So here's the promised update on the panel discussion on genocide denial that took place Thursday night at UCLA. Commenter Micromike wonders whether anything was accomplished. I frankly don't know.

The discussion was interesting. Professor David Myers drew incisive connections between the experience of the Armenian and Jewish communities; Professor Richard Hovanessian gave a fascinating talk on the rhetorical moves deployed by genocide deniers; I argued that while issues such as those are complex enough to support endless academic study, the moral contours of this situation are very stark—one needn't consult scholars to know that Jewish orgs ought not support a campaign of genocide denial. Then Aram Hamparian placed all this in the context of his work as head of the Armenian National Committee, and also made some very kind and encouraging comments about Jewcy.

Phantom says he hopes the experience was meaningful for me, and yes, absolutely it was. Having a chance to sit next to, and engage with, David Myers, Richard Hovanessian, and Aram Hamparian, was as edifying as it was flattering.

But of course that's entirely irrelevant. There are cheaper and easier ways to edify and flatter ourselves than to hold a genocide denial panel discussion at UCLA. There were people who flew across the country for this discussion (afterward, one person came up to me and said she flew in from Chicago, and another said that he came from Arizona; Mr. Hamparian flew in from DC): presumably, they weren't there just to hear interesting or stirring things. They must have hoped that something significant was actually going to come out of it.

On my end, there's one preeminent criterion by which I'll judge whether the event was a success: did it do anything at all that will make genocide denial a less acceptable political manuever to leaders of Jewish-American orgs such as the AJC (David Harris) and the ADL (Abraham Foxman). Will it cause anything to happen that in turn causes people lower down in these organizations to say to these men, "I understand how simple-minded and Polyanna-ish this sounds, but I really think we need to consider the idea that supporting a genocide denial campaign is really just deeply problematic, political considerations aside."

If that's too much to hope, then I'd be satisfied if supporters came to them and said, "listen, this isn't just some bullshit about 'morality' or 'the memory of the Holocaust'—it's actually serious. People out there are saying all kinds of damnfool things about our supporting Turkey's campaign of 'genocide denial,' and it could turn out to have very negatives consequences for this organization."

If that happens--if one person in either of those organizations can muster up the conviction to say either of those things to Abraham Foxman or David Harris--I'd call the event a success. But maybe I'm more easily satisfied than people who flew across the country hoping to witness some progress in ending denial of their family/community's systematic murder, I don't know.

I've been sent a recording and transcript of a public exchange that took place yesterday between Barry Jacobs of the American Jewish Committee and AramBarry Jacobs of the American Jewish Committee: Don't talk to him about "genocide denial," he's a pragmatist Hamparian of the Armenian National Committee. It happened at a Washington, DC lecture on Israeli-Turkish relations.

Hamparian takes Jacobs and the AJC to task for its participation in the world's most successful campaign of genocide denial, i.e. Turkey's campaign to deny the systematic murder of over a million Armenians during World War I. (For those tuning in late, The Armenian Genocide was the prototypical genocide in that it compelled Raphael Lemkin, the Polish-Jewish lawyer who coined the term "genocide," to seek ways to criminalize the mass-slaughter of whole communities. The AJC has abetted its denial by actively supporting Turkish efforts to prevent recognition of the genocide.)

Jacobs responds by suggesting that the AJC can't hope to say whether the genocide took place, because, jeez, World War I was so long ago! Then he swiftly non sequiturs to the very different argument that it's bad to acknowledge past genocides unless it makes good geopolitical sense. And then he adds that that's not just the position of the AJC, but also the position of "the Jewish community."

Well, all I can say is that whoever Barry Jacobs is talking about when he refers to "the Jewish community," their positions are morally bankrupt and a public disgrace to American Jews.

Transcript below.

Aram Hamparian, Executive Director of the Armenian National Committee of America: Your efforts to score points in Ankara at the expense of the Armenian Genocide issue is a transparent transaction that, I think, squanders the moral capital of the Jewish community, undermines our collective efforts to fight Holocaust denial, and, if the ADL [Anti-Defamation League] experience of the last few months is any indication, is very far outside of the mainstream of your own community, and it's just so painful to come and hear you echo those same themes again. I just had to share that with you.

Barry Jacobs, Director of Strategic Studies of the American Jewish Committee:
It's not about the position of the American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish community. It's not about, we are not historians, which is a polite, bullshit way of saying we're not going to take responsibility, we are not going to make a decision on 1915. But the relationship between United States and Turkey, if we want to, I don't know where you are, whether you are right or left, if you're left in the United States and want to get out of Iraq, well, look you at the map, Brits have pulled out of Basra, there are only two ways to get out of Iraq, you have to go south, you have to go north, and if you go north you got to go through Turkey.

So the argument that finally persuaded Congress, and I know this is not – I'm looking for a strong enough word – [unintelligible] but, the message was that the bilateral relationship between the United States and Turkey will suffer greatly if this resolution is passed. The Jewish Community believed that also, and that's been our position. And the world is not made up of choices between good and bad, at least not in the Foreign Service when I was in it, it's made up between choices between bad and worse. So we take practical positions, and the position of all the Jewish organizations, including ADL, was not have a position on the facts of what happened, or not taking a public position on what happened in 1915, we did not think, do not think, that the United States Congress is the place to settle this.

And that's all I can tell you. And that's the real world and that's the position of United States Government and of the Government of Israel.

UPDATE:

In a comment below, Pilisopa says "The AJC's and ADL's behavior is a reflection of what their membership will tolerate."

Unfortunately, that's the truth. All this will continue until enough members and donors call up these orgs and say, "Please don't waste your time calling me, or mailing me anything, or requesting my donations or support, until you've made the decision to stop supporting this campaign of genocide denial."

For that to happen, we need more people in the Jewish community to understand very clearly what's going on here. I sincerely hope and believe that the March 6 event at UCLA can help make this happen. But we'll see. -- Joey

On Nov. 30, Jewcy published an article titled “Are Armenians Angry at Jews?” in which I argued that although the Armenian community is upset that a prominent Jewish civil rights organization (ADL) supports Turkey’s campaign to the deny the Armenian Genocide, it is also aware of the Jewish-American writers, bloggers, and activists who speak out against ADL’s hypocrisy. Armenians know, I said, that throughout the 20^th century there was never a shortage of righteous Jews, individuals who spoke out against the Armenian genocide. I then proceeded to name three such righteous Jews: Henry Morgenthau, Franz Werfel (to whom I dedicated an entire article later), and Raphael Lemkin.

I received dozens of comments—made either to me in person or posted on Jewcy—immediately after the posting of the article. In one of the emails, a reader advised Jewcy to continue “kicking Foxman’s ass.”

I will not dwell on the positive remarks and the many emails, some from prominent academics, suggesting several other names of righteous Jews (about whom I might write in the future). I will, however, bring to the reader’s attention one point of view—from a fellow Armenian—that I thought was outrageous and, I believe, is shared by some other Armenians and non-Armenians.

“It is with great reluctance,” my fellow Armenian said, “that I wish to tell you that your article is oversimplified, very naïve and, at bottom, worthless. The Jewish involvement in Armenian Genocide is much complicated, intricate and perplexing.” He went on to cite historians who studied the “Zionist Jewish participation and their ominous role in Armenian Genocide.”

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We polled Jewcy writers and other assorted machers for their opinions about the lowest lows and highest highs of Jewish 2007. What follows is a highly subjective and occasionally downright narcissistic look at the past year. Being optimists (no really, we totally think the glass is half-full, and even if it IS half-empty, we’re going to fill it, goddamn it) we started with the bad news to make the good news seem even better:

1.) Abe Foxman refuses to acknowledge Armenian genocide was a genocide, and then changes his mind—sorta.—Richard Silverstein

2.) Dan Pipes and Norman Podhoretz named Middle East advisors to Giuliani campaign.—Richard Silverstein

3.) The Jewish people were issued a collective fashion demerit when those flattering-to-nobody Crocs were named the new Jew Shoe—Amy Guth

4.) The terrible fate of Carol Anne Gotbaum in the Phoenix Airport is frightening for every community, American, Jewish, human, and so on. Gotbaum's story is one known, high profile example of the awful, destructive, inhumane conditions far, far too many suffer in custody in these times throughout our country and throughout the world.—Ed Schwarzchild

5.) Michael Mukasey, an Orthodox Jew and product of Ramaz who refuses to condemn waterboarding as, hello, the product of the Spanish Inquisition that it is, but whose nomination as Attorney General sails thru thanks to ranks-breaking Democratic Jews Dianne ("hey, he's better than Gonzales!") Feinstein and Chuck ("but if we reject Mukasey, the big meanie president and VP will give us somebody scarier!") Schumer.—Marjorie Ingall

6.) Jewish organizations hesitating to come out against torture—Marjorie Ingall

7.) Grace Paley, RIP. On the bright side, she has a posthumous book of poetry coming out this spring.—Elisa Albert

8.) Two words: JOSEPH. LIEBERMAN.—Elisa Albert

9.) Michael Chabon. It's a noir! It's in Alaska! It's Yiddish! It's a gimmicky slog with all the soul of a whale blubber sandwich!—Pat Sauer

10.) My dad, a well-respected rabbi, stalking the Santa Claus at the mall. (He’s fascinated with this mysterious Christian custom.)—Maya Wainhaus

11.) Staying with my (usually very hygienic) religious relatives in Israel the week before Tisha B'Av. They don't bathe or wear clean clothes in the 10 days before the holiday as a sign of mourning, despite the 95 degree heat.—Maya Wainhaus

12.) After Rachel Donadio's fluff piece about the Jewish Book Council in The New York Times, a handful of writers were interested in writing an investigative piece about the organization for Jewcy, but one by one they backed out, each citing serious "fear" of the JBC.—Anonymous writer

13.) Michael Weiss giving in to the glittery lure of Pajamas Media, where the neoconitis is never in remission.—The Jewcy Staff

14.) A couple of entries who would make my Best and Worst list: Noah Feldman and Shalom Auslander, The Bad Boys whose public criticism of various aspects of Orthodox life was embarrassing, annoying, mean-spirited and worth pondering (at least privately).—Gary Rosenblatt

15.) Harvey Weinstein married Georgina Chapman. I'm not sure if that falls under awesome or disaster.—Amy Odell

SEE ALSO: The Most Awesome Events of Jewish 2007

Disagree? Leave your own opinions about the worst things to happen to the Jewish community in the comments section. (Bonus! First person to say "Joey Kurtzman" gets a free Jewcy thong!)

On the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, students in the U.S. joined an ADL delegation to participate in the March of the Living. In Poland, the students visited the Warsaw Ghetto. ADL national director Abraham Foxman said, "This trip will teach young people, both Jews and non-Jews, the importance of remembering the Holocaust at a time when survivors are dying and individuals still continue to deny it happened."

Today, very few survivors of another genocide—the destruction of the Armenians—are still alive. And individuals continue to deny it happened.

In a time when the memory of genocide victims—from the Armenian genocide to the Holocaust—is under attack by genocide deniers, I'd like to invite readers of this post—including, hopefully, Foxman himself—to learn about the deep connections between the Jewish heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and the Armenian heroes of Musa Dagh. Also central to this story is Franz Werfel, a brilliant Jewish novelist who helped forge these connections.

***

Franz Werfel, an Austrian-Jewish writer, became an international literary figure with his 1933 novel, Die vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh. The book was originally written in German and published a year later in English under the title The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. It tells the story of the heroic self-defense of the Armenians of Musa Dagh during the Armenian genocide of 1915. Werfel decided to write the novel after witnessing the plight of Armenian refugee children in Damascus in 1929. Little did he know that his novel would not only become a classic and an inspiration for generations of Armenians, but would also serve as a model of survival and resistance for his own people during the Holocaust.

After the 1938 Anschluss, Werfel left Austria to take refuge in France. Soon, with the occupation of France by the Nazis, he narrowly escaped, fleeing to the U.S. He thus avoided the concentration camps, where a generation of Jewish leaders and youth found solace, inspiration and a call to uprising in his novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh.

According to Professor Yair Auron,

"Momentous moral questions arise from Werfel's book. It prominently expresses humanistic values, to which the members of the [Jewish] youth movements were sensitive, as well as the moral uncertainties by which they were beset. The story of the defense of Musa Dagh became, indeed, a source of inspiration, an example for the underground members to learn, a model to imitate.

"They equated their fate with that of the Armenians. In both cases, murderous evil empires conspired to uproot entire communities, to bring about their total physical extinction. In both cases, resistance embodied the concept of death and national honor on the one hand, and the chance of being saved as individuals and as a nation on the other."

Auron notes that "reading the book strengthens the spirit of the members of the youth movements, the future fighters, as Mordechai Tannenbaum and other underground leaders suggested."

Werfel's novel had a great influence on Antek (Yitzhak Zuckerman), the deputy commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the author of A Surplus of Memory: Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. When talking about the Holocaust and what books to read on the issue, Antek would say that "the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising could not be understood without reading The Forty days of Musa Dagh."

In an introduction to the French edition of the book, Holocaust survivor and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize Elie Wiesel says,

"The novel is a masterpiece. ... This Armenian community became very close to me. Written before the coming of Hitler, this novel seems to foretell the future. How did Franz Werfel know the vocabulary and the mechanism of the Holocaust before the Holocaust—artistic intuition or historic memory?"

Wiesel continues, "The novel is precisely about this memory. The besieged Armenians feared not death but being forgotten..."

***

I hope Abraham Foxman will choose to follow in the footsteps of Franz Werfel and Elie Wiesel, and not allow the resistance fighters of Musa Dagh to be forgotten.

UPDATE: Commenter Alamity provides an excerpt showing how the defenders of the Bialystok ghetto used The Forty Days of Musa Dagh as a handbook for Jewish resistance to the Nazis.

Read Khatchig Mouradian's past Jewcy articles here.
* Check our always up-to-date list of posts on the ADL/Armenian Genocide issue
* Get ongoing coverage from our friends at No Place For Denial.

UPDATE: Read how the protest went, here.

**** 

Think it's just no good for a Jewish civil rights organization to support a campaign of genocide denial? Then come out with Jewcy tonight in Los Angeles as we join with the Armenian Youth Federation and survivors of the Armenian Genocide to protest the Anti-Defamation League's "2007 Los Angeles Celebration." Press release:

NEWS ADVISORY – December 1, 2007 – NEWS ADVISORY

Los Angeles calls on Abe Foxman to stop undermining the universal humanitarian principles of the ADL

WHAT: Jewcy Media and the Armenian Youth Federation, joined by victims of the Armenian Genocide, will protest outside the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel on Saturday, December 1^st, when the Anti-Defamation League holds a celebration at the hotel. The protest is being organized in response to efforts by ADL National Director Abe Foxman to use the ADL as a vehicle for genocide denial—starkly violating the universal human rights principles which the ADL claims to revere.

WHO: Ghazaros Kademian, survivor – Armenian Genocide

Joey Kurtzman, Executive Editor – Jewcy

Arek Santikian, Representative – Armenian Youth Federation

WHEN: Saturday, December 1, 2007 @ 6:00 p.m. PT

WHERE: On Wilshire Boulevard in front of the Regent Beverly Wilshire.

Address is 9500 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, CA 90212. GoogleMap.

BACKGROUND ON ABE FOXMAN and the ARMENIAN GENOCIDE: For many years, the ADL, working on behalf of the Turkish government, has refused to acknowledge that the massacres of 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1923 was a genocide. Worse, they have lobbied for Turkey to prevent passage of a resolution by the United States Congress affirming this genocide.

This year, under pressure from the New England community, the ADL issued a highly ambiguous statement regarding the Armenian genocide. It stated that the “consequences” of events in Turkey were “tantamount to genocide.” This duplicitous statement sidestepped the legal definition of genocide by avoiding any language that would imply intent, a critical part of the 1948 UN Genocide treaty.

In the same statement, the ADL reiterated its opposition to the Congressional resolution recognizing the genocide, calling it “a counterproductive diversion.” The ADL then apologized to the Prime Minister of Turkey for having put his government “in a difficult position,” expressing its “sorrow over what we have caused for the leadership and people of Turkey.” No apology has been offered to date to Armenian Genocide survivors and their heirs.

On August 23, echoing Turkey’s call for an “impartial study,” the ADL suggested “further dispassionate scholarly examination” of the genocide. The International Association of Genocide Scholars has labeled such proposals as propaganda, not scholarship. By the ADL’s own standards, casting doubt on the historical truth of genocide constitutes genocide denial. And asking Armenians to sit down with denialist historians on the payroll of the Turkish state is exceptionally offensive. Considering the ADL’s unceasing – and just – efforts to combat Holocaust denial, their actions are remarkably hypocritical.

Perceiving its Armenian Genocide denial and subsequent missteps as simply a public relations dilemma - not a moral issue - the ADL hired the most prominent public relations firm in Boston, Regan Communications, to clean up its image.

For immediate commentary on this news story, please call JEWCY at (323) 600-3243 or the AYF-WR at (818) 507-1933.

# # #

"Thou shalt not stand against the blood of thy neighbor." — Leviticus 19:16

As editor of the Armenian Weekly, I often receive calls from journalists seeking the perspective of the Armenian community. These days, they frequently ask me whether the Anti-Defamation League is damaging relations between the Armenian and Jewish communities. My answer is always a resounding "no."

Yes, the Armenian community is upset that a prominent Jewish civil rights organization supports Turkey's campaign to the deny the Armenian Genocide, the great tragedy that haunts our community. But we are also aware of the Jewish-American writers, bloggers, and activists who speak out against ADL's hypocrisy.

Armenians also know that throughout the 20^th century there was never a shortage of righteous Jews, individuals who spoke out against the Armenian genocide. Here, I present three such righteous Jews, whose efforts will always be treasured by the Armenian community.

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In his recent Jewcy piece "The Betrayal of Turkish Jews," Khatchig Mouradian paints a dark portrait of Jewish life in Turkey, one in which Turkish Jews hope to escape antisemitic violence by proving their extreme loyalty to Turkey. Ami Eden, the managing editor of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, asked me the following questions about how Khatchig's piece bears on the ongoing ADL/Armenian Genocide controversy:

Not to sound snarky, but...

Doesn't this go along way toward validating the view of those who say they are worried about the safety of Turkey's Jews?

Do you think the ADL is concerned about Turkish Jews, but being shortsighted, or that the organization is just using the issue as an excuse to protect Turkey?

Put aside the ADL and its motivations... Do you accept the proposition that, at least in the short term, having Jewish groups successfully secure passage of the resolution is more dangerous for the Jews of Turkey than if Jewish groups are seen as opposing the resolution? That certainly seems to be the logic of this article.

I'll assume this exchange is on-the-record unless you say otherwise.

Here's my response.

Ami,

Obviously, our article "The Betrayal of Turkish Jews" departs pretty radically from the "Oh, Turkish Jews are just fine!" rebuttal that we sometimes hear in response to the supposed concerns of Foxman et al. Khatchig shows Turkish Jews to us as a harried minority whose "loyalty" has been extorted from them in exchange for physical safety.

But no, the article doesn't at all validate the concerns of those who claim we must appease Turkish antisemites in order to protect Turkish Jews. Khatchig and the scholars he interviewed see crude antisemitism as a staple of Turkish life and politics, but they deny that eruptions of antisemitic violence are a plausible outcome of the passage of the Armenian Genocide resolution. This is because Turkey's international ambitions (particularly re: the European Union) would be badly compromised by outbreaks of antisemitic violence.

Are these people wrong? Has Khatchig perhaps understated the antisemitism in Turkish life? Is Turkish society so profoundly antisemitic, so beholden to Protocols-style absurdities about Jewish unity and world influence, that Turks would set upon Turkish Jews with implacable rage if the U.S. House of Reps passed a resolution over which even American Jews have limited influence? And is the Turkish government so feckless and unpragmatic that it would allow its most cherished political ambitions to be scuppered as Turks took violent "revenge" on the country's Jews?

This all strikes me as rather far-fetched, as it does Professor Porter. So no, although the leadership of our community has thrown its weight behind the world's most successful campaign of genocide denial, I doubt they've managed even to serve the short-term interests of Turkish Jewry. And you can bet they've considerably complicated the future of that community by demonstrating to Turkey that popular antisemitic hatred is a valuable political asset.

Your second question: "Do you think the ADL is concerned about Turkish Jews, but being shortsighted, or that the organization is just using the issue as an excuse to protect Turkey?"

I certainly accept that some in the Jewish community—perhaps including some of the commissioners of the ADL—are genuinely concerned about the fate of Turkish Jews. I have more difficulty believing they truly think that by gutlessly jumping at the demands of antisemites we can earn a happier outcome for Jews. I'd thought the 20th century had taught us that this was a losing strategy, and I'm mystified as to how any American Jew could conclude that we were too hasty in giving up on this approach, and ought now to give it another whirl.

Still, I suppose that if the leaders of the ADL—which once stood as a symbol of modern Jewish assertiveness and refusal to accept the traditional indignities of Jewish life in Europe—can today be co-opted as compliant Court Jews for Ankara, then it's no more startling to learn that they and others in the Jewish community are prepared to sit cringing at the feet of Middle Eastern leaders who clearly think they know a thing or two about how to keep irksome Jews in line. Turkish antisemites must have been gratified that American Jewish leaders—representatives of the most empowered, integrated Jewish population in the history of the diaspora—could be so easily managed like a gaggle of korkak Yahudiler, responding to threats of antisemitic violence with desperate smiles and obsequious supplications. As the Turkish ambassador to Israel helpfully explained, so far as the Turks are concerned, a Jew is a Jew is a Jew. How do you say QED in Turkish?

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For the past several months, the Jews of Turkey have been in the international spotlight. As Congress has debated the Armenian Genocide resolution, high-ranking Turkish officials have warned that Turkish Jews will be endangered if the resolution passes. And Jewish-American organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League have repeatedly cited the predicament of Turkish Jews as reason to support Turkey's campaign of genocide denial.

In an effort to better understand the plight of Turkish Jewry, I interviewed several prominent scholars who have studied the community.

Ottoman Jews: Safety Through Loyalty

For 500 years, Jews have lived as a loyal minority in the lands of the former Ottoman Empire and the present-day Turkish republic. According to Turkish-Jewish scholar Rifat Bali, who has published several books on the history of Turkey's Jews, their loyalty to the Ottoman Empire allowed Turkish Jews to escape the tragic fate of the Empire's Greeks, Assyrians and Armenians.

"Turkish Jews were not involved in any sort of ethnic nationalism," says Bali. "The Zionist movement did not take root in Istanbul because the community leadership had witnessed the tragic fate of the Ottoman Armenians. [They] understood that the Ottoman leadership would perceive Zionism as a separatist nationalist movement and that this would have dire consequences. They therefore took an ‘anti-Zionist' position."

Like today's Turkish Jewish community, the Jews of the Ottoman Empire were utilized as international advocates for Turkish political goals. "Haim Nahum, the last Ottoman Chief Rabbi, was an ‘anti-Zionist' and a supporter of the Turkish Nationalist movement," says Bali. "He was sent by Mustafa Kemal to the USA and Europe for lobbying on behalf of the Kemalists."

Turkish Jews in the 20^th century: Loyal Scapegoats

Turkish political groups that fight bitterly on other issues find common ground in blaming Turkish Jews for the country's ills. "Turkey's Jews have been scapegoated by the Islamist movement which started to grow in 1946," say Bali. "In 1969, the National Order Party began propagating its Islamist National View ideology, which accused Jews and Zionism of being behind all the troubles of Turkey." And in the ‘70s, Turkey's Jews were hostage to the clash between Turkey's ultra-leftists and ultra-rightists.

Turkish Jews Today

Adopting Muslim Names to Escape Attention

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I want to underscore Josh's comments about Bernard Lewis' sinister complacency on the question of the Armenian genocide. Josh helpfully mentions the heroic campaign of Raphael Lemkin, the inventor of the term ‘genocide', to install the concept into international law. Josh is quite right that that the concept ‘genocide' picks out does not merely encompass its archetypal instance, the Holocaust, but any acts of a relevantly similar nature that are to be absolutely forbidden among civilized nations.

If you follow the Wikipedia article on Lemkin, you'll see that his struggle to have an international law banning genocide began in earnest in 1933, well before the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jewish people had begun. In fact, the connection between Lemkin's conceptual invention and the crime Ottoman Turkey perpetrated against its Armenian population is not merely theoretical; the Armenian genocide and its aftermath were Lemkin's direct inspiration. As Samantha Power recounts in her excellent book A Problem from Hell, in March 1921, in a pleasant neighborhood of Berlin, Soghomon Tehlirian, a young Armenian man whose family had been slaughtered by the Turks and who had been conscripted into a revanchist band of assassins, gunned down Mehmed Talaat, the former Ottoman Minister of the Interior who oversaw the murder of one million Armenians and acted as the Turkish government's principal obfuscator on the international stage.

Lemkin, a linguistics student at the University of Lvov, read about Talaat's assassination and the events surrounding it in a newspaper. I'll let Power take over:

Lemkin was intrigued and brought the case to the attention of one of his professors. Lemkin asked why the Armenians did not have Talaat arrested for the massacre. The professor said there was no law under which he could be arrested. "Consider the case of a farmer who owns a flock of chickens," he said. "He kills them and this is his business. If you interfere, you are trespassing."

"It is a crime for Tehlirian to kill a man, but it is not a crime for his oppressor to kill more than a million men?" Lemkin asked. "This is most inconsistent."

Lemkin was appalled that the banner of "state sovereignty" could shield men who tried to wipe out an entire minority. "Sovereignty," Lemkin argued to the professor, "implies conducting an independent foreign and internal policy...Sovereignty cannot be conceived as the right to kill millions of innocent people...."

Lemkin was torn about how to judge Tehlirian's act. On the one hand, Lemkin credited the Armenian with upholding the "moral order of mankind" and drawing the world's attention to the Turkish slaughter. Tehlirian's case had quickly turned into an informal trial of the deceased Talaat for his crimes against the Armenians; the witnesses and written evidence introduced in Tehlirian's defense brought the Ottoman horrors to their fullest light to date. The New York Times wrote that the documents introduced in the trial "established once and for all the fact that the purpose of the Turkish authorities was not deportation but annihiliation" [attn: Bernard Lewis - DK]. But Lemkin was uncomfortable that Tehlirian...had acted as the "self-appointed legal officer for the conscience of mankind." Passion, he knew, would often make a travesty of justice. Impunity for mass murderers like Talaat had to end; retribution had to be legalized.

The ironies here are numerous, and one I'll mention just in passing is that while the New York Times was not under any illusions about the nature of the Turkish atrocities as far back as 1921, the establishment press of 2007, following conventions of supposed objectivity that in general do more to throttle truth than disseminate it, can't quite seem to figure out what the fact of the matter is regarding the Armenian genocide.

The bottom line, pace Bernard Lewis, is that the crime of genocide was originally conceived to describe what Turkey did to the Armenians. Just as it is a priori that a meter stick is one meter long, so it is a priori that the Turkish mass-murder of Armenians was genocide, and a denial of this fact is not merely an expression of ignorance, and not even, strictly speaking, false. To say "there was no Armenian genocide" amounts to what the logical positivists called vocus flatus, a syntactical and seemingly articulate string of symbols that nevertheless is literally meaningless, due, in this case, to its containing an analytic inconsistency. "There was no Armenian genocide" is not a false sentence because it is not even a sentence. It's like trying (and failing) to refer to "the married bachelor."

One further irony that deserves notice is the role of Jews in alerting the world to what the Turks had done to the Armenians long before the Jews themselves were victims of a genocide, and how the profiles of Lemkin and others compare with cravenness of Abe Foxman and the ADL. Lemkin was not the first nor the most prominent Jew to assume the plight of the Armenians as his own. Henry Morgenthau, an emigrant from Germany to the US, was ambassador to Ottoman Turkey during the First World War, who began to plead with his superiors to come to the aid of the Armenians as early as February 1915. "There seems to be," Morgenthau wrote to Washington, " a systematic plan to crush the Armenian race." Power again:

Local witnesses urged [Morgenthau] to invoke the moral power of the United States. Otherwise, he was told, "the whole Armenian nation would disappear." The ambassador did what he could, continuing to send blistering cables back to Washington and raising the matter at virtually every meeting he held with Talaat. He found his exchanges with the interior minister infuriating. Once, when the ambassador introduced eyewitness reports of slaughter, Talaat snapped back: "Why are you so interested in the Armenians anyway? You are a Jew, these people are Christians...What have you to complain of? Why can't you let us do with these Christians as we please?" Morgenthau replied, "You don't seem to realize that I am not here as a Jew but as the American Ambassador...I do not appeal to you in the name of any race or religion but merely as a human being."

Morgenthau's efforts cast the issue rather starkly, I think. If the Anti-Defamation League cannot call genocide ‘genocide', for fear that to do so is impolitic, then the Anti-Defamation League does not need to exist. At the very least, Abraham Foxman and whichever other ADL officers are responsible for the organization's behavior on this matter should resign, not just from the ADL, but from public life entirely; whatever moral stature the ADL retains depends upon them doing so.

Lastly, we should not forget that Morgenthau's response to the Turkish Eichmann --- for once the comparison is apt --- was an American, not a Jewish response. Morgenthau was begged to "invoke the moral power of the United States"; if the government of the United States cannot be bothered to state the truth simply and forthrightly, then it has no such moral power.

Bernard Lewis enjoys a status unparalleled by most historians and it's one that puts him in a unique position of power and influence. Dick Cheney has made no secret of the esteem in which he holds Lewis, and one can be certain that the Vice President isn't alone in thinking that Lewis is the go-to guy for information about the Middle East. While it might be tempting to make the assumption that Cheney's vote of confidence is reason enough to doubt Lewis, taking the lazy 'if-the-Bush-administration
-says-white-I'll-say-black' route is always a bad idea . There are reasons to fear Lewis' influence that run far deeper. One of them comes to light in the video below, where he can be seen denying the Armenian genocide outright.

Most worthy of attention here are the precise terms in which the questioner poses his question. At no point does he ask whether Mr. Lewis believes the Armenian genocide was at all similar to the Holocaust. He merely asks whether Lewis has revised his position, namely that the mass murder of a million Armenians was a brutal by-product of war, not genocide. Lewis responds, fairly enough, by saying that it is a question of definitions. So a little about those, then...

I was fortunate enough to have studied briefly with philosopher Richard Bernstein on the subject of Evil in the 20th Century. This was in part an investigation into the atrocities of the last hundred years, but also into the rhetoric and definitions of evil, into resistance to evil, and into how language can be either complicit in or a resistance to evil. Offered as an example of resistance was Raphael Lemkin's one-person crusade to imagine a word that might describe the particular atrocity of systematic human extermination on the basis of particular categories. In some sense, Lemkin's invention of the word 'genocide' gave us a way to speak the unspeakable and thus to specify what we mean when we say 'never again.' And while some intellectuals have taken offense at such gestures, it's hard to argue against the notion that the collective will understands itself and its intentions much better through speech than through reverent silence.

Reverent silence is one thing, but irreverent silence or purposive rejection of this very valuable definition effectively participates in the reverse of resistance to evil. When you do so from a place of influence like Lewis', your culpability increases proportionately. His rhetorical underhandedness stems from a premise he himself conveniently inserts--one that, as mentioned before, is never offered by his interlocutor. The focus of his answer becomes the comparison to the Holocaust, a comparison he feels is inaccurate. The atrocity that took place in WWII, however, is beyond compare, which means that by Lewis' definition, that is the only thing we could possibly call genocide. The lexical weapon is thus confined to a singular past historical event, rendering it useless to the present, future, or to anything that came before that event.

Scholars like Lewis would do well to assimilate one of the keystone lessons of postcolonialism--that some comparisons can sometimes be useful, but others can prevent one from grasping the specificity of a situation--from seeing it on its own terms. Lewis opts for the worst use of comparison. The French Revolution is not the American is not the Russian, and so on, but the notion of revolution as we understand it applies to all three. Likewise with the Armenian genocide and the genocide of Jews during the second World War. One is not the other, granted (does Lewis think this comes as a shock?) But the need to understand them and speak about them plainly as events worthy of moral outrage on many of the same grounds is vital.

A concrete case in point: when Representative Ed Whitfield takes the podium to oppose H.R. 106 on the grounds that damaged relations with Turkey will compromise the War on Terror, he has one of the world's most revered historians of the Middle East backing him up. But in reality, our leaders have no right to call the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan a campaign against a genocidal regime and ideology while simultaneously refusing to recognize the very event that prompted Mr. Lemkin's interest in the topic. Whitfield and his ilk should be far more concerned about how their disingenuous treatment of such an important concept serves to make the public rightly skeptical about the fight against genocidal terror. If that fight is to be a principled one, one must take the principle first, unequivocally, and let all else follow. Selective applications based on tendentious arguments from over-esteemed scholars won't do.

Some long-overdue good news - perhaps - from Turkey yesterday, where the European Union's carrot-and-stick approach, so often criticised in the past, may be about to see the repeal, or at least reform, of the Turkish penal code's infamous Article 301, which bans ‘insults' against Turkish identity or national institutions on pain of jail. The article has been used to prosecute Orhan Pamuk and Hrant Dink, among others; though both were acquitted, of course, Dink tragically did not escape the ultra-nationalist's ‘justice' for long.

In the light of the furore over the Foxman affair, it's worth recalling that the situation in Turkey is one without parallel in the Western world (and since that is the category into which nation aspires to be bracketed, let's run with that for the time being). It's only a few months since the European Union unveiled plans (eventually diluted) to make Holocaust denial a crime EU-wide, and several member states maintain and enforce Holocaust denial statutes rigorously, as David Irving found to his cost. Yet in Turkey it is not genocide denial which is the criminal offence but genocide affirmation.

Opinion is divided on what happened to the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire 90 years ago. Everyone else in the world says they were systematically massacred; Turkey says they weren't. If the historical debate was closed long ago, the Turkish state seems to have misinterpreted the resulting consensus. The rethink on Article 301, then, is not the fruit of introspection but has been forced on them by the EU, whose enlargement Commissioner, Olli Rehn, presented a report on Tuesday that was highly critical of continuing restrictions on free speech in the most high-profile of its aspirant members:

"The infamous article 301 must be repealed or amended without delay," Mr Rehn suggested [...] "This is not acceptable in a European democracy that writers, journalists, academics and other intellectuals are prosecuted for simply expressing a critical but completely non-violent opinion."

That was the stick. The carrot was a promise to open negotiations on the judicial and human rights chapters of accession talks as soon as the penal code was cleaned up to Brussels' satisfaction. This may be the first step in that process.

Europeans are wont to compare their masterful use of ‘soft power' with the heavy-handed, bull-in-the-china-shop belligerence of American policy, though we've heard less crowing from that quarter since the good-cop bad-cop routine with Iran went tits-up. Ankara can hardly be compared with Tehran, of course, but the principle remains the same; draw them in rather than freeze them out, more leverage with friends than enemies, etc. etc. It's reasoning such as this that leads Tony Blair to visit Gaddafi's tent, or the EU to invite the likes of Mugabe to their summits; a touching but naïve belief that since we put aside our differences by setting up a giant talking shop, it'll work with others too.

The problem with is that Turkish public opinion has long since grown tired of this elaborate diplomatic dance; there's little appetite for further concessions. The saber-rattling in Kurdistan shows that Ankara is not afraid to give the West the finger when it sees fit. Nor is there much real enthusiasm on the Continent for Turkish accession, except in London: and even here you can be sure that if there were any realistic prospect of Turkish entry into the EU the tabloid press would swing into full scaremongering mode - just think of all the swarthy immigrants! - and the government would start backtracking at some speed. Moreover, several other EU members have stated their outright hostility to Turkey joining the Union, and that's not likely to change any time soon.

So whilst the repeal of Article 301 is clearly good news, one swallow does not make a summer; it doesn't presage any real shift in Turkey's official stance towards the Armenian genocide, which remains utterly hardline, and it doesn't mean that the path to acceptance in the European family of nations is going to get any smoother.

Jewcy's Armenian comrade Sevag Arzoumanian sends video from last week's rally outside the ADL Headquarters. Footage is interspliced with scenes from the first Jewcy-sponsored rally outside the 92nd Street Y.

The Armenian Genocide Resolution (H.Res.106) has attracted enormous media attention since it was passed by the House International Affairs Committee on October 10. However, the content of many of the articles, columns and stories make one thing clear: Writers across the United States were ill-prepared to tackle the issue of the Armenian genocide, simply because they knew very little about it.

One case in point is Richard Cohen's article in the Washington Post, titled "Turkey's War on the Truth" (Oct. 16, 2007). Cohen makes arguments based on false premises. After conceding--with condescension--that what happened to the Armenians in 1915 was "plenty bad," he concludes that it falls short of genocide "because not all Armenians...were...affected." Clearly, if we follow his train of thought, Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur and several other cases should not be labeled as "genocide."

Cohen's standards are clearly different from those of the UN Convention defining genocide, but Cohen doesn't just introduce his own novel definition of genocide, he also creates his own facts. He suggests that jurist Raphael Lemkin, the author of the Genocide Convention, coined the term "genocide" based solely on "what the Nazis were doing to the Jews." This is blatantly wrong. Although this factual error was pointed out by many--including myself--to the editors of the Washington Post, no correction was issued and, to this day, no letter to the editor on this issue has appeared in the paper.

To set the record straight, the horrors of the Armenian genocide--and not only the Holocaust--played a central role in Lemkin's lifelong pursuit to find a name for the ultimate crime against humanity--the cleansing of a group--and to incorporate into international law the prevention of this crime and the punishment of its perpetrators.

The destruction of the Armenians came to Lemkin's attention when, in 1920, Soghomon Tehlirian--an Armenian whose entire family was killed during the genocide--assassinated Talaat Pasha, the mastermind behind the Armenian genocide, in Berlin. Lemkin read about Tehlirian's trial and, during a discussion with his professor at the University of Lvov, asked, "It is a crime for Tehlirian to kill a man, but it is not a crime for his oppressor to kill more than a million men?" His professor argued that states are sovereign and they can do what they want to their citizens. "Consider the case of a farmer who owns a flock of chickens. He kills them and this is his business. If you interfere, you are trespassing," his professor argued. Lemkin was proud of Tehlirian for defending "the moral order of mankind," but wanted international law--and not individuals--to punish the perpetrators.

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Jewcy Folk,

Tonight Jewcy and the Armenian-American community's No Place for Denial campaign co-sponsor a rally outside the national ADL headquarters in Manhattan. For the next few days, the national ADL will be meeting somewhere in the City to consider, among other things, whether to continue supporting Turkey's ongoing campaign to deny recognition to the survivors of the Armenian Genocide.

I wish I could be at the rally rather than out here on the West Coast, but Michael Weiss will be there along with other Jewish speakers to represent Jewcy and all those of us in the Jewish community who believe that genocide denial is not a Jewish value, and that the ADL can never represent the Jewish tradition of social justice so long as it seeks to deny recognition to the survivors of genocide and to the descendants of those who perished.

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He applauds the Armenian-Jewish* community for slamming Yerevan University's bestowal of an honorary doctorate on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

"It is one thing to provide a forum to speak, as universities are environments where freedom of speech should be promoted and encouraged," said Mr. Foxman. "However, it is quite another to confer degrees and awards on a dictator who denies the Holocaust and calls for the destruction of the state of Israel. Such tributes should be reserved for those academics and world leaders who rightfully deserve them."

Whoever wrote that statement for Foxman must have been cackling at his keyboard.

*Originally said Armenian-American community. Late day typo. Irony still stands given that quote. 

Jewcy is once again teaming up with No Place for Denial to protest the Anti-Defamation League cynical and immoral posturing with respect to the Armenian Genocide. Be there this Thursday, outside the ADL headquarters. Sevag Arzoumanian has the press release:

The ADL National Meeting is in town from Nov. 1st though Nov. 3rd

Join the good folks at Jewcy and No Place for Denial for a hastily organized, totally spontaneous demonstration in front of ADL Headquarters on Thursday, November 1 @ 7 p.m.: 605 3rd Avenue New York, NY

Youthful representatives of two ancient peoples will hit the pavement in front of the ADL offices to demand that the ADL come down on the right side of a key human rights issue: unqualified opposition to genocide denial.

Spontaneous, irreverent, unscripted, a celebration of Jewish-Armenian solidarity, hard hitting political messages transmitted through irony, parody and prose.

B.Y.O signs and slogans.

In an interview published October 26, 2007, Ami Eden of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency asked Abraham Foxman whether he had been wrong to refuse to describe the WWI-era systematic murder of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks--an event known to historians as the Armenian Genocide--as a "genocide." Foxman replied,

"We said it is a massacre, an atrocity, we’ve said it for 40 years. The Armenians wanted us to say genocide. To me it was sufficient for us to say I’m not a historian we don’t adjudicate all the issues...

"I respect the Armenian community for wanting their memory, their pain, their suffering to be recognized globally in the most sensitive way or the most meaningful way. So we said it is an atrocity and it is massacre, but we just don’t think that Congress should [describe it as a genocide]."

Foreign relations Committee calls WWII Killing of Jews "Genocide."

On Wednesday, September 23, The House Foreign Affairs Committee voted 27 to 21 to condemn as genocide the mass killings of Jews in Germany during World War II. New Germany reacted angrily, recalling its ambassador from Washington and threatening to withdraw its support for the continuing War on Terror.

"America has crossed a line with this resolution," Foreign Minister Helmut Gottschalk said. "Petty domestic politics has trumped American national interests. The New German people can only take so much insult. We will see our next steps."

It was a harsh rebuke from one of America's closest allies, and sent shock waves through the White House. The resolution comes at a time when the United States is actively drumming up support for the War on Terror, and two deputies in the State Department departed for Berlin immediately after the vote in an attempt to forestall a diplomatic disaster. At home, Secretary of State Candid Price called the resolutionStill Waiting for Recognition: For the few remaining survivors of the Jewish tragedy, this year's resolution may be the last chance "irresponsible."

In a Rose Garden press conference President Hernandez acknowledged the Jewish tragedy, but sternly warned against the resolution. "This is not the right time or the right place for this kind of resolution," Hernandez said.

Jews, along with the large majority of historians outside New Germany, say that from 1939 to 1945 the German Nationalist Socialist Party carried out a systematic campaign to kill as many as six million Jews in Europe. They claim the killings amounted to "genocide," a term that the New German government fiercely rejects.

New Germany acknowledges that between 1 and 1.6 million Jews died during the war, but contends that a vast majority of those deaths occurred in the throes of war when disease and starvation was widespread. According to New Germany the intent to exterminate Jews is historically unfounded. "There was a context for these events. Many Germans died and suffered as well, far exceeding the number of Jews. These were the sad unintended consequences of war."

Since the establishment of New Germany, the influential Jewish American lobby has sought acknowledgment of their ancestors' suffering. The authors of the resolution are from heavily Jewish districts in California and Florida and New York. They note that the United States must recognize the Jewish tragedy while the few remaining survivors are still alive.

Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee Gregory Demerdjian, a descendent of survivors of the Armenian Genocide, said, "These events must be characterized for what they were: genocide. It is well documented in our own national archives that genocide of Jews occurred during the Second World War. This is merely an acknowledgment of America's own understanding of the events during that time. None of this should be construed to mean that New Germany is in the least responsible for these deaths." Demerjian said that he would soon introduce a resolution reinforcing America's strong and lasting relationship with the New Germany.

The Jewish tragedy is a sensitive issue in New Germany. Under a progressive movement called "Identity Reformation," the New Germans have radically reconsidered what an older generation had taken for granted. Historians in New Germany argue that between the First and Second World War Germany was caught between JewishTaking Pride in Our Past: The New German government has insisted that the alleged genocide is simply not consistent with the nobility of German history industrialists and Jewish socialists intent on overthrowing the German state. "They wanted to destroy the country from within," said New German Ambassador Norbert Sommer. "It was a difficult time. Everyone regrets the death of Jews, but wartime choices had to be made to save Germany's very existence."

Today, New Germany rejects the verdicts of the Nuremberg Trials that found members of the Nazi party guilty of war crimes, pointing out that Germans admitted to those crimes under duress from the prosecuting Allies. "No document has ever been produced that shows that Hitler ordered the extermination of Jews," Sommer said. "Indeed, many attempts were made by Germans at the time to find a safe harbor for Jews, including some negotiations with Zionists in Europe. It is a total fallacy that there was anything resembling genocide."

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These are days of woe for the New Republic, so let me be the first -- or last -- to congratulate the magazine for publishing the best moral argument for the Congressional passage of the Armenian Genocide resolution that I've yet read. Irshad Manji, author of The Trouble with Islam Today, nails it:

America remains the only country in the world with a universal constituency. Domestic politics in the United States often have a profound effect in every corner of the earth, from determining immigration flows and investment patterns to handing leaders and their heirs the excuses they crave to blur the lines between God and government.

[...]

The question for Americans ought to be: Since when is it wrong to speak out against genocide, however many years have elapsed? People of good conscience continued raising their voices against slavery in the United States well after abolition. Are they reckless or sinister for offending many Americans? In any event, is causing offense a reason to stop remembering?

Here is the question for Turks: Why should your history be immune to America's judgment when, according to surveys of global attitudes about the United States, you as a nation are among the most anti-American (read: judgmental) in all of the Muslim world?

Of course, these are precisely the considerations being sidelined by both the left and the right in favor of more urgent matters of foreign policy: the war in Iraq, winning hearts and minds in the Muslim world, etc. But ask yourself: If the U.S. failed to rebuke an ally for its shameful record of denial and distortion about a 20th century atrocity, don't you think the same critics of the Armenian Genocide resolution would eventually use that failure as a cudgel against cynical American self-interest when it became convenient to do so? Of course they would.

The more one thinks about Fallows' Law (perhaps I should downgrade it to an Axiom, since he's only written one blog post about it), the more one sees how hollow it is. The U.S. makes decisions of international scope all the time that alienate other countries with which it otherwise maintains amicable relations. What can Turkey do out of umbrage for having had a parliamentary finger wagged in its face? Start sponsoring terrorism? That'd put a damper in its campaign against the PKK, wouldn it? Invade Iraq? That'd pit it militarily against a NATO ally and further diminish its chances for inclusion in the European Big Boys' Club.

In short, even the dread Nancy Pelosi comes out looking good on H.Res.106., if she sticks to her guns against Bush and company.

I said yesterday, w/r/t Iran, that one could tell a lot about a country by how it wages wars. Well, one can also tell a lot about a country by how it reacts to tough love. Guess who Turkey blames for the resolution? Come on, now... Try harder.

In an interview with the liberal Islamic Zaman newspaper on the eve of the resolution's approval October 10 by the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said he had told American Jewish leaders that a genocide bill would strengthen the public perception in Turkey that "Armenian and Jewish lobbies unite forces against Turks." Babacan added, "We have told them that we cannot explain it to the public in Turkey if a road accident happens. We have told them that we cannot keep the Jewish people out of this."

The Turkish public seems to have absorbed that message.

An on-line survey by Zaman's English-language edition asking why Turks believed the bill succeeded showed that 22 percent of respondents chose "Jews' having legitimized the genocide claims" - second only to "Turkey's negligence."

But why did Yerevan State University bestow an honorary doctorate and a gold medal upon a politician, who has shown disregard to basic historical research and memory by denying the Holocaust of the Jews during WWII?

It is worth noting that one of the manifestations of Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial is calling for further “impartial” studies on WWII. We have heard that very same argument regarding the Armenian genocide from Turkey and its allies.

Needless to say, he thinks it was a bad idea:

Why not go all the way? How about a resolution condemning China for the millions who suffered in the Cultural Revolution and the tens of millions starved during the Great Leap Forward – right as we’re seeking China’s help on Burma, North Korea, the environment, etc? I mean, for each Armenian the Ottoman Turks slaughtered, at least ten Chinese citizens perished at the hands of the regime whose successors still rule the country. And the government's official stance of denial is just about as strong. So, why not just tell them they were evil? The timing would be especially nice during China's current Party Congress.

I'm sure we could get a unanimous vote for a resolution condemning North Korea for any of a hundred grievous offenses; that would be a good complement to the recent nuclear deal. Why not one denouncing Russia for the Czarist pogroms, to accompany efforts to reason with/rein in Putin? Maybe another condemning England for its subjugation and slaughter of the Scots, to say nothing of the Irish – while also asking Gordon Brown to stay the course in Iraq? What about Australia for its historic treatment of the Aborigines? Or the current nations of West Africa for their role in the slave trade?

The Armenian genocide was real; many Turks pretend it wasn’t. They are wrong, and we should stand for what's right. But it’s hard to think of a more willfully self-indulgent step than lecturing Turkey's current government and people 90 years late.

Leaving aside the fact that Soviet Union acknowledged and repudiated the Czarist pogroms -- before it planned its own version of them -- these points are worth exploring since Fallows' argument hinges not on the question of Why? but on the question of Why now? Of all times to express our solidarity with the Armenian people, he asks, why choose a time when our military alliance with Turkey has suffered, perhaps irrevocably, by the Iraq war and the escalating PKK crisis in Kurdistan?

Fallows' plaint is not new, but it is compelling, at least on the surface. Diplomacy is game that depends partly on the wise seizure of opportunities when they present themselves. Only an idealist or a fool acts without regard for immediate consequences. Yes, dear, geopolitics sometimes means making moral sacrifices to ensure the comity of nations. Better still: Who are we, with all our warts, to chide another country for its atrocities and ongoing attempts to cover them up?

Very well. Let's consider the proposition of a poorly timed historical reckoning with the roles reversed. Let's say that tomorrow China's Central Committee decides to pass a non-binding resolution that condemns the United States for its former slave economy. What would our reaction be? Would we stop lobbying China to intercede in Burma, bolster global environmental policies, and see the North Korean nuclear deal to completion, or would we give up these pursuits to express our outrage at the "self-righteously posturing measure" (Fallows' words) enacted by a repressive regime that would do better to concern itself with its own human rights abuses in the 21st century than with ours in the 19th?

What would the cold, hard logic of realpolitik -- which is what Fallows advocates, after all -- dictate we do under such circumstances? And are other countries immune to this logic? To put it another way, why hasn't Turkey already invaded Iraq after 12 of its soldiers were killed and 8 more were kidnapped?

Even if one agrees that the United States has a responsibility to behave with more self-restraint than other countries, I can't see how the timing for recognizing a genocide would ever be "right." The Ottoman Empire no longer exists. What does exist is the modern Kemalist state of Turkey, which bears no responsibility for the murder and dislocation of 1.5 million Armenians, only for the annihilation of the legacy of this gruesome event. Since it hasn't already, at what point in the future, then, will Turkey realize, without feeling the full weight of shame brought down upon it by an international consensus, that its policy towards facing the past is both immoral and self-defeating? Will it be able to join the European Union so long as even speaking of the Armenian Genocide is a crime punishable by jail time? If the Iraq war had not happened, or if it had gone smoothly, would Congress then have been allowed to hold a NATO ally to account for its denial of history?

There are always excuses to be made for deferring justice a little while longer. Many anti-Dreyfusards of fin de siecle Paris, for instance, suspected that the French captain was innocent but that "now was not the time" to acquit a Jew of false charges if that meant jeopardizing the stability of the teetering Third Republic. La patrie en danger: Couldn't France afford to remain under the cloud of clerical paranoia and medieval superstition a few years longer?

What the excuse-makers fail to realize, however, is that by deferring justice they in effect deny it by making it the hostage of convenience. This is a game infinitely more suspect than diplomacy, and it's bad enough when it's played in Great Britain or the United States, where the most jingoistic refrain is "My Country, Right or Wrong." But how much worse is it when it's played in Turkey, where scores of citizens take to the streets to chant self-righteously in defense of a genocide, and where the refrain seems to be "My Country, Never Wrong"?

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports,

Two Jewish congressmen are working to keep the Armenian genocide bill from reaching the U.S. House of Representatives floor....U.S. Reps. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) and Stephen Cohen (D-Tenn.), as well as three other opponents of the controversial bill memorializing the killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during World War I, spoke harshly of its implications for U.S. relations with Turkey at a news conference Wednesday in Washington.

"The Middle East is a tinderbox," Wexler said. "Our responsibility is to bring as much stability as is humanly possible."

Cohen added that passage of the bill would cause "real-time harm to real people."

Congressman Cohen claims that House Resolution 106 -- the Armenian Genocide Resolution -- would threaten our troops in Iraq.

This resolution is an affirmation of the American role in its humanitarian effort during the Armenian Genocide. It does not threaten our troops --Turkey does.

When I met with Congressman Cohen in August, I explained to him that Turkey has a tendency to use theatrics and bluff as foreign policy tools, just as it did with other countries that passed similar resolutions. And this is precisely what happened.

Turkey is now spending millions of dollars with PR firms and lobbying powerhouses to sway American public opinion with theatrics and fear-mongering tactics.

Turkey's tantrum reaction is unbefitting of a US ally -- especially an ally with such a record of unreliability.

In 2003 The Turkish Government rejected a US request to use its territory for the invasion of Iraq. Our military used contingency plans and shifted the war effort to other parts of the region. It was determined then that Turkey cannot be counted on as a reliable ally.

In 2005 Defense Secretary Rumsfeld blamed the inability to gain permission to invade Iraq through Turkey for the surge of the insurgency that our military faces.

Analysts from both the US and Turkey agree that the US can now do without Turkey, but Turkey cannot do without the United States. The economic and political costs to Turkey of cutting off American access are too great to even consider.

What we are witnessing now is outrageous. Turkey wants to impose a gag order when it comes to discussion of the Armenian Genocide. In essence, by acquiescing, we would be outsourcing our morality and foreign policy to Turkey. This is unacceptable.

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