Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Victory for Armenians: Genocide Bill Passes First Step!



Earlier Bush had this to say, but it seems his even his superior persuasive skills could not prevent the bill from moving forward!
It passed through the House Foreign Affairs Committee by 27 votes to 21 - the first step towards holding a vote in the House of Representatives.

After the vote, the US Undersecretary of State, Nicholas Burns, told the BBC that the Bush administration was "deeply disappointed".
Of course, there was predictable opposition from some, especially the anti-Armenian Jewish members of Congress:
"We have to weigh the desire to express our solidarity with the Armenian people... against the risk that it could cause young men and women in the uniform of the United States armed services to pay an even heavier price than they are currently paying," he said.
That was said by Tom Lantos, a Holocaust survivor and chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Source: BBC News

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't quite classify Tom Lantos as anti-Armenian. As the head of the committee, he has to be a somewhat more impartial than the other members, and was just summarizing the arguments of both sides of the debate. Also, I wouldn't be so quick to connect Jewish members and anti-Armenian stances. Adam Schiff, the original author of the bill, is Jewish and is a strong supporter of the legislation.

Rhyne said...

Everything I've said is based in fact. Search the blog for more instances of many Jewish people being openly against the Armenian Genocide Resolution.

Oh, and as for Adam Schiff, Armenians make up a large part of his constituency, thus his support.

Anonymous said...

The Jerusalem Report: The Dark World of the Armenians

THE JERUSALEM REPORT
SEPTEMBER 22, 2003

VIEWPOINT by MATTHEW BERKOWITZ
The Dark World of the Armenians

BEARING VIGILANT AND CONSTANT WITNESS AND fighting Holocaust denial are part of the Jewish respon¬sibility to history. Yet today, we are accomplices in the denial of an earlier genocidal chapter - the Armenian Genocide.

Between 1915 and 1916, some 1 million Armenians were sys¬tematically massacred by Ottoman Turkey; between 200,000 and 500,000 more would be exterminated between 1917 and 1922 by the revolutionary Young Turks. Dehumanization, death marches, and massacres targeted this Christian population. Vivid testimony was recorded by an American Jew - Henry Morgenthau, who was U.S. ambassador to Turkey: "When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well and in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact." Morgenthau writes of a death march to Aleppo. Of some 18,000 who set out, 150 women and children arrived. "All the rest," he writes, "were dead."

Deborah Lipstadt argues that "denial of genocide is the final stage of genocide; it is what Elie Wiesel has called 'a double killing.'" Yet the government of Turkey has been waging a campaign of denial involving threats, political bullying, co¬ercion, and an unabashed assault on truth. The campaign has been effective. Suc¬cessive administrations of the United States have succumbed to pressure pre¬venting the passage of legislation referring explicitly to the Armenian Genocide and calling on Turkey to take responsi¬bility for this blemish on humanity.

Tragically, the organized Jewish com¬munity continues to remain silent, and even to appease the Turkish government. The Turkish Daily News has reported with evident satisfaction that "the American Jewish Committee, member of the influ¬ential Jewish lobby in the U.S., has sent a letter to the Senate calling on the senators to exclude references to the alleged genocide out of the [2004] budget bill." The reference is to the State Department Authoriza¬tion Bill, to which a rider referring explicitly to the Armenian Genocide has been attached by some 33 senators, reaffirming support of the Genocide Convention. They will seek a vote in September.

Adolf Hitler relied on the silence of history to wage a genocidal campaign. On August 22, 1939, only days after the Nazi conquest of Poland, he asked, "Who after all speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?" Today, we are commanded by history just as we are by words of Torah, v'dibarta bam - that you shall speak of them - not only of the destruction that befell us, but the an¬nihilation that befell them.

Fortunately, some have refused to be silent. On June 9, 2000, 126 Holocaust scholars published a petition in The New York Times affirming "the incontestable fact of the Armenian Geno¬cide" and urging "Western democracies to officially recognize it." In March this year, Dr Yair Auron, an Israeli scholar of genocide, wrote in a newspaper article, "Israel has systematically avoided the Armenian issue." The Israeli and larger Jewish response "des¬ecrates the memory of the Holocaust and its significance," Auron comments, and concludes poignantly: "As an Israeli Jew, I can only ask the forgiveness of every member of the Armenian people and as¬sure them that there are people in Israel who will not give up until their state changes its immoral and anti-historical attitude toward the genocide suffered by another people." Some 15 Jewish organ¬izations, including the American Jewish World Service, the JCRCs of Greater Boston and Palm Beach, the Reconstruc¬tionist Rabbinical College, and the Union of Orthodox Rabbis have also breached the wall of silence. The rest of us must also begin to commemorate the Armenian Genocide and give whole-hearted support toward the passage of the Genocide Resolution.

In 1992, on a tour of the Armenian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, I noticed shards of glass jutting out of the upper walls on either side of us. Our guide reminded us that Palestine had been under the rule of the Ottoman Turks and the Armenians lived in constant fear here too. The glass was to prevent the Turks from scaling the walls. "Notice too the size of the windows," continued the guide, "almost miniature, to prevent out¬siders from breaking in. Imagine how dark their world must have been." Those words have become a part of my Jewish soul. Let us imagine how dark the world must still be for the Armenians when people refuse to acknowledge their past.

To remain silent or indifferent is to display, in Abraham Joshua Heschel's moving words, a tragic lack of "moral grandeur." Worse yet, to remain silent is to admit that genocide can and will happen again.

Rabbi Matthew Berkowitz is senior rabbinic fellow for the Jewish Theological Seminary's KOLLOT: Voices of Learning Program.

Rhyne said...

Hey thanks for posting that!

Anonymous said...

rhyne, i want to email u an article form the same magazine, but an article published last year, i believe. It discusses the relationship israel has with turkey and their joint denial of the genocide. I'll send it to u as soon as i dig up the magazine (i should know where it is) and scan it. One hell of a read.

Rhyne said...

Hyelander: I'd appreciate that greatly. My email is armoblog@gmail.com

Cheers!

Anonymous said...

Hyelander, thank you for posting that article that discusses Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, one of the first Jews in a high position in the US government. Morgenthau tried to help protect Armenians and raised funds for survivors. He described the deaths of Armenians as the "murder of a nation."
I think that some Jews today want to preserve Israel's relationship with Turkey and are willing to go as far as denying the Genocide to do so. And maybe some do not want to acknowledge genocides other than the Nazi Holocaust.
But plenty of other Jews understand the analogy between the Armenian and Jewish genocides; they know that Hitler asked "Who today remembers the Armenians?" before beginning the Holocaust.
(It is worth noting that a lot of the criticism against Foxman for kissing up to the Turks on this issue came from fellow Jews.)

Anonymous said...

Aye, I have the book "The Murder of a Nation" and even in that article i sent Rhyne, it touches upon an instance where an armenian-israeli was censored and forced to rephrase a statement she planned on making because she called herself a third-generation genocide survivor.

Socrates said...

Hi - Let me congratulate myself before others castigate me for my first posting on this blog.

Here is the YouTube video of Us Foreign Affairs House Resolution Vote:
http://tinyurl.com/2yldpb


Here is the link to the Morgenthau Chapter called 'The Murder of a Nation'
http://tinyurl.com/ywnzrc

Thanks.
http://www.AidArmenia.com