Israel Refuses to Recognize Genocide of Armenian Christians
By Julio
Severo
A very important news about acknowledgment
of persecution and genocide of Christians went virtually unnoticed in the
mainstream media: The Knesset (the Israeli Parliament) rejected on February a
bill that would have recognized the Armenian Genocide.
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| Protesters in Jerusalem demand Israel’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide |
“The Israeli leadership diminishes itself
by so transparently treating genocide remembrance as a commodity to be bartered
with [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan,” said Armenian National
Committee of America (ANCA) Executive Director Aram Hamparian, regarding the
vote.
The Knesset has discussed the
Armenian Genocide several times in the past, but the Israel government has
blocked all efforts to recognized it.
Even
though Israel has today the most right-wing government coalition
in the Israeli history under Benjamin Netanyahu,
how will the Israel government be able to recognize the Armenian Genocide if it
has been unable even to recognize that abortion, which is legal and fully
available in Israel, is genocide?
As a Zionist evangelical Christian, I am a
supporter of Israel and, in my view, every nation should recognize the
Holocaust, the immense suffering and death Jewish victims went through in the
hands of Nazi thugs.
So, because Jews suffered so much and know
what genocide is, Israel should be the first nation to recognize the Armenian
Genocide, especially because just as there is a denial of the Holocaust, there
is also a denial of the Armenian Genocide.
I have been a fighter against the revisionism
and denial of the Holocaust and the Inquisition, because both efforts bring dishonor
to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust and the Inquisition.
In
the same way, the revisionism and denial of the Armenian Genocide bring dishonor
to the Christian Armenian victims of the Armenian Genocide.
Israel has avoided to label the mass
slaughter of Christians Armenians genocide because Islamic Turkey does not like
to be reminded of its crimes.
Israel is not the only nation seeking not
to enrage Turkey.
Last year, U.S. President Donald Trump
marked the Ottoman Turks’ century-old massacre of 1.5 million Armenians, but
declined to label it a genocide.
“Today, we remember and honor the memory
of those who suffered during the Meds Yeghern, one of the worst mass atrocities
of the 20th century,” Trump said in a statement. “I join the Armenian community
in America and around the world in mourning the loss of innocent lives and the
suffering endured by so many.”
Such a declaration, even though avoiding
the term “genocide” and refusing to mention that the killers were Muslim and
the victims were Christian, angered Turkey, only NATO Islamic member and U.S.
ally, whose cooperation Trump seeks against the Syrian government.
“We consider that the misinformation and
false definitions contained in U.S. President Trump’s written statement of
April 24, 2017 regarding the 1915 events are derived from the information
pollution created over the years by some Armenian circles in the U.S. by means
of propaganda methods,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Previous presidents, including former
President Barack Obama, also refused to call the mass killings a genocide.
Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton avoided the term “genocide” even
though they had pledged during their campaigns that they would recognize it as
such.
In the same week Trump avoided the term
“genocide,” he contacted Turkish President Recep Erdogan to discuss joint
U.S.-Turkish counterterrorism efforts. This is very strange, because as an
Islamic nation, Turkey does not fight terrorism, especially from ISIS.
According to a 2014 WND (WorldNetDaily) report, “Turkey
backs ISIS to eliminate Assad.” Israel has also
backed Islamic terrorists against Assad.
ISIS has committed genocide against
Christians in Syria and Iraq. According to Trump, Obama
founded ISIS. And Obama worked closely with Turkey. So if Trump refuses the
term “genocide” to please Turkey and has this Islamic nation as an ally against
ISIS, is not he helping the ISIS genocide against Christians? To have Islamic
Turkey as an ally against Islamic terror is so insane as to have the Nazi
Germany as an ally against Nazism or have the Soviet Union as an ally against
Soviet Marxism.
Armenia was
the first officially Christian nation in the world. Armenia, as a Christian
Orthodox nation, is allied with Russia, the largest Christian Orthodox nation
in the world.
Because the United States is the largest
Protestant nation in the world, Trump could have an alliance with Armenia and
Russia against Islamic terrorism, and this was his intent in 2016, but now he
is privileging an insane alliance with Islamic Turkey and Saudi Arabia to fight
the Islamic terrorism created and supported by Saudi and Turkish Muslims.
If Trump and Israel cannot recognize as
genocide the slaughters of Christians by Muslims 100 years ago, how can they recognize
current genocides against Christians? How can they recognize that Islam was and
is a genocide machine against Christians?
So far, just 23 nations have recognized
the Armenian genocide, among them France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Greece,
Russia, Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Chile and Bolivia.
In 2015 Russian President Putin was the
only president of a major power to attend commemorations of 100 years of
Armenian Genocide in 1915. The commemorations were held at the Armenian
Genocide Memorial on Tsitsernakaberd Hill, in Armenia’s capital city of
Yerevan, to pay tribute to the genocide victims.
In the occasion, Erdogan was angered at
Putin for calling the mass killing of Christian Armenians by Turkish Muslims a
genocide. He said, “It’s not the first time Russia used the word genocide on
this issue. I’m personally sad that Putin took such a step.”
In
the Armenian Genocide 100 years ago, an estimated 1.5 million Armenians in 66
towns and 2,500 villages were massacred; 2,350 churches and monasteries were
looted, and 1,500 schools and colleges were destroyed.
Yet, Muslims in Turkey and in other
nations understate and deny that Armenian Christians suffered a genocide, just
as neo-Nazi groups understate and deny the Holocaust against the Jews and
ultra-radical Catholics understate and deny the Inquisition against the Jews
and Protestants.
Israel
knows what denial and revisionism have done to minimize the Holocaust and the
Inquisition and their victims. So why has Israel refused to recognize the
Armenian Genocide?
Why
does Israel seek to please the perpetrator (Islamic Turkey) and does not side
with its victim (Armenian Christians)?
The
answer comes from Armenians themselves. The Armenian newspaper Asbarez, in a
report titled “Israeli Politicians Must Stop Using the Armenian Genocide Card,”
said,
“Every time the Turkish regime does something
to anger Israel, the Jewish state’s politicians and members of parliament
threaten Ankara with the recognition of the Armenian Genocide, furthering their
cowardice as a nation that rose from the ashes of the Holocaust.
“For a state that never misses an
opportunity to remind the world of the horrors of the Holocaust, Israel has had
a hard time reconciling its respect for human rights and the losses suffered by
Jews with the fact of the Armenian Genocide.
“Israel must recognize the Armenian
Genocide not because it’s politically expedient, but because it is a historic
fact. By not recognizing it, Israel continues to amplify its own hypocrisy by
becoming complicit in its denial.”
With information from Jerusalem
Post, WND (WorldNetDaily), Armenian Weekly, Asbarez and Armen Press.
Portuguese version of this article: Israel
recusa reconhecer genocídio de cristãos armênios
Source:
Last Days Watchman
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