What about the Armenians?
“Rejecting any denial of the Holocaust as a historical event, either in full or in part, the 191-member Assembly adopted by consensus a resolution condemning “without reserve” all manifestations of religious intolerance, incitement, harassment or violence against persons or communities based on ethnic origin or religious belief, whenever they occur.”
Great! I really admire that… but how about we condemn the denial of the Armenian genocide… actually not just condemn, but punish as well!
Posted by Rampurple |
i completely agree with you. so do the french: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6043730.stm
the parliament passed a bill last fall criminalizing denial of the armenian genocide. the bill establishes a one-year prison term and €45,000 fine as penalty, which i believe is the same as the penalty for denying the holocaust there.
it has be approved by the senate & president before coming into effect, and who knows when or if that’ll ever happen… but no matter what it’s a step in the right direction.
January 29th, 2007 | #
Hi, Ram.
This is going to be a long comment. Please forgive me, but I want to provide a number of pieces of information in one response.
(1) Armenian Genocide
I feel the same way about denial of the genocide against the Armenians that I feel about Holocaust denial. The two are, in fact, tightly related; when Hitler planned the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”, he was asked how history would remember his victims. His reply: “who now remembers the Armenians?” If only the west had learned the lessons of the attrocities against the Armenians, much of *my* extended family would not have been murdered while the world did nothing.
And if only Serbs and Sudanese remembered the murder of *my* family, hundreds of thousands of of Bosnian Muslims and Sudanese from Darfur might not have been murdered. Genocide follows genocide, and the world does not get wiser. Those who hate want to blame the victims, to deny that anything happened at all, to pretend that remembering and learning is unimportant.
(2) The Holocaust
The Nazis first applied modern factory techniques to murder as Henry Ford first applied them to cars. They revolutionized the practice of genocide. They must be remembered so that modern states never again develop continent-spanning infrastructures of mass extermination.
While I will confess some bias — the Nazis made a vast, empty wasteland of much of my family tree — I also feel that a genocide enacted at a continent-spanning scale over several years against millions of civilians who had no option to flee, convert, fight, etc. deserves to be remembered as an earth-shattering event.
If we forget the Holocaust, there is no protection for the Jews, Armenians, Bosnian Muslims, middle eastern Christians, people of Darfur, Egyptian Copts or anybody else.
And there are a lot of people who want to forget the Holocaust. In the Muslim world, many leaders don’t *want* anyone to remember it. They want to bury it under the generic term “genocide” and then change the meaning of “genocide” in common discourse to make it a buzzword for their own grievances. I’m specifically thinking of certain Muslim groups, which persistently claim that Israel is committing an entirely fictional “genocide” against the Palestinians. While the world specifically remembers the Holocaust, this claim is demonstrably idiotic. But the minute the memory of true genocide is replaced by a blurry buzzword, everything changes.
(3) Holocaust Remembrance
The Holocaust is also a lens through which Jewish people focus our opposition to genocide. The words “never again” serve as a rallying cry not only to prevent another attempt against *us*, but also to take action when others are similarly threatened. We are suspicious of those who want to forget, because these are the same people who admire the Nazis and wish to follow their example.
(4) Holocaust remembrance activities
If you visit a Holocaust conference in the west or in Israel, the conference typically studies not only the Holocaust but attempted genocides in Bosnia, Sudan, Kurdistan, Rwanda, Cambodia, Armenia, etc. A typical conference is not simply an exercise in condemnation, but rather studies the crimes and the criminals, the psychology that made genocide possible, the heroes who fought against it in their own ways, helping victims, the actions that could have helped, why people failed to take those actions, fighting Holocaust denial, the legal framework for prosecuting crimes against humanity, and so on. “Never again” is the theme that runs through such a conference, and you can imagine the despair that I have felt when despite these active efforts, the world sits idly by while the Tutsis, Bosnian Muslims and Darfur Sudanese are massacred by the hundreds of thousands.
(5) I did a quickie google search for Holocaust conferences. Here are a couple of random ones.
http://www.glhrc.org/program.html
http://muweb.millersville.edu/~holo-con/2005/confprog.html
Both are typical conferences, in that they include not only Holocaust studies but also the study of other genocides in Rwanda, Armenia, etc.
The Nazi Holocaust was not the only genocide. However, because of its massive scale and broad geographic scope, it provides a “critical mass” for the memory, study and prevention of modern genocides.
Again, I apologize for the length of this comment. I wanted to get all 5 points in, and it just grew. I hope that it was useful. LOL I hope that people actually read it… .
January 29th, 2007 | #
(so yes, I believe that it is perfectly okay to single out the Holocaust, and also to single out the genocide against the Armenians, and the genocide against the Tutsis, and so on. I simply don’t want to see these events lumped and genericized).
January 29th, 2007 | #
Sounds good to me. The Turks wont scream too much since they want to join the EU. I also support Kurdish independence
January 29th, 2007 | #
Yep, but I think we’re getting there if we keep spreading the word and signing petitions (hopefully).
January 29th, 2007 | #
… And what about the genocide against the Palestinian People as well on the hands of the Zionists> I would like to add them on the list, and make a big space for us on this list, because it’s on going, on going.
Armenians suffered greatly this must be recognized.
Zvi: When you ask that people stick to the factual numbers and not abuse the Jewish holocaust to serve other purposes, such as the purpose of Zion, this does not make one a holocaust denier, it makes him a realist.
May all of their souls rest in peace.
January 29th, 2007 | #
Zvi: I do not disagree with anything you did say. Do not apologize for a lengthy comment since it was highly appreciated. I hope you did not understand that I would have rathered that this resolution not be passed… I did not. I am glad such a resolution was passed but wondering when would it be time for the Armenians to get their right.
Is it because Armenia is a weak and small country that they are barely heard? 90 years after the death of 1.5 million people, and still nothing has been done about it.
Izzi, the reason I mention the Armenian genocide and not Darfur, or any other country is because I am half Armenian. My grandfather, in one of the previous posts is Armenian.
Liliane: I have started to believe that petitions are a waste of time. 90 years of annual demonstrations, petitions, as well as other ways, and nothing has been done.
Carine: I did not know that. Thanks for the info!
January 29th, 2007 | #
yes, know that ur half armenian hokis.
January 29th, 2007 | #
Rampurple, on that note, if you want check this video out, it is about an Armenian living in Turkey, who was assassinated on a week ago, because he’s an activist trying to make the Armenians (a minority in Turkey) heard…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SijWiIB5wkc
January 29th, 2007 | #
If the Zionist committed genocide against the Palestinians, how come there were 700,000 Palestinians in 1946 and 5 million today? It doesnt sound like a very effective genocide. In contrast, the number of Jews in the world today is the same as it was in 1939. To include the Palestinians with genocide against the Jews, Armenians, Tutsis or Rwanda, Cambodians, and Darfur trivializes those episodes of genocide. The Palestinians must decide what they want more- their own state or the destruction of Israel
January 29th, 2007 | #
Izzi, you claim there is an “ongoing genocide” against Palestinians by Israel. This only shows that you have no idea what genocide is.
It is easy to understand how your life differs from the Nazi genocide against the Jews. Here is one example. People from Rwanda, and from Bosnia-Herzgovina, and Jews and Kurds will recognize these kinds of images, if not the specific details.
Imagine that the Palestinians had NOT been rocketing Israeli towns and sending suicide bombers for decades. Now imagine that despite the fact that you have been minding your own business, Israel rolls its army into Gaza and deports every living soul in the Strip to closely guarded concentration camps in the Negev. Every person who resists — man, woman or child, old or young — is immediately shot in the head, so that all of the streets of Gaza are lined with dead bodies. Now imagine that you personally are shoved into a cattle car and transported without food or water for a week, in the dead of winter or the blazing heat of summer, frequently left to bake or freeze on railroad sidings under close guard. Now imagine that when you get where you are going, a concentration camp, a bunch of heavily armed thugs carries out a “selection”, sending some of you to the left and the rest (including most kids and old people) to the right. Those sent to the right — the majority — are immediately stripped and efficiently murdered either with guns or in the gas chambers. Those few who were sent to the left are forced to work as slaves, with men and women separated, and you are fed almost nothing. All are subjected to repeated further “selections.” Then imagine that the extermination of your “vermin” self is the ideological foundation of a continent-spanning totalitarian regime, to the extent that the regime is willing to murder you even if it hampers their own war effort.
Now imagine that somehow, you survive 6 years of this, but you are the only member of your large family to do so.
If you understand this, you will understand a very few of the many, many horrific aspects of the Holocaust.
Izzi, your personal politics notwithstanding, there is a world of difference between striking back when you use suicide bombers and rockets against Israel, and committing genocide. Trying to conflate the two is dishonest, and makes those people who have any clue at all regard you as either ignorant or dishonest.
January 30th, 2007 | #
talk to the hand zvi, not in the mood.
January 31st, 2007 | #
Too bad. I assumed you simply didn’t know. If you in fact *refuse* to know, then I’m sad for you, but no, I won’t burden your pristine ignorance with facts.
January 31st, 2007 | #
yes pls don’t burden my pristine ignorance with your tailored facts.
January 31st, 2007 | #