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Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) uses Turkey crisis to renew call on Trump to recognize Armenian genocide

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Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) seized on President Trump’s decision to double tariffs on Turkey to push for the president to recognize the mass killings of Armenians as a genocide.

Lieu, who is frequently critical of the president, tweeted Friday that he agreed with Trump’s increase of the tariffs and his declaration that U.S. relations with Turkey “are not good at this time!”

“Turkey has been trending towards authoritarianism & becoming more anti-American,” the Democrat wrote.

“Many of us have also pushed for recognition of the Armenian genocide. I urge @realDonaldTrump to do so,” Lieu continued. “The US should not continue to ignore historical facts.”

Whether the Armenians were the victims of a genocide has been a polarizing issue in Washington for years. Turkey’s government strongly opposes labeling events from 1915, in which more than a million Armenians were killed or exiled, as a genocide and has lobbied against the designation.

Trump declined to refer to the mass slaughter of Armenians at the hands of Ottoman Turks as a genocide for the second time this year. Former President Obama and his predecessors also declined to refer to it as genocide as they came under heavy pressure from both sides of the debate.

Trump issued a statement in April in recognition of Armenian Remembrance Day, which marks the anniversary of Meds Yeghern, during which 1.5 million Armenians were deported, massacred or marched to their deaths by Ottoman soldiers in 1915. He did not use the term genocide in the statement.

More than 100 lawmakers, including Lieu, signed a letter ahead of Armenian Remembrance Day this year urging Trump to call the acts of Meds Yeghern a genocide.

Italian president pays tribute to Armenian Genocide victims in Yerevan

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Accompanied by President Armen Sarkissian and his spouse Nune Sarkissian, President of Italy Sergio Mattarella, who is in Armenia on a two-day state visit, on Tuesday paid a visit to the Armenian Genocide Memorial in capital Yerevan with his daughter Laura Mattarella.

The Armenian and Italian leaders laid a wreath at the memorial and placed flowers at the Eternal Flame to pay tribute to the innocent victims of the Armenian Genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire in 1915.

As the Armenian presidential office said in a press release, President Mattarella also planted a fir at the Memory Alley of Tsitsernakaberd.

Motion recognizing Armenian Genocide put into debate in Australia

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For the first time in Australian Federal Parliamentary history, a motion recognizing the Armenian Genocide was accepted for debate by the bipartisan Selection Committee of the House of Representatives, the Armenian National Committee of Australia reports.

The debated motion recognizes, among other things, “the extraordinary humanitarian efforts of the then newly formed Commonwealth of Australia for the orphans and other survivors of the Armenian Genocide, as well as the other Christian minorities of the Ottoman Empire including Greeks and Assyrians”.

This comprehensive, bipartisan support indicates that the House of Representatives has taken a major step towards Australia recognizing its first major international humanitarian relief effort was to aid survivors of the Genocide.

“In remembering the victims of the Armenian Genocide and those Australians who came to their aid, we send a message that the events which started in 1915 are not just some footnote in history. For if we hide from the truth, if we fail to recognize the evil that was perpetrated against the Armenians, we simply provide succour to those today and in the future who think that they can deny the most important of human rights, of life itself”, MP Trent Zimmerman said in his remarks.

 

Armenian Genocide Memorial Cross vandalized in San Francisco

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The enormous concrete cross, which has stood atop San Francisco's highest hill since 1934, was erected to commemorate all those who were killed in the Genocide under the Ottoman Empire.

The enormous concrete cross, which has stood atop San Francisco’s highest hill since 1934, was erected to commemorate all those who were killed in the Genocide under the Ottoman Empire.

San Francisco‘s Mt. Davidson Memorial Cross – one of the oldest landmarks in the city and a memorial to the 1.5 million victims of the Armenian Genocide – was recently vandalized, SFGate reports.

As the conversation around the treatment of migrant children at the border gets more heated, hostility toward the immigration-enforcement arm of the U.S. government has become visible.

Someone appears to have spray-painted a message of solidarity with immigrant families on the cross.

“No more violence. This blessing is for the families in detention centers, for the families experiencing U.S. funded wars. Blessings for the queers,” the red lettering reads.

A visitor to the park, Toby Morgan, photographed the graffiti.

The enormous concrete cross, which has stood atop San Francisco’s highest hill since 1934, was erected to commemorate all those who were killed in the Genocide under the Ottoman Empire.

A representative from the Council of Armenian American Organizations of Northern California said they are “saddened” by the incident and have reached out to law enforcement.

“We are notifying the police and will have it painted today,” a representative said Friday. “We understand peoples need for self-expression, vandalism such as this is never appropriate.”

SFGate. Mt. Davidson cross vandalized with anti-government message

Armenian genocide fuels Rogue Machine’s ‘100 Aprils’

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Rachel Sorsa, from left, Robertson Dean, John Perrin Flynn and Leslie Ayvazian in "100 Aprils."

Rachel Sorsa, from left, Robertson Dean, John Perrin Flynn and Leslie Ayvazian in “100 Aprils.”

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The lies that have increasingly flowed into our post-truth era are terrifying stuff, to be sure. Arguably as painful are the omissions of fact — those stubborn denials of the undeniable that echo through the generations.

The refusal of the Turkish government to acknowledge the Armenian genocide of a century ago is the theme fueling Leslie Ayvazian’s play “100 Aprils,” a Rogue Machine production premiering at the MET Theatre.

The pain of that unresolved legacy has driven Dr. John Saypian (played by John Perrin Flynn). After a near-fatal drug overdose, John has been incarcerated, placed under restraints in a psychiatric ward (John Iacovelli’s starkly pristine set, masterfully lighted by Brian Gale).

The action is set in 1982, a time frame that gives the atrocities — and John’s memories of his older relatives’ first-person accounts of the barbarism — a harrowing immediacy, especially in John’s tortured mind. As John lingers near death in a hallucinatory haze, his wife, Beatrice (Ayvazian, starring in her own work), and his daughter Arlene (Rachel Sorsa), wait out his final moments. John’s persistent other visitor, seen only by John, is a Turkish soldier out of the past (Robertson Dean) who torments John with his refusal to take responsibility for his brutality.

Dean also plays a present day Turkish doctor who dismisses the very notion of Turkish wrongdoing — a denial that sparks a strange scene in which Beatrice and Arlene attack the doctor, pressing for a weirdly untimely confession as John is gasping his last. That’s just one example in a string of oddities, most notably Ayvazian’s protracted emphasis on minutiae — soiled pajamas, a bee sting — that may be meant to convey some larger meaning but ultimately seem negligible considering the play’s brevity and subject matter.

The cast includes Janet Song as a dryly unemotional nurse who displays a leavening trace of empathy. Veteran director Michael Arabian approaches his material with his typical assurance in a well-paced, well-acted staging.

There’s certainly the germ of a geopolitically relevant play here. There are also the makings for a plangent absurdist comedy. Unfortunately, “Aprils” falls precipitously into the divide between surrealism and political didacticism. Not knowing how to react or what to think, we remain at a troubling emotional disconnect throughout Ayvazian’s well-intentioned but failed experiment.

‘100 Aprils’

Where: Rogue Machine at the MET Theatre, 1089 N. Oxford Ave., Los Angeles

When: 8:30 p.m. Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays, 8:30 p.m. Mondays; ends July 16; no performance June 25

Tickets: $40

Information: (855) 585-5185, www.roguemachinetheatre.com

Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes

Opinion Israel Must Stop Playing Political Games With the Armenian Genocide

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Mourners at the Tsitsernakaberd Armenian Genocide Memorial Museum in Yerevan, Armenia in 2015.\ REUTERS

Israel should ignore the noisy, serial threats Turkey throws at states recognizing the Armenian genocide. The Jewish state has a particular responsibility to oppose those who would deny genocide.

Under pressure from Israel’s government, the Knesset has again postponed the debate on the bill to recognize the Armenian genocide until after the Turkish elections on June 24. Meanwhile, prominent figures in the fight against genocide denial have been doing their own lobbying and are strengthening appeal to Israel to recognize the genocide against the Armenians.

It is high time Israel join numerous other nations in recognizing the Armenian genocide. Such a move would restate Israel’s fundamental values, and would reinforce the international coalition against genocide denial.

Despite Turkey’s official denial, the Armenian genocide is a historical reality. A roundup of Armenian intellectuals in Constantinople on April 24, 1915 was followed by the planned and thorough extermination of 1.5 million people – killed because they were Armenian. These killings occurred under the supervision of the Committee of Union and Progress led by the de facto leaders of the Ottoman Empire at the time: the triumvirate of Talaat Pacha, Enver Pacha and Djemal Pacha.

This mass killing was a genocide.

This truth is acknowledged in all its simplicity by historians around the world as well as by brave Turkish activists and intellectuals, who have commemorated the genocide for several years, especially in Istanbul.

The geopolitical alliance between Turkey and Israel has been a key element keeping the latter from recognizing the Armenian genocide.

But Israel should not worry about Turkey’s diplomatic threats against countries that dare to recognize the genocide. Take, for example, what happened in the wake of the international wave of recognition in 2015 that marked the centenary of the genocide.

Turkey railed against it, protested, recalled ambassadors, suspended diplomatic relations, uttered threats and then the course of relations between nations and states resumed its normal course, that is to say sometimes chaotic, but built mainly upon well-known interests and alliances.Since then, Germany has gone on working with Turkey, for example spearheading an agreement between the European countries and Ankara on refugees, while France, which is at the forefront of the recognition movement, has never halted its commercial ties with Turkey. No one should be swayed by loud threats which haven’t been followed by action.

Israel’s recognition of the Armenian genocide will contribute to preventing mass atrocities in the future. Theodor Herzl launched Zionism when he understood the existential threat facing Jews. Since its creation, Israel has been the refuge of Shoah survivors and of every Jew threatened around the world.

It is often foolhardy to imagine how history might have been different, but it is not absurd to think that if international recognition and denunciation of the Armenian genocide had taken place at the time, the genocide against the Jews, as well as those against the Roma, the Tutsis in Rwanda, and others, may have been avoided.

Thus, Israel has a particular responsibility. Recognizing the Armenian genocide will not change the past, but it will contribute to shaping the future and help protect those who are threatened with extermination, today and tomorrow.

On August 22 1939, on the eve of the invasion of Poland, Hitler told his generals in his infamous Obersalzberg speech: “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” When the Knesset does finally discuss the bill, all MKs, whatever their political sensibilities and backgrounds, should have this comment in mind.

What is at stake goes well beyond ephemeral geopolitical alliances and minor political games; it is about historical truth and our shared humanity. Israel must remember the Armenian extermination, and recognize the Armenian genocide.

Benjamin Abtan is the president of the European Grassroots Antiracist Movement – EGAM and the Coordinator of the Elie Wiesel Network of Parliamentarians of Europe. He is the former political advisor of French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner 

Beate, Serge and Arno Klarsfeld are world-known Nazi hunters and activists against genocide denial. They are the leaders of the Association of Daughters and Sons of Jewish Deportees from France

Tom Catena and his wife visit Armenian Genocide Memorial

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YEREVAN. – Laureate of Aurora Prize 2017 Tom Catena and his wife Nasima visited Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan on Monday.

While placing a wreath at the genocide monument, Catena’s wife burst into tears.

Nasima was deeply touched by the memorial, Tom Catena told reporters adding that when there is a lot of pain in you, you are trying to suppress it, but being here, you immediately remember your own history.

Tom Catena and his wife planted a tree on Memory Alley and visited the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute.

Katena told Armenian News- NEWS.am he was deeply impressed by a photo of an Armenian boy showing his hands with traces of nails. He was crucified, but survived.

Doctor Tom Catena arrived in Sudan as a Catholic missionary from Amsterdam, New York. He has since saved thousands of lives as the sole surgeon permanently based in Sudan’s war-ravaged Nuba Mountains where humanitarian aid is restricted. It is for this service that he received the Aurora Prize, granted by the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative, created on behalf of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide and in gratitude to their saviors.

 

Israeli Knesset to vote on Armenian Genocide bill after securing majority

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Speaker of the Israeli Knesset Yuli Edelstein has said that the issue of the recognition of the Armenian Genocide will be brought to a plenary voting when the Knesset secures a majority for recognition.

Edelstein’s comments came in response to a letter by Archbishop Nourhan Manougian, the Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem, in which the Patriach expressed deep disappointment over media reports that the Speaker has pulled the Genocide issue from this week’s Knesset agenda.

“I regret that incorrect publications caused your disappointment. The discussion about the recognition of the Armenian Genocide was not scheduled for this week at all, so it was not pulled of the agenda. I did not remove the item from the agenda, not by insinuation and not in fact,” Edelstein said.

“I do not take one word back of what I said on the subject.

“I remain true to what I have said in the past years over and over again: the Israeli Knesset must recognize the Armenian Genocide because it is the right and moral thing to do- and not because of political or momentary diplomatic interests. I hope that I have reassured you.

“The moment we are convinced the Knesset will have a majority for recognition, we will bring it to a plenary voting.

“I will therefore do everything that is in my ability, and I hope that my efforts will bear fruits.”

The Knesset is still set to hold a vote on whether to recognize the Armenian Genocide, after approving Meretz chairwoman Tamar Zandberg’s motion to include the issue in the agenda May 23

Related links:

Facebook post by the Armenian Apostolic Patriarchate of Jerusalem

Knesset speaker withdraws Armenian Genocide recognition from parliament agenda

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The expected vote on recognizing the Armenian Genocide was not on the Knesset’s agenda for this week as of Monday, JPost reported.

Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein withdrew the item from the agenda, his spokeswoman said, to avoid an embarrassment to the Knesset, because it was unclear there would be a majority in favor. Edelstein has repeatedly voiced his support for recognition over the years, including last week.

The vote on recognizing the Armenian Genocide, in which 1.5 million Armenians were murdered by the Ottoman Empire during World War I, was set for Tuesday, after a motion to do so by Meretz chairwoman MK Tamar Zandberg was approved.

Zandberg accused Edelstein of putting politics ahead of morality, dismissing the Knesset Speaker’s words in favor of her motion.

“Holding this debate, with a historic vote to recognize, is the right thing to do. Some preferred politics to doing the right thing,”
Zandberg said at a Meretz faction meeting Monday. “The Knesset should do what it promised. This is a matter of historic justice.”

Recognizing the Armenian Genocide has the potential to anger Turkey and Azerbaijan. Tensions between Israel and Turkey are already high, with the countries withdrawing their ambassadors after Turkey supported Hamas when the terrorist organization tried to violently break through the Gaza border into Israel earlier this month.

However, Israel and Azerbaijan have warm ties, and the latter’s proximity to Iran makes it a strategic ally, important to Israeli security.

Azerbaijan is in an ongoing conflict with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Zandberg, however, said that should not be taken into consideration.

Recognizing the Armenian Genocide, she argued, “shouldn’t hurt ties with any country. This is a basic moral issue…. We, the Jewish people, know the value of recognizing national tragedies.”

 

Israeli right shifts stance on Armenian genocide amid Turkey spat

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Members of the Armenian community attend a memorial march marking the 100th anniversary of the mass killings of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces, Jerusalem’s Old City, April 23, 2015.

Akiva Eldar,

As long as I can remember, I’ve known that there was only one unique Holocaust in the history of humankind. We learned that the Armenians had suffered a “genocide” and that “a people’s massacre” had been perpetrated in Rwanda. We learned that Israel’s Arab citizens experienced a catastrophe, known in Arabic as the “Nakba,” when the state was established 70 years ago and they were uprooted from their homes. We were told that the use of the term “Shoah,” Hebrew for “Holocaust,” to characterize atrocities committed after World War II does a moral and historic injustice to the 6 million Jews exterminated by the Nazis.

However, a sea change has now occurred, and senior elected officials have ceded the Jewish monopoly over the Holocaust. On May 16, Education Minister Naftali Bennett used “Shoah” in calling on Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein to “promote Israeli recognition of the holocaust against the Armenians carried out by Turkey.” Last month, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan of the Likud used the same term in urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to recognize the “Armenian Holocaust.”

Knesset member Amir Ohana, also of the Likud, drew a direct line between Nazi crimes and the massacre of an estimated 1.5 million Armenian people by Ottoman forces during World War I. “When Hitler presented the Wehrmacht officers with his plan for mass extermination,” Ohana wrote on Facebook, “he reassured those worried about the reaction of the world by saying: ‘After all, who mentions the extermination of the Armenian people anymore?’” He added, “If for no other reason, that is why we should have already recognized this murder officially.” An original and winning argument? Not really. A quick glance through the Knesset minutes from February reveals that Yair Lapid, chair of the Yesh Atid opposition party, presented this argument virtually word for word three months ago to

present proposed legislation recognizing the Armenian genocide.

“The question facing the Knesset today is not a practical one, it is not a foreign relations issue, it is a fundamental moral issue,” Lapid said. “Can we as Jews ignore a holocaust?” Himself the son of a Holocaust survivor, the late Knesset member Yosef Lapid, he added that the State of Israel could not afford to ignore the genocide of another people, the murder of its children, women and elderly. “It is not moral, it is not just and we have a commitment,” Lapid concluded. And how did his fellow Knesset colleague Ohana vote? Like the 15 other Likud members who bothered turning up for the debate, he voted “nay.” So did the Knesset members of Bennett’s HaBayit HaYehudi. Their leader, along with the Likud’s Erdan, skipped the vote altogether. Deputy Minister Michael Oren, who said during a 2015 Knesset debate, “It’s time for us as a state to recognize the massacre of the Armenians and do it justice and close the circle,” also voted against the proposed bill. So did all the members of his center-right Kulanu. The Knesset voted down the proposal to recognize the Armenian genocide by 41 to 28.

Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely informed the Knesset in that same session that her ministry was opposed to the legislation proposed by Lapid’s party. She conceded that it was important to recognize the suffering of the Armenian people and the tragedy they experienced, but despite “our deep identification with them stemming from the experience of the Jewish people, there’s no room to take a stand on the issue.” She went on to explain, “Given the complexity and the diplomatic repercussions, and the clear political context, there’s no place for a step that could necessarily be interpreted as recognition of the Armenian genocide.” Hotovely added, “This situation is not expected to change anytime soon.”

It is unclear yet whether the verbal clash between Netanyahu and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the killing of Palestinians during violent demonstrations along the Gaza-Israel border changed the “situation” to such an extent that the government is at long last heeding calls for recognition of the Armenian genocide. But if it does so, the world in general and the Armenians in particular will see through the claims of morality and conscience and recognize the move for what it is: taking cynical advantage of a genocide to exact diplomatic retribution and score PR points.

It’s true that joining the 29 other states, among them 11 members of the European Union, that have recognized the genocide would undermine the prospects of eventual reconciliation with Erdogan’s regime. To resolve its previous contretemps with Turkey over the 2010 Mavi Marmara flotilla that sought to breach the Israeli siege of Gaza, Israel relented and paid compensation to Turkish victims of its commando raid on the vessel. It will not be able to go back on its recognition of the Armenian genocide. Such decisions cannot be made in the heat of the moment, nor as public relations ploys. The Talmud had this to say about such situations: “Woe unto me from my creator and woe unto me from my inclination.”

Knesset member Yair Tzaban (Meretz), who first proposed recognition of the Armenian genocide some 30 years ago, told Al-Monitor that such a move now would raise an issue of Jewish law that questions the value of a good deed born in sin. Tzaban suggests instead adopting the approach of conscientious Israelis who take a stand on each issue on its merits rather than conducting moralistic scorekeeping. The opportunity now emerging for Israeli recognition of the genocide, he advised, should not be missed.

Turkish criticism of the current right-wing Israeli government, harsh as it may be, “will not turn me into a fan of Erdogan and his dark and oppressive regime, which have inflicted deep scars on the bodies and souls of Turkish, Kurdish and Armenian freedom fighters and lovers of democracy,” Tzaban said. At the same time, he added, no condemnation of Erdogan and of Hamas rulers of Gaza will blunt his harsh criticism of Netanyahu and Co. for leading Israel on a dangerous road that stifles the Jewish people’s hopes of national revival and of peace.