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FRENCH AUTHOR EXPLAINS RATIONALE BEHIND GENOCIDE BILL
PanARMENIAN.Net
January 10, 2012 - 10:19 AMT
PanARMENIAN.Net - French writer and academic Bernard-Henri Levy
explained the rationale behind the recent bill passed in the French
Parliament criminalizing the denial of the Armenian Genocide in a
January 4 article in Huffington Post.
"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," Levy writes in the Huffington Post. "This we have always known:
that, beginning in 1915, the Armenians were the victims of a methodic
attempt at annihilation."
"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," the author writes.
"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,"
he concludes.
From: Baghdasarian
PanARMENIAN.Net
January 10, 2012 - 10:19 AMT
PanARMENIAN.Net - French writer and academic Bernard-Henri Levy
explained the rationale behind the recent bill passed in the French
Parliament criminalizing the denial of the Armenian Genocide in a
January 4 article in Huffington Post.
"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," Levy writes in the Huffington Post. "This we have always known:
that, beginning in 1915, the Armenians were the victims of a methodic
attempt at annihilation."
"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," the author writes.
"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,"
he concludes.
From: Baghdasarian