204) A Typical "Genocide" Newspaper Article

 

 Ruth Rosen of The San Francisco Chronicle wrote the classic case of a "rubber stamp" article of genocide enthusiasts on December 15, 2003, to be found in these archives.
Let's take a look at what this champion of objectivity had to say.

  
"The Hidden Holocaust" 

 

Already her title gives away her ignorance. There is nothing "hidden" about the so-called Armenian "genocide." Run a search on the Internet, and see if you don't get countless hits. Go to the bookstore or library, and see if there aren't numerous books. Ask most people on the street if they haven't heard of the "Armenian Genocide," and see what they have to say. Yet, zealous apologists as Ruth Rosen continue to insist this episode of history is somehow "hidden" or "forgotten." (Such a notion must play up the sympathy value, I suppose.)

 

The Armenian Diaspora has spread itself too fully throughout the world, and members of its traditionally merchant class have too much money to finance their identity-nourishing obsession. This is why we have countries such as Slovakia (in December 2004) adding their names to the growing list of resolutions recognizing these events as a genocide. There is no reason for Slovakia to care, unless there is a confirmed group of Armenians in their midst, throwing lots of money at their politicians, already brainwashed through centuries of "Terrible Turk" indoctrination. The Slovakian politicians only listen to what the Armenians have to say, and don't know anything about the true history. What's worse, they don't care to do any true research. Not unlike Ruth Rosen.

 

If Ruth Rosen truly wants to sputter on about hidden holocausts, she doesn't have to look very far. There are countless episodes of "Man's Inhumanity to Man" throughout history where the victims are not rich or obsessed enough to proclaim their victimhood, or have not been deemed worthy enough to receive recognition, by the hypocritical genocide scholars' community. She could start with Tasmanians, a truly sorry example of genocide, because it's one where the extermination aims actually succeeded. Aside from the devilish fellow in Bugs Bunny cartoons, no Tasmanians are left behind today. She could  look at practically any country that supports these Armenian Genocide resolutions... say, Slovakia. Slovakia may be excused in its participation of the Holocaust, as she was a Nazi puppet state at the time. Yet, in recent times, human rights groups have singled out Slovakia for forced sterilization of an "undesirable" element in their country, the Romani or Gypsy women. These voiceless people were the "hidden" victims of the Holocaust, but we only hear about the victims who have the money and the influence.

 

She could also look at the Turks/Muslims, where 5 million were expulsed by the Russians and other Orthodox peoples, and 5.5 million were slaughtered, in the century from the Greek War of Independence to the end of WWI. Now Turks are the easy villains of western history, so it would take much for a Ruth Rosen to switch gears and regard them as victims. My speculation is that Ruth Rosen, as a probable Jew, is so immersed in the tragic genocide experienced by her people, her sympathies get clouded when she sees the parallels between the Holocaust and the Armenian "Genocide" that the genocide industry has so notoriously created. Ironically, the number of Jewish victims — 5.1 to 5.4 million, according to Washington's Holocaust Museum — are comparable to the Turkish mortality. (Although we're often reminded by these dishonest genocide people that "numbers don't matter," when the numbers don't suit their purposes. Meanwhile, they do their best to inflate their numbers, every chance they get.)
 

 "IMAGINE IF a producer from National Public Radio invited a scholar to speak about his new book on the Jewish Holocaust and then, to provide 'balance,' included another guest known for denying that the Nazis murdered 6 million Jews," Ruth Rosen begins. (First by not getting her facts straight about her millions.)

 

 She goes on to proclaim her outrage this is exactly what happened to Peter Balakian, who went on his book tour for  "The Burning Tigris." We can't expect Ruth Rosen to understand, because her emotional passions have allowed her to wholly swallow the stomach-churning propaganda Balakian filled his book with. Yes, the same propaganda that Professor John Dewey cautioned Americans to no longer be deceived by, back in 1928 when he wrote an article for The New Republic. Three-quarters of a century later, this disgusting propaganda is still doing its evil work in the hands of ethics-challenged individuals like Peternocchio Balakian, and continues to deceive brainwashed genocide zealots that often speak in shrill voices.

 

The reason why Ruth Rosen is dead wrong is because even Peter Balakian couldn't prove his genocide, despite filling his book from top to bottom with endless examples of hearsay, canards, and opinions of religious/racist bigots. (Although he makes a stab at factual evidence with his incredible support for the legitimacy of the Aram Andonian-forged  Talat Pasha telegrams.) Therefore she should know better than to compare an alleged genocide with a proven one. She has no idea of the injustice she is committing upon the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, by putting them on the same plane as a genocide that has been concocted under false pretenses for political purposes.

 

One NPR producer, however, insisted on inviting another guest to present the Turkish "perspective" that no genocide ever occurred. Balakian declined the invitation.

 

Indeed! Pro-Armenians like Balakian, like one of his inspirations, Richard Hovannisian, are only good when it comes to monologue, not dialogue. This is why these people are questionable academicians, to put it kindly. What real academician would try to stifle debate, if there are questions about the validity of their position?

 

Balakian is so averse to debate, his response to a challenge (in Nov. 14, 2004, at California's Museum of Tolerance) was: "I don't want to share this stage with a genocide denier. I ask you to please leave." Balakian knows that should he get down and dirty, his case is going to fall apart. This is why he covers his tracks with attention diverting charges such as "denier" and that Turkey is "totalitarian." The smear campaign is a time-honored Armenian tactic, and Balakian is no stranger to this terrorism weapon, as when he helped spearhead the campaign to assassinate Heath Lowry's character.

 

 

 Unfortunately, much of the American media still thinks that the Armenian genocide is subject to debate. Until recently, many American newspapers wrote about the "alleged" Armenian genocide or felt obliged to give equal weight to Turkey's denial of this grotesque crime.

 

When a crime is unproven, moral people believe it is wrong to point accusatory fingers. And once again, we get the tiresome claim that it is only the government of Turkey that believes there was no genocide.  In 1985, sixty-nine American academicians thought so. These days, because of discrediting maneuvers by those such as Peter Balakian and Israel Charny, far fewer academics wish to put their reputations open to attack when they have clearly learned how dirty the tactics are of genocide zealots.

 

To counter such historical inaccuracy, in June 1998 the Association of Genocide Scholars unanimously defined this event as the 20th century's first genocide. Two years later, 126 Holocaust scholars, including Elie Wiesel -- awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his lifelong effort to bear witness to genocide -- published a petition in the New York Times affirming "the incontestable fact of the Armenian genocide."

 

Here we go again. Everyone knows genocide is "bad" and so-called genocide scholars are automatically presumed to be moral and upright. Instead, many of them — like Ruth Rosen — have become so emotional, truth is the first thing they allow to compromise. Genocide has become a religion with these people. Many are so convinced of the righteousness of their cause, it becomes easy for them to excuse their lack of attention to principles and morality. This is why they are the modern counterparts of the missionaries of the Ottoman Empire. The missionaries spent years vilifying the Turks, without a care for the facts... nor for their own commandment, THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS AGAINST THY NEIGHBOR. Such is the difference between faith and reality based mindsets. The missionaries, like the genocide scholars, were successful because people believed clergymen would not lie.

 

A similar New York Times petition by genocide zealots has been examined here, and unfortunately Elie Wiesel has lost his grasp on his recognition of true history by allowing his emotions to supersede his reason. If one only considers Vahakn Dadrian as the source for Armenian "Genocide" history, of course they're going to throw their lot into this cause. However, despite what Peter Balakian and Ruth Rosen tell us, there is always another side of the story to consider.

 

We can see, by the way, how on the mark this "Association of Genocide Scholars" is, as regards the truth, when they  "unanimously defined this event as the 20th century's first genocide." That honor probably belongs to the United States, as their marines committed untold atrocities upon the civilian population of the Philippines at the turn of the century.  Then there were German acts of extermination against the Hereros and other African peoples a decade before "1915." We don't hear about these genocides, because the victims simply weren't and still aren't rich enough, and/or white enough. Yet, is it not inexcusable for a group that calls itself the "Association of Genocide Scholars" to select certain presumed genocides as more important then probable real ones?

 

Denial of the Armenian genocide didn't always exist in this country. Before World War I, Americans knew exactly what had occurred. During the 1890s, American reformers launched a human-rights campaign to protest repeated massacres of the Armenian people. In September 1895, the New York Times headlined a story as "Another Armenian Holocaust." During 1915, that paper published 145 articles about the mass murder of the Armenian people, describing the massacre as "systematic, "authorized" and "organized by the government." In 1918, Theodore Roosevelt called it "the greatest crime of the war."

 

It's infuriating when seemingly intelligent people like Ruth Rosen don't bother to scratch beneath the surface. If there is a centuries long prejudice against the Terrible Turk, in existence since the Crusades, and if no one speaks for the Turks, naturally it's going to be easy for religious/racist bigots who will be swayed by the influences of Armenian colonists giving their lopsided "please feel sorry for me" version of events. Balakian outlined how one infiltrated the ranks of New England intelligentsia, in his Burning Tigris abomination. Like a stack of dominoes, the influence of these people spread. The commonly accepted wisdom became the Armenians were the persecuted victims, and the Turks were reinforced in their familiar role as barbarians.

 

Scarcely were the Armenians' role of beginning their revolutionary groups examined, coming into prominence in the 1880s.

 

"The Dashnak revolutionary society is working to stir up a situation in which Muslims and Armenians will attack each other, and thus pave the way for Russian intervention," Russian Consul General in Bitlis and Van, General Mayewski, reported. (And the intervention was not limited to the Russians; other European powers were chomping at the bit to maintain their stronghold over the "Sick Man of Europe." Dashnak ideologue, Mikayel Varandian, concurred in his 1932 work, History of the Dashnagtzoutune: "(By inciting massacres, Armenians) wanted to assure European intervention"

 

 

 

Sir Gilbert Parker The books of the Canadian novelist (1862-1932) dealt with either Canada, or England and the empire; his experience in Australia and elsewhere made him a strong Imperialist in politics. He moved to England in 1889 and served in Parliament from 1900 to 1918. The "First Line" of his book, The Right of Way, was "Not guilty, your honor!"; For warping the truth as a propagandist, the verdict is otherwise.

 

Of course it will be easy for newspapers of the period like The New York Times (and sometimes newspapers of this period, like Ruth Rosen's The San Francisco Chronicle) to blindly print the war propaganda of those days, particularly when a branch of Wellington House operated illegally on U.S. soil, directing these stories. Sir Gilbert Parker, the Canadian managing this branch, had a list of 170,000 to send anti-German and anti-Turkish propaganda to the Who's Who of American society, targeting "every editor and molder of public opinion." What a genuine truth-seeker should ask is why these reports of hearsay could not constitute evidence when the British desperately sought to convict the Turks in the more than two years long process of the Malta Tribunal.

 

"There is no crime without evidence. A genocide cannot be written about in the absence of factual proof." So wrote "genocide scholar" Henry R. Huttenbach, in his Genocide Forum, in  1996.

 

And the Roosevelt quote is the one time Teddy, under the influence of the avalanche of this propaganda, spoke loudly and carried a little stick. (Wouldn't this have been a good opportunity for genocide-conscious Ruth Rosen to have brought up what Teddy had to say about the United State's crimes in the Philippines War during his presidential watch, when most of the atrocities occurred? Assuming Ruth Rosen knows much about real history, which is a mighty big assumption.)

 

So what cast such a cloud of uncertainty over the Armenian genocide? The short answer is: oil and military bases. After World War I, the United States' drive for oil in the Middle East resulted in an alliance with the new Turkish republic.

 

Ruth Rosen should forever be embarrassed by being caught on record for utterly believing Peter Balakian's history at the expense of checking other sources... as a good journalist is honor-bound to do. The fact of the matter is, the Turks had all of their oil-producing lands stolen by the British and the French by the end of 1918. Military bases did not become an issue until the Soviet Union became more powerful in later years. (Or during the period when the Cold War heated up, as Rosen mentions later in her article. If there is evidence of any prominent American thinking of the strategic importance of military bases in Turkey, during 1919-1923, I have yet to encounter it.)

 

What should cast a cloud of uncertainty over Ruth Rosen's zealous, righteous mind is the documentation of her own rear admiral and surrogate ambassador of the time, Mark Bristol. This great American was mainly responsible for driving United States opinion away from phony Armenian propaganda at the period, as he realized his country would better benefit through friendship with the Turks. He was also a man of honor, and let truth be his guiding principle.

 

As an American, Ruth Rosen should be grateful for the efforts of Mark Bristol, assuming she has even heard of him. It was Turkey's military might greatly helping to stem the tide of Soviet expansionism during the dark days of the Cold War. The USA reaped great benefits through her alliance with Turkey over the years, including an economic trade flow often advantageous to America. Contrast with how Armenia betrayed her western benefactors by willingly joining with the Soviet Union, and stiffing the USA on a $50 million + interest loan made in good faith around 1919. Armenian money-supported politicians in the USA (the kind that votes for their genocide resolutions) gave some billion and one half dollars to Armenia over a decade or so, getting nothing in return.

 

 

Ruth Rosen prints a long quote by a Rabbi Matthew Berkowitz, railing with the familiar line about Turkish denialism and coercion (who knew Turkey was such an influential superpower succeeding in such behind-the-scenes arm-twisting), "and calling on Turkey to take responsibility for this blemish on humanity."

 

Since Ruth Rosen prefers to give the soapbox to a Jewish perspective, she may also wish to consider what "The Jewish Times" had to say in June 21, 1990:

 

"An appropriate analogy with the Jewish Holocaust might be the systematic extermination of the entire Muslim population of the independent republic of Armenia which consisted of at least 30-40 percent of the population of that republic. The memoirs of an Armenian army officer who participated in and eye-witnessed these atrocities was published in the U.S. in 1926 with the title 'Men Are Like That.' Other references abound."

 

I guess that's one " blemish on humanity" the Rabbi Matthew Berkowitz and Ruth Rosen don't give two sticks about, because this truly "hidden holocaust" is one that simply is not in vogue. The area referred to mainly affected the Tatar Turks, the inhabitants of today's Azerbaijan. I wonder how many pieces Ruth Rosen has written about Armenia's illegal attack on the Azeris in 1992, with one billion of Russian military aid along with many millions from her own country, resulting in massacres, the taking of a large chunk of Azeri territory condemned by the United Nations, and perhaps nearly a million refugees still living in conditions of squalor? This is the more contemporary view of that "genocide" episode, but I have a feeling we won't have Ruth Rosen voicing her outrage about these unpopular events.
  

 

"To remain silent or indifferent" Wiesel reminds us, "is the greatest sin."

 

Some might say a greater sin would be to not have your historical facts straight and unethically condemn a people upon no evidence. And if remaining silent or indifferent is so sinful according to Elie Wiesel, why is he selectively silent and indifferent to other episodes of Man's Inhumanity to Man? Has he uttered a peep about the over one-half million Turks/Muslims and Ottoman Jews the Armenians deliberately slaughtered during their attempted  ethnic-cleansing policy, while in possession of eastern Anatolia, along with the Russians? Such hypocrisy is unbearable.

 

Never forget that Adolf Hitler relied on that silence when he said on Aug. 22, 1939, "Who after all speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"

 

And what better way to cap off a genocide article than to end with the coup de grace... the line the Armenians' greatest moral witness most likely never uttered?

 

Thank you, Ruth Rosen, for predictably following the typical Armenian Genocide article formula to a tee. You would do your profession, not to mention your personal honor, a greater service if you only would bother to lift a finger to examine all sides of the stories you write.

 

ADDENDUM: A Bit About the Author, Ruth Rosen

 

Ruth Rosen

 

Ruth Rosen edits the monthly Jews for Jesus Newsletter, an organization which is described on its web site as the "world's largest  Jewish evangelism agency." Her father, Moishe Rosen, founded the organization. She received a degree in biblical studies from Biola College in Southern California, according to her bio on the J for J web site.

 

In an article she co-wrote (along with her dad and the J for J Executive Director's assistant) entitled, "When Jews Were Proselytizers" (here), she gives credence to the missionizing nature of Jews by citing ' the pagan converts (of) the (Turkic) Khazars in the ... 8th century.') We are also told:

 

The rise of Islam in the seventh century added other obstacles to the missionizing efforts of Jews. In 624 Mohammed began his persecution of the Arabian Jews. By 628, the death sentence was decreed for those Jews who accepted a Moslem convert to Judaism.

 

Nowhere in the article is mentioned how the Muslim Turks served as one of Judaism's rare historical saviors. Looks like the Muslims are the bad guys in her mind.

 

Is Ruth Rosen following the proud tradition of the Ottoman Empire's missionaries, and feels she is duty-bound to make the Turks appear as monsters?

 

In an August 26, 2004 Jewish Tribune article ("Jews for Jesus are back in a big way again"), we're told:

 

Ruth Rosen is ... 50 years old, she loves Jews, Israel and Christianity. A middle-aged balding man wearing glasses walked up to her, jabbing his finger, screaming loudly, repeatedly: “You are despicable. You should be ashamed of yourself.�

 

Perhaps the middle-aged balding man knew what he was talking about.

 

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