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