Israeli denial of the Armenian Genocide; siding with Hitler

[Tigranakert]

This topic is made to post anything that has to do with the Israeli (j-e-w-i-s-h) hypocrisy regarding the Armenians, be it their attitude towards the Armenian Genocide, against Armenians in foreign countries or their discriminatory practices towards the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem.

Also to post articles of brave Israeli scholars and other persons who acknowledge the Armenian genocide and support Armenians in their cause, something the state of Israel can learn from.
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Suddenly, the Israel lobby discovers a genocide

I once tried to blow the whistle on the Israel lobby's denial of the Armenian Genocide -- and it cost me my job

Some of the most powerful leaders in the American xxxish community have stepped forward in recent days to acknowledge the 1915 Armenian Genocide at the hands of Ottoman Turkey.

On the surface, this would seem unremarkable. As victims of the Holocaust, xxxs might be expected to stand beside the Armenians and their tragedy. After all, the massacres and death marches across Anatolia during the fog of World War I became a model for Hitler himself.

But this sudden embrace of the Armenian Genocide actually marks a shameless turnaround for the major American xxxish organizations. For decades, they have helped Turkey cover up its murderous past. Each year, the Israel lobby in the U.S. has played a quiet but pivotal role in pressuring Congress, the State Department and successive presidents to defeat simple congressional resolutions commemorating the 1.5 million Armenian victims.

Genocide denial is not a pretty thing, they now concede, but they did it for Israel. They did it out of gratitude for Turkey being Israel’s one and only Muslim ally.

Now the game has changed. Israel and Turkey are locked in a feud over the Palestine-bound flotilla that was intercepted on the high seas by Israel. Turkey is outraged over the killing of nine of its citizens on board. Israel is outraged that a country with Turkey’s past would dare judge the morality of the xxxish state.

So the Armenian Genocide has become a new weapon in the hands of Israel and its supporters in the U.S., a way to threaten Turkey, a conniver’s get-even: Hey, Turkey, if you want to play nasty with Israel, if you want to lecture us about violations of human rights, we can easily go the other way on the Armenian Genocide. No more walking the halls of Congress to plead your shameful case.

If I sound cynical about all this, maybe I am.

In the spring of 2007, I wrote a story that revealed how genocide denial had become a dirty little pact between Turkey and Israel and its lobby in the U.S.

The story, as it turned out, was my last story at the Los Angeles Times, the only story in my 20-year career that was killed on the eve of publication.

Three years later, I can still hear myself framing its contours to one of our editors in the Washington bureau:

A rift over genocide denial has begun to crack open inside the xxxish community. If you listen closely, you can hear the stirrings of a debate.

On one side were the conservative, Likud-devoted lions of the major xxxish organizations who championed the virtues of Turkey, the first Muslim country to formally recognize Israel. As long as Ankara continued to cooperate in Israeli military exercises and purchase Israeli war machines, it deserved special treatment. Israel itself had adopted an official policy of denying the Armenian Genocide. Its supporters in the U.S. were obliged to do the same.

On the other side were more progressive xxxs who couldn’t stomach the notion that Holocaust survivors were working so diligently to erase the memory of another people’s genocide. How could xxxish leaders whose every sense was tuned to detect the Holocaust deniers in our midst, who had gone to the ends of the earth to hunt down Hitler’s henchmen, now enlist with the patrons of genocide?

It was the sort of hypocrisy that made the vow of "Never Again" sound exclusive, a shelter for just one.

My editor was intrigued. Here was an important and timely topic that no newspaper or magazine had ever covered. The fact that I was the grandson of Armenian Genocide survivors didn’t seem to give him any pause. If nothing else, my ethnic background gave me a working knowledge of the issues and the players.

I knew that experts in the field of Holocaust studies recognized the Armenian Genocide as an antecedent with chilling echoes. And xxxish scholars were openly condemning Turkey’s long campaign of denial, seeing it as the psychological continuation of genocidal trauma.

But these same scholars were mostly silent when it came to the behind-the-scenes role that Israel and its lobby in the U.S -- the Anti-Defamation League, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, neoconservative think tanks and Bush administration hawks -- were playing in this denial.

This was the story I wanted to tell as the ceremonial bill went to committee that April -- the month that Armenians remember their martyrs.

The only caution from my editor was that I conduct all interviews on-the-record. "Unnamed sources aren’t going to work for this one," he said.

I drove down Wilshire Boulevard and knocked on the door of the Turkish Consulate. The diplomat in charge, a polished man in a three-piece suit, wondered how the events of 1915 could constitute a genocide if I, an Armenian, was standing literally before him.

“So both of your grandfathers survived, huh?” he said in an accuser’s tone.

I tracked down Yair Auron, the professor at the Open University of Israel who had authored the seminal 2003 book “The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide.”

He had written it out of shame, he said. "Denial of the Armenian Genocide in the xxxish Diaspora is closely connected to the policy of denial in Israel. This is nothing less than a betrayal of the moral legacy of the Holocaust."

Then I found my way to the equivocators and deniers who sat at the helms of the major American xxxish organizations. None was more blunt than Abraham Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defamation League in New York. The Armenian Genocide had become his own convenient cudgel to keep Turkey in line.

Foxman had just returned from a meeting with Turkish military and government leaders to discuss pressuring Congress, the State Department and President Bush to turn back the genocide resolution once again.

"Our focus is Israel," he explained. "If helping Turkey helps Israel, then that’s what we’re in the business of doing."

But such a bottom line would seem an uncomfortable place for a xxxish leader to be when the question was genocide.

"Was it genocide?" he said. "It was wartime. Things get messy."

He questioned whether a bill in Congress would help "reconcile" the differences between Turks and Armenians, as though the whole thing was a marital spat that needed some calming down.

"The Turks and Armenians need to revisit their past. The xxxish community shouldn’t be the arbiter of that history. And I don’t think the U.S. Congress should be the arbiter, either."

He was lifting lines right out of the Turkish playbook. I almost had to revisit his website to make sure that the ADL was still in the business of fighting not only anti-Semitism but "bigotry and extremism" and "securing justice and fair treatment to all."

I pointed out that the genocide had already been documented as a fact by many prominent historians. And Congress recognizes all sorts of people's history. Resolutions commemorating the victims of the Holocaust, for instance.

"You’re not suggesting that an Armenian Genocide is the same as the Holocaust, are you?"

I tried to draw the parallels that the scholars had drawn, but Foxman saw it as an affront. The oneness of the Holocaust was being debased by Armenians looking for a piggyback ride.

"Are you Armenian?" he finally asked.

"Would it matter if I was?" I replied. “Black reporters cover civil rights. Latino reporters cover immigration. xxxish reporters write about Holocaust deniers. We’re journalists.”

I wrote the story and filed it. My editor in Washington was pleased. It landed on the weekend budget, a strong candidate for Page One.

The weekend came and went, but the story held. I called the editor and asked if there was a problem. He was sorry to say that the story had been killed -- on a last-minute order from the managing editor.

“But why?” I asked.

"Your byline," he said.

"My byline?”

Then it hit me. Even as the paper was nominating one of my other stories for a Pulitzer Prize, on this story I was an Armenian.

The official explanation was a beauty. The managing editor said I was not an objective reporter because I had once signed a petition stating that the Armenian Genocide was a historical fact.

I had never signed such a petition. But if I had, how did this prove bias? Our own style book at the Times recognized the genocide as a historical fact.

"Would you tell a xxxish reporter that he couldn’t write about Holocaust denial because he believed the Holocaust was a fact?” I asked.

His answer was to reassign my story to a colleague in Washington who covered Congress. That this reporter was xxxish -- and the story dealt with xxxish denial of the genocide -- didn’t seem to faze the managing editor. The colleague, who may not have had a choice in the matter, proceeded to gut my story. By the time he was done, there was not a single mention of xxxish denial.

After an ugly public fight, I left the paper. The managing editor was later pushed out when an internal probe showed that my story was factual and without bias.

These days, I find myself more than a curious observer of the new cold war that has broken out between Turkey and Israel and its supporters.

What to make of the rush of xxxish leaders -- from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington to a city councilman named Jack Weiss in Los Angeles -- coming forward in the past few weeks to divulge their role in genocide denial?

"Frankly, [it] was not becoming for xxxs, given that we have likewise been victims of genocide," Weiss wrote in an inelegant piece in the xxxish Journal.

How to account for these sudden confessions? A pang of remorse? A cleansing of the soul? I’m afraid not. These aren’t confessions, at all. Rather, they are reminders of the debt Turkey owes Israel -- and they come with teeth bared.

Last week, four xxxish professors from Georgetown and Bar Ilan universities urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to officially recognize the Armenian Genocide. Take that, Turkey!

How will Ankara react? Will fear of genocide recognition, which it considers a national security issue, eventually cause Turkey to soften its accusations of apartheid against Israel and become a compliant ally again?

And what about the Armenians and their lobby? Aren’t they guilty of their own cynicism for watching the flotilla feud and now thinking that the winds of geopolitics have finally blown their way? Will they cozy up to xxxish leaders suddenly eager to embrace their genocide? Or will they tell them "thanks but no thanks" and join Turkey in standing up for the Palestinian cause?

Only next April, the season of the return of the genocide resolution, will tell.

Mark Arax is the author of several books, including the most recent, “West of the West.”

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/06/16/israel_lobby_genocide_armenia

[Tigranakert]

Re: Israeli denial of the Armenian Genocide; siding with Hitler

Christians in Jerusalem want xxxs to stop spitting on them



xxxish ’spitter’ being carried away by Israeli authorities and left unpunished

Father Samuel Aghoyan, a senior Armenian Orthodox cleric in Jerusalem’s Old City, says he’s been spat at by young haredi and national Orthodox xxxs “about 15 to 20 times” in the past decade. The last time it happened, he said, was earlier this month. “I was walking back from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and I saw this boy in a yarmulke and ritual fringes coming back from the Western Wall, and he spat at me two or three times.”

Conspicuous targets. “Every Christian cleric who’s been here for a while, and who dresses in robes in public, has a story to tell about being spat at,” says Father Athanasius, a Franciscan monk.

Wearing a dark-blue robe, sitting in St. James’s Church, the main Armenian church in the Old City, Aghoyan said, “Every single priest in this church has been spat on. It happens day and night.”

Father Athanasius, a Texas-born Franciscan monk who heads the Christian Information Center inside the Jaffa Gate, said he’s been spat at by haredi and national Orthodox xxxs “about 15 times in the last six months” – not only in the Old City, but also on Rehov Agron near the Franciscan friary. “One time a bunch of kids spat at me, another time a little girl spat at me,” said the brown-robed monk near the Jaffa Gate.

“All 15 monks at our friary have been spat at,” he said. “Every [Christian cleric in the Old City] who’s been here for awhile, who dresses in robes in public, has a story to tell about being spat at. The more you get around, the more it happens.”

A nun in her 60s who’s lived in an east Jerusalem convent for decades says she was spat at for the first time by a haredi man on Rehov Agron about 25 years ago. “As I was walking past, he spat on the ground right next to my shoes and he gave me a look of contempt,” said the black-robed nun, sitting inside the convent. “It took me a moment, but then I understood.”

Since then, the nun, who didn’t want to be identified, recalls being spat at three different times by young national Orthodox xxxs on Jaffa Road, three different times by haredi youth near Mea She’arim and once by a young xxxish woman from her second-story window in the Old City’s xxxish Quarter.

Armenian Archbishop Nourhan Manougian.

But the spitting incidents weren’t the worst, she said – the worst was the time she was walking down Jaffa Road and a group of middle-aged haredi men coming her way pointed wordlessly to the curb, motioning her to move off the sidewalk to let them pass, which she did.

“That made me terribly sad,” said the nun, speaking in ulpan-trained Hebrew. Taking personal responsibility for the history of Christian anti-Semitism, she said that in her native European country, such behavior “was the kind of thing that they – no, that we used to do to xxxs.”

News stories about young xxxish bigots in the Old City spitting on Christian clergy – who make conspicuous targets in their long dark robes and crucifix symbols around their necks – surface in the media every few years or so. It’s natural, then, to conclude that such incidents are rare, but in fact they are habitual. Anti-Christian Orthodox xxxs, overwhelmingly boys and young men, have been spitting with regularity on priests and nuns in the Old City for about 20 years, and the problem is only getting worse.

“My impression is that Christian clergymen are being spat at in the Old City virtually every day. This has been constantly increasing over the last decade,” said Daniel Rossing. An observant, kippa-wearing xxx, Rossing heads the Jerusalem Center forxxxish-Christian Relations and was liaison to Israel’s Christian communities for the Ministry of Religious Affairs in the ’70s and ’80s.

For Christian clergy in the Old City, being spat at by xxxish fanatics “is a part of life,” said the American xxxish Committee’s Rabbi David Rosen, Israel’s most prominent xxxish interfaith activist.

“I hate to say it, but we’ve grown accustomed to this. xxxish religious fanatics spitting at Christian priests and nuns has become a tradition,” said Roman Catholic Father Massimo Pazzini, sitting inside the Church of the Flagellation on the Via Dolorosa.

These are the very opposite of isolated incidents. Father Athanasius of the Christian Information Center called them a “phenomenon.” George Hintlian, the unofficial spokesman for the local Armenian community and former secretary of the Armenian Patriarchate, said it was “like a campaign.”

Christians in Israel are a small, weak community known for “turning the other cheek,” so these xxxish xenophobes feel free to spit on them; they don’t spit on Muslims in the Old City because they’re afraid to, the clerics noted.

THE ONLY Israeli authority who has shown any serious concern over this matter, the one high official whom Christian and xxxish interfaith activists credit for stepping into the fray, is Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger.

On November 11, Metzger addressed a letter to the “rabbis of the xxxish Quarter,” writing that he had “heard a grave rumor about yeshiva students offending heaven…[by] spitting on Christian clergy who walk about the Old City of Jerusalem.” Such attackers, he added, are almost tantamount to rodfim, or persecutors, which is one of the worst class of offenders in xxxish law. They violate the injunction to follow the “pathways of peace,” Metzger wrote, and are liable to provoke anti-Semitism overseas.

“I thus issue the fervent call to root out this evil affliction from our midst, and the sooner the better,” wrote the chief rabbi.

Metzger published the letter in response to an appeal from Armenian Archbishop Nourhan Manougian, an appeal that came in the wake of a September 5 incident in the Old City in which a haredi man spat on a group of Armenian seminarians who, in turn, beat him up. (See box.)

This is not the first time Metzger has spoken out against the spitting – he did so five years ago after the most infamous incident on record, when Manougian himself was spat on by an Old City yeshiva student during an Armenian Orthodox procession. In response, the archbishop slapped the student’s face, and then the student tore the porcelain ceremonial crucifix off Manougian’s neck and threw it to the ground, breaking it.

Then interior minister Avraham Poraz called the assault on the archbishop “repulsive” and called for a police crackdown on anti-Christian attacks in the Old City. Police reportedly punished the student by banning him from the Old City for 75 days.

Seated in his study in the Armenian Quarter, Manougian, 61, said that while he personally has not been assaulted since that time, the spitting attacks on other Armenian clergy have escalated.

“The latest thing is for them to spit when they pass [St. James's] monastery. I’ve seen it myself a couple of times,” he said. “Then there’s the boy from the xxxish Quarter who spits at the Armenian women when he sees them wearing their crosses, then he runs away. And during one of our processions from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre this year, a fellow in a yarmulke and fringes began deliberately cutting through our lines, over and over. The police caught him and he started yelling, ‘I’m free to walk wherever I want!’ That’s what these settler types are always saying: ‘This is our country and we can do whatever we want!’”

Where are the police in all this? If they happen to be on the scene, such as at the recent procession Manougian described, they will chase the hooligans – but even if they catch them, they only tell them off and let them go, according to several Christian clergymen.

“The police tell us to catch them and bring them in, but then they tell us not to use violence, so how are we supposed to catch them?” asked Aghoyan, a very fit-looking 68-year-old. “Once a boy came up to me and spat in my face, and I punched him and knocked him down, and an Armenian seminarian and I brought him to the police station [next to the Armenian Quarter]. They released him in a couple of hours. I’ve made many, complaints to the police, I’m tired of it. Nothing ever gets done.”

Said Rosen, “The police say, ‘Show us the evidence.’ They want the Christians to photograph the people spitting at them so they can make arrests, but this is very unrealistic – by the time you get the camera out, the attack is over and there’s nothing to photograph.”

Victims of these attacks say that in the great majority of cases the assailants do not spit in their faces or on their clothes, but on the ground at their feet. “When we complain about this, the police tell us, ‘But they’re not spitting on you, just near you,’” said Manougian.

Sitting inside the Church of the Flagellation on the Via Dolorosa, Pazzini recalled: “Early this year there were about 100 Orthodox xxxish boys who came past the church singing and dancing. The police were with them – I don’t know what the occasion was, maybe it was a holiday, maybe it had to do with the elections. There was a group of Franciscan monks standing in front of thechurch, and a few of the xxxish boys went up to the monks, spat on them, then went back into the crowd. I went up to a policeman and he told me, ‘Sorry about that, but look, they’re just kids.’”

Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby refused to provide an official comment on the situation on behalf of the Old City police station. “We don’t give interviews on relations between xxxs and Christians in the Old City,” he said. “We’re not sociologists, we’re policemen.”

The Jerusalem municipality likewise refused to be interviewed. “We have not received any complaints about this matter and we do not deal with things of this nature,” said assistant city spokesman Yossi Gottesman.

EVERY CHRISTIAN cleric interviewed for this article stressed that they weren’t blaming Israeli xxxry as a whole for the spitting attacks; on the contrary, they said their general reception by Israeli xxxs, both secular and religious, was one of welcome.

“I keep in mind that for every person here who’s spat at me, there are many more who’ve come up and said hello,” said Father Athanasius.

“I studied at Hebrew University for seven years and the atmosphere was wonderful. I made a lot of friends there,” said Pazzini.

“My class members at ulpan visited our convent, they couldn’t have been more warm and friendly,” said the nun in east Jerusalem. She recalled that a group of boys in a schoolyard near the ulpan once threw stones at her and another nun, and two ulpan teachers saw it, became outraged and went straight into the school principal’s office. “The kids never threw stones at us again,” the nun said.

“I don’t want to cause troubles for Israel – I love Am Yisrael,” said Manougian, adding that he felt completely unthreatened and at ease when visiting Tel Aviv, Haifa and other parts of the country. The problem of belligerent Orthodox xxxs spitting at Christian clergy, added Rossing, is evidently confined toJerusalem.

There was a time when priests and nuns in the capital went virtually unmolested. In the first 20 years or so after Israel conquered the Old City in the 1967 Six Day War, spitting incidents did occur, but only once in a very long while. Old City police would lock the offender up for the night, which proved an effective deterrent, said Hintlian. “Whatever problem we had, we could call [mayor] Teddy Kollek’s office, we could call people in the Foreign Ministry, the Interior Ministry, we could call Israeli ambassadors. In those days, Christians inJerusalem were ‘overprivileged,’” he said.

That era of good feelings came about as a result of two circumstances, continued Hintlian, the leading chronicler of Jerusalem’s Armenian history. For one, he says, Israel in general and Jerusalem in particular were much more liberal in those days, and secondly, Israeli authorities were out to convince the Christian world that they could be trusted with their newly acquired stewardship over the Old City’s holy places.

“Now Israel doesn’t need the world’s approval anymore for its sovereignty over Jerusalem, so our role is finished,” said Hintlian. “Now we don’t have anyone in authority to turn to.”

“I move around the Old City a lot,” she said, “I come in contact with these people, and what they learn in these fundamentalist yeshivot is that the goy is the enemy, a hater of Israel. All they learn about Christianity is the Holocaust, pogroms, anti-Semitism.”

Rosen recalls that in 1994, after Israel and the Vatican opened diplomatic relations, he organized an international xxxish-Christian conference in Jerusalem, “and the city’s chief rabbi called me in and said, ‘How can you do this? Don’t you know it’s forbidden for us? How can you encourage these people to meet with us?’

“He told me that when he sees a Christian clergyman, he crosses the street and recites, ‘You shall totally abhor and totally disdain…’ This is a biblical verse that refers to idolatry.”Rosen noted that the Jerusalem chief rabbi of the time, like the more insular Orthodox xxxs in general, considered Christians to be idolators.

The people doing the spitting, according to all the Christian victims and xxxish interfaith activists interviewed, are invariably national Orthodox or haredi xxxs; in every attack described by Christian clerics, the assailant was wearing a kippa.

The great majority of the attackers were teenage boys and men in their 20s. However, the supposition was that they came not only from the Old City yeshivot but also from outside. Hintlian and Aghoyan noted that the spitting attacks tended to spike on Fridays and Saturdays, when masses ofOrthodox xxxs stream to the Western Wall.

The hot spots in the Old City are the places where resident Orthodox xxxs and Christians brush up against one another – inside Jaffa Gate, on the roads leading through the Armenian Quarter to the xxxish Quarter and around Mount Zion, which lies just outside the Old City and is the site of a several yeshivot.

Of all Old City Christians, the Armenians get spat on most frequently because their quarter stands closest to those hot spots.

Near Mount Zion, four teenage boys on their way to the Diaspora Yeshiva affirmed with a nod that they knew about the spitting attacks on Christian clergy. “But it’s nobody from our yeshiva,” said one boy, 16, who noted that he’d seen it happen twice right around there – once by a boy wearing a crocheted kippa and once by a boy without a kippa. (This was the only mention I heard of a secular xxx spitting on a Christian.)

“We’re against it because it’s a desecration – it gives religious xxxs a bad name,” said the boy. He added, however, “Inside, I also feel like spitting on the Christians because everybody knows how they preach against the xxxs. But I’d never do it.”

[Tigranakert]

Re: Israeli denial of the Armenian Genocide; siding with Hitler

Future allies?


It is a pity that the official state policy of Israel is so anti-Armenian, and not even neutral like other countries who want to remain ''friends'' with Turkey. It has to do with the ''oneness'' of the Holocaust they want to show to the world, not per sé the relations with Turkey.

There are thousands of j-e-w-i-s-h scholars who acknowledge the Armenian genocide and support the Armenian cause, but unfortunately they are a minority who have little or no influence on Israeli politics.

I would be in favor for having good relationship with Israel and supporting the Israeli cause and join them in their fight against anti-Semitism and their right to have a state, but it can't be a one-way road.

We Armenians can not imagine to deny the horrors of the Holocaust just to have good relations with Iran, eventhough we are in a far worse situation (economically, military, politically) than Israel.

[KanadaHye]

Re: Israeli denial of the Armenian Genocide; siding with Hitler

Future allies?


It is a pity that the official state policy of Israel is so anti-Armenian, and not even neutral like other countries who want to remain ''friends'' with Turkey. It has to do with the ''oneness'' of the Holocaust they want to show to the world, not per sé the relations with Turkey.

There are thousands of j-e-w-i-s-h scholars who acknowledge the Armenian genocide and support the Armenian cause, but unfortunately they are a minority who have little or no influence on Israeli politics.

I would be in favor for having good relationship with Israel and supporting the Israeli cause and join them in their fight against anti-Semitism and their right to have a state, but it can't be a one-way road.

We Armenians can not imagine to deny the horrors of the Holocaust just to have good relations with Iran, eventhough we are in a far worse situation (economically, military, politically) than Israel.

Maybe we aren't as good in politics as the Israeli government, they disregard all ethics and morals... something Armenians aren't historically known for. However, we have been getting quite good at it since our demise.

[londontsi]

Re: Israeli denial of the Armenian Genocide; siding with Hitler

Do not get carried away

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2010/06/15/2739608/us-xxxs-though-reeling-preserve-turkish-ties

U.S. xxxs, though reeling, look to preserve Turkish ties

By Ron Kampeas · June 15, 2010


WASHINGTON (JTA) -- U.S. xxxish leaders talk in pained, hushed tones about the “red lines” in the Turkey-Israel relationship -- the ones they say the Turkish leadership has crossed and the ones they say they won’t.

The fragile consensus emerging from the establishment xxxish organizational leadership is that the relationship it has cultivated over the decades with Turkey is worth preserving -- at least for now.

“There are lines that mustn't be crossed, and we have seen over the last weeks those lines aggressively crossed,” said Jason Isaacson, the director of international affairs for the American xxxish Committee, a group that has taken a lead role over the decades in outreach to Ankara. ”The dilemma is to honor the legacy of Turkey's hospitality and integration of its xxxs in its society.”

Isaacson and others referred to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s likening last week of the Star of David to a swastika.

“It is going to be a challenge for them to walk back into a zone of responsibility -- but they must, and we will continue to make that case very forcefully to our Turkish contacts,” Isaacson said.

The Turkey-Israel alliance reached the breaking point May 31, when Israeli commandos intercepted and boarded the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish-flagged ship that was part of a flotilla that aimed to breach Israel’s embargo of the Gaza Strip, which is controlled by the Hamas terrorist group.

Nine Turkish passengers, including one Turkish American, died in the subsequent melee. Seven Israeli soldiers were injured. Competing accounts -- each backed by video outtakes -- blame each side for starting the violence.

Turkey-Israel tensions have been brewing since Israel’s 2009 war in the Gaza Strip; some say they began even earlier. In 2009, Erdogan condemned Israel’s invasion of Gaza and upbraided Israeli President Shimon Peres at an economic conference in Davos, Switzerland that January. Turkish state television subsequently ran a TV series that depicted Israelis as bloodthirsty.

Daniel Pipes, who directs the Middle East Forum, says the roots of the crisis date to Erdogan’s election in 2003. Erdogan’s Islamist AKP Party is challenging the military, the redoubt of secularism in Turkey, Pipes says, and that when Israel is depicted in a negative light, the AKP weakens the military.

“It appears they no longer fear the military, and they are now are unleashing their might,” Pipes said of the AKP. “We mustn’t give up on Turkey -- AKP is the problem.”

Turkey’s behavior also has taken hits from the left of the pro-Israel spectrum, which otherwise had criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for its handling of the raid.

Turkey "has been too quick to try to make political gains for themselves at the expense of regional stability,” Jeremy Ben-Ami, who directs J Street, told JTA.

Israel’s oldest Muslim ally, Turkey in recent years has buffered the xxxish state -- and Western interests -- against Iranian expansionism in the region. Israeli combat pilots are able to practice drills in Turkish airspace that would not be possible over Israel’s compact territory, and Israel’s Navy counted on Turkey as an alternate harbor in case of all-out war.

In return, Turkey has benefited from the deep, broad reach of Israel’s intelligence services, particularly relating to the activities of the PKK Kurdish terrorist group. It also has relied on the American xxxish community to make its case in Washington; the Turkish Diaspora has never matched its Greek and Armenian counterparts for sustaining nationalist passions overseas.

A critical test for Turkey’s xxxish proxies in Washington has been their successful effort to quash recurring resolutions that would recognize Turkey’s Ottoman-era massacres of the Armenians as a genocide, as most experts already do. The Armenia resolution is a rare source of tension between xxxish lobbying groups, which stymie the measure to protect Israeli and U.S. interests in the region, and xxxish Congress members, who recoil at denial of a genocide.

But pro-Israel insiders, speaking off the record, say now that they are considering keeping their hands off the resolution. The version currently circulating in the U.S. House of Representatives has passed the Foreign Affairs Committee.

It stands little chance of reaching the floor, however, as long as Rep. Nancy Pelosi is the House speaker; Pelosi has closely heeded directives from the Obama and Bush White Houses to bury the resolution as long as Turkey remains a key U.S. ally in the region.

Passage would be disastrous, said Soner Cagaptay, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who tracks Turkey, as Erdogan would be able to make his Islamist, anti-Western case to the Turks with an “I told you so” argument.

“We would lose the Turks,” Cagaptay said. “And we have not lost Turkey -- we have lost the steering wheel.”

Already the relationship is fraught: Turkey canceled planned joint military exercises with Israel in the wake of the flotilla raid, and on Monday it dismissed Israel’s planned query into the incident as a sham.

With the exception of the Zionist Organization of America, which has called for an investigation into Turkey’s role in the fiasco, pro-Israel groups in Washington are not willing to take commensurate leaps and directly target Turkey. Instead, they are targeting the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation, or the IHH, the charity with ties to Erdogan’s AKP that helped fund the Mavi Marmara excursion.

In the House, Rep. Ron Klein (D-Fla.) wrote Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton asking her to list IHH as a terrorist group because of its alleged affiliation with Hamas. Five House members from New York accepted a petition Monday demanding the same action that had been organized by the xxxish Community Relations Council of New York and garnered 20,000 signatures.

The Senate leadership of both parties is gathering signatures for a letter to President Obama asking him to consider such a designation. Placement on a terrorist list freezes a group’s U.S. assets and makes it illegal to fund-raise in the United States.

By not targeting Turkey directly, xxxish groups want to avoid antagonizing the entire Turkish political establishment; Erdogan may yet be vulnerable because of his mishandling of the important U.S. relationship, among other reasons. And there are still redoubts of friendship to Israel, in the military and Foreign Ministry.

Another factor is Turkey’s xxxish community.

“American xxxs who have been longtime supporters of Turkey must keep alive the people-to-people dialogue, considering that over 20,000 xxxs live in Turkey today,” said a lobbyist who has represented both xxxish and Turkish interests and still travels frequently to Turkey.

Cagaptay warned that the relationship, while worth salvaging, would never be the same.

“The days of Turkey watching Israel’s back in a tough neighborhood, and of Turkey counting on Israel to represent its interests in Washington, are over,” he said.

[Tigranakert]

Re: Israeli denial of the Armenian Genocide; siding with Hitler

DC Lawmakers to Turkey: Israel? What about Armenia?



by Hana Levi Julian
Follow Israel news on and .

Washington lawmakers are warning they might formally recognize the Armenian genocide to punish Turkey for its treatment of Israel.

A Congressional resolution recognizing the 1915-1923 massive slaughter of Armenians in eastern Anatolia by the Ottoman Turks passed the Foreign Affairs Committee by a lone vote in March.

It will soon be brought before the full House of Representatives for a vote -- and lawmakers who previously have said they would not support the resolution are now hinting they might change their minds.

Indiana's Republican Congressman Mike Pence told reporters on Wednesday there would be “a cost if Turkey stays on its present heading of growing closer to Iran and more antagonistic to the State of Israel. It will bear upon my view, and I believe of many members of Congress.”

New York Republican Congressman Peter King backed him up, adding that he and “many” other lawmakers who previously were unwilling to support a resolution on Armenian genocide due to the U.S. relationship with Turkey are now reconsidering. “I think that's about to change,” he said.

Nevada Democrat Shelley Berkley and New York Democrat Eliot Engel both agreed in interviews with Fox News. “Turkey is on a charm offensive this week,” said Berkley after getting a call from a PR firm gunning on behalf of Turkey following the flotilla clash with Israeli Naval commandos. “They will not be welcome in my office until I see a change in policy.”

Engel went further, saying Turkey's government was growing too close to the Muslim sector. “It has a strong Islamic bent,” he said.


Two other lawmakers have drafted a letter to President Barack Obama urging him to “thwart international condemnation and focus the international community on the crimes of the Iran-backed Hamas leadership against Israel.” Close to 130 U.S. Representatives have signed the document, including lawmakers from both sides of the political spectrum. Among them are House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH).

Turkey, a member of NATO and a long-term ally of both the United States and Israel, defied the U.S. and voted with Brazil to oppose increased United Nations Security Council sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

The U.S., Israel and other Western nations have been pushing for the sanctions for more than a year, hoping the pressure will persuade Iran to abandon its accelerated nuclear development program.

In addition, the Turkish government actively supported the terror-linked IHH organization's recent sponsorship of a six-ship flotilla sent in hopes of breaking the maritime blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza.

One of the six ships was manned by dozens of armed terrorists who attacked the Israeli naval commandos when they boarded the vessel after it refused to change course and head for Ashdod.

Nine Turkish terrorists died and many people were wounded in the clash, including seven Israeli commandos. (IsraelNationalNews.com)

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/138125

[Davo88]

Re: Israeli denial of the Armenian Genocide; siding with Hitler

Israel to decide on 'Armenian genocide'
Fri, 18 Jun 2010 05:43:42 GMT

Israeli parliament, the Knesset, will hold a hearing on whether to recognize the alleged massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks during the World War I as genocide.

The session would be held in the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. The committee has declared that the hearing was slated to be held in two weeks.

The move was originally suggested by Haim Oron of the Meretz Party last year but it seems that the recent escalation of tension between Turkey and Israel is the main reason that has moved the plan to the front burner in the Knesset.

Armenia accuses Turkey of killing up to 1.5 million Armenians under the Ottoman Empire in 1915-1917.

Turkey, however, puts the death toll between 300,000 to 500,000, arguing that at least as many Turks died in what Ankara calls a civil strife in the aftermath of Armenians' siding with Russian troops against their Ottoman rulers.

The Knesset move comes after a recent Israeli attack on the Turkish-led Gaza Freedom Flotilla aid convoy on May 31 that killed 20 human rights activists, including nine Turks, and injuring over 40 others.

AGB/MGH

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=130953&sectionid=351020202

[Tigranakert]

Re: Israeli denial of the Armenian Genocide; siding with Hitler

In Quarter of Jerusalem, Armenians fear for future
Mon Jun 28, 2010 5:56am EDT

By Alastair Macdonald

JERUSALEM, June 28 (Reuters) - In Jerusalem's Armenian Quarter, a library stores precious memoirs which are all that remain of hundreds of Armenian communities, erased from the map of Turkey a century ago in what many regard as genocide.

Now the Armenians in Jerusalem itself, many descended from refugees, fear their own 1,500-year-old Christian presence may disappear, too. Their society and extensive landholdings risk becoming collateral damage in a demographic conflict for land and power in the holy city between Israel and the Palestinians.

"It's a dying community. Only the church holds us together," lamented 97-year-old Arshalouys Zakarian, as she sat with family and friends in her garden near St. James's Armenian cathedral.

The church, with its distinctive rites and dozens of black clad singing monks, dominates a Quarter which the Armenians, now just 2,000 of them, have held since Ottoman times alongside the Old City's bigger Muslim, xxxish and Christian Quarters.

Over tea, Zakarian's guests, some living locally, others back on visits from overseas, joined in tales of children gone abroad in search of jobs and of struggles, often in vain, with Israeli bureaucracy to retain rights to come back home to live.

"For the first time in our history, we are not sure we can stay, after 1,500 years," concluded one man, now working for the Armenian church after a career spent in the United States. His daughter, born here, can visit, but may no longer live here.

Officials of the church, at the Armenian Patriarchate, share a view held by the mostly Muslim Palestinians -- that Israel's designation of the whole city as capital of the xxxish state means its control of residence and building permits is being used to press Arabs and other non-xxxs to give up and leave.

"The withdrawing of ID cards is becoming very serious," said historian George Hintlian, a former Patriarchate secretary. Five local-born Armenians lost residence rights last month, he added.

Non-xxxs, a third of today's 750,000 population in greater Jerusalem, have had residence rights but not citizenship since Israel seized the Arab east, including the Old City, from Jordan in 1967. Israel, which promotes xxxish immigration, says it is not obliged to grant re-entry to other residents who emigrate.

It says it respects the access of other faiths to Jerusalem and denies any policy to discriminate or to push non-xxxs out. But the Armenians see double standards and fear for their land.



SENSE OF SIEGE

In the library, Hintlian leafs through volumes of memoirs detailing names, families, anecdotes, plans and sketches of lost Armenian communities in Turkey, from where refugees came to Jerusalem after World War One, bolstering the local population.

"What remains of historical Armenia is these books. For a people who suffered genocide, it is very important," he said.

But while many xxxs had sympathy for a people whose history of dispersal and suffering has echoes of their own, Armenians are wary of the Israeli state: "For the private Israeli, we are full-time genocide survivors," Hintlian said. "But for the Israeli bureaucracy, we are full-time Palestinians."

Many fear territorial designs on their Quarter, which covers a sixth of the square kilometre (230 acres) inside the walls but houses only a small fraction of the Old City's 40,000 people. It lies next to the xxxish Quarter, ravaged under Jordanian rule after 1948. Israelis have rebuilt and expanded it since 1967.

A rash of spitting at clergy in the street by ultra-Orthodox xxxs in recent years add to a sense of siege among a community which traces its roots back to monks and pilgrims who settled in the 5th century. By the mid-1940s, the community numbered 16,000 across Jerusalem and other cities of British-ruled Palestine.

Many were refugees from Turkey who revived Armenian language among native compatriots assimilated in Arabic. They brought, too, colourful ceramic work which still fills their shops today.

Many left when British rule ended in 1948. More followed in 1967. Those who stayed on in the Old City under Israeli rule were cut off from 400,000 other Armenians in the Middle East -- in countries like Syria and Lebanon, at war with Israel.

They are part of a global diaspora of 10 million whose language and religious roots lie in a Caucasian kingdom that was the first to adopt Christianity as a state religion, in 301.

St. James's Cathedral is a serene xxxel, hung with precious lamps and treasures donated by Armenians scattered far and wide and infused with the haunting singing of its black-cowled monks.



DEMOGRAPHIC STRUGGLE

The Armenian Church has parity at Jerusalem's Christian holy places with the much bigger Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches, 6,000 of whose Palestinian Arab adherents live in the Christian Quarter. Its history, income from local rents and gifts from the diaspora, should assure the Church's future here.

But the lay community surrounding it does question whether future generations will be here; residents say Armenians feel disadvantaged in getting work with xxxish or Arab employers and so move abroad and then face Israeli refusal to allow them back.

"It's a demographic struggle," said Hintlian, as he strolled the quiet courtyards that distinguish the Quarter from the crowded lanes typical of the rest of the Old City. "The basic struggle is to have numbers," he added. "Diplomats say, 'Look, the Armenians have a lot of space and very few people...'."

Among Armenian fears is that Israel and Palestinian peace negotiators might revive an idea to divide sovereignty over the Old City by allotting the Muslim and Christian Quarters to a Palestinian state and handing the Armenian Quarter to Israel.

The end of Communism in Armenia has thrown a lifeline to the church, bringing a supply of novices from the ex-Soviet state, said Archbishop Nourhan Manoogian, who himself came from Syria just before the 1967 war. But having returned now from 20 years abroad, he too faces a problem renewing his residence permit.

"What kind of freedom of religion is there?" he asked.

Life can be uncomfortable beyond the walls of the monastery compound. Relations with Muslims have cooled, Manoogian said. There have been fights between Armenian and Greek clergy around Jesus's tomb. And some ultra-Orthodox xxxs are openly hostile.

But, consoled by a history that has seen Armenians survive bloodier sieges and regimes in Jerusalem down the centuries, Manoogian has confidence after four decades of Israeli rule:

"In another 40 years, we'll still be here," he said.

And for all the anxieties that tinge the nostalgia round the tea table in Arshalouys Zakarian's garden, there too there is a note of cheerful defiance: "The Armenians had a hard life," the retired schoolmistress concluded. "But they are survivors."