Home
In this issue
Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review August 23, 2007 / 9 Elul 5767

Truth and the Armenian genocide

By Jeff Jacoby

Jeff Jacoby
Printer Friendly Version
Email this article


http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Was there an Armenian genocide during World War I?


While it was happening, no one called the slaughter of Armenian Christians by Ottoman Turks "genocide." No one could: The word wouldn't be coined for another 30 years. But those who made it their business to tell the world what the Turks were doing found other terms to describe the state-sponsored mass murder of the Armenians.


In its extensive reporting on the atrocities, The New York Times described them as "systematic, "deliberate," "organized by government," and a "campaign of extermination." A Sept. 25, 1915, headline warned: "Extinction Menaces Armenia." What the Turks were embarked upon, said one official in the story that followed, was "nothing more or less than the annihilation of a whole people."


Foreign diplomats, too, realized that they were observing genocide avant la lettre. American consular reports leaked to the Times indicated "that the Turk has undertaken a war of extermination on Armenians, especially those of the Gregorian Church, to which about 90 percent of the Armenians belong." In July, US Ambassador Henry Morgenthau cabled Washington that "race murder" was underway — a "systematic attempt to uproot peaceful Armenian populations and . . . to bring destruction and destitution upon them." These were not random outbreaks of violence, Morgenthau stressed, but a nationwide slaughter "directed from Constantinople."


Another US diplomat, Consul Leslie Davis, described in grisly detail the "reign of terror" he saw in Harput and the corpses of "thousands and thousands" of Armenians murdered near Lake Goeljuk. The mass deportations ordered by the Turks, in which hundreds of thousands of Armenians were crammed into freight cars and shipped hundreds of miles to die in the desert or at the hands of killing squads, were far worse than a straightforward massacre, he wrote. "In a massacre many escape, but a wholesale deportation of this kind in this country means a longer and perhaps even more dreadful death for nearly everyone."


Other eyewitnesses, including American missionaries, provided stomach-clenching descriptions of the "terrible tortures" mentioned by Morgenthau. Women and girls were raped, then forced to march naked through blistering heat. Many victims were crucified on wooden crosses; as they writhed in agony, the Turks would taunt them: "Now let your Christ come and help you!" Reuters reported that "in one village, 1,000 men, women, and children are reported to have been locked in a wooden building and burned to death." In another, "several scores of men and women were tied together by chains and thrown into Lake Van."


Talaat Pasha, the Turkish interior minister who presided over the liquidation of the Armenians, made no bones about his objective. "The Government . . . has decided to destroy completely all the indicated persons" — the Armenians — "living in Turkey," he wrote to authorities in Aleppo. "An end must be put to their existence . . . and no regard must be paid to either age or sex, or to conscientious scruples."


Was there an Armenian genocide during World War I? The Turkish government today denies it, but the historical record, chronicled in works like Peter Balakian's powerful 2003 study, "The Burning Tigris," is overwhelming. Yet the Turks are abetted in their denial and distortion by many who know better, including the Clinton administration and both Bush administrations, and prominent ex-congressmen-turned-lobbyists, including Republican Bob Livingston and Democrats Dick Gephardt and Stephen Solarz.


Particularly deplorable has been the longtime reluctance of some leading Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, to call the first genocide of the 20th century by its proper name. When Andrew Tarsy, the New England director of the ADL, came out last week in support of a congressional resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide, he was promptly fired by the national organization. Shaken by the uproar that followed, the ADL finally backed down. The murder of a million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Turks in 1915, it acknowledged yesterday, was "indeed tantamount to genocide."


Now the other organizations should follow suit. Their unwillingness to acknowledge that the Turks committed genocide stems from the fear that doing so may worsen the plight of Turkey's beleaguered Jewish community or may endanger the crucial military and economic relationship Israel has forged with Turkey. Those are honorable concerns. But they cannot justify keeping silent about a most dishonorable assault on the truth. Genocide denial must be intolerable to everyone, but above all to those for whom "never again" is such a sacred principle. And at a time when jihadist violence from Darfur to Ground Zero has spilled so much innocent blood, dissimulation about the jihad of 1915 can only aid our enemies.


The Armenian genocide is an incontestable fact of history. Shame on anyone who refuses to say so.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

Jeff Jacoby is a Boston Globe columnist. Comment by clicking here.

Jeff Jacoby Archives

© 2006, Boston Globe

Insight (Our Columnists)

 Arnold Ahlert
 Mitch Albom
 Michael Barone
  Dave Barry
 Tony Blankley
 Andy Borowitz
 David Broder
 Stratfor Briefing
 Mona Charen
 Linda Chavez
 Ann Coulter
 Greg Crosby
 Larry Elder
 Suzanne Fields
 John Fund
 Frank J. Gaffney
 Lloyd Garver
 Jonah Goldberg
 Julia Gorin
 Jonathan Gurwitz
 Paul Greenberg
 Lewis Grossberger
 Victor Davis Hanson
 Betsy Hart
 Nat Hentoff
 David Horowitz
 Laura Ingraham
 Cheri Jacobus
Jeff Jacoby
 Paul Johnson
 Jack Kelly
 Ed Koch
 Ch. Krauthammer
 Michael Ledeen
 John Leo
 David Limbaugh
 Kathryn Lopez
 Rich Lowry
 Michelle Malkin
 Jackie Mason
 Dick Morris
 Bill O'Reilly
 Jim Mullen
 Clarence Page
 Kathleen Parker
 Dennis Prager
 Wesley Pruden
 Tom Purcell
 Jonathan Rauch
 Celia Rivenbark
 Robert Robb
 Cokie & Steve Roberts
 Pat Sajak
 Debra J. Saunders
 Culture Shlock
 Roger Simon
 Michael Smerconish
 Thomas Sowell
 Mark Steyn
 John Stossel
 Cal Thomas
 Bob Tyrrell
 Diana West
 Dave Weinbaum
 George Will
 Walter Williams
 Byron York
 Mort Zuckerman

'Toons
 Robert Arial
 Chuck Asay
 Baloo
 Chip Bok
 Dry Bones
  Lisa Benson
 John Branch
 Gary Brookins
 John Cole
 J. D. Crowe
 John Deering
 Brian Duffy
 Everything's Relative
 Mallard Fillmore
 Jake Fuller
 Bob Gorrel
 Joe Heller
 David Hitch
 Jerry Holber
 Steve Kelley
 Jeff Koterba
 Dick Locher
 Chan Lowe
 Ranan R. Lurie
 Jimmy Margulies
 Rick McKee
 Michael Ramirez
 Kevin Siers
 Jeff Stahler
 Ed Stein
 Danna Summers
 John Trever
 Gary Varvel
 Kirk Walters

Lifestyles
 How 2
 Lori Borgman
 The Savvy Consumer
 Elder matters
 Fixit
 Dr. Peter Gott
 GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko
 Richard Lederer
 Tech Maven
 Every Monday Matters
 Nutrition Myths
 Bookmark These
 Bruce Williams
 How Stuff Works