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Obama Administration Insults Memory Of Armenian Holocaust

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  • Obama Administration Insults Memory Of Armenian Holocaust

    OBAMA ADMINISTRATION INSULTS MEMORY OF ARMENIAN HOLOCAUST

    Front Page Magazine
    March 18 2015

    March 18, 2015 by Stephen Brown

    Next month, Armenians worldwide will mark the centennial of the
    Armenian Holocaust that saw 1.5 million of their people perish
    barbarically at the hands of the Ottoman Turks in a jihad that is
    continuing today under the Islamic State. This destruction of the
    Armenians in Anatolia, where they had lived for several thousand years,
    was also the event that gave Hitler reason to believe he could get
    away with exterminating Jews, Poles and Gypsies.

    "Who still remembers today the annihilation of the Armenians?" the
    Nazi leader reportedly said.

    The trauma of 1915 left deep scars on the Armenian psyche, similar
    to those the Nazi Holocaust made on that of the world's Jews. As
    a result, one would think the Obama administration would show an
    increased sensitivity regarding the killing of Armenians, especially
    by Muslim enemies, and more especially in view of the approaching
    Armenian Holocaust's centenary in April. But only last month,
    US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs
    Victoria Nuland urged Armenian authorities to make "a humanitarian
    gesture" and release two Azeri terrorists who had crossed the border
    from Azerbaijan and murdered two people, one a 17-year-old. A third
    Armenian, a woman, was badly wounded.

    "Such humanitarian gestures have been shown to reduce tensions
    and build trust between the sides. So that's what she (Nuland) was
    referring to," said a state department spokeswoman later at a press
    briefing, in explaining the assistant secretary's controversial
    remarks.

    Nuland was in Azerbaijan, the second stop of her tour of the Caucuses
    Mountains, when she made the "humanitarian gesture" comment, having
    previously visited Georgia. In Azerbaijan, Nuland also said she
    would take up the matter of releasing the two imprisoned Azeris when
    she visited Armenia, her next and last stop. Armenia and Azerbaijan
    are both former Soviet republics in the southern Caucuses Mountains,
    who now face each other over a closed, hostile border. Armed clashes
    occur there now almost daily and deaths have occurred. The military
    confrontation between the two Caucasian nations has recently become
    so heated, it is feared armed conflict could break out.

    The cause of the enmity between Christian Armenia and Azerbaijan, a
    Turkic-speaking, Muslim-majority country, was an undeclared war fought
    from 1988 to 1994 over Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian enclave inside
    of Azerbaijan that sought secession and reunification with Armenia in
    the dying days of the Soviet empire. The Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians,
    perceiving themselves as victims of the Soviet Union's nationalities
    policy, believed they were righting a historical wrong. In 1921, the
    Bolsheviks had first awarded the enclave to Armenia but later reversed
    that decision, giving it to Azerbaijan, even though the population,
    according to an early Soviet census, was 95 percent Armenian. Stalin
    was reportedly responsible for this fateful, and disastrous, decision
    reversal.

    During the conflict, both sides engaged in ethnic cleansing. According
    to authors Caroline Cox and John Eibner, Azeris cleared 40,000
    Armenians out of Kirovabad, Azerbaijan's second-largest city, in 1988
    in response to Nagorno-Karabakh's secession drive. Another Azeri pogrom
    against Armenians, in which 32 were killed, preceded this in Sumgait,
    followed by another in Baku, Azerbaijan's capital.

    "The Armenians were not quick to retaliate to the Sumgait massacre,"
    wrote Cox and Eibner in their 1993-published book Ethnic Cleansing In
    Progress: War In Nagorno-Karabakh. "But Armenian restraint crumbled in
    response to the Kirovabad pogrom and the anti-Armenian demonstrations
    in Baku."

    In the war itself, the outnumbered Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians, with
    assistance from neighboring Armenia, not only won their independence,
    defeating the Azeri forces, they also conquered some adjoining
    Azeri territory, which they still hold today. With the victory,
    Nagorno-Karabakh renamed itself Artsakh (its ancient name when
    an Armenian kingdom), and became an independent state, recognised
    internationally, however, by few others. These diplomatic difficulties
    have also prevented Artsakh from joining Armenia, although the two
    are closely entwined.

    Until now, Artsakh has refused to return the Azeri territory it
    occupies until it can be guaranteed that it will not be used to stage
    attacks on its land. In this respect, Nagorno-Karabakh has adopted
    a position similar to Israel's regarding the Arab territories it
    captured in 1967: it will trade land for peace.

    Azerbaijan's ally, Turkey, which is located on Armenia's western
    border, became so incensed when the Artsakh forces were winning that
    it threatened to attack Armenia, although it was not officially a
    combatant. Apparently, Turkey is not content with having murdered
    1.5 million Armenians a hundred years ago and wants to continue this
    homicidal tradition in this century. A Turkish military assault on
    Armenia would be like Germany attacking Israel today.

    However, a warning from the Kremlin that a Turkish attack on Armenia
    would mean war with Russia caused Turkey to climb down, thus averting
    a regional conflict. In the end, to save face, all Turkey could do
    was seal its border with Armenia as well. This closure has lasted now
    22 years, severely disrupting the Armenian economy. And incredibly,
    while trying its best to strangle Armenia, Turkey has hypocritically
    complained about Israel's blockade of Gaza.

    So it is against this background of war, genocide, ethnic cleansing
    and ancient hatreds that Nuland called upon Armenian authorities to
    make a "humanitarian gesture" and release the murderers. The two
    Azeri terrorists were found guilty in a Republic of Artsakh court
    after an "open and transparent trial," and received prison sentences
    of life and 22 years respectively. One of the charges that formed the
    conviction was "murder committed by an organised group motivated by
    ethnic hatred." Artsakh security forces killed a third Azeri terrorist
    belonging to the group. None of the three, Azerbaijan claims, are
    members of its military.

    Although Artsakh is recognised by four American state governments,
    the most recent being California in 2014, the federal government
    continues to deny it diplomatic recognition. As a result, Nuland
    did not talk with Artsakh authorities when in Armenia. Instead,
    she met with the Armenian foreign minister and visited the Armenian
    Holocaust memorial in Yerevan. But Nuland's talks with Armenian
    officials concerning the two Azeri terrorists yielded no results.

    This was to be expected. Armenians well remember the terrible injustice
    and humiliation inflicted on them when the Hungarian government
    released early from prison an Azeri military officer, Rami Safarov,
    who had killed Armenian officer, Lt. Gurgen Markarian, in his sleep
    with an axe in 2004 in Budapest. Both were attending a North Atlantic
    Treaty Organization-sponsored event at the time. Safarov was released
    after he had served only six years of a 30 year sentence for reasons
    that have yet to be discerned, outraging both Armenians and Hungarians.

    "With their joint actions the authorities of Hungary and Azerbaijan
    have opened the door for the recurrence of such crimes," Armenia's
    then president, Serge Sarkisian, stated prophetically. "With this
    decision they send a clear message to the butchers. The slaughterers
    hereafter are well aware of the impunity they can enjoy for murder
    driven by ethnic or religious hatred."

    Safarov returned home to Azerbaijan on a "special flight" and received
    a hero's welcome. For his foul murder, the government rewarded him
    with a pardon, eight years back pay, an apartment and a promotion of
    two ranks, similar to honours Palestinians bestow on their terrorists
    for killing Israelis. Also like the Palestinians, one Azeri member
    of the national legislature called Safarov "a national hero." Which
    shows the level of Azeri hatred and civilizational development when
    an axe murderer is accorded this status.

    The reason the Obama administration requested on Azerbaijan's
    behalf that the two Azeri murderers be released was probably not
    a humanitarian one, as it maintains. Like some Arab countries,
    Azerbaijan is very oil rich, while Armenia has no oil. American
    companies also have investments in the large Azeri oil industry.

    Equally important, Azerbaijan serves as a hub for the Caspian
    Sea-Central Asian energy pipelines. As well, both Israel and the
    United States view Azerbaijan as an ally in the regional showdown with
    Iran. So it is most likely that upholding these business and strategic
    interests with Azerbaijan was the real reason behind Nuland's pushing
    for the terrorists' release.

    This situation resembles the controversial early release by Great
    Britain of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, a Libyan also known as the Lockerbie
    Bomber, who was responsible for 259 deaths when a Pan Am flight was
    destroyed by a terrorist bomb over Scotland in 1988. It was later
    revealed that the British oil company, British Petroleum, had lobbied
    for his release, which greatly helped it obtain a $900 million oil
    exploration contract from Muamarr Gaddafi.

    But Armenia is not Great Britain. The murder of Lt. Markarian in
    Budapest and the two civilians in Artsakh are symbolic of the hatred
    and homicidal fate the surrounding Turkic populations have in store
    for the Armenian people, much like the Arabs have for Israel. Also
    like Israel, Armenians cannot allow the lives of their people to be
    sold cheaply. They have already suffered one holocaust. Granting
    early release to the two Azeri terrorists would send a wrong, and
    very dangerous, message, one that would likely be interpreted as
    weakness in one of the world's rougher neighbourhoods where only
    strength is respected.

    Besides, some Armenians view Nuland's request as hypocritical. Would
    the United States, for example, release Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to Russia as
    "a humanitarian gesture" to better relations with an Islamic country
    or with Putin, they ask? Or free early other imprisoned foreign
    terrorists with American blood on their hands?

    If the State Department truly wants "to reduce tensions and build
    trust" in the region, it should first tell Azerbaijan and Turkey to
    lift their blockades and open their borders with Armenia, ending the
    crippling of the Armenian economy. This is the humanitarian gesture
    it should be pursuing and not the release of two murderers.

    The border openings would not only be a good start to solving the
    other outstanding regional issues, it would also serve to lessen the
    Armenian fear that their Muslim neighbours simply want to finish the
    extermination project they started in 1915. It would also constitute
    a very fitting gesture of friendship and reconciliation, especially
    by Turkey, to Armenians worldwide on the centenary of the horrific
    event that serves as the well-spring of so much of their pain.

    But instead of a adopting a principled position that would help
    lessen that pain, the Obama administration appears to have taken one
    of unprincipled pragmatism.

    http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/stephenbrown/obama-administration-insults-memory-of-armenian-holocaust/

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