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Tel-Aviv Must Rise Above Monopolizing Genocide

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  • Tel-Aviv Must Rise Above Monopolizing Genocide

    TEL-AVIV MUST RISE ABOVE MONOPOLIZING GENOCIDE
    BY ARA KHACHATOURIAN

    asbarez
    Wednesday, February 8th, 2012

    Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman

    When Israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said "attempts to
    turn conflicts and massacres in Africa, Asia and Balkans into another
    Holocaust are unacceptable," and "Since its establishment, Israel has
    opposed the application of the term Holocaust to another war or
    tragedy," it revealed an ugly and ignorant reality by which certain
    Israeli leaders have been guided.

    Having risen from the ashes of the Holocaust, Israel should have been
    the first country to properly acknowledge the events of 1915 as
    Genocide. However, as Lieberman himself decries that "today historical
    incidents have turned into political disputes; that's why I don't
    consider it right for Israel to address this [the Genocide] issue,"
    the Israeli government has made it a policy to ignore the Armenian
    Genocide in the face of its regional POLITICAL interests-namely its
    unholy alliance with Turkey.

    Lieberman's assertion that Israel has a monopoly on man's inhumanity
    to man disrespects and diminishes the suffering and eventual fate of
    the millions genocide victims be they Armenian, Rwandan or Sudanese.

    It also goes against all international conventions on prevention of
    such acts, to which Israel is a signatory. More important, Lieberman's
    statements can be characterized as denial, which implies complicity in
    and the perpetuation of the cycle of Genocide.

    In December, an unprecedented discussion took place in the Israeli
    Knesset, where leaders from both parties affirmed the need for
    Israel's recognition of the Armenian Genocide. This coincided-or
    prompted-leading Israeli publications and human rights advocates, to
    as the director of Jerusalem Institute of Holocaust and Genocide
    Israel Charny appropriately said "put an end to this charade and fully
    recognize the Armenian Genocide."

    At the same Knesset event Israel's foreign ministry representatives
    maintained the Tel-Aviv's steadfast denial of the Genocide by saying
    "at this time, recognition of this type can have very grave strategic
    implications... Our relations with Turkey today are so fragile and so
    delicate that there is no place to take them over the red line." Is
    this not politicizing historic events?

    This dangerous semantics game only bolsters the likes of Turkey to
    continue its policies and further its pre-meditated and planned
    campaign of denial that also allows it to wreak havoc on its
    minorities today and pursue a policy of stifling those that stand
    opposed to its doctrines.

    Israel must rise above Lieberman's skewed beliefs that Israel has
    cornered the market on being a victim of a systematic effort to
    annihilate an entire race. Such a monopoly does not exist in the world
    and the likes of Avigdor Lieberman only incite hatred by making such
    statements.

    Lieberman should remember that such sense of entitlement breeds
    supremacist sentiments, which were the cornerstone of Hitler's plan
    that eventually became known as the Holocaust.


    From: Baghdasarian
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