Harut Sassounian

Armenian Life Magazine No 1418

May 29, 2014

This second article supplements that I wrote last month, analyzing the reasons which allowed the Turks to exterminate the Armenians and prevented them from implementing a simultaneous elimination of the Jewish population of Palestine map.

May 9, 1917 Reuters broadcast information transmitted by the settler Aaron Aaronsohn “an order was given to deport all Jews from Tel Aviv, even citizens of the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary), within 48 hours. During the previous week, 300 Jews were expelled from Jerusalem, Jamal Pasha who reported that their fate would be that of the Armenians. The 8,000 deportees from Tel Aviv had permission to take no stock, and after the expulsion of their house had been looted by packs Bedouin. “

Shortly after these events, Oskar Cohen, a socialist Jewish member of the German Parliament, asked the Chancellor to urge the Turkish government to “vigorously oppose repetition in Palestine,” the Jews, “atrocities” comparable to those committed against the Armenians.

June 8, Aaronsohn noted in his diary: “The cry that we pushed was effective. Turks and Germans soon realized we could not, without suffering the consequences, massacring Jews as were massacred Armenians, the financing of the war by Germany may suffer from the reaction of the Jews. They ended, therefore, any new deportation. “

Palestine, the official journal of the British Zionist movement, had described the significant differences between the capabilities of influence between the Jews and the Armenians: “The German government knows that the Jews do not compare to the Armenians on their power in the world, and the weight of the Jews in Germany is therefore different from that of the Armenians. “

Mordecai Ben-Hillel Hacohen, renowned chronicler of Jewish history in Palestine, March 30, 1917 wrote in his diary: “the reputation of the Turkish government has been tainted in the eyes of the whole country, because of the crime against the Armenians, and perhaps the government he would reconsider his plans to take similar action against the Jews. “

Moshe Smilansky, a leader in agricultural villages of Palestine, having realized the terrible massacres of Armenians, concluded: “The stories of eyewitness spread terror and panic among the Jews. Who knows what our fate would have been without Morgenthau, the U.S. representative at Constantinople, and without the fear inspired by the world press is ‘controlled’ by the Jews. “

Yair Auron recalls in his book that Meir Dizengoff, a leader of the Jewish refugees in Palestine, throughout the First World War, “had worked closely collaborating with the Zionist delegation to Constantinople, which was pro-German and pro-Turkish . According Dizengoff relations were also excellent with the German consul in Palestine … The consul, who acted as an intermediary for the transfer of funds to the Yishuv [the Jewish community] was under the orders of the German ambassador in Constantinople “. Dizengoff had also said that it was thanks to the Germans that the Yishuv had been been helped and saved. “The fact that Djemal Pasha became more sympathetic to the Jews was to the credit of Germany.” Dizengoff remembered the threats that Jamal Pasha and Enver had made against the Jews: “Be careful, Zionists! If you pitch against us, we will do what we did to the Armenians. “

When October 1917, the Turkish authorities discovered the Nili spy network, a new threat took shape on Jewish settlers in Palestine, providing another excuse to oppress the Turks. They were afraid that such anti-Turkish conducted can cause horrific reprisals as those suffered by the Armenians. The Turkish governor of Haifa Jewish leaders met village 2ichron Yaakov October 4, 1917 and threatened unless access to its applications to them what he had done to the Armenians. He told them he “killed with bare hands several Armenians, and that his soldiers had killed thousands.” Chaim Kalvarisky-Margalit, the representative of the Jewish Colonization Association in the Galilee, wrote in his diary the following note: “I learned from a reliable source that the high command [Turkish] was very angry against the Jewish colony, and was considering a possible general deportation of Jews from Palestine to the most distant provinces of the empire [Eastern Anatolia]. “ Kalvarisky recorded verbatim the words of Jamal Pasha after a heated exchange with him: “May Heaven help those whose are these spies son cursed. We gave the Armenian people a lesson for such acts, and will not hesitate to take the same measures in this case. “

Having witnessed the brutality of the Turks against the Armenians who were accused of insubordination and rebellion, Jewish settlers decided to fully submit and does not challenge the Turkish authorities. Professor Auron observed that “He had not a single attack on a Turkish soldier by a Jewish settler.” What saved at the end of the Jews was the occupation of Palestine by the British forces, preventing brutality and massacres by the Turkish authorities.

In total, 1.5 million Armenians were annihilated, while Jewish settlers in Palestine suffered only minimal losses. During the war years, the Jewish population of Palestine was reduced from 86 000 to 55 000. IN spite of the fact that the Armenians themselves as defenders in Europe and the United States, Jewish settlers benefited from the double protection of powerful countries in the two warring camps: the Western countries, including the United States, and Germany’s ally Turkey. Vahakn Dadrian, in his book, The History of the Armenian Genocide, said that Hans Wingenheim, German ambassador to Turkey, told the Ambassador Morgenthau U.S.: “I will help the Zionists … but I will not do anything for Armenians “.

While Germany saved the Jewish settlers in Palestine, she helped Young Turkish regime to exterminate the Armenian people.