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Robert Fisk: Israel can no longer ignore the existence of the first Holocaust
30.01.2010 16:57 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Israelis commemorated the second Holocaust of the
20th century this week, Jan. 27, but the Armenians were not
participating in official ceremonies, says an article published in
British Independent.
That's perhaps because Israel officially refuses to acknowledge that
Armenia's million and a half dead of 1915-1923 were victims of a
Turkish Holocaust, according to Robert Fisk, the author of the
publication.
Israeli-Turkish diplomatic and military relations are more important
than genocide, he further notes.
The authors quotes the words of George Hintlian, historian and
prominent member of Jerusalem's 2,000-strong Armenian community in
Jerusalem who said, `Maybe they don't like it that there was another
genocide. These are things we can't explain."
"For three decades, no documentary on the Armenian Genocide could be
shown on Israeli television because it would offend the Turks. Then
suddenly last year, important Israelis demanded that a documentary be
shown. Thirty Knesset members supported us. We always had Yossi Sarid
of Peace Now but now we've got right-wing Israelis," said the
historian.
George Hintlian turned up on Israeli television with Danny Ayalon -
the foreign office minister who humiliated the Turkish ambassador by
forcing him to sit on a sofa below him - and Knesset speaker Reuven
Rivlin who said that Israel should commemorate the Armenian genocide
"every year".
Proceeding with his publication, the British analyst further states
that the Israeli press now calls the Armenian genocide a "Shoah" - the
same word all Israelis use for the Jewish Holocaust.
"Let us assume that Turkey will renew its ties with Israel. Then what?
What then? Will we also renew our contribution to the denial of the
Armenian Holocaust?" he asks in clunclusion.
The Armenian GenocideM (1915-23) was the deliberate and systematic
destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during
and just after World War I. It was characterized by massacres, and
deportations involving forced marches under conditions designed to
lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of deaths
reaching 1.5 million.
The date of the onset of the genocide is conventionally held to be
April 24, 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities arrested some 250
Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople.
Thereafter, the Ottoman military uprooted Armenians from their homes
and forced them to march for hundreds of miles, depriving them of food
and water, to the desert of what is now Syria. Massacres were
indiscriminate of age or gender, with rape and other sexual abuse
commonplace.
To date, twenty countries and 44 U.S. states have officially
recognized the events of the period as genocide, and most genocide
scholars and historians accept this view. The Armenian Genocide has
been also recognized by influential media including The New York
Times, BBC, The Washington Post and The Associated Press.
The majority of Armenian Diaspora communities were formed by the
Genocide survivors.
Holocaust also known as The Shoah is the term generally used to
describe the genocide of approximately six million European Jewsduring
World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored extermination
by Nazi Germany.
The persecution and genocide were carried out in stages. Legislation
to remove the Jews from civil society was enacted years before the
outbreak of World War II. Concentration camps were established in
which inmates were used as slave labor until they died of exhaustion
or disease. Where the Third Reichconquered new territory in eastern
Europe, specialized units called Einsatzgruppen murdered Jews and
political opponents in mass shootings. Jews and Romani were confined
in overcrowded ghettos before being transported by freight train to
extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, the majority
of them were killed in gas chambers. Every arm of Nazi Germany's
bureaucracy was involved in the logistics of the mass murder, turning
the country into what one Holocaust scholar has called "a genocidal
state"
30.01.2010 16:57 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Israelis commemorated the second Holocaust of the
20th century this week, Jan. 27, but the Armenians were not
participating in official ceremonies, says an article published in
British Independent.
That's perhaps because Israel officially refuses to acknowledge that
Armenia's million and a half dead of 1915-1923 were victims of a
Turkish Holocaust, according to Robert Fisk, the author of the
publication.
Israeli-Turkish diplomatic and military relations are more important
than genocide, he further notes.
The authors quotes the words of George Hintlian, historian and
prominent member of Jerusalem's 2,000-strong Armenian community in
Jerusalem who said, `Maybe they don't like it that there was another
genocide. These are things we can't explain."
"For three decades, no documentary on the Armenian Genocide could be
shown on Israeli television because it would offend the Turks. Then
suddenly last year, important Israelis demanded that a documentary be
shown. Thirty Knesset members supported us. We always had Yossi Sarid
of Peace Now but now we've got right-wing Israelis," said the
historian.
George Hintlian turned up on Israeli television with Danny Ayalon -
the foreign office minister who humiliated the Turkish ambassador by
forcing him to sit on a sofa below him - and Knesset speaker Reuven
Rivlin who said that Israel should commemorate the Armenian genocide
"every year".
Proceeding with his publication, the British analyst further states
that the Israeli press now calls the Armenian genocide a "Shoah" - the
same word all Israelis use for the Jewish Holocaust.
"Let us assume that Turkey will renew its ties with Israel. Then what?
What then? Will we also renew our contribution to the denial of the
Armenian Holocaust?" he asks in clunclusion.
The Armenian GenocideM (1915-23) was the deliberate and systematic
destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during
and just after World War I. It was characterized by massacres, and
deportations involving forced marches under conditions designed to
lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of deaths
reaching 1.5 million.
The date of the onset of the genocide is conventionally held to be
April 24, 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities arrested some 250
Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople.
Thereafter, the Ottoman military uprooted Armenians from their homes
and forced them to march for hundreds of miles, depriving them of food
and water, to the desert of what is now Syria. Massacres were
indiscriminate of age or gender, with rape and other sexual abuse
commonplace.
To date, twenty countries and 44 U.S. states have officially
recognized the events of the period as genocide, and most genocide
scholars and historians accept this view. The Armenian Genocide has
been also recognized by influential media including The New York
Times, BBC, The Washington Post and The Associated Press.
The majority of Armenian Diaspora communities were formed by the
Genocide survivors.
Holocaust also known as The Shoah is the term generally used to
describe the genocide of approximately six million European Jewsduring
World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored extermination
by Nazi Germany.
The persecution and genocide were carried out in stages. Legislation
to remove the Jews from civil society was enacted years before the
outbreak of World War II. Concentration camps were established in
which inmates were used as slave labor until they died of exhaustion
or disease. Where the Third Reichconquered new territory in eastern
Europe, specialized units called Einsatzgruppen murdered Jews and
political opponents in mass shootings. Jews and Romani were confined
in overcrowded ghettos before being transported by freight train to
extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, the majority
of them were killed in gas chambers. Every arm of Nazi Germany's
bureaucracy was involved in the logistics of the mass murder, turning
the country into what one Holocaust scholar has called "a genocidal
state"