FATHER FRANK’S RANTS Rant Number 629 22 April 2015 HOLOCAUSTS

THE PLANNED EXTERMINATION OF THE ARMENIANS: THE FIRST HOLOCAUST OF THE LAST CENTURY, STILL AWAITING FULL RECOGNITION.
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‘The death warrant of a whole race’, US Ambassador to Turkey Henry Morgenthau called the extermination orders by the Young Turks regime on the Armenian people. The vile contriver and fiend of that holocaust was Interior Minister Talat Pasha. In 1915, as Ottoman Turkey fought alongside Germany against Britain and France, Talat had more than one and half million innocent Armenians deported to the deserts of Syria and Mesopotamia. Morgenthau’s graphic account in Secrets of the Bosporus is heart-rending.

Armenians who had served in the Ottoman Armies were disarmed and murdered in batches. In caravans, civilian men were regularly taken out and killed outright. Policemen, tribesmen and bandits harassed and raped the distraught female survivors. Children were kidnapped and given to Turkish or Kurdish families. To escape the torments, women often committed suicide with their babies by flinging themselves into precipices and rivers. A few survivors, naked and sick, reached the deportation sites but the great majority had died of hunger, exposure and epidemic. Thus was the biblical land of Ararat, for 3000 years the homeland of Armenians, bereft of its ancient people.

Does Turkish PM Erdogan plan to do it again? He told the BBC he could deport 100.000 of resident Armenians, didn’t he? Would he like to march them through scorching, bandit-infested deserts, perhaps? Into the tender care of ISIS? The scurvy gang he has protected so far? Far-fetched scenario? Not really. Erdogan looks mentally unstable. Capable of anything?

More nations are officially recognising the Armenian genocide. I prefer the word holocaust. Contrary to politically correct use, ‘holocaust’ is – and should be - a plural word. Because it picks out many examples. The last century began with the holocaust of the Armenians. Then came the millions of Ukrainian peasants deliberately murdered by Stalin (Britain’s jolly wartime ally). Stanford historian Norman Naimark does indeed argue that Stalin was not just a mass murderer but committed genocide. I agree but I call it a holocaust. Last of course are the six million of innocent Jews exterminated by the Nazis. Alas, there are reasons why, in a sense, the Armenian holocaust is even more serious a mega-crime than the Jewish one.

First, the criminals who sought to wipe out the Jewish race were punished when Germany was defeated in WWII. Hitler and other leading Nazis committed suicide, others were tried at Nuremberg and elsewhere. Many were hanged, shot or jailed. (Even now a 93 year old  former Auschwitz book-keeper is being prosecuted.) Conversely, of the many butchers of the Armenians only the triumvirate of evil - Enver Pasha killed in battle, while Talat and Djemal were executed by avengers – got its deserts. Scores of others got away scot-free. Morally, there is a bitter asymmetry with those punished for killing the Jews.

Second, post-war Germany never tried to hide her guilt but admitted it. Substantial reparations were paid to survivors, their families, their descendants and to the state of Israel. (Noteworthy, considering that much of Germany was reduced to heaps of rubble by the Allies in WWII.) Conversely, Turks have stuck to a stubborn denial. Even mentioning the Armenians gets you prosecuted in Turkey –  it happed to writer Orhan Pamuk for a mere passing reference in his book, Snow. No reparations or compensation or restitution of stolen lands have ever been paid to Armenian descendants of their holocaust. Morally intolerable.

Third, modern Armenians do not invoke their people’s genocide in order to oppress another people. It grieves me to say it but all too often the Jewish holocaust is brought up by the state of Israel, its fans and minions in the West to justify or obscure the terrible wrongs inflicted on the Palestinians. Disgusting.

Unlike that noble, brave American Jew, Henry Morgenthau, US President Obumble still chickens out of using the word ‘genocide’ to refer to the Armenia catastrophe. It speaks volumes on his lack of moral fibre. On the other hand, brave Pope Francis during a Mass in St Peter’s has not refrained from calling a spade a spade. Naturally, he has drawn Erdogan’s unrighteous wrath. The PM has warned the Holy Father ‘not to do it again’. Silly or sinister words? A veiled threat? What enormity does he contemplate, deportation of Armenians apart? Considering that in 1981 Turkish terrorist Mehmet Agka shot John Paul XXIII in St Peter’s Square….what? Will Erdogan perhaps dispatch one of his goons to have another go? Or does he mean to invade Italy and take Rome? Part of an old eschatological Islamic hadith…

Anyway, I do not believe the Armenian holocaust was a Muslim crime. It was planned and carried out not in the name of Islam but by the Young Turks, an ultra-nationalist, Masonic and atheistic cabal. The Grand Sheikh of the Mevlevi Order, the Ottoman highest Sufi fraternity, made that clear.

That was a Sheikh more spiritual and far-sighted then the current Mufti of Ankara. ‘The Pope’s remarks will hasten turning Haghia Sophia into a mosque’, he said. An idiotic assertion. First, Haghia Sophia was never a Catholic cathedral but an Orthodox one. The Pope never had any jurisdiction over it. Second, if it does get reconverted into a mosque it will mean a slap not to Francis but to Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. It was Kemal who abolished the Caliphate and made the mosque into a museum. Third, when would-be Khalifa Erdogan returns it to Islamic worship – bound to happen, mark my words - it will be another nail in the coffin of Ataturk’s secularist revolution.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

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