My Turn
Sassounian: Speaking at the Armenian Genocide Conference in Israel
Last week I spoke at the first conference on the Armenian Genocide in Israel, gave a lecture at the Armenian Patriarchate in Jerusalem, and attended a meeting with Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin.
Rivlin was a staunch supporter of Armenian Genocide recognition while he was Chairman of the Knesset (parliament). As President, he is now more circumspect, not wishing to contradict his government’s reprehensible silence regarding the Armenian Genocide. However, during his meeting with the sch
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Does it not strike anyone else as at least ironic/hypocritical, and intensely insulting and harmful to host a conference on the Armenian Genocide in a country currently engaged in ongoing genocide, apartheid, displacement, and occupation? Are we so self-centered as a people that we cannot for one second be in solidarity with those suffering under these condition TODAY and choose to call out Israel’s refusal to recognize our genocide AND stop perpetrating one themselves? As a descendant of Musa Daghtsis, I shake my head in disgust when we engage in such blatant lack of insight and empathy towards the plight of others, while simultaneously demanding that others recognize ours.
Demanding Armenian genocide recognition from Israel is not a contradiction to demanding it from Turkey…or Palestinian authority. The genocide denial of palestinans, turks and israelis should neither be used to justify and glorify the 1915 crimes of turks nor to be used as a negotiation card to allow new crimes. By contrast recognizing it by Palestinians and turks would improve living conditions of kurds and Palestinians snice it wold prooted coexistence of chistians Muslims and jews in middle east. Sadly Christians and Jews are a small minority in their ancestral homelands such as Syria and Turkey.
Does Israel’s failure to recognize the Armenian Genocide surprise anyone? Look at their history of intelligence sharing with Turkey and their sales of weapons to Azerbaijan. They’re not interested in what is right. Their overriding interest is Israel and the high moral stance be damned.
It is time for Armenia to shine the light on this history.
We wish to thank Harut Sassounian in going to Israel and bringing forth our Armenian Genocide which has not been recognized by the State of Israel. We hope this conference will finally have Israel pass our Genocide in the Knesset. I am sure that Turkey has been putting pressure on Israel along with five Jewish Organizations here in the U.S. that Turkey has influenced to have the State Dept., the President to put our Armenian Genocide to one side. Shame on Israel if they don’t recognize this issue on our 100th Anniversary whereby Armenians lost up to 2 million people on that massacre & death marches, not counting another 1 million whom were forced to become Moslems or fled to other lands like my father & mother whom lost there parents, children, etc.
Political-Prostitute-For-Hire aka “the president of Israel”, Reuven Rivlin at the UN: “On this day we must ask ourselves honestly, is our struggle, the struggle of this Assembly, against genocide, effective enough? Was it effective enough then in Bosnia? Was it effective in preventing the killing in Khojaly?”
With this in mind, my message to the “president of Israel”: in the same spirit of your “concern for humanity” as outlined with your speech at the UN, why is Israel currently committing a genocide against the Palestinians? And what is your opinion, and why do you ignore the many genocides perpetrated in Palestine for the past 60+ years by European terrorists and Israeli militia against the indigenous inhabitants such as the Haifa Genocide, the Deir Yassin Genocide, Safsaf Genocide, the Al-Dawayima Genocide, etc and which is still ongoing in Palestine today, the latest being last year when you murdered 500 Palestinian children in cold blood?
I know some will think this to be a futile approach, but in fact, such a response is actually not only correct in my view, but it is actually necessary to give such responses to those who have the audacity to mention “Khojaly” along with any discussions of ‘genocide’.