the statements that my studies were on the face of it “without properly scholarly foundations” and based on “a flawed survey methodology.”  These were the allegations that were spread immediately in response to the studies by authors of the JGR articles. I myself am a trained social science researcher and have published various empirical studies in the past as well as supervised research dissertations on the university level, and I really am quite capable of knowing what is a legitimate scientific study.  In our case we are talking about the responses of 76 identified genocide scholars plus 30 students in a number of courses on Holocaust and genocide – the results were so consistent that we did not need to separate the groups for the analysis – and it is their voices that speak in repeated criticisms of each of 7 articles in JGR and then of the Journal as a whole.  These are bona fide research findings.  How would we feel if such a 106 were to identify publications of our IAGS as committed to basically wrong and prejudicial values?

Please note that I myself have carefully maintained my membership in INOGS from the outset to this very day and am committed to a maximum positive cooperation between the two organizations, but never at the expense of compromising with open and shut denials of genocide or any form of racism and prejudice.

A final note: The results of my studies, which were gathered by an outside independent survey company, are and always have been fully available to any and all researchers and to any re-analyses of data.  The initial study of N=76 is publicly available at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-26BHWS3W/.  The subsequent study of N=30 (students) which was handled by another survey company is available upon request.

______

We will post this correspondence exchange between us on the website of our Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem (www.ihgjlm.com) .  I will also submit a brief note to our IAGS Listserv (smile) calling attention to this exchange.

In continuing commitment to genocide studies and to the basic values implicit in our professional commitment.

Israel

Jewish Professor Requests Information From Israeli Gov’t on Armenian Genocide

by Harut Sassounian
California Courier, January 11, 2018.
Prominent Israeli scholar Yair Auron filed an official request with Israel’s Foreign Ministry on December 21, 2017 asking for all internal documents on agreements and commitments undertaken by the State of Israel with Turkey and Azerbaijan not to recognize the Armenian Genocide.
The request sent by Auron’s attorney Eitay Mack to the Foreign Ministry, states that “official Israeli denial of the Armenian Genocide is tied to its diplomatic and military relations with Turkey, and in recent years to the relations with Azerbaijan.”
Prof. Auron’s request under Israel’s Freedom of Information Law explains that “Turkey has purchased from Israel training and military systems worth billions of USD. The arms deals included the upgrading of planes and tanks, radar and monitoring systems, missiles and munitions.” Azerbaijan has also purchased from Israel close to $5 billion worth of advanced weaponry.
In 2011, during Knesset’s deliberations on the Armenian Genocide, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon and Alex Miller, Chairman of the Knesset Education Committee, unequivocally ruled out the possibility of Israel recognizing the Armenian Genocide in order not harm relations with Azerbaijan — Israel’s “key strategic ally in the Islamic world.”
Prof. Auron’s letter also quotes from several leaders of the right wing “Yisrael Beiteinu” party stating that they will ensure that the Knesset does not recognize the Armenian Genocide. “Yisrael Beiteinu” is led by Israel’s Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Arye Gut, a propagandist for Azerbaijan and spokesperson for the International Israel-Azerbaijan Association, has affirmed that “Lieberman is one of the architects of the Azerbaijani-Israeli partnership.” In an interview with RTV-TV, Lieberman announced that the Armenian Genocide “was a theoretical, disputed historical issue and that the lack of recognition was not necessarily related to Turkey, but primarily to [Israel’s] strategic relations with Azerbaijan.” Prof. Auron stresses that these arguments sound very similar to those who deny the Jewish Holocaust.
As an example of Israel’s close relations with Azerbaijan, Prof. Auron’s letter reports that “613 trees were planted” on February 26, 2016, “at the Chaim Weizmann (1st President of Israel) Forest, to mark ‘24 years to the Khojaly genocide,’ in memory of 613 victims, attended by MK [Member of Knesset] Avigdor Lieberman. Only Azerbaijan and Turkey mark this ‘genocide’ event. In recent years, official Israel has become a direct and indirect supporter of the purported Khojaly genocide claim. The battle of Khojaly took place in February 1992, in the midst of a cruel war between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno Karabagh province. There are several versions as to what happened there, including the number of those who perished, but one thing is not disputed among the international community — no genocide by its common definition took place there.”
Prof. Auron’s concludes his request from the Israeli government by stating: “one suspects that not only does the State of Israel ‘trade’ in the recognition of the Armenian Genocide, but that it has taken upon itself real commitments on this matter, in agreements with Azerbaijan and Turkey.”
Consequently, Attorney Mack specifically demands that the Israel’s Foreign Ministry should disclose the following information:
1)  “Any documentation of agreements, understandings, commitments vis-à-vis Azerbaijan and Turkey as to the question of recognizing the Armenian Genocide.”
2)  “Any correspondence with Turkish or Azeri representatives on the question of recognizing the Armenian Genocide.”
3)  “Any documentation of meetings or communications between the representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with Turkish or Azeri representatives on the question of recognizing the Armenian Genocide.”
4)  “Decisions and position papers of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as to the question of recognizing the Armenian Genocide, in view of Turkey and Azerbaijan’s objection.”
It remains to be seen if the Israeli Foreign Ministry complies with Prof. Auron’s legal request. Both the American and British governments, which have similar laws on requirements to disclose internal information, have responded to similar requests from their own citizens, making public secret documents on the Armenian Genocide. It would be understandable if certain portions of the disclosed documents were to be blacked out by the Israeli government for confidential reasons, to protect the identities of those providing the information or for national security reasons.

Erdogan Turkey Continues Ottoman Empire

A Smoking Gun!: Erdogan Calls Turkey the ‘Continuation of the Ottoman Empire,’ So It Is Unmistakably Turkey that Committed the Armenian Genocide

Turkey’s current (and who apparently hopes to join the growing list of rulers of countries who stay on and on accruing greater and greater power) president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has himself provided the absolute justification for seeing contemporary Turkey as the continuation of the state that committed the Armenian Genocide 100 plus years ago.

For a long time, many Turkish officials would make the absolute distinction between the earlier Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic that followed and which continues today.  The argument was that the Ottoman Empire indeed was responsible for whatever massacres did take place of Armenians — though God forbid they continued their denial that it was a basic genocidal plan.

The Times of London reported as follows: “Last week, the president said that modern Turkey is a ‘continuation’ of the Ottoman Empire – a direct contradiction of Ataturk’s ideology, which cast the Imperial era as backwards, stale and to be discarded and forgotten rather than celebrated.

“We see Sultan Abdulhamid II as one of the most important, most visionary, most strategic-minded personalities who have put their stamps on the last 150 years of our state,” Mr Erdogan said. “We should stop seeing the Ottomans and the Republic as two eras that conflict with one another.”[1]

The following is a powerful editorial column written by Harut Sassounian, publisher of the excellent Armenian-American newspaper, the California Courier.

Pres. Erdogan Admits that Turkey is…The ‘Continuation’ of the Ottoman Empire

BY HARUT SASSOUNIAN, PUBLISHER, CALIFORNIA COURIER · FEBRUARY 20, 2018

http://www.thecaliforniacourier.com/pres-erdogan-admits-that-turkey-is-the-continuation-of-the-ottoman-empire/

For many decades Turkish officials have outright denied the occurrence of the Armenian Genocide. In recent years, however, some Turks have made the excuse that today’s Turkish Republic is not responsible for the Armenian Genocide because it was committed by the Ottoman Empire, a defunct state.

With this pretext, the issue is no longer whether genocide was committed or not, but who is responsible for it. Those who use this justification, claim that the Republic of Turkey is neither the successor nor the continuation of the Ottoman Empire, but a new and separate state!

This argument has gradually grown weaker as Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdogan began speaking and acting as an Ottoman Sultan! Two weeks ago, the Turkish leader made matters worse for his country when he, according to The Times of London, asserted that “modern Turkey is a ‘continuation’ of the Ottoman Empire — a direct contradiction of Ataturk’s ideology, which cast the Imperial era as backwards, stale and to be discarded and forgotten rather than celebrated.”

By stating that Turkey is a ‘continuation’ of the Ottoman Empire, Erdogan effectively concedes that today’s Turkey is responsible for the actions of the Ottoman Empire. In other words, the Republic of Turkey, which inherited the Ottoman Empire’s assets, also inherited its liabilities!

To confirm his allegiance to the Ottoman dynasty, Erdogan attended a ceremony earlier this month to mark the centenary of the death of Sultan Abdulhamid II, the ‘Red Sultan,’ who has been rehabilitated by the current government. Erdogan conveniently ignored the fact that the Red Sultan had ordered the killing of 300,000 Armenians from 1894 to 1896, known as the Hamidian massacres. As reported by The Times of London, “The descendants of one of the last Ottoman sultans are to be given Turkish citizenship, ending almost a century of outcast and ostracism.”

According to the Times of London, “Abdulhamid II ruled from 1876 to 1909, and was much maligned in Kemal Ataturk’s modern Turkish republic for his authoritarianism, anti-Westernism and clampdowns on the media. Yet, in the era of President Erdogan he has been rehabilitated. A television series, ‘Payitaht’, which depicts the life of Abdulhamid in glowing terms has been lauded by Mr. Erdogan as essential viewing for Turkish youths to find out about their country’s history…. ‘We see Sultan Abdulhamid II as one of the most important, most visionary, most strategic-minded personalities who have put their stamps on the last 150 years of our state,’ Mr. Erdogan said. ‘We should stop seeing the Ottomans and the Republic as two eras that conflict with one another.’ Abdulhamid died in 1918 and at celebrations for the centenary this week, Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that he would personally oversee the granting of citizenships to the family.”

Arrogantly, Erdogan then warned that U.S. soldiers in Northern Syria would soon receive the ‘Ottoman slap,’ according to Reuters. He was “referring to a half-legendary Turkish martial move that involves a potent open-palm hit, resulting in a one-hit knockout or even skull fractures and death.” An illustration published by the pro-government Turkish media shows Pres. Donald Trump receiving an ‘Ottoman slap’ by Pres. Erdogan. Furthermore, Reuters quoted Turkish Foreign Minister Cavusoglu stating that Washington was backing the YPG [Kurdish forces in Syria] because it shared the same “Marxist, communist, atheist” ideology!

Returning to the issue of whether the Republic of Turkey is a brand new and separate entity from the Ottoman Empire, Prof. Alfred de Zayas, an international law expert, explained in an essay titled, “The Genocide against the Armenians 1915-1923 and the relevance of the 1948 Genocide Convention,” that a ‘successor state’ is responsible for the crimes committed by its predecessor regime. Moreover, a state that is a ‘continuation’ of a previous entity is even more responsible because there is no difference between the two, as admitted by Erdogan two weeks ago.

In addition, Alfred de Zayas quoted in his study Prof. M. Cherif Bassiouni stating that “In international law, the doctrine of legal continuity and principles of State responsibility make a ‘successor Government’ liable in respect of claims arising from a former government’s violations.” Prof. de Zayas concluded that “the claims of the Armenians for their wrongfully confiscated properties did not disappear with the change from the Sultanate to the regime of Mustafa Kemal.”

Finally, Prof. de Zayas affirmed that “the principle of responsibility of successor States has been held to apply even when the State and government that committed the wrongs were not that of the ‘successor State.’ This principle was formulated, inter alia, by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Lighthouse Arbitration case.”

We can conclude that Pres. Erdogan, by affirming that today’s Republic of Turkey is the continuation of the Ottoman Empire, has inadvertently admitted that Turkey is responsible for the genocidal, territorial and economic damages caused by the Ottoman Empire to the Armenian people. Erdogan’s confession should be presented as evidence when demands emanating from the Turkish Genocide of Armenians are submitted to the World Court.

 

[1] Roberts, Heather (February 13, 2018). Turkey opens the door to exiled Ottoman royals.  The Times (UK). https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/turkey-brings-ottoman-heirs-in-from-the-cold-n0ddzqsh2

 

Netanyahu and Kagame: Their Hands Are Full of Blood by Prof. Yair Auron

According to the media, the “summit meeting” between the Israeli Prime Minister and the President of Rwanda at Davos evoked more interest than Netanyahu’s earlier meetings with the German Chancellor, the French President, and even the President of the United States.  The two leaders are trying to ‘iron out the wrinkles’ and ‘close the deal’ that would allow for the continued deportation of refugees from Israel via Rwanda, at times to their death, at other times to hell on earth.

It seems inconceivable that this is being done by two peoples who have experienced genocide in recent times – us in the 1940s (and the last Holocaust survivors are still among us), and the Tutsi in 1994. The quickest genocide in history was not stopped by the international community, but by Tutsi forces that came from outside the state, led, among others, by the incumbent Rwandan President. Around a million people – the actual number may never be known – were murdered in just a hundred days; that is, about 10,000 human beings per day, 416 per hour. That is, seven human beings just like me and you, were murdered every minute. And the world knew, and saw, and kept silent, turned its back and did nothing.

We, in Israel, saw and kept silent. We did send a mobile hospital to save lives, but at the same time, we also sent arms for killing, whilst the genocide went on, and did it knowingly and consciously. Even if we did not know the exact number of the massacred, we have watched hundreds of bodies floating down the river – on the two TV channels we had at the time. The weapons were sent by the Government of Israel to the murderous Hutu government, not by private arms dealers. And yes, the Israeli government at the time was sadly the Rabin-Peres-Meretz coalition.

The ‘leftist’ Supreme Court has repeatedly refused our request to expose documents that the state admits are in its possession, which prove unequivocally the crime committed according to both Israeli and international law. That crime is, in fact, complicity in the crime of genocide. Sending arms to Rwanda during the genocide is quite similar to sending arms to Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. These are difficult things to say, but they must be said.

The Rwandan President, an ethnic Tutsi and son of genocide survivors, knows this very well. But that did not prevent him from coming to Israel for the late President Shimon Peres’s 90th birthday celebrations; it has not prevented him from receiving Netanyahu at the Genocide Museum in Kigali, keeping silent about Israel’s crimes during the genocide. His government ministers even tried to deny it ever happened, because the mention of those arms deals may jeopardize the current weapons deal hatched between the two governments, who are still trading heavily.

Senior Rwandan officials are denying any deal regarding the deportation of refugees, but and under careful analysis, official statements reveal contradictions, and it is safe to assume that many lies are being disseminated.

Two peoples who have experienced genocide, for whom genocide is possibly the most important component of their identity, are now sending refugees to their horrific fate. Such fate has been documented by extensive evidence and testimonies of survivors, who often say they’d rather die than choose that route.

It must be said: both governments are involved in human trafficking. There is no other definition for these dealings: the government of Israel pays a sum (perhaps $5,000 ‘per head’) for every refugee that Rwanda agrees to allow to pass through its borders. Both peoples must have learned a disastrous lesson: That there are human beings – members of your own group – who are worth more, and there are others, who are worth less, and then there are those who are worth nothing at all. There are no moral restrictions, and survivors are allowed anything, with impunity.

All this takes place in front of our eyes on the eve of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27). When I contemplate this, I know that evil, almost any evil, is still possible now. True, this is neither the Jewish Holocaust nor the Rwandan Genocide, but it is horrific enough, unthinkable enough, and so deeply disheartening …

And yet the mobilization in recent weeks of broad and diverse publics in Israeli society, who are currently awakening for protest, is an injection of hope that compels us to keep protesting until the deportation decree is aborted.

Prof. Yair Auron is a genocide scholar and the Associate Director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide.

This article was also published in the Hebrew and English editions of Haaretz on February 1, 2018. for the English edition see: Auron, Yair (February 1, 2018). Genocide Victims as Refugee Dealers: It’s hard to believe that the people behind the deal to expel asylum seekers from Israel to Rwanda are the leaders of two peoples who suffered genocide recently. Haaretz English Edition. https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-genocide-victims-as-refugee-dealers-1.5784452

Poland Seeks to Criminalize any Reference to Polish Participation in the Holocaust

Published in the California Courier

January 28, 2018 – The Polish parliament has approved a law that forbids use of the term “Polish Death Camp,” and forbids any other mention of the participation of the Poles in crimes committed during the Holocaust.  Anyone who violates the law, including non-Polish citizens, will be liable to receive a fine or up to three years of imprisonment. [1]  [2]

Legal authorities and others were quick to point out that the law in principle could be attached to anyone who reports or produces records of persecution by Poles of them or their families during the Holocaust, or researchers into the history of the Holocaust who are seeking to get more detailed records of events.

With regard to murders by Poles in the Holocaust, an article in Haaretz has reported that “According to the most extreme estimates, over 100,000 Jews were murdered over the course of the Holocaust with Polish assistance.” [3]

Speaking on the “Crossroads” TV show on Channel i24, Israel Charny, Director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem gave as his opinion that the Poles were justified in insisting that the camps were not “Polish death camps.”  Charny said, “The camps were set up by the Nazis, and even though there were clearly Poles who participated in the operation of the camps, their actions came under the Nazi regime which had occupied Poland in entirety.  However, in my opinion it would have been better to make this legitimate point a declaration by the government rather than a criminal law.”

He continued, “When it comes to the issue of Poles contributing to the Holocaust, it is well known that there were numerous incidents in which the Poles turned in and/or murdered Jews during the Holocaust as well as after the Holocaust.  Two famous massacres were the pogroms in Jedwabne in 1941 and then after the war in Kielce in 1946.”

The same position has been taken by Yad Vashem, acknowledging the legitimacy of the demand not to refer to the camps as Polish, but protesting severely the law against any mention of Polish responsibility for deaths of Jews in the Holocaust.

Charny emphasized that the law as a whole was a clear-cut example of one of the many strategies of denials of the Holocaust, in this case combining a legitimate restriction of charges of responsibility for the concentration camps with denial of historical truth as well as denials of freedom of expression and research, as if the legitimate restriction could hide or justify the subsequent denial of the Holocaust.

When asked by the television interviewer, Tracy Alexander, whether denials were particularly common among right-wing bigots, Charny replied that regrettably denials are very widespread and are to be found in quite unbelievable places, such as Israel’s denials of several genocides including the Armenian Genocide and currently the genocide in Myanmar, as well as the shameful record of Israel’s sales of arms to several countries even as those countries were committing genocide.  Denials are even to be found among bona fide genocide scholars and academic institutions such as the Journal of Genocide Research which published a series of articles minimizing the significance of the Holocaust, even including an article which denied that the Wannsee Conference in any way addressed a Final Solution specifically to the Jews.[4]

The following appears in a New York Times International editorial:

“In a striking coincidence, the Polish bill was passed just as the leader of a major Muslim institution in Saudi Arabia, a sternly Islamic kingdom better known for its virulently anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli positions, publicly proclaimed the Holocaust “among the worst human atrocities ever.” “One would ask, who in his right mind would accept, sympathize or even diminish the extent of this brutal crime?” demanded Mohammad Alissa of the Muslim World League in a letter to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

“Indeed, that is the question Poland should be asking, and in fact many Poles have been asking and should be encouraged to keep asking.”

[1] Eglash, Ruth and Selk, Avi (January 28, 2018). Israel and Poland try to tamp down tensions after Poland’s ‘death camp’ law sparks Israeli outrage. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/01/27/it-could-soon-be-a-crime-to-blame-poland-for-nazi-atrocities-and-israel-is-appalled/?utm_term=.2b15ee66d4ff

[2] Spiegel Online (January 27, 2018). Israel kritisiert polnisches Gesetz zu NS-Todeslagern. http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/polen-kritik-aus-israel-an-strafvorschrift-zu-ns-todeslagern-a-1190160.html

[3] Aderet, Ofer (January 28, 2018).  Poland criminalizes mention of ‘Polish crimes’ in Holocaust.  Haaretz English Edition. https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/.premium-poland-votes-to-criminalize-any-mention-of-polish-holocaust-crimes-1.5767561

[4] New York Times International (January 31, 2018). Poland’s Holocaust Blame Bill: In an effort to rewrite history, the Polish Parliament is debating a bill to criminalize discussion of the nation’s role in the Holocaust (Editorial).

Israel W. Charny is the author of The Genocide Contagion: How We Commit and Confront Holocaust and Genocide, and in 2011 was the recipient of the Armenian Presidential Medal in part for his “significant research in the field of genocide denial.”  Prof. Charny is a Clinical Psychologist and Family Therapist and Executive Director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem.

See also the discussion of the denials of the Holocaust by Poland and the denials of the Armenian Genocide by Israel in an article by Robert Fisk in the London Independent:

Fisk, Robert (February 15, 2018).  In the cases of two separate holocausts, Israel and Poland find it difficult to acknowledge the facts of history. (London) Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/holocaust-israel-poland-history-difficult-acknowledge-netanyahu-jewish-polish-government-a8212071.html

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The Genocide Contagion: How We Commit and Confront Holocaust and Genocide. Rowman & Littlefield, 2016.  Awarded SPIRITUALITY AND PRACTICE BOOK AWARD 2016. 
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 A Democratic Mind: Psychology and Psychiatry with Fewer Meds and More Soul. Rowman & Littlefield and Lexington Books (2016).

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COVER BLURBS A DEMOCRATIC MIND

Groundbreaking
“The argument for freedom of thought in our work and in our lives is emblazoned in this groundbreaking book for our times. A Democratic Mind marshals cogent arguments against the social and psychotherapeutic trends toward the surrender to imposed constraints on thought and action, and toward the suggestion that rule-bound ideas of mental health and illness will suffice. If you long for a unifying call for freedom of thought, read this book!”—David E. Scharff, MD, International Psychotherapy Institute and the IPA Committee on Family and Couple Psychoanalysis.

Compelling
“This compelling book held my interest throughout. It is written by a man who loves life and speaks with candor, clarity, and courage. A Democratic Mind is a critical exploration of the limits of contemporary psychotherapy, and a passionate plea to expand its agenda to not only treat the individual, but also the impact that he/she has on his/her family, community, and world. Israel Charny stresses the necessity of cultivating open, compassionate, and engaged people who embrace life. Charny’s writing is lucid and interesting; his work is passionate and lively.”—Michael Berenbaum, PhD, American Jewish University

Empowering
“The release of A Democratic Mind could not be at a better time, as the world contends with polarizing forces that pit tribal populism against global democratic principles. Israel W. Charny offers a metaphor of the ‘Fascist versus Democratic Mind’ as a new framework with which to understand symptoms and direct treatment. Like Albert Bandura’s Moral Disengagement, Charny offers readers an approach to assessment and psychotherapy that is firmly grounded in democratic, life-affirming values, and that emphasizes the choice between good and evil. He expands assessment of the rigid, fascist mind—how we humans hurt ourselves—to how we also hurt others. The addition of these relational considerations is critical for a full understanding of the human condition. To be mentally healthy in the twenty-first century is to cultivate calm in the midst of uncertainty, to embrace and learn from diversity, and to hold our own and others’ behaviors accountable as life-affirming. Charny offers an empowering and integrative psychotherapy to achieve these goals. We need this approach now more than ever.” —Susan McDaniel, University of Rochester Medical Center; Past President, American Psychological Association

Fascinating
From the Foreword to the book by Allen Frances, MD, Editor of DSM IV:
“This is a fascinating book, expressing noble aims. Charny’s premise is that our species is limited by a fairly primitive mental apparatus that needs a “software upgrade” to provide us with the tools to live more at peace with ourselves and with each other. Diagnosis and treatment must also extend beyond the individual to encompass relational problems at the family and societal level. We must not be satisfied with treating pathology; instead, we must strive to create goodness where once there was evil. Would it were possible, but I fear it isn’t. I believe in human happiness, but not in human perfectibility. Let the reader decide between my skeptical reservations and Dr. Charny’s hopes. I hope he is right.”

***

COVER BLURBS PSYCHOTHERAPY FOR A DEMOCRATIC MIND

Captivating
“Israel W. Charny provides a captivating journey exploring a framework for therapy that charts a course for today’s and tomorrow’s mental health professionals. Charny’s therapeutic wisdom and existential insight into the human condition, combined with his pioneering work on the Holocaust and genocide studies, informs his courageous approach to perplexing issues. He provides essential truths, including a prescription for therapists and patients alike, to achieve a ‘free mind’ that does no harm to one’s own life or that of others. This book provides approaches to diagnosis and therapy that must be studied, savored, and implemented.”—Robert Krell, MD University of British Columbia

Original
“This is one of the most original psychotherapy books I have ever read. Israel W. Charny does not flinch when describing evil in the human experience. He calls on therapists to see psychological health as inclusive of how personal behavior affects the well-being of others, and to make the connection between political democracy and democracy in the mind and heart. There is an ethical consciousness at work on every page, which is much needed in today’s world.” Bill Doherty, PhD, Family Social Science, University of Minnesota

Creative
Psychotherapy for a Democratic Mind presents a creative focusing of Israel W. Charny’s general concept of democratic and fascistic minds to a crucial field of application. An unusual blend of material from clinical psychology, personality theory, and political psychology, its core terms symbolize broad personality types. The result is a set of novel and thought-provoking ideas for clinical theory, diagnosis, and treatment.”—Peter Suedfeld, PhD, University of British Columbia

Brilliant
Response to Rap Poem-Like Closing Chapter, “Author’s Voice: What Is Going to Happen to All of Us? What Can I Do in MY Time?”
Psychotherapy for A Democratic Mind concludes with a brilliant summation of an extraordinary life spent grappling with the human condition. Truth is in essence dialectical, and this book is a twenty-first century embodiment of the rabbinic concept of “yetzer hara/yetzer tov” (in Hebrew: the good impulse and the bad impulse). Israel Charny offers a profound understanding of the human story. There is so much substance, depth, and truth in Charny’s life perspective.” — Samuel Karff, Temple Beth Israel, Houston and University of Texas Medical School

Wonderful
From the Foreword to the book by Douglas Sprenkle, Ph.D., Former Editor of the Journal of Marriage and Family Therapy
“This is a wonderful book. It is the most provocative—very much in a positive sense– book I have read on psychotherapy in the past decade. All of the chapters are enlivened with case studies that reflect the author’s exceptional wisdom, sensitivity, and courage. It is rare to read a book that offers a synergy of theory, research, and practice in a way that is so scholarly, compelling, and practical. I felt that it was a privilege to be drawn into the consulting room of a master clinician who handles very difficult cases with such sensitivity and brutal honesty.”