Posts

Do Jews Have A Special Responsibility To Fight Against Genocide?

By Shmuel Rosner / June 26, 2008

From: Shmuel Rosner

To: Adam LeBor

Dear Adam,

Thank you for your thoughtful response. The lesson of your experience seems quite obvious: if even someone like yourself, whose instincts (I suspect) are much more pro-UN than mine, has turned skeptical, then the organization is really as useless as I imagined. And the point you've raised regarding its treatment of Israel is but one example of why it should be scrapped, or at least marginalized. Giving it more power will be very costly to Israel, as instead of working to better the world as it should, what I expect the UN to do it is to try and use any power it might obtain to make Israel less secure.

So let us agree (I think we do) on that, and turn to the question of Darfur, and to Jewish-American involvement in trying to make this cause a keystone of using Jewish political power to improve the world.

The facts are indisputable: Jewish Americans were on the forefront of the battle to save Darfur. If you happened to attend the largest Washington demonstration for Darfur you couldn't ignore the fact that although it wasn't a "Jewish" rally, most of the participants happened to be Jewish. Jewish legislators (among them the late Tom Lantos) were vocal, Jewish activists were, well, very active, Jewish organizations were, and still are, making space for this issue on their agenda.

But what is the reason for all that?

One possible explanation should make all of us very proud: Jews, who suffered the most from genocide, feel compelled to raise their voices against it in every part of the world. They feel they have the moral authority and obligation to do so. And they're right.

But there's also a second possibility (which isn't mutually exclusive from the first): For the past few decades, American Jews were spent most of their political capital on the just cause of securing Israel — and then got tired of it. They got tired of being seen by some elite groups as particularistic and tribal. They got tired as the cause (Israel) has shifted from being David to being Goliath. And they were looking to prove that American Judaism is not a hostage of the Israel-first school of thought, that it has its own priorities.

This comes out in discussions of Darfur as well as other humanistarian causes. One expression of those sentiments the outrageous letter (former IDF civilian volunteer) Representative Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) sent to Israel's Ambassador in Washington, demanding that Israel be more receptive to Sudanese refugees who reach Israel's borders. Another expression was the denunciation (in which Jewcy played no small part) of the Anti Defamation League after its leader, Abe Foxman, came out in opposition to the Armenian Genocide bill presented to Congress by — you guessed it — a Jewish legislator. (The bill was defeated for the very reasons on which Foxman based his opposition, but you didn't hear much criticism of its sponsors and of the leadership of the House when they failed to deliver on their unrealistic pledges).

So you see where I'm going with this — and I hope the readers will spare me comments blaming me for not caring enough about genocide. I'm happy to see the Jewish community as active as it is in humanitarian causes. I do also think, however, that there's some merit to this niggling question that keeps coming back: Will universalist causes eventually replace Israel as the great political cause of American Jewry?

One might suspect that domestic considerations are also in play here. American Jews
were always at the forefront of fighting for the rights of African-Americans. They were marching alongside Reverend King in the high days of cooperation between the two communities, but sometimes along the way the bond between Jews and African Americans have soured. The Jewish community has been trying to prove, ever since, that it did not abandon African-Americans for racial reasons — hence some of the appeal to Jews of Barack Obama, offers the community the intriguing hope of repairing those historic relations.

That's why Israelis interpret the intense involvement of American Jews in shaping the policies toward Ethiopian Jews, as being motivated by domestic considerations. The same logic applies to the very active role Jews are playing in trying to help Darfurians. The Jews, arguably, were not as involved as a group during the crisis in the former Yugoslavia. (Interestingly, Ariel Sharon opposed international involvement in the crisis, fearing it would set a dangerous precedent. He anticipated an effort by the countries in control of international organizations hostile to Israel to influence the outcome of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by the use of international force).

And again, this is not an indictment of the Jewish community for acting for the "wrong" reasons. Motivations that lead to the outcome of fighting genocide are all "good". However, I think one should be able to have an honest discussion of such motivations, because other than implicating the just war against genocide, it also raises issues related to the relations between Israel and Diaspora Jews, especially in cases in which the interests of the communities come apart.

Such contradiction was visible in the case of Turkey and the Armenian genocide, when fighting to establish historical truth ran contrary to Israel national interests (and American interests, to judge by the coverage and the outcome). The case the Ethiopian Jews was a similar story of American Jews pressuring Israel to accept more immigrants than it wanted to.

So: we started with the UN and its inability to stop genocide, and we now turn to explore Jewish involvement with stopping genocide. Is there a special Jewish responsibility here? Does it also apply to Israel? And what happens when the preservation of the State of Israel contradict the cause of stopping genocide?

I'm looking forward to your answers.

Best, Shmuel

POST A COMMENT

  • Ibrahime Weindorf
    By Romaneboy 6/8/10 at 3:20 p.m. UTC

    i know what the turks did was wrong but from a moral perspective i think the armenians were way worse .

    not just did they viciously kill approximately 100000 turks of muslim and jewish faith before the turks retaliated with a re-settlement program that starved  half a million armenians . armenian secessionists  were the ones killing muslim and jewish  women , children while armenian children starved or died in battle since they were forced by their idealistic parents to join the fight and ally with Russia .half of the pictures used in all those armenian genocide videos are actually pictures of dead muslims and jews  of turkish nationality .only starvation and execution pictures  are from armenians.

    armenians hate jews severely  . stop believing everything Armenocchio (Armenian Pinocchio) says , especially as a person of the Tribe of Israel since Armenocchio hates you .

  • By AlboIrishbhoy 8/8/08 at 11:26 a.m. UTC

    Every person has a responsibility to speak out against genocide whether they are Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, etc…

  • By Anonymous 7/1/08 at 3:26 p.m. UTC

    Jews, but moreover – Jewish organizations – have a responsibility to speak out against genocide as well as genocide denial. To read that mainstream Jewish organizations routinely deny the Armenian genocide and side w/ the deniers, who bribe them with cash and favors, is truly disgusting. There is no other word for it…ok, how about despicable?  Then again, many of the deniers are in fact Jewish…so, think of that slimy paradox. What does that say?  The mind reels…. 

  • By RandallJones 7/1/08 at 10:59 a.m. UTC

    What about the genoocide the United States comiited when it killed 3 to 5 million Buddhists when it bombed Vietnam and Cambodia?

    What about the genocide in Iraq? The United States had helped Saddam Hussein into power and suported him, strategically and financially, when he was committing his worst atrocities. Saddam Hussein, former U.S. puppet, had checked with the U.S. government before he invaded Kuwait; Saddam had accused Kuwait of slant drilling and stealing oil from Iraqi land. He was told that the United States would not interfere with the conflict between Iraq and Kuwait. But for some reason the U.S. administration changed its mind and millions of Iraqis have been killed disabled and made refugees from the bombings of two invasions and years of sanctions. The Iraqis are scapegoats of the foreign policies of the United States and its allies?

    Every one is crying crocodile tears for the Black Africans of Darfur, but they have nothing to say about the role of the United States and Israel for fueling the violence in Sudan. The country with the most killings and rapes is the Christian Congo, but you don't hear much about it in the mainstream media because the United States, Israel and Europe benefit from the diamonds and other natural resources, slave labor, and sale of weapons (to both sides of the conflict). See the links from my previous comment for further information about this.

  • By Phantom 6/30/08 at 6:56 p.m. UTC

    Shmuel,

    You wrote, "…when fighting to establish historical truth ran contrary to Israel national interests (and American interests, to judge by the coverage and the outcome)."

    Do you really believe that denying a Genocide is in the national interest of Israel or America?  Try to think long-term Shmuel.  It can't be in the long-term interest of any country to ignore or deny Genocide.

  • By RandallJones 6/28/08 at 2:03 a.m. UTC

    Shmuel Rosner,

    I am going to ask you the same question I asked, Adam LeBor. I hope both of you respond.

    Can you investigate and do an analysis of these articles by Keith Harmon Snow about

    Darfur http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=447&Itemid=1

    and the Congo

    http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_keith_ha_080207_the_gertler_steinmet.htm

  • By ThorsProvoni 6/27/08 at 5:31 p.m. UTC

    Jews (really only German or Yiddish Jews) have been plotting or undertaking genocide since the 1880s, and the ongoing murder of Arab Palestine is probably the purest example of genocide under the Lemkin and International definitions.

    Until Jews start showing serious remorse and repentence for the mass murder, ethnic cleansing, and genocide in which far too many Jews have played major roles, no one should take hypocritical Jewish anti-genocide activities seriously.

    Here are some articles that I have put together on the Sudan and Darfur.

  • Profiteering from humanitarianism
  • Poisoning Human Rights Discourse
  • Killing Muslims Under Humanitarian Cover
  • Harvard Supports Incinerating Arab Countries
  • Singing HaTikvah while inciting a disastrous US invasion
  • The Neocon Program to Incinerate Arab and Muslim Countries
  • USHMM: National Thought Control

    • Yiddish and Spaniolish Jews have a long history of bigotry against Armenians. Such Jewish hatred probably resulted from economic competition between Jews and Armenians in Commonwealth Poland, Czarist Russia and the Ottoman Empire.

    It should be no surprise to anyone that knows much about Jewish history that the racist Zionist settlement in Palestine studiously avoided paying any attention to Armenian suffering while Palestinians and other Arabs opened their hearts to the victims.

    Here is a description of a recent Boston event commemorating the genocide of Armenians and the murder of Arab Palestine.

    Commemoration: Palestinian and Armenian Genocides

    The Truth about Arab Humanitarianism
    Four minute commemorative speech
    by Sevag Arzoumanian
    delivered at:
    The Evelyn Abdallah Menconi Memorial Cultural Series on
    April 24, 2008 at  Rabb Lecture Hall, Boston Public Library

    My grandfather, Nazareth Arzoumanian, was 11 years old in the spring of 1915 when Turkish soldiers knocked at the door. He hid in the attic and watched as his father was taken away. That was the last time he saw him. 

    The order soon came to deport all the Armenians in the village, and send them walking on a Death March. A courageous Turkish neighbor agreed to hide my grandfather's mother and younger brother, but there was no room for him and my grandfather was placed in an orphanage. He soon heard that Turkish soldiers were about to raid the orphanage, and he escaped, walking alone for days until he reached the port city of Adana. There, together with other fleeing refugees, he was taken to Lebanon on a French boat.

    My grandfather was raised in an orphanage north of Beirut, and somehow managed to earn a living alone, until one day, years later, he saw his mother on the street – she was working on a construction site, cutting stones. She had miraculously survived the deportations.

    His mother heard that children from their village—now orphans—were being raised in an orphanage in the South of Lebanon. There she found a neighbor's daughter, Lousaper, the sole survivor of her extended family and she brought her home.

    This is how my grandfather Nazareth met my grandmother Lousaper. And this is how many Armenian families survived, while countless others did not.
    ***
    Armenians around the world commemorate April 24 as the date of the unfolding of the Armenian Genocide.

    On the night of April 24, 1915, the Young Turk Government arrested over 200 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople, the center of Armenian cultural and political life at the time. Most of these writers, poets, teachers, artists, political activists, church and civic leaders, members of the Ottoman Parliament were executed soon after. Over the following weeks, this became the pattern in every city, town and village as Armenian leaders were arrested and murdered.

    Soon after these arrests, orders were issued to deport the Armenian population to the Syrian Desert.

    The adult and teenage males were separated from the deportation caravans and killed at the outset. The remaining deportees (now comprised mostly of women, children and the elderly) were driven for weeks over mountains and desert, deprived of food and water, and subjected to attack, rape and murder. They fell by the hundreds of thousands along the way to their eventual destination: the open air concentration camp of Deir el-Zor in the Syrian Desert. 

    By 1923, two-thirds of the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire, or 1.5 million people, had been exterminated.
    ***
    And if it wasn't for the Arab and Muslim population in Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, many Armenians would not have survived. In 1917 the Sharif of Mecca issued a decree or fatwa for the protection of Armenians. The fatwa read:

    "What is requested of you is to protect and to take good care of everyone from the Jacobite Armenian community living in your territories and frontiers and among your tribes. To help them in all of their affairs and defend them as you would defend yourselves, your properties and children. And provide everything they might need whether they are settled or moving from place to place — because they are the Protected People of the Muslims — about whom the Prophet Muhammad said: "Whosoever takes from them even a rope, I will be his adversary on the day of Judgment." This is among the most important things we require of you and expect you to accomplish."

    Al-Husayn Ibn 'Ali, King of the Arab Lands and Sharif of Mecca
    ***
    Apart from the immense loss of life, the enduring legacy of the Armenian Genocide is the dispossession of a people and the continuing denial of the crime by its perpetrator.

    Within a matter of 18 months, an entire civilization and way of life came to an end. Armenians were uprooted from their ancestral homeland, and those who survived and their descendents were prevented from returning home.

    And for the past 93 years, Armenians have been unable to tell their story and commemorate their loss without having to combat the aggressive and institutionalized denial of the Turkish government.

    This is why many Armenians identify so closely with the plight of the Palestinian people, and the story of the Nakba—it's because of this continued dispossession and the denial and minimization of their experience by the perpetrator.
    ***
    I would like to conclude by thanking the organizers of this event for conceiving this joint commemoration, bringing together two dispossessed peoples who continue to struggle against the legacy of forced expulsion and persistent attempts to erase that history.
    Thank You.
    More Information
    Original Event Announcement
    The Evelyn Abdalah Menconi Memorial Cultural Series  
    Thursday, April 24 2008, 5:00pm - 8:30pm  
    Event Description:

    The Evelyn Abdalah Menconi Memorial Cultural Series — Fourth Memorial Program Remembrance — Images, and Musical Resonance –In Commemoration of the Palestinian Nakba and the Armenian Genocide — Thursday, April 24, 2008
      The Evelyn Abdalah Menconi Memorial Cultural Series

     Fourth Memorial Program

    Remembrance, Images, and Musical Resonance

    In Commemoration of the Palestinian Nakba and the Armenian Genocide

    Thursday, April 24, 2008

    Rabb Lecture Hall, Boston Public Library, Copley Square 6:30 – 8:15 p.m. Reception: 5:30 -6:15 p.m.

    OPEN TO THE PUBLIC FREE OF CHARGE

    Program

    Commemorative Speakers

    Hilary Rantisi (Tawassul) and Sevag Arzoumanian

    Performers

    Novelist Susan Abulhawa, The Scar of David, a discussion and reading.

    Documentary Photographer Rania Matar, Muslim Women and the Veil: Modesty, Fashion, Devotion, or Statement.

    Master Qanunist Jamal Sinno, traditional musical selections.

    Sponsors

    William G.  Abdalah Library

    American-Arab Media Foundation

    Tawassul

    For further information and/or directions to the Library, call 781 648 1245

  • By Alamity 6/27/08 at 2:48 p.m. UTC

    1.Do Jews have a special responsibility to fight against genocide? The answer is contingent upon the 2nd question.

    2.Do Jews have a special responsibility to fight against genocide denial? The answer should be YES, but it doesn't seem to be.


    Another expression was the denunciation
    (in which     Jewcy
    played no small part) of the Anti Defamation League after its leader,
    Abe Foxman, came out in opposition to the Armenian Genocide bill
    presented to Congress by — you
    guessed it — a Jewish legislator. (The bill was defeated for the very
    reasons on which Foxman based his opposition, but you
    didn't hear much criticism of its sponsors and of the leadership
    of the House when they failed to deliver on their unrealistic
    pledges).


    Mr. Rosner, Why do you characterize a simple non binding resolution on the Armenian genocide as "unrealistic," or perhaps not worth fighting for? No one ever argues –well, almost no one — that the Jewish Holocaust issue is/was "unrealistic", and yet got the recognition it deserves.

    Why do you advocate shifting criticism from the likes of Abe Foxman to the likes of Adam schiff, — yes, you guessed it, a Jewish legislator — the sponsor of the Armenian genocide bill?

    What is wrong with this picture? — If Abe is a credible and honest leader of a human rights organization, why does he obsessively derail, defeat, and destroy other peoples' causes and dreams? Remember, Adam is a politician, and needs to be commended for sponsoring and promoting human rights issues to any length that he could muster, yes, even if he fails. Just consider the ferocious opposition coming from the ADLian Jews and you'll know as to why many have tried and failed. But it doesn't mean we have to throw in the towel and accept ADL's brand of justice. For your information, the passage of the Armenian genocide resolution would be (and should be) a "slam dunk" if, only, certain Jewish human rights organizations put their moral weight behind it. Conversely, if they choose not to lend a helping hand, well then, that is fine too, so long as they pledge not to use the proverbial denial IEDs along the roadside of genocide recognition way, which they always seem bent on doing.

     

     

    • Wanna post your own comments?