Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

TelAviv: When silence is wisdom

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • TelAviv: When silence is wisdom

    Ha'aretz, Israel
    Jan 6 2012


    When silence is wisdom

    By having its education committee hold a hearing on the subject of the
    Armenian tragedy, the Knesset is setting a dangerous course, morally,
    politically and historically.

    By Michael Berenbaum

    Last week's Knesset discussion on whether the Armenian tragedy merits
    being called a "genocide" was a sad and dangerous spectacle, one that
    put Israel in a no-win, all-lose situation.

    On the one hand there are those who believe in historical justice. But
    that is not the real issue, as the MKs who organized the session are
    joined by others who are furious at contemporary Turkey for many
    recent incidents that have contributed to a significant deterioration
    in relations.

    On the other side are pragmatists who feel that Israel's relationship
    with the Turks is tense enough right now without adding fuel to the
    fire, especially as the Syrian situation is so explosive. Turkey has
    come out strongly against the Assad regime, even as Israeli observers
    wonder whether their interests are better served by the devil it knows
    than by the unknown alternative. They are joined by MKs who are
    zealous to preserve the uniqueness of the Nazi Holocaust, and who feel
    that use of the term "genocide" with regard to the Armenian tragedy
    somehow diminishes the Shoah's stature - even if it's by no means
    clear how this is so.

    By having its education committee hold a hearing on the subject, the
    Knesset is setting a dangerous course, morally, politically and
    historically. Here's why:

    I have no doubt that the crime committed during the years 1915-1918,
    which led to the deaths of as many 1.5 million Armenians, was
    genocide. Indeed, the very word, a hybrid combining the Greek geno,
    meaning race or tribe, and the Latin derivative cide, from caedesi,
    meaning killing, was first coined to depict the massacre of Armenians
    by the Turks.

    Early this past decade, I worked on a film depicting Turkey's mostly
    positive role during the Holocaust, which brought me into direct
    contact with many Turkish officials. Naturally, the issue of the
    Armenian genocide came up. I advised those officials and Turkish
    intellectuals with whom I have worked closely to admit to the genocide
    and not to expend such national prestige fighting a historical truth.
    It implicates neither the current regime nor any of its predecessors
    dating back to the founding of the Turkish Republic by Mustafa Kemal
    Ataturk following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War
    I. Say it once, say it quietly and get it behind you.

    No one would think any less of the current Turkish government were it
    to acknowledge such a chapter in the country's history. In fact, such
    an act would be met with admiration. Germany is a proof in point: By
    admitting to the past and taking vital steps to establish a democratic
    state and to act and educate against the hatred of the Jews, Germany
    has overcome its Nazi past.

    But the Knesset should stay out of it. For the Knesset to pass a
    resolution today would only serve to politicize history. Sensitive to
    its relationship to Turkey and to the vast stake the Turkish
    government has had in denying the genocide, the State of Israel has
    long believed that it's not in its national interest to use the word
    genocide with regard to the massacres. There is no mention of this
    genocide at Yad Vashem, Israel's official Holocaust memorial
    institution. Foreign Ministry officials forced the cancellation of an
    academic conference on the subject in Israel some three decades ago.
    The state has also formally and informally pressured international
    Jewish organizations, as well as the influential American Jewish
    community, not to touch the issue.

    In the early 1990s, for example, when the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
    Museum was in the process of being created, Israel tried to make sure
    it would include no mention of the Armenian genocide, and came close
    to succeeding. The museum eliminated from the permanent exhibition's
    opening film any mention of previous cases of genocide, and limited
    mention of the Armenian case to Hitler's 1939 quote on the subject, as
    well as to a reference to Franz Werfel's novel "The Forty Days of Musa
    Dagh."

    At the time, I was the museum's project director, and Israeli Embassy
    staff and Foreign Ministry officials warned me that we should steer
    clear of the issue. During a visit to Israel, the then-vice chairman
    of the Holocaust Memorial Council met with the foreign minister
    himself, who told him this was a subject of highest concern to the
    Israeli government. As a result, he ordered the staff not to discuss
    it and when it was brought up before the museum's content committee,
    the atmosphere was explosive. I was ordered not to mention the
    Armenians again.

    And there are many other, more recent examples of Israeli governmental
    pressures.

    So why should Israel not deal with this? After all, not to pass such a
    resolution would be craven. It would legitimize the denial of history
    for political purposes, for a political agenda. Yet to pass this
    resolution at this time, when nothing has changed other than the fact
    that Israel and Turkey are feuding, would have Israel serve as an
    example par excellence that historical facts can be changed for
    political purpose - something other nations might notice as they
    consider the memory of the Holocaust.

    Israel is now in a lose/lose situation. The longer the politicians
    debate the issue, the more it diminishes the country's moral stature
    and the more dangerous it becomes for the memory of the Holocaust. Not
    to acknowledge the Armenian genocide puts it on the side of historical
    deniers, yet to acknowledge it now, out of anger, as punishment for
    the Turks, is the ultimate of politicization of history. Sometimes, as
    the Talmud tells us, silence is wisdom.

    Michael Berenbaum is the director of the Sigi Ziering Institute on the
    Holocaust at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, and
    professor of Jewish studies there.

    http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/when-silence-is-wisdom-1.405752

Working...
X