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Huffington Post
Jan 3 2012
On the Armenian Genocide: The Response of a Handful of Historians
Bernard-Henri Lévy.French philosopher; Writer
Are these people really incapable of comprehending? Or are they just
pretending not to understand?
The law whose purpose is to penalize negationist revisionism, voted
before Christmas by the French parliament, does not propose to write
history in the place of historians. And this for the simple reason
that this history has been told and written, well written, for a long
time. This we have always known: that, beginning in 1915, the
Armenians were the victims of a methodic attempt at annihilation. A
wealth of literature has been devoted to the subject, based in
particular upon the confessions offered by the Turkish criminals
themselves, starting with Hoca Ilyas Sami, almost immediately after
the fact. From Yehuda Bauer to Raul Hilberg, from researchers at Yad
Vashem to Yves Ternon and others, no serious historian casts doubt
upon this reality or denies it. In other words, this law has nothing
to do with the will to establish a truth of state. No representative
of the French National Assembly who voted for it saw himself as a
substitute for historians or their work. Together, they only intended
to recall this simple right, that of each of us not to be publicly
attacked -- and its corollary, the right to demand reparations for
this particularly outrageous offense which is the insult to the memory
of the dead. It is a question of law, not one of history.
Presenting this law as one that denies liberty, one likely to hamper
the work of historians is another strange argument that makes one
wonder. It is the negationist revisionists who, up until now, have
hampered the work of historians. It is their mad ideas, their
hare-brained concepts, their twisting of facts, their terrifying and
breathtaking lies that shake the earth upon which, in principle, a
science should be built. And in punishing them, making their task more
complicated, alerting the public that it is dealing not with scholars
but with those who would enflame minds, that the law protects and
shelters history. Is there one historian who has been prevented from
working on the Shoah by the Gayssot law punishing denial of the
Holocaust? Is there one author who, in good conscience, can claim that
it has limited his freedom to do research and to raise questions? And
isn't it clear that the only ones this law has seriously hindered are
the Faurissons, the Irvings, and the other Le Pens? Well, the same
applies to the genocide of the Armenians. This law, when the Senate
will have ratified it, will be a stroke of fortune for historians, who
can finally work in peace. Unless... Yes, unless those who oppose the
law express this other, cloudier reservation: that it would be a bit
premature to come to a conclusion, precisely and for nearly a century,
of "genocide".
Some still say, isn't there some other way than the law to intimidate
the "assassins on paper"? And hasn't the truth in itself, in its
starkness and its rigour, the means to defend itself and to triumph
over those who would deny it? It is a vast debate, one which has been
discussed, in parenthesis, since the origins of philosophy. And to
which one adds, in the case at hand, a specific parameter stating
that, when in doubt, it is prudent to make sure one is backed up by
the law. This parameter is the negationist revisionism of the Turkish
State. And this specificity is that the negationists there are not
just a vague bunch of cranks, but people who are supported by
resources, diplomacy, the capacity for blackmail and retaliation of a
powerful State. Imagine the situation of the survivors of the Shoah
had the German State been a negationist State after the war. Imagine
the immensity of their additional distress and anger had they been
confronted, not with a sect of loonies, but with an unrepentant
Germany that brought pressure upon their partners by threatening them
with angry retaliation should they call the extermination of the Jews
at Auschwitz genocide. It is, mutatis mutandis, the situation of the
Armenians. And that is also why they have the right to a law.
And finally, I would add that it's time to stop mixing everything up
and drowning the Armenian tragedy in the ritualized blahblahblah
assailing the "memorial laws". For this law is not a memorial law. It
is not one of those dangerous power plays capable of laying the path
for dozens if not hundreds of absurd or blackguardly rules, codifying
what one has the right to say about the Saint Bartholomew's Day
massacre, the meaning of colonization, slavery, the Civil War, the
misdemeanor of blasphemy and heaven knows what else. It is a law
concerning a genocide -- which is not the same. It is a law
sanctioning those who, in denying it, intensify and perpetuate the
genocidal act -- which is something else entirely. There are not,
thank God, hundreds of genocides, or even dozens. There are three.
Four, if we add the Cambodians to the Armenians, the Jews, and the
Rwandans. And to place these three or four genocides on the same level
as all the rest, to make their penalization the antechamber of a
political correctness that authorizes a stream of useless or perverse
laws on the disputed aspects of our national memory, to say, "Watch
it! You're opening a Pandora's box from which everything and anything
can pop out !" is another imbecility, exacerbated by another infamy
and sealed with a dishonesty that is, really, grotesque.
Let us confront this specious line of argument with the wisdom of
national representation. And may the senators complete the process by
refusing to be intimidated by this little band of historians.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bernardhenri-levy/on-the-armenian-genocide-_b_1181758.html?ref=yahoo&ir=Yahoo
From: A. Papazian
Jan 3 2012
On the Armenian Genocide: The Response of a Handful of Historians
Bernard-Henri Lévy.French philosopher; Writer
Are these people really incapable of comprehending? Or are they just
pretending not to understand?
The law whose purpose is to penalize negationist revisionism, voted
before Christmas by the French parliament, does not propose to write
history in the place of historians. And this for the simple reason
that this history has been told and written, well written, for a long
time. This we have always known: that, beginning in 1915, the
Armenians were the victims of a methodic attempt at annihilation. A
wealth of literature has been devoted to the subject, based in
particular upon the confessions offered by the Turkish criminals
themselves, starting with Hoca Ilyas Sami, almost immediately after
the fact. From Yehuda Bauer to Raul Hilberg, from researchers at Yad
Vashem to Yves Ternon and others, no serious historian casts doubt
upon this reality or denies it. In other words, this law has nothing
to do with the will to establish a truth of state. No representative
of the French National Assembly who voted for it saw himself as a
substitute for historians or their work. Together, they only intended
to recall this simple right, that of each of us not to be publicly
attacked -- and its corollary, the right to demand reparations for
this particularly outrageous offense which is the insult to the memory
of the dead. It is a question of law, not one of history.
Presenting this law as one that denies liberty, one likely to hamper
the work of historians is another strange argument that makes one
wonder. It is the negationist revisionists who, up until now, have
hampered the work of historians. It is their mad ideas, their
hare-brained concepts, their twisting of facts, their terrifying and
breathtaking lies that shake the earth upon which, in principle, a
science should be built. And in punishing them, making their task more
complicated, alerting the public that it is dealing not with scholars
but with those who would enflame minds, that the law protects and
shelters history. Is there one historian who has been prevented from
working on the Shoah by the Gayssot law punishing denial of the
Holocaust? Is there one author who, in good conscience, can claim that
it has limited his freedom to do research and to raise questions? And
isn't it clear that the only ones this law has seriously hindered are
the Faurissons, the Irvings, and the other Le Pens? Well, the same
applies to the genocide of the Armenians. This law, when the Senate
will have ratified it, will be a stroke of fortune for historians, who
can finally work in peace. Unless... Yes, unless those who oppose the
law express this other, cloudier reservation: that it would be a bit
premature to come to a conclusion, precisely and for nearly a century,
of "genocide".
Some still say, isn't there some other way than the law to intimidate
the "assassins on paper"? And hasn't the truth in itself, in its
starkness and its rigour, the means to defend itself and to triumph
over those who would deny it? It is a vast debate, one which has been
discussed, in parenthesis, since the origins of philosophy. And to
which one adds, in the case at hand, a specific parameter stating
that, when in doubt, it is prudent to make sure one is backed up by
the law. This parameter is the negationist revisionism of the Turkish
State. And this specificity is that the negationists there are not
just a vague bunch of cranks, but people who are supported by
resources, diplomacy, the capacity for blackmail and retaliation of a
powerful State. Imagine the situation of the survivors of the Shoah
had the German State been a negationist State after the war. Imagine
the immensity of their additional distress and anger had they been
confronted, not with a sect of loonies, but with an unrepentant
Germany that brought pressure upon their partners by threatening them
with angry retaliation should they call the extermination of the Jews
at Auschwitz genocide. It is, mutatis mutandis, the situation of the
Armenians. And that is also why they have the right to a law.
And finally, I would add that it's time to stop mixing everything up
and drowning the Armenian tragedy in the ritualized blahblahblah
assailing the "memorial laws". For this law is not a memorial law. It
is not one of those dangerous power plays capable of laying the path
for dozens if not hundreds of absurd or blackguardly rules, codifying
what one has the right to say about the Saint Bartholomew's Day
massacre, the meaning of colonization, slavery, the Civil War, the
misdemeanor of blasphemy and heaven knows what else. It is a law
concerning a genocide -- which is not the same. It is a law
sanctioning those who, in denying it, intensify and perpetuate the
genocidal act -- which is something else entirely. There are not,
thank God, hundreds of genocides, or even dozens. There are three.
Four, if we add the Cambodians to the Armenians, the Jews, and the
Rwandans. And to place these three or four genocides on the same level
as all the rest, to make their penalization the antechamber of a
political correctness that authorizes a stream of useless or perverse
laws on the disputed aspects of our national memory, to say, "Watch
it! You're opening a Pandora's box from which everything and anything
can pop out !" is another imbecility, exacerbated by another infamy
and sealed with a dishonesty that is, really, grotesque.
Let us confront this specious line of argument with the wisdom of
national representation. And may the senators complete the process by
refusing to be intimidated by this little band of historians.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bernardhenri-levy/on-the-armenian-genocide-_b_1181758.html?ref=yahoo&ir=Yahoo
From: A. Papazian