2116) Letter To Ms Maxine McKew - Australian Labor Party

Dear Ms McKew,
I quote the Online Armenian Newspaper Yekir:

"ANC Australia President, Mr. Varant Meguerditchian welcomed Ms McKew's affirmation, stating: The 4000-strong Armenian-Australian voters of Bennelong will wait to hear the position of other candidates, including Prime Minister John Howard, regarding the issue of Armenian Genocide recognition before casting their united votes at the upcoming election."

..this is nothing but a threat by the Armenian Lobby to you, which in my simplistic understanding is nothing but a trade, and the Armenians effectively are saying to you "you scratch my back and we will scratch yours"!!!!!

I am an Australian of Turkish heritage. I am Muslim. I suppose I carry a different set of baggage to the Armenians. However I will do no such deals with your office.

I simply implore you to consider your position carefully. Do not allow your soul to be bought.

historical facts have withered with the age of time since the early 1900's - winners write the history which then becomes so-called fact - debates on such matters in my observations deteriorate to non-truth, especially in politics - powerful lobbyists and financially well -endowed organisations will have their message better coordinated, and thus be heard (the squeakiest wheel getting the oil), the Turks are not rich in Australia - Armenians are Christians aren't they, after all, and I can understand that the divide between the Turkish and Armenian viewpoint are somewhat set along these lines in a predominantly Christian country like Australia, hence my position of no authority.

Whatever position you hold on this matter is actually irrelevant. You might get a few extra votes. At the end of the day your position will in actual fact have achieved nothing for promoting solidarity between Armenian and Turkish Australians living neither in your electorate, nor in Australia. Your stated current position on this matter will only serve to DIVIDE Australians of Turkish and Armenian heritage. This is a far cry from your more honest position as interviewer and reporter, which, by the way, does not give you authority to judge on the allegation of Armenian genocide.

With behaviour like this from a previously respected reporter who supposedly investigated matters impartially, who needs politicians?

http://www.network54.com/Forum/407087/
Newington

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Email: Maxine.Mckew@alp.org.au
Fax: 02 9874 7688
Adres: PO Box 600, Eastwood NSW 2122

Dear Madam,

I am deeply saddened and extremely offended by your remarks regarding Armenian claims of genocide.

The events of 1915 are a wartime tragedy during which many more Turkish lives were lost in Eastern Anatolia as a result of Armenian greed, terrorism, uprising, and treason, than Armenian lives as a result of Turkish retaliations. Insisting on the Armenian version of events and totally ignoring Turkish views is, first and foremost, a gross distortion of history, and therefore, unethical and unfair. But there is more.

Allegations of Armenians Genocide are dishonest and racist history. They are racist because they imply that Turkish dead do not matter, but Armenian dead do. And they are dishonest because they deliberately misrepresent as genocide a complicated human tragedy, a civil war within a world war, caused by Armenian greed, armed revolts, terrorism, and treason, within the scope of territorial designs at the expense of the Ottoman Empire by the major powers of Europe at the time.

Allegations of Armenians Genocide completely ignore Armenian butchery which is directly responsible for the killings of 523,000 Ottoman-Turks during World War I and only demand that the 300,000 thousand or so (not 1.5 million) Ottoman-Armenian dead to be commemorated. Most of the 300,000 Armenian casualties perished by starvation, epidemics, harsh climate, and difficult terrain.

As you may have noticed, the members of Turkish community in Australia do not make any claims against Greeks, Armenians or others regarding the past history. Is this because there is nothing to claim? On the contrary, history is littered with Greek atrocities and massacres of Turks which are well documented by Western countries, latest of which are the massacres of entire inhabitants of 3 Turkish villages in Cyprus where their mass graves were found soon after the Turkish Peace Intervention in 1974. But the Turks do not believe in carrying their issues back in the old world to their home in Australia. Didn't we all condemn the Serbs for bringing their 500 year old hatred to surface, while they were killing the Bosnian civilians?

Turkish community sincerely believes in the values of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is embedded in their heart and soul as they are the descendants of the Turkish Ottoman Empire which enjoyed the benefits of a true multicultural society for centuries. Turks also believe in peace and harmony within the society following the motto "Peace at Home, Peace Abroad" of their beloved leader Ataturk.

As a member of the Australian-Turkish community and a proud citizen of Australia, I strongly urge you to stop to spread such intolerable remarks. As you know, Turkish and Australian nations built a very strong relationship and a friendship over the years. Please do not darken our bright future with the one-sided offensive comments.

Yours truly,

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This time I hope the vast majority of Turks in Sydney and Melbourne can unite and come to the party. It's time to put the pressure on the Labor party. Turks in Auburn and Broad Meadows should contact their Federal Member of Parliaments (which are Labor) and other Turks where they are in a majority and have a Labor Member and tell them that if their Party does not admonish McKew for her Statement and retract the fallacious Armenian Genocide claim then the Turks as a block will vote Liberal in the respective safe Labor Seats.

Since Mckew wants to play politics the Turks can and should as well.

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Letter to McKew October 21 2007 Response to Maxine McKew
Dear Ms McKew,

I could not believe my eyes when I read an article stating that you have promised the Armenians in your electorate of recognising the fallacious Armenian Genocide allegations.

As a former Reporter one whom would have suspected as having some sort of an inquiring mind and some intelligence to make such a big mistake is beyond belief.

As no doubt you are aware every story has two sides and to me it appears that the millions of dead Turks and muslims do not matter and are some how less human then the dead Armenians. There is a mountain of evidence against the fallacious Armenian Genocide allegation and yet you make no effort whatsoever to inquire into what that evidence may be.

If you like I can and will pass on mountains of evidence for your perusal. I will copy a recent article by a US Journalist about these issues for your consideration below.

However, I must mention that after hearing your support for the alleged Armenian Genocide I will strongly lobby all of the Turkish Community far and wide to vote Liberal and especially in the areas of safe Labor seats where the Turks are in majority. I truly hope with your comments you have landed Mr Howard another term in office.

Ataman Atlas

October 18, 2007 History Speaks

The moral case against the Armenian Genocide resolution.
By Barbara Lerner

Prudential arguments against the Armenian genocide resolution pending in Congress are gaining traction; odds for passage in November that looked overwhelming last month look more like a toss-up today. But in the court of public opinion, genocide proponents are still winning. Most Europeans and transcultural multinationals have already proclaimed it an indisputable historical fact that the Armenian tragedy in Turkey in World War I was a genocide, perpetrated by the Turks — a deliberate government attempt to wipe out all Armenians — and growing numbers of Americans think we have a moral duty to join them. The problem, in this arena, is that prudential arguments have nothing like the emotional power and widespread popular appeal of the moral case for condemning the Turks.

We must do it, Armenian genocide proponents tell us, because the Armenian tragedy was the original Holocaust: Armenians in World War I were like the Jews in World War II; Turks in 1915 were like the Germans in the 1940s. Thus, the only moral choice is to condemn the Turks, as we condemned the Nazis. The logic here is inescapable: it is the only moral choice, if the charge is true, if Armenians really were helpless scapegoats like the Jews, and if Turks really were deliberate, genocidal monsters like the Nazis. But an analogy is only an emotional appeal, not a rational argument — let alone a moral one — — unless it actually fits the historical facts. To judge whether the Holocaust analogy does, we can’t just look at Jews and Germans in World War II, then at dead Armenians in World War I, and extrapolate the rest. We have to look at live Armenians and Turks in 1915; at the desperate, multi-front war Turkey was submerged in, in that bloody year; and at how ordinary people and government leaders reacted.

We know what life was like for ordinary people and government leaders in Germany in 1942-43, when the mass killing of Jews reached industrial scale. It was orderly and safe; the Nazis were still mostly winning abroad, and in full, unchallenged control at home. Jews aside, no one starved to death in Germany then, and no German civilians were massacred or raped by enemy forces. There were no enemy forces on German soil in those years. The only enemies at home were the Jews, and they were never a real threat. They were scapegoats, not objective enemies, and they were being methodically eliminated, without exception, in all German-controlled territory. Life in Turkey in 1915 was very different, but, genocide accusations aside, most Americans know nothing of it. Here, to remedy that lack, a little history. First, the backdrop to 1915 — a one-paragraph review of how Turkey got to where she was in that critical year. Then, the foreground — what was happening in Turkey in 1915, and how Turks and Armenians responded.

Turkey wasn’t a country in 1915; it was an empire in dissolution, reaching the climactic endpoint of a century-long decline in wealth, power, and control over territory. The Ottomans tried many reforms to halt the slide; all proved too little, too late. By 1915 they had already lost great swathes of territory in Crimea and the Caucasus, in a series of losing wars with their giant rival to the east, Imperial Russia. In the west, they lost most of their European territories in another series of losing wars against a rising tide of nationalist uprisings in Greece and the Balkans.

In all these lost lands, Turks and other Muslims had been at least a substantial minority; in many, a clear majority, and everywhere, they were driven from their homes in large numbers, and often brutalized. Massacres and rapes were especially common on the eastern front. Czarist troops and their local allies were no less brutal to conquered Muslim civilians than their Communist successors were to Christian civilians in the Ukraine and Eastern Europe, a few decades later. All this sent millions of Muslim refugees flooding into the Ottoman core we now know as Turkey in the years before World War I, overwhelming the Ottoman’s waning power to provide even minimal assistance to many, and seriously eroding their ability to maintain order in areas farthest from the government in Istanbul. Then, on November 2, 1914, Imperial Russia declared war on the Ottomans again, and this time, Imperial Britain and Imperial France followed suit, three days later.

That’s the backdrop to 1915. Here’s the foreground. In January, the French, the British, and Britain’s colonial troops — Australians and New Zealanders—mounted a major attack on Turkey’s western front at Gallipoli, the gateway to Istanbul. Fighting there was fierce, and continued until January 1916, but, on this front, there were relatively few civilian casualties, and no massacres.

On the eastern front, the situation was grimmer. The czar’s army had broken through the Ottoman defense lines in the Caucasus, and was laying waste to cities and villages in Anatolia, sending old refugees fleeing in terror once more, and adding millions of new refugees to the mounting toll. Once again, the invading Russians and their local allies often treated conquered Turkish civilians with great brutality; massacres and rapes were not rare events. In much of Anatolia, death and destruction was omnipresent, and for millions of homeless survivors, clean water and food was scarce to nonexistent. Starvation killed many; raging epidemics of dysentery, typhus, and cholera killed more. In refugee-flooded areas behind the ever-changing front lines and on the roads leading to them, chaos ruled. There was no one to keep order: all available men were needed at the fronts.

That’s what the Turks were struggling with in 1915, and some Armenians struggled with them, serving in the Ottoman government, and fighting side-by-side with Turks in the Ottoman army. Most Armenians who demonstrated this kind of loyalty to the Ottoman state came from Istanbul, Izmir, and Aleppo; the wives, children, and elderly they left behind when they went off to war were not driven from their homes or subjected to massacres. After the war, these men collected their veteran’s pensions, just as other veterans did; some of their descendants live there still.

But Armenians were hardly immune to the fierce currents of nationalism sweeping the region in the late 19th and early 20th century. In eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus, especially, many Armenians on both sides of the border saw the Russian invasion as their great chance to recreate their ancient Christian kingdom in Anatolia, with the aid of the Czar’s mighty Christian army. Armed Armenian nationalist groups — the Dashnaks, the Hunchaks, and others — saw Armenians who fought for the Turks as traitors to the Armenian cause; many still do. Nationalist Armenians were at war with the Turks in 1915, and the Armenian generals and guerilla leaders who commanded them are still honored as Armenian heroes today. Military leaders like Generals Andranik Oznanian, Garegin Nzhdeh, Drastamat Kanahyan (“General Dro”), and Garo Pasdirmaijan (“Armen Garo”) are largely unknown to Americans whose knowledge of Armenian history is limited to the orthodox genocide literature, but well-known by Armenians. Here, again, the analogy to the Jews of the Holocaust simply does not fit. There are no statues to the Jewish generals who fought the Nazis in Germany in 1942-43, because there were none.

In 1915, Armenian generals were in the forefront of the Russian invasion: some led Russian troops; others led special Armenian battalions, made up of Armenian volunteers from both sides of the border; still others organized Turkish-Armenian military units be-hind the lines, capturing Anatolian cities like Van, even before the Russians arrived, joining the Russians in capturing Bitlis, Mus, and many other Turkish towns and villages, massacring Turks in a number of those places, before Ottoman reinforcements recaptured them in a long, bloody series of seesaw battles that raged throughout eastern Anatolia in 1915. Some Turkish civilians responded by massacring Armenians, and wild, outlaw tribes of Circassians and Kurds preyed on hapless civilians in both groups.

Of course, nothing justifies any of these massacres, but the claim that Ottoman government leaders ordered any of them is belied by the frequency with which, when they could, they tried and punished men responsible for them: not just Armenians, but many Turks, too, including government officials and military men found guilty of failing to protect civilians. But the Ottoman government in 1915 was no fount of wisdom. It was the product of a series of mutinies, coups, and countercoups that began in 1908, deposing one Sultan and installing another, most of whose rapidly eroding powers were seized in 1913 by three rebel leaders, Talat, Cemal and Enver. And in 1915, that triumvirate made a decision that resulted in many civilian deaths. They decided to deal with the civil war in eastern Anatolia by ordering Ottoman soldiers to march all Armenians out of the area, and resettle them in the Ottoman city of Aleppo, in what is now Syria.

Orders were given to distribute food and water as needed, and to protect the marchers. But, due to the chaos of war, the dearth of supplies, the critical shortage of troops needed at the fronts, and the competing tragedies playing out all around them, there was no chance that the transfer plan could be carried out humanely. It turned into a death march, comparable to the one our soldiers endured on Bataan in World War II, but made worse in the Armenian case by the fact that many of the marchers were the women, children, and old people left behind. Many did not survive the horrors of the trip. Still, we don’t call the Bataan death march a genocide, and there is even less reason to claim the Armenian death march was intended as such. If the Ottomans wanted to kill all Armenians, they would not have exempted Armenians from Istanbul, Izmir, and Aleppo from the transfer order, along with others serving in government and the military. Mustafa Kemal, the hero of Gallipoli who founded the modern Turkish Republic in 1923, had a more cogent view: he saw the triumvirate as incompetent, and Enver, especially, as a dangerously unrealistic commander whose poorly conceived plans resulted in the slaughter of many Ottoman soldiers; and he saw the Armenian transfer plan as more of the same.

The bottom line here is that in actual historical fact, Turks were not like Nazis; Armenians were not like Jews; and attempts to convince Americans that they were are propaganda, not history. The Armenian tragedy was real and terrible, but it was not the only terrible tragedy in Turkey in 1915 and it wasn’t genocide; it was that in the midst of a wider war that brought death and destruction to millions on all sides, nationalist Armenians fought a war to claim a piece of Turkey for a country of their own, and lost. Later, they got a state of their own, but its development has been stunted from that day to this by high levels of poverty, corruption and political violence. If Armenians would accept their share of responsibility for the tragedies of 1915, trade with their increasingly prosperous Turkish neighbors could do much to alleviate that poverty. Some in Armenia have long wanted to do that, but most government leaders — and the powerful Armenian diaspora community those leaders rely on — have always insisted, instead, on demonizing Turks and whitewashing all Armenian actions in World War I. And, although they proved incompetent at governing, they achieved great success as propagandists. In this, Armenians are very similar to Palestinians; very different from both Jews and Turks.

And the urgent questions that these facts raise for us are these: How did a narrative so far from the facts gain such wide currency and power in contemporary America? What can we do to make ourselves less vulnerable to specious narratives, promoted by other groups who fail at governing, but excel at propaganda?

— Barbara Lerner is a frequent NRO contributor.
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September 7, 2007 Judgment Time
Should America recognize an Armenian Genocide?
By Barbara Lerner

Calls for America to recognize the Armenian tragedy of 1915 as genocide, and to condemn the Turks for it, grow louder, more insistent, and more varied by the week.

The Armenian lobby, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), and a handful of other longtime congressional supporters are no longer the only people calling for this recognition. They are joined not just by the usual old secular human-rights crusaders of the Left like Noam Chomsky and Robert Fisk, but also by new voices from the Right — including some I respect. Should we do it? Is it really beyond dispute that the Ottoman Turks were guilty of genocide in World War I?

Most Europeans have already decided that Turkey is guilty as charged. In France, arguing that the Turks might be guilty of anything less inhuman than a deliberate, calculated, genocide is considered a hate crime; Princeton historian Bernard Lewis was convicted of it and fined a nominal sum. Here in America and in Britain, other historians and scholars who argue that the facts don’t justify the genocide label — men like Guenter Lewy, Edward J. Erickson, Andrew Mango, Justin McCarthy, Stanford Shaw, Norman Stone, and Michael Gunter — are regularly compared to Holocaust deniers like David Irving and Ernst Zundel, and dismissed as “genocide deniers.”

On many blogs and websites, Armenians often accuse these scholars of being part of a Jewish and/or Zionist conspiracy, because Israel has always steadfastly rejected the genocide charge, as Turkey’s own Jewish citizens do. In America, all of the existing long-established Jewish organizations also reject it (that is, until last month when one major American Jewish organization capitulated under mounting pressure).

Not all Turks reject the genocide charge. A few transnationally acclaimed Turks, like Nobel prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk, pride themselves on accepting the judgment that Turkey was guilty of genocide in World War I, butthe vast majority of Turks reject that label. They don’t deny the fact that hellish things were done to Armenians in their country in the hellish World War I years, when much of Anatolia became a bloody battleground and mass graveyard for everyone caught up in it, civilians no less than soldiers. No honest Turk or legitimate scholar denies that. The fight is about whether genocide is an accurate or fair characterization of the Turkish response to the situation that confronted them in 1915.

Turks say it’s neither fair nor accurate, and feel they are the victims of a well-orchestrated, one-sided, Western smear campaign. They see the accusation of genocide as an attempt to resurrect old stereotypes about “the terrible Turk,” to demonize their early 20th-century Ottoman forbears, and to pin a badge of inferiority on Turks today. Turkey’s newly reelected AKP government has long been committed to meeting Europe’s standards for Turkey’s admission to the European Union. It has already accepted many other allegedly superior European standards and judgments, some gladly, others reluctantly. So far, it has refused to bow on this one.

In the United States, the Bush administration has also refused to bow to the European judgment, but support for Senate and House Resolutions recognizing the Armenian genocide is building. The growing numbers of Americans who campaign for genocide recognition claim that if we are to retain any moral credibility in the world, it is past time for us to join the international moral consensus against Turkey; shameful of us to hold back for prudential reasons. They argue with great passion, that a fundamental moral principle is at stake here because the Turks in World War I were, in all essential respects, comparable to Germans in World War II; and that Armenians then were comparable to the Jews of the Holocaust, a quarter of a century later. The inescapable conclusion, they insist, is that common decency requires us to condemn the Turks as we condemned the Nazis.

Americans who take a public stand against the increasingly popular genocide recognition movement, arguing that it would be a serious mistake for us to endorse it, generally prefer to sidestep the moral question altogether. Their focus is on the geo-strategic significance of such a move, and its implications for our national security. In fact, there is a strong moral case to be made against the genocide resolution, because there are major differences — between Nazis and Turks, and between Armenians and Jews — that any fair-minded judge would feel honor-bound to take into account before passing moral judgment on the Turks.

First, though, I want to present at least a brief, partial summary of the geostrategic argument, because genocide zealots who indignantly refuse to even consider the geostrategic argument are not displaying a higher morality. Rather, they are being irresponsible. There are times when we should give moral considerations precedence over prudential ones, but there is never a time when we should do so blindly, without estimating the cost and deciding if we are honestly willing to pay it. The risk here is that endorsing the genocide resolution will turn what is already a growing rift between America and Turkey, into a historic parting of the ways between our two nations.

To make even a rough estimate of the cost — to our position in the world and our national security — of such a radical realignment, Americans need to know more than many zealots seem to know about Turkey today: about her geostrategic position, and about what the longtime alliance between our two countries has meant, to us, to the Turks, and to the world.

Turkey today is an 84-year-old republic with a population of some 75 million, and a rapidly expanding modern economy; an economy based on the growing education, skills, and know-how of its people, not the luck of oil.

Turkey has one of the biggest, best-trained militaries in the world. It is a long-time NATO ally — the only NATO ally with a population that is 99-percent Muslim. Geographically, it sits atop a strategic-ally, vital world crossroads. For half of a century, it has held the line with us against both Communist and Islamist aggression, sending its soldiers to fight and die alongside ours, on battlefields from Korea to Afghanistan. Unlike our other NATO allies, Turkey did all this with the Soviet Union, as well as a number of Islamist states, sitting right on her borders.

For many decades, Turkey’s alliance with America was an especially close one, not just in NATO but in areas far beyond it, to our mutual benefit, in the Middle East and elsewhere. Today, that alliance is seriously strained and in danger of breaking apart altogether. Many Americans know that part of the tension between us stems from the fact that Turkey opposed our invasion of Iraq in 2003. Many Americans feel that we have as much reason to be angry about that split as they do.

Many fewer Americans understand that ordinary Turks aren’t simply nursing a grievance over past disagreements about Iraq. Their anger and pain is a response to what is going on in their own country today — to the reality that members from the PKK, a Kurdish terrorist group that finds sanctuary in Northern Iraq, keep sneaking across the border, blowing up innocent civilians in Turkish cities and killing Turkish soldiers on Turkish soil.

Turks are angry that our Kurdish allies in Iraq refuse to restrain the PKK and sometimes even threaten to unleash further PKK violence if Turkey balks at Kurdish government demands. They are angry and hurt that we refuse to seriously pressure the Kurds, even when the weapons the PKK uses to kill Turks are American weapons. They are angry and frustrated that our diplomats repeatedly warn the Turkish military against taking any cross-border military action to put an end to the aggression themselves.

Popular grief and anger builds as the Turkish death toll rises, week after week, feeding into a growing Islamist trend in Turkey, as witnessed by the fact that Turkey is no longer governed by any of its old secular parties. It is now instead governed by what the EU and trans-nationals everywhere are pleased to call “a moderate Islamic party.” This party not only embraces the EU, but also has much closer relations with the Arab world than any previous government of the Turkish Republic Ataturk foundedin 1923.

All this leaves our traditional, longtime Turkish friends — pro-American, Ataturk-style, secular Republican nationalists — between a rock and a hard place. They strongly oppose the growing power of Islam in Turkey, as well as Turkey’s increasing turn to the East, but they are as dismayed as other Turks at our unwillingness to do what needs to be done to stop PKK attacks, or to allow the Turkish military to stop them.

They are equally dismayed by the growing western attempt to brand Turkey as a genocidal nation. Still reeling from the AKP’s latest electoral victory, the enthusiastic embrace of the AKP government by the EU and much of the American press, and by widespread western attempts to portray the AKP’s Turkish opponents as anti-democratic elitists, they feel betrayed abroad and on the defensive at home. All things considered, this doesn’t look like a propitious moment for America to take a stand on the Armenian genocide question.

This is a serious argument that deserves to be taken seriously, but the moral argument is equally serious and deserves to be addressed in an equally serious way. To do that, we cannot focus only on the main similarity between Jews in Germany and Armenians in Turkey: the terrible tragedies both groups endured at the hands of their countrymen. We must take an honest look at the main differences as well.
— Barbara Lerner is a frequent NRO contributor

FURTHER STILL HERE IS SOME SOURCE MATERIAL FOR YOU TO PERUSE SOME OF WHICH IS HELD IN THE US CONGRESS LIBRARY WRITTEN BY ADMIRAL MARK BRISTOL.

“The acts of the Armenian army at Kars absolutely disgusted our Americans…I am sure that the mass of people at home believe the Armenians are Christians in action and morals, and that they are able to govern themselves. You and I, and others that know them, know that this is not the case…… We have already loaned Armenia over 50 million and that money is lost……. Armenia turned Bolshevik and repudiated all her debts; and one of these debts was for the flour we had furnished on their word of honor to repay, because they certainly had no security to offer. It was a sentimental loan ... and they have gone back on us…… The charge made by the Armenians in their papers that our relief organization was using 80% of all the receipts for work with the Turks and Kurds, is, I am sure you will admit, in keeping with the accuracy of the statements that the Armenians are given to making….. Cardashian came out with a pamphlet in which he charged the Near East Relief and the American missionaries as being the greatest enemies Armenia has ever had, claiming that they, in cooperation with President Wilson, had crucified Armenia... Cardashian... is constantly reporting atrocities which never occurred and giving endless misinformation with regard to the situation in Armenia and in Turkey….. (Armenians) are a peculiar people. They have a great faculty of making themselves disliked wherever they go...”

"The pride of race brings about many singularities and prompts the Armenians to prey on missionaries, Jesuits, consuls and European traveler with rapacity and ingratitude. The poor Armenians will demand assistance in a loud tone, yet will seldom give thanks for a donation. Abuse of Consular officers and missionaries is only a part of the stock-in-trade of the extra-Armenian press." —Mark Sykes, "The Caliph’s Last Heritage" (London, 1915)

“The acts of the Armenian army at Kars absolutely disgusted our Americans…I am sure that the mass of people at home believe the Armenians are Christians in action and morals, and that they are able to govern themselves. You and I, and others that know them, know that this is not the case…CARDASHIAN IS CONSTANLY REPORTING ATROCITIES WHICH NEVER NEVER OCCURRED and giving endless MISINFORMATION with regard to the situation in Armenia and in Turkey….. (Armenians) are a peculiar people. They have a great faculty of making themselves disliked wherever they go...” "All the Americans in Kars are well, and the Turkish Army is full of concern for us and accords us all considerations. We have been given permission to continue our activities as before. The Turkish soldiers are well disciplined and there have been no massacres."

Edward Fox, District Commander N.E.R. Kars

"The Turks marched into Kars and the Armenians ran away without firing a shot except from two or three places on the hill in the beginning, and this firing soon ceased. Many of the Armenians threw away their guns, stripped off their uniforms and hid in the houses, especially in the Near East Relief orphanages and hospitals with the children."

"...The Turkish forces were far inferior to the Armenians, but the latter put up no fight and ran away in the most cowardly manner. The soldiers threw away their guns, stripped off their equipment, and hid in the hospitals and orphanages belonging to the Near East Relief Committee when the Turks entered Kars. There was hardly a shot fired from the Kars fortifications and there were no troops to withstand the advance of the Turks, who marched in as if on parade. The Armenian soldiers in many cases hid in the beds with sick children. The Turks in their advance into Armenia did not do any massacring..."

"The great Turk is governing in peace twenty nations from different religions. Turks have taught the Christians how to be moderate in peace and gentle in victory"
Voltaire

“One should be blind to history not to understand the Turks. The dignified silence of the Turks against the mounting unjustified attacks and mean slanders can only be explained by their pity for the blind. How beautifully this attitude of theirs answers the undignified calumnies.”

Pierre Loti, French writer and traveller, “Fantome d’Orient” (1928)
(Loti added: "The Turk is the noblest of the nobles. This high nobility is not artificial or showy-- it is the gift of nature. The only people that can create simplicity out of magnificence, eloquence from silence, a sensitive vitality from a graceful calmness...are the Turks. The Orient is the land of dreams and legends. The Turk is the eye, the tongue, the light and the truth of that magic land.")

How many people in the US know what the NEW YORK TIMES wrote about the Armenian Genocide during the relevant time ?

http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2007/08/1886-nyt-18-oct-1915-dangerous-rebel.html

http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2007/08/1884-nyt-22-nov-1915-rebel-turk-djemal.html

http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2007/08/1883-nyt-14-nov-1920-armenians-complain.html

http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2007/08/1882-nyt-13-nov-1914-turkish-armenians.html

http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2007/08/1881-nyt-2-may-1928-huncak-agitates.html

http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2007/08/1880-nyt-15-dec-1903-armenian-revolt.html

http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2007/08/1878-nyt-22-jun-1935-armenian-patriot.html

http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2007/08/1877-nyt-8-jan-1915-armenians-from.html

The Ottoman Empire Took Any Measure to Protect the Armenians

Document: The Ottoman Empire Took Any Measure to Protect the Armenians

Source: Felizx Guse –“1915 Armenian Uprisings and Their Results”

The General Staff of the Third Army

Date: 1925

Felix Guse’s book, titled “1915 Armenian Uprisings and Their Results” published in Berlin/Germany in 1925 is benefited from in this document.

“Armenians naturally encountered some hardships and harshness in their temporary deportation. But the Ottoman Empire took unusual security measures against any potential challenges during the deportation. Doubtlessly, many lost their lives while on migration despite the measures taken, which was undesired.

But today, due to the Armenian continuous complaints and grievances, the Western public opinion assumes that Armenians were subjected to oppression and mass cruelty on the migration routes. The Armenian reports were written rather for the purpose of propaganda. Events are always exaggerated and the same things are mentioned in these reports. Besides, believing in everything that Armenians say and accept them as true in advance is wrong.

In this issue, the difference between personally witnessing the events and hearing about them from others should be grasped. As a matter of fact, the report of someone who had never been to Trabzon in his life includes much more depressing and bad news than that of the one who resided there.

It is only a claim that Turks ordered the annihilation of the Armenians. But there is not any concrete evidence regarding this issue. Although such pronunciations were presented to the court as so-called evidences during the trial of Talat Pasha, they were some “made-up evidences” which had been written by Armenians for propaganda purposes and were unfounded. To tell it in brief, not any plausible evidences were presented to the court on this issue.

The really odd aspect of the issue is that the larger part of the German public opinion is not working for our ally but for the Armenians, the enemy of it. The opinion that Armenians were subjected to more unjust treatment than Turks was widespread – as it is today- in Germany. In fact, Turks were in a more miserable situation, because they had neither German nor American missionaries to cease their pains, to remove their distress and to make the unfairness they were exposed known to the Western public opinion.

The Armenians have managed well to arouse pity for themselves and carried out such propaganda for years.”

Talat Pasha did not Give Any Instructions Against Armenians

Document: Talat Pasha did not Give Any Instructions Against Armenians
Source: Tehlerian Lawsuit – Hearing Proceedings
Date: 1921

The below text is the statement by the German General, Liman von Sandres, who commanded the Ottoman forces in Canakkale and Palestine in the World War I, during Soghomon Tehlerian, the murderer of Talat Pasha.

“In my opinion, Juvenile-Turkish government had an order for the Armenian deportation. The Juvenile-Turkish government can be blame for this, i.e. the issuing of this order, but it is partly responsible for its consequences. On the other hand, the conflicts took place firstly because Armenians did not want to abide by the order of the Turkish government for the “submission of the arms” and secondly, some of them assumed a pro-Russian attitude and resisted Turks. Of course, they were sent to war field and got offended as ordinary losers do… The government put the deportation (temporary migration) decision into practice due to completely military purposes.

Again it must be emphasized regarding this issue that Turkish gendarmerie forces had been in a good position before the war. In fact it was distinguished force comprising of 85 thousand. As this force was spread within the army later, a reserve gendarmerie force, which did not include good elements, was created. …The discipline among those men was very poor. While the events the Armenians had experienced are mentioned about, those conditions have to be taken into consideration. The ones who committed those were not the Turkish soldiers but the bad gendarmerie units that had been created due to need the war required. This aspect should also be taken into account: There was so much misery on the roads that not only the Armenians but also numerous the Turkish soldiers lost their lives because of the lack of victuals in the Turkish Empire, disasters and disorganization. Thousands of Turkish soldiers died there; thousands of soldiers only in the Army I was commanding in the Gallipoli died of hunger… On the other hand, it was previously touched that Kurds were perpetual enemy to Armenians and had murdered them.

I have never received even a single order signed by Talat (Talat Pasha) regarding the Armenians any time! The orders I received were signed by Enver Pasha and were of soft nature. Sometimes those orders were too meaningless to be executed. For instance, once I received the order to send away the Armenians from the staff under my control. But such an order was not executable, because those were needed as translators in the army. One gets numerous senseless orders in those places.

I did not see any orders or measures by Talat against the Armenians during the period of five years I was in war and did not witness them to executed.

Statements, stands and testimonies of foreigners about the Armenian question…

Preface

During decades, the Armenians have forgotten with stubbornness, denied fiercely, and even hidden carefully to the public opinion a whole part of historiography that questions their vision their vision of the dramatic events that took place in 1915-1916.

Shut in a logic that consider their memory to be sacred, the Armenians do not see anymore, do not listen anymore, and do not hear anymore.

They proclaim as truth a selection of facts among others. This provides them the role of heroes and victims, hiding by this way another memory, which of the crimes committed on the Moslem populations.

1 300 000 people have been exterminated by the Armenians, who have joined massively the ranks of the Russian army since the beginning of the First World War, thus making themselves responsible of betrayal towards their homeland, the Ottoman Empire, which these people held on together for centuries.

The negation of these atrocities and the refusal to recognize their responsibilities in the cataclysm of 1915 take the fanatic Armenian racism to a deadlock and prevent an expected peaceful reconciliation. At this point, putting an end to the “Armenian amnesia” is today an absolute necessity of humanity.

Through this study, we hope that we’ll finally help modestly the Armenians find their memory.

The reason behind today’s Armenians historically baseless complaints conflicts with the fact that the Armenians have been entitled with the identity of being a “citizen” of the Ottoman community. These Armenian citizens of Ottomans were the milestones of development of the Ottoman State. The Armenians maintained their presence in everyway of life as a printer, doctor, senior official, teacher, author, poet, theater player, jurist, merchant, painter, etc.

The Ottoman history records 29 pashas, 22 ministers, 33 deputies, 7 ambassadors, 11 consuls general and consuls, 11 academicians and 41 senior officials. Some of these Armenians also held the crucial and key positions in the ministries of Foreign Affairs, Finance and Commerce and Posts.

All these deny the pronouncements of today’s Armenian fanaticism. Because, although there was not a distinction between these Armenians and the other citizens of the Ottomans as for prosperity and life standards, the Armenian community was protected for centuries and saved their identity and freedom.

The followings show the reflections of unfounded and groundless bases of hatred of a deceived structure on today.

“To the inhabitants of Zeytun
O! Tenderly and lovely mother, who do you wish to see?
Come here, don’t be afraid, come close
And without weeping any tear, look courageously
At your beloved child whose wound is bleeding
Let the Turkish mothers cry
And go to Zeytun to give the joyful news
The sun rose, O inhabitants of Zeytun! Quick on horseback!
Arms up, and ahead! Let’s walk ahead!
The ones fear and lethargy holds back are not one of us.
Enough slavery, enough serfdom.
Let us try to enjoy a little the bitterness of the Turks!!”
Verse of the Armenian poet Bechiktachlian (September 1862)

“During a meeting of the Armenian National Assembly, in the last autumn, Mr. Sdépan Papazian, the author presumed the statistical figures presented to the Berlin Conference, took on violently to the patriarch to have communicated to the Embassies of the statistical figures without having consulted first the National Assembly, what consequentially drew the attention of the opinion to the enormous differences between the figures of Berlin and those supplied more recently by the patriarchy and to provoke remarks on the doubtful character of these two series of figures (…)

In the list of Berlin, by an apparently dishonest manipulation of the official figures, looked for purpose was to prove that, according to these figures, the Armenian population of Erzurum and Van (including Erzurum and Hakkari) amounted to in 1 150 000 souls. I demonstrated afterward that the real number did not exceed doubtlessly 450 000. As for the figures supplied by the Patriarch in the embassy in 1880, they indicated a population of 373 500 Armenians.” (Report of the commander Trotter, specialist of demographic questions in the Embassy of England in the Ottoman Empire, on February 15, 1882)

The aim of the Armenian committees was to foment outbreaks and to do terrorist acts; the foreign powers would come to help after appropriate conditions were established, and it happened as that…

“The aim of the Armenian revolutionaries is to foment outbreaks, to induce first the Ottomans to react to their violence and to encourage next the foreign powers to intervene.

The aims of the revolutionary committees are to arouse a general discontent and to force the Turkish government and the population to react violently, that would draw the attention of the foreign nations to the Armenians’ imaginary suffering and encourage them to intervene to right the situation.” (Letter of the British ambassador Currie to the Foreign Office, on March 28 of 1894)

“The members of Dachnak and Hintchak parties have terrorized their own compatriots, they have irritated the Moslem populations with robberies and wild actions; they have incapacitated all the efforts to implement reforms; all the events in Anatolia find their origins in the crimes committed by Armenian revolutionary committees.” (Note written on March the 4th of 1896 by the British vice-consul in Van)

The strategic calculations centered on the Russian and British axis and then turned into a rivalry, gave the Armenian issue an international character. The Armenians, encouraged with the situation and in deed with the aim to establish their promised state, built up “the Armenian revolt movements and terrorism” on two main Armenian terrorist organizations’ axle namely Hintchak and Dachnak in the second half of 1800s.

“In 1895 and 1896, the Armenian revolutionary committees have created such a suspicion between local and Armenian populations that it has become impossible to apply the slightest reform in those regions. The Armenian priests preferred to spread nationalist ideas, sticking them on the walls of the monasteries rather than apply themselves to religious education, and to set the Christians against the Moslems rather than carry out their religious tasks. The revolts that took place in 1895 and 1896 in several Turkish provinces have not been induced by some extreme poverty of the Armenian countrymen, nor by the Moslem attacks. Actually, these countrymen were considerably richer and more prosperous then their neighbors.” (General Mayewski, Russian consul general in Bitlis and Van, “Statistics of the provinces of Van and Bitlis”, 1897, pages 11-13)

“Governed by their patriarch, seconded by an ecclesiastical committee, an administrator and an Audit Office, things that the Turks, who used to be their friends, acknowledge, the Armenians would be far from being miserable if, basing their arguments on religious differences or on old historical memories, they dreamed too about the independence conquered by the Greeks, the Bulgarians, the Serbs; if in 1827 first, in 1896 and in 1897 next, unhappy to still be raias (Moslem or Catholic countryman recorded in the Ottoman census register as a farmer), they had not refused to submit to the military service or to pay the tax that exempt the Christians and the Jews from doing it; at last, if they had not shown ideas in which socialist and even anarchist tendencies were thought to be found. The Turks are tolerant, they are the most indifferent masters the world have ever known, and, may be, the Christian religion is nowhere freer than in their country. Public worship is free; churches and convents stand on here, they are self governing, they prosper here without inhibition, as we’ve seen it in the Mount Athos. In the streets of their cities, they have the priests, carrying ostentatiously the last sacrament to the ones about to die, escorted and protected by soldiers in arms; at last, concerned about the mystery of their private life, they respect the others’ ones, whoever they are, Latins or Orthodox, Armenians or Jews. The oppression they are accused of is no more than a legend as old as the crusades and it would always be easy to find, if not an excuse, at least an explanation for the violent events, it’s true they are, of what is called their ‘Fanaticism’.” (“Around the Mediterranean: European and Asian Turkey – From Salonica to Jerusalem”, Marius Bernard, H. Laurens, Paris, 1899, page 82)

I THINK YOU GET MY GIST.

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Source: http://www.network54.com/Forum/407087/

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RESOLUTION

Calling upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide , and for other purposes.
Resolved,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. This resolution may be cited as the `Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution'.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. The House of Representatives finds the following:

(1) The Armenian Genocide was conceived and carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923, resulting in the deportation of nearly 2,000,000 Armenians, of whom 1,500,000 men, women, and children were killed, 500,000 survivors were expelled from their homes, and which succeeded elimination of the over 2,500-year presence of Armenians in their historic homeland.

(1) Our reply: As for the charge of "genocide, I do not wish to minimize the scope of Armenian suffering. But we all Turks are likewise cognisant that it cannot be
viewed as separate from the suffering experienced by the Muslim inhabitants of the region. The "foremost authority on the Armenian in the Genocide" Vahakn Dadrian himself has written that what is referred to as a genocide had "all but run its course" by 1916; defeated in 1918, the Ottoman Empire came to end as an entity not long after. Therefore, a practically non-existent government could not have "carried out" a genocide until 1923. The consensus of contemporary western opinion ,e.g., the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, settled on 1.5 million as the total pre-war Ottoman-Armenian population, and even Dadrian vouches for 1 million survivors. At the end of 1918, the Armenian leader Boghos Nubar spoke of the resettlement of 600,000-700,000 Armenians, not "nearly 2,000,000." The half-million -not "1,500,000", mostly died (not "killed" ) of famine and disease, factors also claiming most of the 2.7 million other Ottoman fatalities. Not a single Armenian was permanently "expelled"; all the Armenians who were resettled were allowed to return at the end of 1918 and 644,900 Armenians (nearly half the original population) remained in what was left of the Ottoman Empire in 1921, according to the Armenian Patriarch. Those who left on their own accord to lands outside Ottoman control , (e.g. Iran (50,000), Greece (120,000) and Transcaucasia (500,000), according to Hovannisian) were free to return, as stipulated by the Gumru and Lausanne Treaties.

(2) On May 24, 1915, the Allied Powers, England, France and Russia, jointly issued a statement explicitly charging for the first time ever another government of committing `a crime against humanity'.

(2) Our reply: The May 24, 1915 statement of the "Allied Powers, England, France, and Russia" rings hollow considering that they had secret treaties to divide the Ottoman Empire between themselves, and were overlooking Russia's own 'crime against humanity' against Jews. The British treated their own non-rebellious German-British men with greater relative severity (given that the British were not bankrupt and resource-challenged, like the Ottoman Sick Man, and were not threatened with extinction), truly "deporting" them (that is, banishing outside national borders) and imprisoning the rest in what amounted to concentration camps.

(3) This joint statement stated `the Allied Governments announce publicly to the Sublime Porte that they will hold personally responsible for these crimes all members of the Ottoman Government, as well as those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres'.

(3) Our reply: The Allies made good their threat to hold the Ottomans "personally responsible" by conducting the Malta Tribunal (1919-1921), and holding up to 144 Ottomans prisoner. No evidence could be found to implicate anyone, and all the accused were set free, thus making a trial unnecessary.

(4) The post-World War I Turkish Government indicted the top leaders involved in the `organization and execution' of the Armenian Genocide and in the `massacre and destruction of the Armenians'.

(4) Our reply: The "post-World War I Turkish Government" was a puppet of the Allies. Even the British held the findings of these kangaroo courts a travesty of justice, and dismissed them in favor of their own Malta Tribunal.

(5) In a series of courts-martial, officials of the Young Turk Regime were tried and convicted, as charged, for organizing and executing massacres against the Armenian people.

(5) Our reply: Officials found guilty by Ottoman courts were tried without due process by a corrupt administration eager for retribution. As Dadrian tells us, they were pressured to pass guilty verdicts in order to secure more favorable peace terms.

(6) The chief organizers of the Armenian Genocide , Minister of War Enver, Minister of the Interior Talaat, and Minister of the Navy Jemal were all condemned to death for their crimes, however, the verdicts of the courts were not enforced.

(6) Our reply: Enver, Talat and Jemal were indeed found guilty by this illegal court. But in the absence of factual evidence, even a "genocide" champion of the period, Johannes Lepsius, vouched for Jemal's protection of the Armenians; thus, putting in doubt the worth of these verdicts.

(7) The Armenian Genocide and these domestic judicial failures are documented with overwhelming evidence in the national archives of Austria , France , Germany , Great Britain , Russia , the United States , the Vatican and many other countries, and this vast body of evidence attests to the same facts, the same events, and the same consequences.

(7) Our reply: There is no "overwhelming evidence" in the archives of the countries mentioned; but an overwhelming amount of hearsay and even some forgeries. The British examined the best of Armenian-related documents in the U. S. State Department, and rejected them all as "personal opinions."

(8) The United States National Archives and Record Administration holds extensive and thorough documentation on the Armenian Genocide , especially in its holdings under Record Group 59 of the United States Department of State, files 867.00 and 867.40, which are open and widely available to the public and interested institutions.

(8) Our reply: When perused, the "thorough documentation on the Armenian Genocide" in the U.S. National Archives almost all derives from Armenian testimony. An Associated Press correspondent had warned in 1895: "(Atrocity claims) must be established independently of Armenian testimony, or their value may be seriously questioned." Armenians told missionaries, and missionaries told everyone else. Hearsay is never a substitute for fact. If the records that are being referred to in here (in detestably "smokescreen" fashion) truly amounted to concrete evidence, not a single one of the countless Armenian genocide web sites would have failed to reproduce them. The bulk of these records document one-sided suffering, and suffering is not genocide.

(9) The Honorable Henry Morgenthau, United States Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1916, organized and led protests by officials of many countries, among them the allies of the Ottoman Empire , against the Armenian Genocide .

(9) Our reply: Morgenthau's private diaries and letters prove his lack of good faith, as they contradict the claims made in his 1918 book, which was ghost-written for propaganda purposes. During 1915, he was on friendly terms with Ottoman officials, in contrast to his later "efforts to make the Turks the worst being on earth" (as his critic, George Schreiner worded it, in a December 11,1918 letter which can be found in Roosevelt Library Doc. 105); Morgenthau was aware of the Armenians' treason in his governmental communications (e.g., March 18, May 25, 1915), information he later suppressed in order to present Armenians as innocent.

(10) Ambassador Morgenthau explicitly described to the United States Department of State the policy of the Government of the Ottoman Empire as `a campaign of race extermination, ' and was instructed on July 16, 1915, by United States Secretary of State Robert Lansing that the `Department approves your procedure . . . to stop Armenian persecution' .

(10) Our reply: Morgenthau was heavily under the influence of Armenian assistants for his information; he never ventured outside the capital's environs in 1915 to see what was happening (as opposed to newspaperman Schreiner, a genuine eyewitness who knew there was no "genocide"). Secretary of State Robert Lansing later wrote (November 21, 1916, to Wilson) that the Armenians' "disloyalty" essentially made their relocation (i.e., "persecution") "justifiable."

(11) Senate Concurrent Resolution 12 of February 9, 1916, resolved that `the President of the United States be respectfully asked to designate a day on which the citizens of this country may give expression to their sympathy by contributing funds now being raised for the relief of the Armenians', who at the time were enduring `starvation, disease, and untold suffering'.

(11) Our reply: Congress was not concerned by the 'starvation, disease, and untold suffering' of all Ottomans, but only of the politically powerful Armenians. Note, by the way, that the prominent reasons given for the Armenians' hardships in early 1916, when the resettlement/"genocide" had "all but run its course": makes no mention of massacres.

(12) President Woodrow Wilson concurred and also encouraged the formation of the organization known as Near East Relief, chartered by an Act of Congress, which contributed some $116,000,000 from 1915 to 1930 to aid Armenian Genocide survivors, including 132,000 orphans who became foster children of the American people.

(12) Our reply: The most successful charity drive in American history resulted from massive Armenian propaganda, assisted by influential folks from all walks of society (such as the Chairman of the National Motion Picture Committee). Colonel William Haskell of the American Red Cross thought with greater humanity: "America should feed the half million Turks whose hinterland was willfully demolished by the retreating Greeks, instead of aiding the Greeks and Armenians who are sitting around waiting for America to give them their next meal. The stories of Turk atrocities circulated among American churches are a mass of lies. I believe that the Greeks and not the Turks are barbarians." (Few Americans knew or cared about the worse crimes of the Armenians in the east.)

(13) Senate Resolution 359, dated May 11, 1920, stated in part, `the testimony adduced at the hearings conducted by the sub-committee of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations have clearly established the truth of the reported massacres and other atrocities from which the Armenian people have suffered'.

(13) Our reply: US politicians, then and now, relied strictly on deceptive Armenian propaganda without bothering to scratch the surface. An exception was Senator James A. Reed, who declared, "The Armenian is not guiltless of blood himself," pointing out the wholesale massacres committed by the Armenians, and criticizing General Harbord's report as "a picture of the Armenians by the friend of the Armenians." (Congressional Record, 1920.)

(14) The resolution followed the April 13, 1920, report to the Senate of the American Military Mission to Armenia led by General James Harbord, that stated `[m]utilation, violation, torture, and death have left their haunting memories in a hundred beautiful Armenian valleys, and the traveler in that region is seldom free from the evidence of this most colossal crime of all the ages'.

(14) Our reply: Yet even this great Armenian friend, General Harbord, included in his report: "In the territory untouched by war from which Armenians were deported the ruined villages are undoubtedly due to Turkish deviltry, but where Armenians advanced and retired with the Russians their retaliatory cruelties unquestionably rivaled the Turks in their inhumanity."

(15) As displayed in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Adolf Hitler, on ordering his military commanders to attack Poland without provocation in 1939, dismissed objections by saying `[w]ho, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?' and thus set the stage for the Holocaust.

(15) Our reply: Even an Armenian scholar, Dr. Robert John, summed up this Hitler quote as a "forgery." There were four versions of this Hitler speech, and the unsigned and undated one containing this statement was rejected by the Nuremberg authorities, "embellished" as it might have been ( noted historian William Shirer), and containing other dubious references such as the obese Goring's jumping on a table and dancing wildly. The Holocaust Memorial Museum compromised its credibility by exhibiting this falsehood, a bone thrown to the Armenians, perhaps in appreciation of the big money donated by the Armenians (such as the one million dollars promised by Seth Moomjian).

(16) Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term `genocide' in 1944, and who was the earliest proponent of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide , invoked the Armenian case as a definitive example of genocide in the 20th century

(16) Our reply: Raphael Lemkin knew of the Armenians from what he had read in the biased western press and the hearsay of missionaries and Armenians. Lemkin's prejudiced "personal opinion" is no substitute for historical fact.

(17) The first resolution on genocide adopted by the United Nations at Lemkin's urging, the December 11, 1946, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 96(1) and the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide itself recognized the Armenian Genocide as the type of crime the United Nations intended to prevent and punish by codifying existing standards.

(17) Our reply: The United Nations has never "recognized the Armenian Genocide as the type of crime" defined in its genocide convention. A 1985 subcommittee vigorously debated the issue, after having been made aware of the actual facts, and refused to recognize it. (See "23" below.).

(18) In 1948, the United Nations War Crimes Commission invoked the Armenian Genocide `precisely . . . one of the types of acts which the modern term `crimes against humanity' is intended to cover' as a precedent for the Nuremberg tribunals.

(19) The Commission stated that `[t]he provisions of Article 230 of the Peace Treaty of Sevres were obviously intended to cover, in conformity with the Allied note of 1915 . . ., offenses which had been committed on Turkish territory against persons of Turkish citizenship, though of Armenian or Greek race. This article constitutes therefore a precedent for Article 6c and 5c of the Nuremberg and Tokyo Charters, and offers an example of one of the categories of `crimes against humanity' as understood by these enactments'.

(18) and (19) together, Our reply: If this commission came up with such conclusions, its participants were irresponsible in limiting their reading to Armenian propaganda in exclusivity. If their intention was to provide an example of crimes against humanity, they totally ignored the systematic extermination campaign perpetrated by Armenians against fellow Ottomans. These points have been raised in this dishonest resolution as a deceptive subterfuge. The purpose of the stillborn Sévres Treaty was to end Turkey's independence: its provisions must be evaluated accordingly.

(20) House Joint Resolution 148, adopted on April 8, 1975, resolved: `[t]hat April 24, 1975, is hereby designated as `National Day of Remembrance of Man's Inhumanity to Man', and the President of the United States is authorized and requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the people of the United States to observe such day as a day of remembrance for all the victims of genocide , especially those of Armenian ancestry . . .'.

(20) Our reply: In order to label people as victims of genocide, one must first prove a genocide had taken place. The simple fact is that there is no evidence demonstrating a systematic, government-sponsored extermination plan against Armenians; the actual evidence demonstrates the Ottoman government attempted to safeguard Armenian lives and property during their relocation, but that its power and resources were insufficient to curtail random violent acts committed by renegade forces. Prejudiced and ignorant politicians in 1975 once again limited their attention to propaganda, failed to consider the universality of man's inhumanity to man; where the victims were Muslim, they did not count.

(21) President Ronald Reagan in proclamation number 4838, dated April 22, 1981, stated in part `like the genocide of the Armenians before it, and the genocide of the Cambodians, which followed it--and like too many other persecutions of too many other people--the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten'.

(21) Our reply: The Armenians are a powerful and influential political force in the United States, and are obsessed with their "genocide"; extremists among them sadly do not refrain from using falsehoods and other tactics where the end is meant to justify the means. Politicians, including presidents, sometimes forget their responsibility to serve all of the people, and the truth. The fact that Ronald Reagan offered his "personal opinion" that there was a genocide against Armenians is meaningless without the historical evidence to back up such a claim.

(22) House Joint Resolution 247, adopted on September 10, 1984, resolved: `[t]hat April 24, 1985, is hereby designated as `National Day of Remembrance of Man's Inhumanity to Man', and the President of the United States is authorized and requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the people of the United States to observe such day as a day of remembrance for all the victims of genocide , especially the one and one-half million people of Armenian ancestry . . .'.

(22) Our reply:It was a request the President refused. Hopefully he was made aware that it would be impossible to kill "one and one-half million people" when there were 1.5 million people to begin with, and even the worst Armenian propagandists of current times agree 1 million survived. At the end of 1918, the Armenian Patriarch broke down his inflated pre-war population figure of 2.1 million as such: 1,260,000 survivors, and 840,000 dead. The Armenians had initially settled on 600,000-800,000 dead at the postwar Peace Conference. Even Armenian propagandists did not go as far as what the writers of this resolution would have us believe.

(23) In August 1985, after extensive study and deliberation, the United Nations SubCommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities voted 14 to 1 to accept a report entitled `Study of the Question of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide ,' which stated `[t]he Nazi aberration has unfortunately not been the only case of genocide in the 20th century. Among other examples which can be cited as qualifying are . . . the Ottoman massacre of Armenians in 1915-1916'.

(23) Our reply:The claim of acceptance is false. The 14 to 1 vote pertained to Resolution 1985/9 and not the "Study of Genocide" Report - also known as the Whitaker Report, named after the rapporteur who prepared it. The Sub-Commission refused to receive the report, deleting the word "receives" from the draft resolution, merely taking "note" of the study. It refused to praise the report by deleting words such as "the quality of," and refused to transmit it to the Commission on Human Rights. In order to clear the record in response to Armenian propaganda claims, U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq stated on October 5th, 2000: "(The) United Nations has not approved or endorsed a report labeling the Armenian experience as Genocide."

(24) This report also explained that `[a]t least 1,000,000, and possibly well over half of the Armenian population, are reliably estimated to have been killed or death marched by independent authorities and eye-witnesses. This is corroborated by reports in United States , German and British archives and of contemporary diplomats in the Ottoman Empire, including those of its ally Germany. '.

(24) Our reply: As even Cyrus Hamlin, a missionary prejudiced against the Turks, wrote in 1893, regarding the tactics of the Armenian terrorists who drove a wedge between Armenians and Turks: "Falsehood is, of course, justifiable where murder and arson are." Even today, the Dashnak terrorist party wields considerable influence both in the Armenian diaspora and in the republic of Armenia. The frequent use of falsehood in this resolution is symptomatic of its influence. Total misrepresentation of the Whitaker report (which was, after all, prepared by only one biased individual, as well as the reliance on the personal opinions of biased and or ignorant diplomats, who derived their information solely from missionaries and Armenians) is an example. Once again, 1 million people could not have possibly died if there were 1 million survivors from a pre-war population of 1.5 million, and most of the fatalities were due to famine and disease, not to killings. Nearly the entirety of those "death-marched" reached their destinations alive. U.S. Consul Jesse Jackson, a prejudiced observer, vouched for nearly half a million Armenian immigrants in 1916 "when the genocide had all but run its course."

(25) The United States Holocaust Memorial Council, an independent Federal agency, unanimously resolved on April 30, 1981, that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum would include the Armenian Genocide in the Museum and has since done so.

(25) Our reply:Relying on propaganda and not on fact, damages the integrity of the Holocaust Memorial Council; some of the persons involved may labor under the misapprehension that any effort to detract from the Armenian version would cast disbelief upon the Holocaust. Crafty Armenians tried to advance their cause by hanging on to the coattails of the Jewish Holocaust, and wealthy Armenians generously supported, and continue to support, Holocaust centers.

(26) Reviewing an aberrant 1982 expression (later retracted) by the United States Department of State asserting that the facts of the Armenian Genocide may be ambiguous, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1993, after a review of documents pertaining to the policy record of the United States, noted that the assertion on ambiguity in the United States record about the Armenian Genocide `contradicted longstanding United States policy and was eventually retracted'.

(26) Our reply: Once again a demonstration of the immense political power of Armenian-Americans. Were if not this "aberrant 1982 expression", served as a contradiction, the Armenian genocide would have long ago been recognized through the countless resolutions introduced over the years. While Armenians have no monopoly on historical suffering, it is most telling that it is the Armenian genocide bill that has kept recurring with jarring frequency. This is the kind of power and intimidation the Armenian community utilizes on a regular basis, as in 2002 when pressured Feds commanded the U.S. Justice Department to drop Armenia from the watch-list of potential terrorist nations, freeing male Armenian nationals from the INS fingerprinting and registration process.

(27) On June 5, 1996, the House of Representatives adopted an amendment to House Bill 3540 (the Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 1997) to reduce aid to Turkey by $3,000,000 (an estimate of its payment of lobbying fees in the United States) until the Turkish Government acknowledged the Armenian Genocide and took steps to honor the memory of its victims.

(27) Our reply:This dishonest resolution is making barely any effort to focus on historical facts (with good reason; to do so would cast doubt on the Armenians' genocide invention), and attempts to make its case by citing the "personal opinions" of those swayed by propaganda, prejudice and ignorance. Today, the Congressional Caucus on Armenian Issues makes up more than one-third of the entire House, a significant number when it comes to Armenians getting their way. Congressmen Pallone and Knollenberg serve as Co-Chairmen of this Armenian Caucus, and Schiff and Radanovich feel beholden to the large numbers of Armenians residing in their state of California. Incidentally, ''aid'' to Turkey generally comes in the form of monies that need to be paid back, and not free and clear cash, as given to Armenia, the second greatest recipient of U.S. aid after Israel, per capita. The undemocratic Armenian republic offers nothing of value to the USA, but they do spend millions in pushing their propaganda and in influencing U.S. Congressmen... befitting their reputation as "professional beggars," in the estimation of Col. Haskell (see p 212 of Akaby Nassibian’s 1984 London publication of “Britain and the Armenian Question”). The Armenians sought revenge by engaging in their familiar smear tactics, charging Haskell with stealing from the relief efforts... without offering proof, of course.

(28) President William Jefferson Clinton, on April 24, 1998, stated: `This year, as in the past, we join with Armenian -Americans throughout the nation in commemorating one of the saddest chapters in the history of this century, the deportations and massacres of a million and a half Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in the years 1915-1923.'.
(29) President George W. Bush, on April 24, 2004, stated: `On this day, we pause in remembrance of one of the most horrible tragedies of the 20th century, the annihilation of as many as 1,500,000 Armenians through forced exile and murder at the end of the Ottoman Empire.'.

(28) and (29) together: Our reply: Further examples of Armenian political clout. Both presidents appear to have slowly become aware "that the facts of the Armenian Genocide may be ambiguous," but it would take courage to desist from throwing a "genocide bone" to the obsessed and powerful Armenian community. Politicians would leave themselves open to the underhanded smear tactics of the extremists in this community. Some go farther; a Californian truck driver, Norayr Avetisyan, was accused of threatening the life of President George W. Bush for alleged anti-Armenianism.

(30) Despite the international recognition and affirmation of the Armenian Genocide , the failure of the domestic and international authorities to punish those responsible for the Armenian Genocide is a reason why similar genocides have recurred and may recur in the future, and that a just resolution will help prevent future genocides.

(30) Our reply: Aside from the meaninglessness of an ‘’international recognition’’ based entirely on propaganda, prejudice, money and intimidation tactics, what is forgotten is that nations cannot be held responsible for genocides. This is particularly true of democratic successor nation states of erstwhile empires. Only individuals may be accused of genocide, and all of the accused individuals were freed from their Maltese internment in late 1921, after the British failed to find any judicial evidence to convict them of massacres. Furthermore, the "human rights" argument presented here is another smokescreen tactic; none of those who have perpetrated genocides after the promulgation of the 1948 U.N. Convention such as the Hutus of Rwanda, or the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia looked back upon the Armenian episode to inspire them along their way.

Dishonest and racist resolutions contravene human rights in inciting hatred against people unjustly accused of committing this worst crime against humanity.

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