| Topic: |
Sociology > Education |
| User: |
"" |
| Date: |
18 Aug 2007 02:25:20 PM |
| Object: |
A painful truth |
X-NO ARCHIVE- YES
A painful truth
By Rachel Kaprielian and Alan Dershowitz
August 18, 2007
THE CONTROVERSY in Watertown over the Anti-Defamation's League's anti-
bigotry program, "No Place for Hate," has struck an important chord in
the historical and global struggle for human rights. Moreover, it
reopened a deep wound for the Armenian people, whose nation was
devastated, half their population murdered, and the remainder deported
in what was the first genocide of the 20th century.
The tragedy is compounded by the denial by Turkey itself. In 1915,
Henry Morganthau, then US ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, worked
tirelessly to bring the genocide to the world's attention and warned
the US secretary of state that "a campaign of race extermination" was
occurring against "peaceful" Armenians.
The New York Times published 145 articles in 1915 and stressed that
what was happening to the Armenians was a "deliberate" "policy of
extermination." Thousands of eyewitness accounts, official government
documents, and photographs buttress the historical truths.
The Association of Genocide Scholars and the community of Holocaust
scholars, as well as numerous others, have written that this horrific
event was genocide. In 2000, 126 leading Holocaust scholars --
including Nobel Prize laureate Elie Wiesel -- published a statement in
The New York Times that sought both to "affirm the incontestable fact
of the Armenian Genocide and urge Western Democracies to officially
recognize it."
The matter is not subject to interpretation. In recent decades, the
Armenian genocide has been referred to as "the forgotten genocide" and
to understand it is to note that it was the template for the genocides
that followed: the Holocaust, Pol Pot's genocide in Cambodia, the 1994
genocide in Rwanda, and today in Darfur. Adolf Hitler famously said in
1939 upon the commencement of his own "final solution:" "Who now
remembers the Armenians?"
For any organization or official to believe that there are differing
sides to the Armenian Genocide is as much an outrage as it would be
for Germany to say that the work of Jewish scholars, witnesses, and
victim testimonies represented merely the "Jewish side" of the
Holocaust. To deny genocide victims their history and suffering is
tantamount to making them victims again.
Justice and memory demand that we recognize the Ottoman Turkish
genocide against the Armenians for what it was: the destruction of a
large part of an ancient and vibrant community as well as the horrible
model of what Hitler did to Jews and what the janjaweed is doing to
the victims of Darfur.
The Anti-Defamation League has done enormous good around the world.
Its regional chapter was courageous and correct in its decision to
affirm its position that the genocide was fact.
No Place for Hate is a wonderful project that is not limited to
Watertown. It represents the defense of human rights yesterday, today,
and tomorrow and challenges our strongest determination, our greatest
will, and our most humanitarian spirit.
To assure that "Never Again" remains more than an aspiration we must
all join together to proclaim the truth, no matter how painful or
difficult.
Rachel Kaprielian is a state representative from Watertown, MA. Alan
Dershowitz is a professor at Harvard Law School.
=A9 Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
Posted by Permission
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| User: "David Johnston" |
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| Title: Re: A painful truth |
18 Aug 2007 04:21:37 PM |
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On Sat, 18 Aug 2007 12:25:20 -0700, wrote:
X-NO ARCHIVE- YES
Reposting it with "no-archive" won't change the original one. That
being said, it's unfortunate that the Turks still insist on pretending
it never happened.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: A painful truth |
19 Aug 2007 02:13:02 AM |
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On Aug 18, 5:21 pm, David Johnston <da...@block.net> wrote:
On Sat, 18 Aug 2007 12:25:20 -0700, wrote:
X-NO ARCHIVE- YES
Reposting it with "no-archive" won't change the original one. That
being said, it's unfortunate that the Turks still insist on pretending
it never happened.
No Archive is merely a condition
precedent for permission to publish
.
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