Armenian Genocide News‏

Dr. Israel Charny Condemns Denial of Armenian Genocide in British Parliament
by Harut Sassounian
30 June 2009
in the Armenian Reporter

In an earlier column I wrote about the special conference held at the British Parliament on

May 7, organized by the British-Armenian All-Party Parliamentary Group. Dr. Israel Charny

and I were invited as guest speakers. I spoke about “The Armenian Genocide and Quest

for Justice.” Dr. Charny could not attend due to illness, however, his prepared remarks were

read by Peter Barker, a former broadcaster of BBC Radio.

Dr. Charny is an internationally-known authority on the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide.

He is the Executive Director of the Jerusalem-based Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide,

past President of International Association of Genocide Scholars, Editor-in-Chief of

Encyclopedia of Genocide, and author of several scholarly books. Dr. Charny’s lengthy paper

was titled: “Confronting denials of the Armenian Genocide is not only honoring history, but a

crucial policy position for confronting threats in our contemporary world.”

In his remarks presented at the British Parliament, Dr. Charny described the conference on

the Armenian Genocide he attended two years ago in Istanbul. He found “the prevailing

discourse stilted, blocked and rigid with denials.” The overwhelming majority of the statements

were “one-sided rehashes of Turkish denial propaganda; a basic intellectual failure since they

did not even mention or refer to or in any way acknowledge any of the voluminous documentation

and evidences of the Armenian Genocide that are now part of world culture; and a great number

were emotional diatribes rather than ’scientific’ or properly scholarly contributions.”

In his paper, Charny singled out the presentation at the Istanbul conference of Prof. Yair Auron,

his colleague from Israel, who spoke “in a strong resonant voice that there was no question but

that the Armenians had suffered genocide at the hands of the Turks.”

In his London remarks, Dr. Charny’s also discussed the “failure of the State of Israel, but not of

Israelis, to recognize the Armenian Genocide,” expressing his “deep regret and shame” that

Israel (where he lives) and the United States (where he was born), “have failed seriously in

their moral responsibility towards the Armenian people.” He felt “particularly wounded as well as

angry at such failures by my Jewish people when we too have known the worst horrors of being

victims of a major genocide, and therefore we should be all the more at your side as deeply

committed allies in all aspects of preserving and honoring the record of the Armenian Genocide.”

Dr. Charny announced “the happy news [that] the battle for recognition and genuine respect for

the memory of the Armenian Genocide [was won] on the level of everyday Israeli culture.” In great

detail, he explained that “throughout the year there are major statements in our culture about the

Armenian Genocide, including many full-length feature stories and interviews in all of our major

newspapers and on our television. On April 24, there is powerful coverage, for example, this year

on Roim Olam or Seeing the World, a major TV news magazine; there is an annual seminar at

the Hebrew University of Jerusalem at which this year the keynote speaker was Prof. James

Russell of Harvard University, and it was my honor to be the keynoter the year before together

with an influential member of the Knesset who was totally knowledgeable about the Genocide

and totally clear about Israel’s error in not recognizing it; and there is of course an annual

commemoration by the Armenian Community—it was there that the two ministers in the past

announced their recognition of the Armenian genocide. During a too-brief period, we also had

two ministers of the Israeli government who officially recognized the Genocide, and although the

governments in question promptly disavowed these ministers’ statements as private and not

speaking for the country, the records of those ministers honoring the Armenian Genocide on

behalf of the State of Israel cannot be erased. I would say that both the everyday Israeli man on

the street and the professional scholars of the Holocaust, such as Prof. Yehuda Bauer perhaps

the ranking scholar of the Holocaust at Yad Vashem, are basically sympathetic and committed

to paying homage to the Armenian Genocide. A few years ago four of us, including one of the

above former ministers, Yossi Sarid, Prof. Bauer, Prof. Yair Auron, an indefatigable scholar of

the Armenian Genocide and of Israel’s denials of same, and myself traveled together to Yerevan

to lay a wreath at the Armenian Genocide Memorial.”

As he has done many times in the past, Dr. Charny expressed regret that “sadly and shamefully

the pull of practical government politics still leads to official Israel cooperating with Turkey in

gross denials of the Armenian Genocide. No less than the arch fighter for peace in the Israel-

Palestinian conflict, Shimon Peres, now President of Israel, then serving as Israel’s Foreign

Minister, twice went notably out of his way to insult the history and memory of the Armenian

Genocide.”

In a scathing letter, Dr. Charny told Peres in 2001: “You have gone beyond a moral boundary

that no Jew should allow himself to trespass…. As a Jew and an Israeli, I am ashamed of the

extent to which you have now entered into the range of actual denial of the Armenian Genocide,

comparable to denials of the Holocaust.”

In response to a second “especially insulting” denial by Shimon Peres in 2002, Dr. Charny sent

him one of my columns from The California Courier, with the following note: “I am enclosing with

great concern for your attention an editorial in a leading US-Armenian newspaper calling on

Armenia to expel the Israeli Ambassador. For your further information, the author of this editorial,

who is the head of the United Armenian Fund in the U.S.—comparable to our United Jewish

Appeal—was for many years a delegate to the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva.”

Dr. Charny concluded his London remarks: “I am happy to emphasize that the people and the

culture [in Israel] very strongly recognize and honor the [Armenian] Genocide, and know how

serious and important it is for us and the whole world.” He expressed his sincere hope that

“some day we will succeed in changing the official Israeli government position.”

Turkish Translation of ‘Blue Book’ Released in Ankara
23 June 2009
Armenian Reporter

On Fri., June 26, the Turkish edition of the 1916 “Blue Book,” titled The Treatment of Armenians

in the Ottoman Empire 1915-16, will be released in Ankara by Lord Avebury and Ara Sarafian.

The event is sponsored by the Turkish Human Rights Association (Ankara) and the Freedom of

Thought Association.

On Oct. 12, 2005, Lord Archer of Sandwell QC, Lord Biffen, and Lord Avebury organized a

meeting in Westminster for British parliamentarians to respond to a petition sent to members

of the British Houses of Parliament by the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TGNA) contesting

the veracity of the 1916 British Parliamentary “Blue Book.”

The central thesis of the Blue Book was the argument that starting in 1915, Armenians were

subject to a policy of mass annihilation in the Ottoman Empire. According to the TGNA petition,

the Blue Book was a wartime fabrication that harmed Turkish interests during World War I and

continues to do so today. The petition asserted that the 1916 report had no supporting

documentation; that it was contrived in essence; and that the main compiler and editor of the

report admitted that it was a propaganda tool fabricated against Ottoman Turkey and its German

ally.

The petition insisted that the core of the Blue Book was a set of eyewitness accounts that were

unreliable, and that the work was composed in such a way as to conceal the flawed character of

these key reports. It maintained that withholding the names of some informants and locations,

supposedly to safeguard sources still in the Ottoman Empire, was in reality to conceal the

weaknesses of the reports themselves.

However, a group of British MPs concluded from their own knowledge of the Blue Book and

many contemporaneous accounts by eyewitnesses that have since been published, as well as

from a detailed report from the Gomidas Institute, that: the Blue Book was compiled from first-hand

testimonies that were scrupulously reported by the distinguished editor, Arnold Toynbee; the

supporting documentation has been readily accessible, a point overlooked in the letter from the

TGNA;

Toynbee never said the Blue Book was flawed, as claimed by the petition; the petition wrongly

asserted that the War Propaganda Bureau was the sole source for all information regarding the

situation in the Ottoman Empire, while really there were hundreds of neutral consular officials and

missionaries; the reports by neutrals have been reinforced and corroborated by other United States

and German consular reports, now in the public domain, and by numerous accounts in the diaries

and letters of survivors; and the sources of the 150 eyewitness accounts published in the Blue Book

were not discovered recently in a War Propaganda Bureau document, as claimed by the TGNA,

but have been known and published for many years.

British MPs judged that the TGNA was not properly informed about the Blue Book. Consequently,

on Jan. 27, 2006, 33 MPs responded to the TGNA petition with a letter to the speaker of the TGNA,

Bulent Arinc, inviting TGNA members to a face-to-face meeting with their British colleagues to

discuss the Blue Book. As no response to that letter was received, a second email communication

was sent on Sept. 1, 2006 to all individual members of the TGNA, inviting them to a face-to-face

meeting. Again there was no response.

The British MPs concluded that TGNA members must not be aware of the actual content of the

Blue Book, nor the archival trail associated with it. In order to facilitate better understanding and

reflection, it was suggested that the Gomidas Institute undertake the Turkish translation of their

uncensored edition of the Blue Book, which was replete with discussion and full archival references.

The Gomidas Institute was able to undertake such a project with support from the AGBU, so that

a whole new Turkish readership—not just members of the TGNA—could appraise the Blue Book

issue in an informed and balanced manner.

ENGLISH: James Bryce and Arnold Toynbee, The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire,

1915–1916: Documents Presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon by Viscount Bryce [Uncensored

Edition], edited and with an introduction by Ara Sarafian.

TURKISH: James Bryce and Arnold Toynbee, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda Ermenilere Yapılan

Muamele, 1915-1916 Vikont Bryce’ın Fallodon Vikontu Grey’e Sunduğu Belgeler [Sansürsüz Basım],

Gomidas Institute: London and Istanbul, 2009, 654 pp. Yayına hazırlayan Ara Sarafian. Özel önsöz

Lord Avebury.

For more information email info@gomidas.org.

TURKISH 'BLUE BOOK' CRITICIZED
Hurriyet
July 01, 2009 05:40

ANKARA - The recently published Turkish edition of the "Blue Book,"
which voices claims about the Armenian genocide, aims to defeat the
Turkish position from the inside, according to a retired ambassador.

"The Turkish translation of the book is part of a strategy that aims
to make Turkish people advocate the Armenian position, both in Turkey
and abroad," said retired Ambassador Omer Engin Lutem, speaking at
a press conference in Ankara on Tuesday.

"Some of the Turkish intellectuals are thus contacted and meetings
that back the Armenian claims are organized in Turkey by the NGOs and
universities in this respect," he said. "And some publishing houses
in Turkey publish Turkish translations of Armenian or non-Armenian
people's books that advocate genocide claims in line with this
strategy."

The book, "The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915 -
1916," also known as the "Blue Book," was originally published in 1916,
in English, by the British parliament. The central thesis of the book
is that Armenians were subject to a policy of mass annihilation in
the final years of the Ottoman Empire, starting in 1915.
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