Israel must put an end to this charade and fully recognize the Armenian Genocide, well-known genocide scholar Israel Charny says in an article titled “A moral Israel must recognize the Armenian Genocide.”
"I never cease to be amazed at the “upside-down double talk” that genocide deniers speak – not only in denial of the Armenian genocide, but in denial of the Holocaust and, believe it or not, denial of the Rwandan genocide. In fact, many of us scholars characterize denial of genocide as the “last stage of genocide." In a recent article in The Jerusalem Post called “Armenian Genocide: Israel must maintain its moral compass,” the arguments set forth by Hakan Yavuz and Tal Buenos are a thin veneer for nothing less than a pro-Turkish government position of maintaining denial of the Armenian genocide,” he says in the opinion published by The Jerusalem Post.
“What is their argument? For Israel to now to break its silence and recognize the Armenian genocide, it would be tantamount to confessing, retroactively, that its been playing politics all along by remaining silent and, with crocodile tears, admitting that those of us who care about Israel cannot allow that to happen.”
According to him, “the key issue that emerges is the question of whether, after years of a realpolitik denial of the Armenian genocide, in disheartening obsequiousness to Turkey in an attempt to gain their favor at the expense of the basic moral principles that are intrinsic to recognition to another people’s genocide or holocaust, Israel’s recognition of the Armenian genocide would constitute another politicized move rather than a moral correction.”
“The facts are well known: the Turkish government executed the Armenian genocide – in which one to one-and-a-half million Armenians were murdered,” prof. Charny says.
“And for us Jews and Israelis, there are added meanings: One Israeli Professor at Bar Ilan University once characterized the Armenian genocide as a “dress rehearsal for the Holocaust.” We also know that Hitler explicitly built on the precedent of the Armenian genocide when he went after us Jews,” he concludes.
Israel Charny is executive director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem, editor of the Web Magazine GPN GENOCIDE PREVENTI0N NOW, a co-founder and former president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars and editor of the Encyclopedia of Genocide.
