I. Introduction
Statesmen in western countries are often besieged by representatives of Armenian groups representing huge voting blocks demanding resolutions or "Denier" legislation -with penalties- in connection with events that occurred in Eastern Anatolia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
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Why do so many Armenians, and too many of their supporters, willingly engage in outright lying, regarding their genocide obsession? (This is a theme touched upon in an early TAT page, Armenian Scholars' Disregard for the Truth.)
Before we continue, let’s keep in mind two factors. One is, as Alexandre Dumas wisely wrote, “All generalizations are dangerous, even this one.” Because so many Armenians lie when it comes to their genocide obsession, that does not mean all Armenians have a natural tendency to bend the truth. Of course; people are people everywhere, and there are some wonderful, honorable Armenians. (Yet, when it comes to the “genocide,” the honorable Armenians choose to remain quiet, and as we know from genocide-speak, “silence means compliance.” We will refer to this troubling point later.)
The second point is, even though there are too many Armenians who willingly lie for their cause, they still represent the minority of the Armenian people. Most Armenians who fling themselves into the genocide arena are irrationalists who deeply believe in their genocide myth. Here, it would be helpful to note what James Morgan Read wrote in “Atrocity Propaganda, 1914-19 (1941, p. 187): "Lying is an act of conscious deception. Much of British atrocity propaganda was unconscious deception built upon erroneous reports and impressions." Most of the Armenian rank-and-file, taught to hate Turks by their parents, churches and teachers (given genocide indoctrination from an early age, in order to develop soldiers for Hai Tahd, the Armenian Cause), are simply too brainwashed and are immersed in genocide-mania to a religious extent. (Armenian propaganda, in yet another example of Armenians doing the crime and blaming Turks for the same, tells us it is the Turks who are brainwashed; but even Fatma Muge Gocek revealed that Turkish schools avoided the genocide topic, and many Turks have gotten their first exposure to this madness once they had moved away from Turkey, and were blasted by the Armenians’ version of events in nations such as the USA and France.) In short: Most Armenian believers who perpetuate their genocide tale engage in “unconscious deception,” since they believe in their genocide as a God-substitute. By contrast, we must believe nearly all Armenian professors who specialize in the field know the real truth and work at “conscious deception,” that is, “lying.”
This, the professors and other educated Armenians feel, is the patriotic thing to do; many of these “scholars” are Dashnak-oriented, and this terrorist group has always followed an end-justifies-the-means strategy. The fanatical Dashnaks today enjoy a stranglehold over the worldwide Armenian diaspora, and the Republic of Armenia.
The genocide scholars are an altogether different can of worms. Hardly any specialize in history, and the few who do have forgotten the rules of honest history. Wealthy Armenians have cleverly made certain to support the hypocritical genocide institutions, and many genocide scholars (those mostly into the Holocaust) don’t know a thing about the Armenian episode other than the Armenian genocide propaganda they have read. Genocide is their religion, as long as the genocides have been politically selected, and whether these folks are consciously or unconsciously deceiving (surely there are examples of both varieties), one thing is for sure: the term “genocide scholar” is a misnomer, since those who begin their theses with the conclusion first, and who study only one side of a story, have nothing to do with scholarship, and everything to do with propaganda.
What inspired this page was a commentary by Peter Beinart that appeared in the October 1, 2007 issue of TIME Magazine, entitled, “The Devil in Every Fan: We cheer when our teams cheat. That’s because all we care about is winning. And if that makes us immoral, so what?”
Isn’t that exactly the mode for the genocide-mad Armenians and most of their genocide scholar allies? All that matters is getting their genocide agenda across. It doesn’t matter what kind of corrupt information they use, it doesn’t matter whose reputations they help destroy with their vicious character assassination strategies, all that matters is “winning.” And what makes these people especially despicable is that they pretend to be moral, given that they try to come across as fighting for human rights and genocide prevention (when the truth is, by selecting the worthier humans, and by comparing their designated villains with Nazis, they perpetuate hatred and racism, as well as the fact that there can be no genocide prevention any more than there could be murder prevention). What they are really about is, if their tactics “make them immoral, so what?”
Coach Bill Belichick
The TIME article informs us that the fans of an American football team, the New England Patriots, learned that Coach Bill Belichick cheated (by getting an assistant to videotape the defensive coaches of a rival team, trying to steal their signs); he was fined, criticized by sports writers and editorialists, yet cheered by the fans. The “fans already knew that Belichick doesn’t play by the Marquis of Queensbury rules.” (As alleged by a player, the coach is such a creep, the player was forced to train despite having suffered a concussion, and today has brain damage. Yet such a revelation has not hurt the coach’s reputation; the writer tells us there is “only one thing that could: losing.”)
We can say no less about the Armenian genocide extremists and most of their genocide scholar allies; the Marquis of Queensbury rules are a foreign concept, and whatever they can get away with, they will get away with... as long as their selected genocides, or what they tell us constitute genocides, reign supreme.
This is their “dirty little secret,” as Author Beinart wrote about sports fans: “We’re basically amoral.” An amoral person, of course, cannot discern right from wrong, which is sometimes even scarier than the way an immoral person conducts himself. An immoral person knows what he is doing is wrong, but does it anyway. The immoral person makes a choice, but the amoral person is too lost to even consider choosing. It could perhaps be said that the Armenian professors (conscious deceivers) who know the truth but choose to prevaricate are immoral, and the irrational Armenian rank and file (unconscious deceivers) can’t bring themselves to conduct the proper research (since the fulfillment of their genocide religion takes precedence over all else) may have the tendency to dance along amoral lines.
Beinart continues: “Kant said that acting ethically means treating other people as ends in and of themselves, not merely as means to our own desires. But that’s exactly how fans treat coaches and players. We want them to win because when they do, we bask in the glory.
Fans don’t really care how their teams win. They aren’t moral universalists; they don’t care about being fair to the other guys.”
The rank and file similarly “bask in the glory” as long as their genocide fetish is affirmed. They don’t care how their defenders do the job, as long as their team wins. And they certainly don’t care about being fair to the other guys. There is no end to examples from Armenian professors, from the way Richard Hovannisian ultimately drove Stanford Shaw out of UCLA, to the ways in which Vahakn Dadrian has tried to crucify those such as Guenter Lewy and Edward Erickson (charging them with poor scholarship, or with the stupidity to be manipulated by evil Turks), to how Peter Balakian compared Justin McCarthy to a “white supremacist.” But it’s not just the obsessed Armenians; the genocide scholars can be equally unethical.
Take the “Professional Ethics” paper co-authored by Robert Jay Lifton, Eric Markusen and Roger Smith. Lifton committed a huge faux pas by strictly relying on the word of master manipulator Vahakn Dadrian, in order to conclude Ottoman physicians behaved as the Nazi doctor, Mengele. The Turkish ambassador at the time enlisted the help of academician Dr. Heath Lowry to conduct a scholarly criticism, and was foolish enough to include Lowry’s report to Lifton, as a way to demonstrate to Lifton that the criticism derived from a worthy peer. (One of many examples of Turkish gullibility and/or knuckleheadedness; the Turk had no idea that he was feeding Lowry to the wolves.) Naturally, these three jumped on the opportunity, lashed out at Lowry as an “agent of the Turkish government” (lying outright in the process, by claiming that Lowry’s report was included “inadvertently”), encouraging Peter Balakian and others to enlist the aid of naive/prejudiced famous authors to help fry Lowry even more, and succeeding in knocking Lowry out of the genocide debate. To this date, this “Professional Ethics” paper, prepared by these unethical genocide scholars, is used as a tool for Armenian propaganda.
And then there is good old Israel Charny. He didn’t like that sixty-nine mostly Western scholars signed their names to a 1985 advertisement questioning the validity of the Armenians’ genocide, and Charny, with the help of the notorious ANCA, did a background check on these academicians. Some had received grants from two organizations with “Turkish” in the title (ARIT and the ITS), which clearly, to poor Israel Charny’s mind, must have been controlled by the sinister Turkish government. Charny unethically implied that most of these academicians must be “agents of the Turkish government” (although Fatma Muge Gocek, clearly in the Armenians’ corner, had received grants from the very same organizations as well; any scholar knows that accepting a grant is hardly tantamount to selling one’s academic soul), thus demonstrating to genuine historians how dirtily the Armenians and their genocide scholar allies play, and the last thing on their minds is “being fair to the other guys.” As a result, the real historians were frightened away from the debate, and the “genocide” field has since been dominated by fraudulent Armenians and their nearly-as-fraudulent genocide scholar allies.
Beinart wrote further: “In the abstract, fans oppose cheating. They may even oppose cheating by their own team, since the team could get caught, thus eliciting penalties that outweigh any potential gain. They may also fear the psychological penalties: if your team wins but people think it cheated, it’s harder to do a victory dance around the office watercooler. But fearing the consequences of cheating is a far cry from opposing it because it’s wrong.”
When Armenian terrorism raged globally in the 1970s and 80s (killing over seventy, and wounding over five hundred; the second greatest terror conducted in the USA between 1980-86 came courtesy of the Armenians), Armenians supported these “heroes,” even though “in the abstract” they claimed not to condone terrorism. Hardly any Armenian came out publicly to decry these vicious acts, because many Armenians felt points were being scored for their team. (Some even excused them. On the other hand, there was one highly sad and dramatic example of an Armenian-Turk who protested Armenian terror.)
George Mason, the moderate publisher of The California Courier (before the hardcore Harut Sassounian took over), commented: "There are many Armenian Americans in California who feel great sympathy and support for Armenian terrorists. I have talked to numerous peaceful, fair, and thoughtful men who have expressed support for the terrorists."
The aim of these terrorists, after all, was to bring recognition to the Armenian genocide myth, an aim that proved to be successful; most Western news accounts of these violent incidents would quickly add their take on Armenian propaganda in their biased reportage. Once the genocide team won and is currently enjoying their prominent status today, Armenians have learned to “cool it,” and these days restrict their attacks to character assassination and intimidation. The team is aware that if any fanatic should flip his lid and do something physically destructive, “Hai Tahd” could be set back a few years, and cost their cause “psychological penalties.”
Beinart continued: “When the refs go to review a close play, fans don’t sit there thinking, I hope they’ll make the right call. They pray that the call goes their way.”
This brings to mind debating with irrational Armenian extremists. Tell Armenian genocidists a rock-solid fact, and the last thing on their minds would be to consider the validity of what is being said. That is because the truth, or the “right call,” is not what they are after. Their first instinct will be to see how they could discredit what is being said, in a delirious attempt to see “that the call goes their way.” If the fact is too powerful, the strategy will be to ignore the fact completely, and to counter the momentary setback by throwing forth endless distracting weasel facts that the Armenian propaganda machinery has compiled through the years. Since their opponent will usually operate from a standpoint of honesty and fairness, generally, this trick will work. The opponent will then shift his or her attention to deal with the new points, and the original point will thus lose its potency.
Of course, another trick is to counter the rock-solid fact with the claim that it’s untrue. Particularly if the debate is on an important public forum, the Armenian genocidist will know the bigoted public has already been conditioned to be on the side of the noble “victims,” rather than the nasty “deniers,” and will accept whatever the genocidist claims, at face value. Both Peter Balakian and Taner Akcam used this particular trick to advantage, in their PBS debate; at times, they simply lied through their teeth.
And this leads to the crux of what this page set about to explore: why do so many Armenians lie?
Marmaduke Pickthall
The British author, Marmaduke Pickthall, made an enormously revealing point, when he clashed with Arnold Toynbee in the pages of The New Age (December 16, 1915, Vol. XVIII. No. 7), after Toynbee defended the sources of his Blue Book (“Mr. Arnold J. Toynbee invited me to read his book entitled ‘Armenian Atrocities: The Murder of a Nation,’ seeming confident that, if I did so, I should change my views... I have read Mr. Toynbee’s book, and can find there nothing serious in support of his contention that the Turkish Government ordered ‘the extermination of the Armenian race.’”) Pickthall demolishes Toynbee’s horrible work of propaganda, and then there was this:
“Mr. Toynbee quotes the ‘Frankfurter Zeitung’ to the effect that the Armenians are more intelligent than the Turks. Well, so they are, and in precisely the same way they are more intelligent than the English. It was an Armenian- Nubar Pasha who called us ‘the Turks of the West.’ There are certain efforts of the intelligence which do not occur to us as possible for man to make. The Armenian recognises no such limitations, and this it is which has made him so disliked throughout the East.
The typical Armenian esteems it meritorious not only to exaggerate but to invent occurrences calculated to excite the pity of the Western world.”
That reminds me of Rafael Ishkhanian’s words:
"[T]o curse at Muslims and especially at Turks, to talk much about the Armenian Genocide, and to remind others constantly of the brutality of the Turks are all regarded as expressions of patriotism. Among the leaders of the past we consider those who curse Turks and killed Turks to be the most patriotic. Our most recent heroes are those who assassinated Turkish diplomats in European cities... [this] is the dominant mentality."
It’s pretty terrible to point out so many Armenians engage in lying, and let’s please keep in mind there are many honorable Armenians (at least as long as the topic is not about genocide, regarding those willing to share their views publicly), but unfortunately, this is the reality. It’s not simply that these Armenian extremists lie, but that they consider it their patriotic duty to lie. There is a pattern here: the Ottoman-Armenians who served as interpreters for already prejudiced Westerners passed on their outrageous horror stories, and the Westerners accepted these stories at face value. No different than the massive voice of genocide-obsessed Armenians today, tenaciously writing letters or contributing to forums at anything and everything that might pose a threat to Hai Tahd.
Pickthall sheds light from his travels in an earlier issue of The New Age (September 25, 1913, Vol. XIII. No. 22); he saw many foreign war correspondents while spending over two weeks at the Pera Palace Hotel, and he took note of the many people who attempted to influence the reporters, including one Armenian who repeatedly claimed that he possessed private information, presumably of fictional Turkish misdeeds. This illustrated a customary way in which the uncritical Western journalists collected their details, often referring to their usually unnamed sources as reliable. Pickthall also recounts his time with his Turkish language teacher, a Christian from Diyarbakir. “Though we talked together long and freely, I could not discover that he had ever so much as heard of Turkish fanaticism — Christian though he was, and mixing, as he did, continually with Mahommedans.”
The Armenian penchant for dishonesty has been recorded widely by Westerners who got to know them. One, whom Peter Balakian ironically pointed to (in “The Burning Tigris”) as a voice affirming the “genocide,” was the American poet Ezra Pound, who wrote in The New Age (October 21, 1915, Vol. XVII. No. 25): “I mistrust all accounts of Armenians.”
We're going to take a look at this characteristic, peculiar to too many Armenians who have lent their voices publicly on their genocide, as much as we'd rather adopt the high road followed in Kamuran Gurun's excellent book, "The Armenian File." Gurun had written in his introduction:
"Because it was not our intent to slander the Armenian nation, nor to blame all Armenians for the actions of a small group... we have also avoided observations and opinions against the Armenians as a people which were contained in many of our sources."
So what's the idea here, with this page? Number one, there is no limitation in Armenian propaganda referring to how subhuman the Turks are as a people; it is simply disgraceful that these bigoted accounts are being pointed to in this day and age, and accepted without criticism in what is supposed to be an enlightened and "race-sensitive" age. But here, when the missionaries or when those such as Henry Morgenthau tried to present the Turks as the worst beings on earth, they had prejudices and/or agendas. In addition, the far greater number of writers who never had firsthand experience with the Turkish people directly, simply parroted the racist observations that were omnipresent. (There are plenty of accounts telling us that when Westerners got to know Turks firsthand, they were quickly won over by the goodness of the Turks.)
By contrast, Westerners who developed a low opinion of Armenians did so through firsthand experience. They often began with the most positive feelings toward the Armenians, as cultivated in their Christian home countries, but then through personal observations, began to make generalizations about certain Armenian characteristics.
Secondly, it's important to shed light on this penchant for dishonesty, because the prejudiced world today naively accepts whatever a Vahakn Dadrian or Peter Balakian throws their way. (At one time, that was not the case: "[T]he average American was beginning to grow sophisticated and sceptical concerning propaganda about the Near East," as William T. Ellis nicely put it in a 1928 article about "Smyrna"; that is one reason Armenians kept quiet roughly until 1965, on the 50th anniversary of their "genocide," time to get the hateful ball rolling again.)
A few of these observations have already been sprinkled throughout the site, as when the Armenians' great post WWI friend, Lord Curzon remarked, "the Turk is honest; the Christian is a liar and a cheat," as a result of his travels in "Armenia," in the early 1850s. Baron Max von Thielmann remarked on the tendency of Armenians to be "seldom if ever conscientious," from his own 1875 travel memoirs, but added importantly, "Still it must not be concluded from this that there are no honourable exceptions..."
"[N]o one, not even the missionaries, seems to have a good word to say about them," thought Lt. General Sir W. N. Congreve in 1919. A "gentleman" remarked, in Gratan Geary's 1878 travel memoirs, on how "a Mohammedan" may be trusted on his word, whereas a native Christian caused him to ask himself "where the deception lies — in what direction I am going to be tricked. There are exceptions, of course."
Historian-turned-genocide-scholar Dr. Margaret Lavinia Anderson compiled a few other examples of Westerners' views on the character of Armenians, in her article entitled, “Down in Turkey, far away” (Contemporary Issues in Historical Perspective, The Journal of Modern History, volume 79, 2007); she points to an article (later expanded into a booklet) in Die Zukunft, written by Hans Barth, whom the author describes as a "polemicist," and a "turcophile." (The rare Westerner giving a fair shake to Turks usually risks such a description, since everyone knows Turks are rotten, and who else would be of the right mind to write favorably of them?)
"Barth then grasped the nettle of the victims’ national character," Anderson writes. "Armenians... were impossible not to dislike. In contrast to (the Turkish Peasantry)..., these guys were usurers who 'plundered' their honest, hardworking Muslim neighbors. Pretty flimsy stuff." What is so flimsy about those in power positions ("[T]he Armenians are the bankers, merchants, mechanics, and traders of all sorts in Turkey... so that without them the Osmanlis could not survive a single day"; Hatchik Oscanyan, 1857) ripping off those less fortunate? This is called "Capitalism," which often goes hand in hand with "exploitation," and if the ones on top exhibit signs of not being particular about ethics, it's not unusual for such people to bend the rules in their favor. This sort of thing happens with U.S. corporations all the time.
The ninth century poetess Kassia (in the Frankfurter Zeitung's series, “Famous Women in Ancient Greece and Byzantium”; Prof. Anderson gently mocked the editors of the influential German publication for excusing the following as a "contribution to the current debate," but probably would not have protested when the same publication wrote lines to the extent that "the Armenians are more intelligent than the Turks," as Arnold Toynbee quoted, and Pickthall responded to, above) described the Armenians as “quite horrifying people,” and as Anderson summed up, "malicious in low positions, worse when prosperous, and worst of all when they rose to high estate." Left Liberal leader Friedrich Naumann's travel articles also maintained a low opinion: "Naumann quoted at length one who, to unanimous accord, justified the massacres as the 'self-defense' of honest, upright Turks, a people exploited by the grasping Armenian, who would steal from his own brother, sell his wife and prepubescent daughter, and morally befoul the whole city." Karl May, "the era’s most popular adventure writer," spoke of the Armenians (in The Empire of the Silver Lion, 1898) as those who (“speaking generally and on average”) could be behind “any kind of vile thing” taking place "whenever and wherever in the Orient."
Sir Mark Sykes, with one of the natives
Sir Mark Sykes is damned with a scandalous statement for these politically correct times (but only for select peoples): “Even Jews have their good points, but Armenians have none,” as quoted in G. S. Graber, Caravans to Oblivion: The Armenian Genocide, 1915 (1996). Hopefully the reader will allow a "Sykes digression" here, since Sykes got to know the Armenians and Turks very well, as he demonstrated in travel books such as Dar-ul-Islam; however, he did an "about face" in his views come WWI. (Likely for patriotic reasons; he was recruited to write anti-Turkish propaganda for Wellington House, where he indulged in fabrications and demonization — Sykes described Turks as "pure barbarians" and "degenerate," for example — and had a major hand in 1916's secret Sykes-Picot Agreement, outlining the Ottoman land-grabbing scheme between Britain and France.) Sir Sykes didn't care for being quoted in C. F. Dixon-Johnson's "The Armenians," as he illustrated in a letter to The Times. Marmaduke Picktall called Sykes on his change of heart, as Sykes made it seem that his words constituted "an attack on the Armenians, and that the quotations (by Sykes)... were wrested from their true meaning, or unwarrantably introduced in such a work?" After Pickthall quotes a revealing passage on the nature of the Armenians (from Sykes' The Caliphs’ Last Heritage, 1915; see under "Addendum, 9-07" here), of which Pickthall remarks: "The utterance is indeed so decided that the author’s firm conviction of its truth alone could justify its publication. I believe it, from my own slight knowledge of Armenians, to be true; and I, in common with many other Englishmen who have hitherto regarded Sir Mark Sykes as a friend and possible champion of the much misjudged Mohammedan majority in Turkey, am anxious to know what has caused this sudden change in his opinions... if the pro- Armenian friends of Sir Mark Sykes object to temperate and reasoned opposition, they must be in a truly pitiable state of mind. I ask every reader of ‘The Armenians,’ by C. F. Dixon-Johnson, to compare it with the pamphlet ‘Armenian Massacres: The Murder of a Nation,’ by Mr. Arnold J. Toynbee, and then, and not till then, to think about it.”
Otto von Bismarck’s epithets for an Austrian he did not care for included "Tartar, mouse-trap dealer, Armenian," as quoted in a 1950 book by Erich Eyck, Bismarck and the German Empire. (I have a feeling Prof. Anderson could find the first word acceptable as a curse term; "Tartar," of course, is often a description for Azeris or other Turkic peoples from Asia.) Barth is faulted for bringing up the proverb which states an Armenian is better able to cheat Greeks and Jews, elements found "in the works of orientalists such as Alfred Korte, the archaeologist; Karl Krummbacher, founder of Byzantine studies in Germany; and Hugo Grothe, a geographer who assured readers that not Muslim fanaticism (the explanation of choice among armenophiles) but Armenian exploitation was responsible for the violence." Grothe's line of thinking, we are told, may better be understood by the fact that Grothe later became a Nazi. Does that mean those who pointed out unappealing characteristics of Armenians were all Nazis at heart?
For example, are we to believe this next speaker was in line to sport a Swastika?
"One of the disappointments in the present terrible situation and one of the saddest commentaries on American missionary work among the Armenians is their lack of religious and moral principles and the general baseness of the race. During all that has happened during the past year I have not heard of a single act of heroism or of self-sacrifice and the noble acts, if any, have been very few. On the contrary mothers have given their daughters to the lowest and vilest Turks to save their own lives; to change their religion is a matter of little importance to most of the people; lying and trickery and inordinate love of money are besetting sins of almost all, even while they stand in the very shadow of death. On one occasion, when the students of the Armenian theological seminary were arrested, nearly every one of them lied about one thing or another to save himself. Absolute truthfulness is almost unknown among the members of this race. Money is sought at any price, even at the risk of their lives, as in the case of the young man already mentioned in this despatch whom I had saved from death and tried to help for several months by keeping him in the Consulate. Every trick and device are resorted to by those who are not in need as well as by those who are to obtain money and often by depriving others of it who are in much greater need. From every point of view the race is one that cannot be admired although it is one to be pitied."
The author was U.S. Consul Leslie Davis, from one of the "Bibles" of the Armenians' genocide, The Slaughterhouse Province.
Now here is where Professor Anderson really goes overboard: "Extenuating the massacres in 1896 are Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, who note that in the course of the violence the sultan ordered 'the government to crack down on the Armenian merchants of Istanbul to lessen their substantial economic power.'" (History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, vol. 2, 1997). The professor comments: "Imagine if a historian wrote that Hitler’s government had decided to 'crack down' on Berlin’s Jews."
The legitimate history of these mid-1890s events is that the Armenians, excited by their fanatical leaders, committed revolts and massacres, in order to induce European imperialists to step in and give the Armenians free hand-outs. No matter how often propagandists tell us otherwise, this irrefutable fact is confirmed in too many Armenian friendly sources to be questioned. (Missionary Cyrus Hamlin, for one.) Logically, too, after six hundred years of fairly harmonious co-existence, the reasons provided by propagandists, such as Muslims hating Christians, cannot explain why the Ottomans suddenly decided to massacre Armenians. So if imperialist-inducement serves as the backdrop, and if Sultan Abdul Hamid decided to curtail the power of the Armenians who had an economic grip over his nation, because he figured — for very good reason — the traditional "Loyal Nation" of the Armenians were suddenly untrustworthy and dangerous (who, after all, was financing the Hunchaks and the Dashnaks? It was the wealthy Armenians, whether by choice or coercion), then any government would have done what the Professors Shaw have reported that the Sultan has done. This episode cannot be compared with the German Jews of WWII, because the Jews were entirely innocent, and were not out to topple Germany; and besides, if this historical claim happened, then it is the duty of professional historians to report it as a fact. Note that Prof. Anderson does not examine the factual nature of the claim itself, as she needed to do, if she didn't like what was being said. No, Prof. Anderson is actually insinuating that the Professors Shaw were closet neo-Nazis! In other words, she is focusing on maligning the character of the historians, rather than sticking to the facts or non-facts of the historians' work.
This kind of practice is truly despicable, but it is only in a day's work for the typical genocide scholar. Prof. Anderson's paper is filled with falsehoods and speculations, but I am not going to address the many other eyebrow-raising points she makes in her quest to uphold the golden equation, "Armenians=good; Turks=bad." (That is not the point of this page, for one thing, and her work has already been examined in a page of her own.) Nevertheless, there are two of her points I would like to address: she tells us the number for the 1894-96 Armenian dead amounts to "some 200,000 or more Armenians," and we get the idea from her footnote that the figure is a fair median. The two extremes? Lepsius, whom she has stated elsewhere is a "hero" of hers, figured 88,000, later updated to 100,000 (not including those who died later, the professor points out, for reasons such as "loss of breadwinner"), and on the higher end: "By 1903, French and Italian commentators were putting the number of victims at 300,000 (Pour l’Arménie et la Macédoine, Paris, 1904)."
Isn't that remarkable?
In the same New Age letter where Pickthall took apart Toynbee's "Blue Book" work (the one Prof. Anderson assigns to her students as legitimate history; Pickthall's New Age letter appeared in the Dec. 16, 1915 issue), he reported that in the same vein as the 1876 Bulgarian victims first given as 60,000 and later proven by British Ambassador Layard to be 3,500 ("including the Turks, who were, in the first instance, slain by the Christians"), similarly, the 1894 Sassun massacres" (Placed in quotation marks by Pickthall) were first slated at 8,000, "and afterwards reduced in the final report of the Commission of Enquiry to 900." There are many other examples of such "appalling fabrications," as Pickthall worded it, that are on record.
The rare conscientious missionary, George Lamsa, wrote in his 1923 book "The Secret of the Near East," that 40,000 Armenians were reported killed, 10,000 women taken to the harem, and thousands of children left destitute, "In some towns containing ten Armenian houses and thirty Turkish houses." The Armenian-sympathetic Briton, Richard Davey, gave us an excellent idea as to how the game worked: "If anyone wishes to form an idea of how Armenian atrocities are manufactured and exaggerated, let him read the Blue-books on 'affairs at Aleppo,' 1879. The London papers, inspired by the 'patriots,' announced, with a great flourish of trumpets, that 500 Armenians had been tortured and massacred in the neighbourhood of that city; and there was, so to speak, a great Armenian horrors' boom all over the western world and America too. Well, after all this sensationalism, the number of slain was eventually reduced by our own and the American consuls to eight."
Of course, the bigoted French and Italian writers were going to give credence to this malarkey, just as today's genocide scholars accept such propaganda without question. The 300,000 figure is so totally without foundation, how obscene to even mention it. It is Lepsius's figure of 100,000 that is actually on the high end (this is the figure that Wellington House propagandist, and another devout Christian, Lord Bryce, also provided as the mid-1890s toll), because men such as Lepsius and Bryce shared the agenda to make the Turks appear as horrible as possible. The estimate of Barth (29,000, maximum) is much closer to the truth, more than double the figure of the Ottomans' 13,432. (As usual, the Turks killed by the Armenians during the same period — some 5,000 — remain invisible.) And how does Prof. Anderson handle this estimate? (And this is the second point of hers I would like to highlight for criticism.) She writes that Barth was "almost certainly on the take"! That's right! The German author was an "agent of the Turkish government," in other words, a government that was "almost ludicrously innocent of the propagandist’s art," as master Wellington House propagandist Arnold Toynbee himself worded it (in Western Question in Greece and Turkey," 1922.)
The fact of the matter is, despite Prof. Anderson's cruel term, "Turkey's 'lie factory,'" the Turks — then and now — usually have no idea of what they are doing, as far as protecting themselves. Pickthall pinned their psychology perfectly, in another New Age letter (July 10, 1919, Vol. XXV. No. 11): "[T]he Turk never sticks up for himself in the controversy against Europe. He does not know how to do so... he puts himself in the wrong from a tendency to accept the point of view of his opponents... There is also the feeling that it is a waste of time to seek to demolish prejudices so robust as those which Europe cherishes regarding Turkey, even though those prejudices may be based upon false information. The Turk is thus the worst possible champion of his own cause. Anyone in possession of the facts could state his case much better than he can state it." This brings to mind two points: it is this combination of fatalism, helplessness and apathy, in addition to pride, that has caused the Turks to mostly keep quiet against genocide allegations for years, allowing the genocide juggernaut to grow as powerful as it has become today, seducing professors with bonafide history degrees to get in on the beneficial game. Secondly, because the easy charge of being an "agent of the Turkish government" is perfectly in line with the Armenians' tendency to "pay off" those who can help with their political cause — as in the case of Taner Akcam — once again, the Armenians do the crime, and blame the Turks of the same crime. Genocide scholars and others, prejudiced to begin with, easily accept and repeat these baseless charges.
How did Prof. Anderson demonstrate her outrageous accusation against Barth? Here was her "proof": "Who else would have covered the costs of publishing Turk, Defend Yourself! a pamphlet on steroids, with gilt-edged pages? Of having it translated into French?" (Would it have cost such an unreasonable fortune to have published a "pamphlet" in 1898 Germany?) What Prof. Anderson is really getting at is, the Turks are simply so awful, anyone who is interested in telling the historical truth (which, unfortunately for such writers, involves portraying Turks as actual human beings) must be getting paid off. And this comes from a woman fancying herself as one for human rights, a woman who apologizes for the Armenians at every turn, portraying those who have pointed out the Armenians' less desirable qualities as ones who raise their right arms, click their boots, and cry, "Ja wohl, mein Fuehrer."
Turnabout is fair play, in this page examining the dishonesty of Armenians, and Prof. Anderson makes a fair point; she reveals that the 1988 Turkish version of Barth's "Turk, Defend Yourself!" pamphlet was mistranslated as "O Turk, Awake." Just as the travel books from the 19th century, written by Westerners without axes to grind against the Turks, confirmed the honesty of the Turks and Kurds versus the dishonesty of Ottoman Christians (for example, Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels, in the words of Marx, felt "the mass of the Turkish people" was "unconditionally one of the bravest and most moral representatives of the European peasantry" [Karl Marx: His Life and Thought, 1973], and even the rare missionary, Elder Tanner, thought of the Turks as the "most honest and moral of the Orientals," in 1886), I have learned not to always accept the claims of Turks when it comes to genocide matters. (Whereas, when I seriously first got into this surreal genocide world, I would accept Turkish word at face value, because with truth on their side, I figured, why would Turks have a reason to falsify?)
But Turks suffer, generally, from two problems. The main problem is a lack of attention to detail, and such sloppiness sometimes goes hand in hand with a "this is good enough" attitude. What is the excuse for mistranslating the title of another author's book? There is none, and that certainly does not induce confidence in how carefully the rest of the book may have been translated. Secondly — and luckily, this happens rarely, but it does happen — some Turks do lie outright on genocide claims. For example, some fool made up quotes, attributing these quotes to actual personalities, attesting to how Armenians had killed 2.5 million Turks. Whatever parties concocted such falsehoods must not have given any consideration to the overall damage caused; the Turks are already seen, in the prejudiced Western world, as the liars of this genocide matter, and how absolutely stupid to create further dents in Turkish integrity. (Similar to prejudiced Westerners who accept Armenian propaganda at face value, the Turks who have read these lines and then have gone on to repeat them also suffer from a blind, unquestioning acceptance.)
Where does this dishonesty come from, when the Turks have no reason to lie? I believe it's frustration. The extremist Armenians may be observed in trying every dirty trick in the book, in the defense of Hai Tahd. From outright lying to ad hominem attacks, to financially supporting Turkish opportunists, to pretending to be Turkish in the forums they contribute to or in the web sites they establish... you name it, they've done it. Some Turks then become weak, and start thinking in terms of "two can play at that game." That is the worst thing they can do, of course.
This is the downside of committing wrongs. The Turks and Armenians were the best of friends for centuries, until some greedy Armenians went nuts and started committing ghastly crimes against the Turks, hoping for a response in turn. Sometimes, of course, they got what they wished for. On a smaller scale, that is exactly what has happened with the concept of spreading falsehoods. The dishonesty of these extremist Armenians know no bounds, and there are times such infectious poison will spread.
Let us revisit the state of the Armenian professors. Is there one, when it comes to the "genocide" subject, who is honest? Forget about the old guard like Dadrian and Hovannisian, they are beyond redemption. The comparative younger generation, illustrated by the likes of Peter Balakian, have followed in the same footsteps. There are some who have tried to keep a lid on the dishonesty, such as Ara Sarafian and Ronald Suny (the former's reward with one episode was practically to be accused as an "agent of the Turkish government," the same fate that awaited his one-time partner who gave honesty a shot, Vincent Lima), but how can you defend the indefensible? No matter how these people try to go about it, there simply was no "Final Solution" plan against the Armenians, and whatever these Armenian scholars are going to say, it's going to turn out to be a lie. The only relevant factor then becomes, how far will they be willing to stretch the truth? (The only respectable Armenian scholar I know from the world of genocide is Dr. Robert John; that's pathetic.)
This page has not been an easy one to prepare, because as stated off the bat, all generalizations are dangerous. And the last thing I want to do is give the impression that Armenians can be counted on for their dishonesty. That is certainly not the case; there are extremely honorable Armenians out there, and I have had the privilege to know a few. The problem is, these are the ones who are keeping quiet. Either they don't want to get mixed up with the mad dogs among them (that's the age-old "Curtain of Fear" at play), or their own patriotic feelings are such that they feel the liars are performing a valuable service for Hai Tahd... which would not make them very honorable. (Recall the former Courier publisher's words above, referring to the "peaceful, fair, and thoughtful men who have expressed support for the terrorists"; these Armenians sound like they would have come from the "honorable" category, but their misguided patriotism superseded their honor.)
But our world is increasingly becoming ethically-challenged, and this kind of behavior is not restricted to Armenians. As the TIME essay went on to offer:
A study demonstrated that “a significant minority of fans — if guaranteed anonymity — would even support injuring an opposing player or coach.” In 1940, a football team "forfeited a victory after realizing that it had been mistakenly given an extra play. If a coach did that today, sports writers would declare him a saint. And his team’s fans would boil him in oil."
On the other hand, there is a definite pattern of Armenian mendacity through the ages, regardless of how much the apologists for Armenians attempt to cast the writers of such opinions as racist Nazis. If an Armenian champion as Leslie Davis writes, "Absolute truthfulness is almost unknown among the members of this race," then it is difficult not to pay notice. If Marmaduke Pickthall, who surely was not raised with any prejudices toward Armenians in his Armenian-sappy nation of Great Britain, writes, based on his own observations and interactions that "The typical Armenian esteems it meritorious not only to exaggerate but to invent occurrences calculated to excite the pity of the Western world,” we have got to pay attention. Because when it comes to their genocide obsession, this is the way Armenians behave, as a rule; at least the ones who make their voices heard publicly. We have to pay attention, because it is these ethically-challenged Armenians who are snookering the already prejudiced world with their genocide lies, breeding the grounds for further prejudice and hatred. The stakes are high; when "neutral" observers look into these matters, they must be forewarned not to accept Armenian claims without deep study. They must entertain a healthy "mistrust [of] ... accounts of Armenians,” as another Armenian champion, Ezra Pound, felt he must do.
Furthermore, this pattern of Armenian dishonesty is a stain upon the Armenians' national honor. The honorable Armenians must force themselves to adhere to the truth, and nothing but the truth, no matter how much it hurts. This will mean turning one's back on the claims of Armenian professors and their genocide scholar allies. That will be an extremely difficult thing for most Armenians to attempt, but the honorable Armenian must do it. The honorable Armenian must put the truth above his or her feelings of patriotism, and/or pathological victimhood. If the honorable Armenian can get rid of the blind, religious genocide faith and drum up the necessary rationality, and see where the truth really stands (it's not that difficult; for example, here is a French historian's 1920 account, and the account is perfectly in line with the version derogatorily called "Turkish propaganda." There is no way this French historian was a "turcophile", nor was he "on the take," especially from a nearly nonexistent 1920 Ottoman government under British and French control. After the read, and after having paid note to the fact that the French historian also made use of propagandistic Armenian sources, there is a question that begs to be asked: why doesn't a "historian" like Prof. Anderson go near the sources examinng the role of the Dashnaks and Hunchaks in depth, as a real historian would be duty-bound to do?). Then the honorable Armenian must do the most difficult thing: SPEAK UP.
(Currently, and since the death of Edward Tashji, there is only one — or, I should say, there are one-and-a-half, as the second one can be ambiguous, perhaps on purpose so as not to lose his audience — Armenians I am aware of who publicly question the "genocide." That is ridiculous.)
It is the duty of the right-minded Armenian to stringently stress the genuine truth. If my national heritage has become known for a negative trait, and there is sound reason for it (as opposed to the negative traits that Turks have become known for, as a result of vicious propaganda; Sir Mark Sykes' charges of Turks being "pure barbarians" and "degenerate" may top the long list), then I would want to do whatever I could do to dispel this negative image that has the potential of hurting my kind.
The TIME article goes on to tell us that "Sports are often compared to war. The team is our army, battling for our honor. But there’s a key twist: the players aren’t citizen-soldiers; they’re mercenaries. They can be bought, bartered and sold, and once they are, they go from heroes to enemies."
And this genocide battle is a war, a war that the Armenians and their supporters are handily winning, because of their dishonesty, wealth, and sheer brute force, along with existing anti-Turkish prejudices in the Western world, as well as Turkish apathy. Naturally, if the honorable Armenians begin to speak the truth, they will go from heroes to enemies within the Armenian and genocide scholar camp. That will take plenty of courage, and it is easy to understand why almost no Armenians have put themselves on the line, as who needs to face the destructive actions of these unscrupulous extremists? Yet, Armenian national honor needs to be protected. The honorable Armenian must consider what line of action would constitute greater patriotism, while also considering the price of ostracism and character defamation, practiced by the screwballs on the genocide team.
The honorable Armenians who don't speak up will risk being guilty of exactly what the TIME author has said about the sports fans:
"we aren’t innocent victims; we’re co-conspirators." (An Armenian who is not an "innocent victim"? Unfathomable.)
The conclusion of the TIME article is right on the money, as far as the rest of the pack, the dishonorable Armenians. Simply substitute "The genocide-obsessed Armenian activist" for "Belicheck."
"Belicheck... knows that as long as he wins, all will be forgiven. And that once he stops, it won’t matter if he becomes Mother Teresa. He doesn’t care about being fair to the other team; he doesn’t even really care about his own players. He just wants to win."
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© Holdwater
The source site of this article gets revised often, as better information comes along. For the most up-to-date version, links and the related photos, the reader may consider reviewing the direct link as follows:
www.tallarmeniantale.com/ethics-genociders.htm
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When you hear the words "oppression," "genocide," "racism," or even "torture" or "rape," do you immediately recoil as you always did? I don't. While I hate those evils as much as ever, I no longer assume the term always describes the reality....
For example, the liberal press' unending preoccupation with American abuses of Iraqi detainees had a number of deleterious consequences. One was a further undermining of Arab and Muslim support for America's liberation of Iraq. But the longest-lasting negative effect was probably the cheapening of the word "torture."
It undermined the war against torture to characterize what some Americans did to some Iraqis in the Abu Ghraib prison -- actions that were indeed sick, un-American and shameful to our military -- as "torture." Labeling abuses as "torture" filled me with pity for all the people around the world who had experienced real torture.
I kept thinking about those whose bodies were burned, whose fingernails were torn out, who were hung by their arms in a way that broke their shoulders (a common Chinese communist torture), who were put into human shredders (in Saddam's Iraq) or who had burning hot steel rods shoved into their rectums. How did these poor souls react to seeing the Western media routinely describe humiliating and frightening naked men for the sadistic amusement of guards as "torture"?
A second example is "rape." In the past, when I heard that a woman had been raped, I recoiled in horror. Not any more. Now, my first reaction is, "What happened to her?"
One has to ask that question because the feminist left has redefined the word "rape" to the point where, unless you know the specifics, you don't know if a woman was violently forced into sexual intercourse or had engaged in sex that she regretted the following morning.
For the latter is one of the definitions of "rape" that the feminist movement uses and has disseminated. That is how the figure "one in four" women having been raped was derived. And while the late feminist thinker Andrea Dworkin did not actually make the statement widely attributed to her that "all (heterosexual) sex is rape," it was a sentiment that was earnestly debated in feminist circles.
Individuals and groups on the left have done the same to the word "genocide." The term originally meant an attempt to murder all members of a racial, ethnic, national or religious group. Today, it is used to describe an Israeli attack on Palestinian terrorists that also unintentionally kills some civilians, and to describe what America is doing in Iraq and even what America has done to its black population. So, when one hears "genocide" today, one immediately wants to know who is using the term and against whom.
Even the left in Israel, the nation that arose from the ashes of the most organized genocide in history, misuses the word. For example, professor Israel Charny, director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem, told the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz: "We (Israelis) have never committed an act of genocide. We have perpetrated a few acts of genocidal massacre against a small number of people."
"Genocide" against a small number of a people? What, then, is not "genocide"?
No term is more often used by the left than "oppressed." American women are routinely described as "oppressed," as are America's blacks, Hispanics and all poor people. But if American women, the freest women in human history, are oppressed, what term is left to describe the treatment of women in Arab and some other Muslim countries?
And then there is "racism." Being aware of the racism of those who lynched blacks in America and the racism of Nazism, I grew up believing no doctrine was more evil. Yet today, I yawn when I hear a member of the left use the term -- such as when Sen. Harry Reid characterized the Senate's proclamation of English as America's official language as "racist," or when whites and blacks who oppose race-based affirmative action are called racists.
One more example will have to suffice: The left regularly charges America's conservative Christians with wanting to make America a "theocracy," being "fascists" and/or being "anti-Semites." They are none of those things, and as a result, the battle against real theocrats (Muslim fundamentalists), real fascists and real anti-Semites is compromised.
The tragedy of all this is that when evils are defined down, good people are left verbally unarmed when the real evils present themselves. It is yet another way in which the left, intentionally or not, undermines the battle against evil.
28 June 2006, Resource : Frontpage.mag
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The German publication, “Die Welt,” is not normally known for being Turk-friendly. Yet a remarkable article appeared in its pages, clearly recognizing that the "Turkish side" of the genocide debate is actually being conducted from the standpoint of honesty.
The original article may be found at welt.de/data/2006/03/20/862391.html
Great thanks go to Dr.Oylar Saguner for pointing out this article, as well as having translated it. The translation has been slightly modified, for readability purposes.
1,634 turkish officers condemned to death
The great conference in Istanbul on the Armenian Genocide could set a remarkable change
by Boris Kalnoky
It could be a discussion platform on which the Armenian historians could have shown up their Turkish colleagues in a proper manner, regarding how the Armenian people, from 1915 until 1917, had been exterminated by the Turkish hand. But most of them preferred to stay away. Four Armenian historians who represented the Armenian Genocide thesis were invited to the three day conference, “New Basic Approaches in Turkish-Armenian Relations”, however they have refused to participate. Therefore there were only three advocates of the Genocide-Thesis at the conference, facing off to their opponents, historians who do not see a genocide in the deportation of the Armenian people by the Ottoman Government. Hilmar Kaiser, the Israeli historian Yair Auron and Ara Sarafian from the Gomidas-Institute of London listened to what their collegues had to say. The result was interesting: Sarafian promised at the end to start combined projects together with the historians of the TTK[1] (an institution which made it their duty to invalidate the genocide thesis).
New research results came especially from Yusuf Sarinay who presented documents according to which the Ottoman Minister of Interior Affairs Talat Pasha ordered a stringent action in order to protect the deported Armenians from hostile attacks, and signed the death penalties of 1,643 Turkish officers, soldiers and officials who assaulted/mistreated the deportees. It was clearly known that such executions were ordered; however, the personal role of Talat Pasha, referred to by the Armenian side as a merciless hater of Armenian people and the architect of the genocide, was new. [2]
The German-Turkish historian Cem Özgönül presented a remarkable debut. Özgönül has diligently studied the documents of the archives of the German foreign office as the first Turkish historian and compared them with the ones which were published in 1919 by the Protestant Armenian activist Johannes Lepsius (under the order of the government of the German Empire). In “The Myth of a Genocide” (Onel-Publishers, 2006) Özgönül demonstrates that Lepsius systematically and massively manipulated the documents, in order to suggest exaggerated dimensions to the Armenian genocide (number of the victims), and to belittle its causes (Armenian terrorists) and to insinuate racist motives upon the Ottoman leadership. At the end, Lepsius — so argues Özgönül — wanted the spin off of the Armenians from the Ottoman Empire. Özgönül means that the manipulations to a certain extent served to diminish German complicity because Lepsius followed pro-Armenian objectives without the consent of the German foreign office.
If those explanations prove correct, then the most important documentary basis of the representatives of the Genocide-Thesis will be shaken. Another main pillar, the so called Andonian Documents were already proven falsified more than 20 years ago.
Hilmar Kaiser, a famous protagonist of the Genocide, listened to Özgönül's presentation, but brought up no objections or criticism. It will be interesting to follow this aspect of the discussion in upcoming months. If Özgönül's work indeed stands against critical examination, there could begin a basic turn to the discussions to the genocide of the Armenians.
One can always allege a genocide in the debate. At that time there was not a judicial term; however, it is not very difficult to classify the incidents as genocide according to the UN Definition. In contrast, the Turkish historians say that there was no intention to exterminate, and the number of victims on the Armenian side (by illness, hunger, and attacks) was not higher than the number of victims on the Turkish side by illness, hunger and Armenian attacks. In addition, there was no “singularity” of the Armenian Sorrow — one can reproach the Armenian Revolutionaries in much the same manner as the Ottomans, regarding the massacre and systematic expulsion of civilians in those areas where they (Armenians) had been the ruling power at times. Perhaps the next time, Armenian historians will attend in order to defend their position.
March 20, 2006
Holdwater Notes
[1] The TTK represents the Turkish initials for the Turkish Historical Society, currently presided by Prof. Yusuf Halacoglu.
[2] The figure of those Turks who were brought to trial, accused of committing crimes against Armenians, has been updated from Kamuran Gurun's 1,397. More details may be seen here (where the number is 1,673, and not 1,634). If the article claimed all of these people were faced with the death penalty, that would have been a huge mistake.
While it is wonderful that Turkish professors are finally getting off their lead-lined behinds (not all are like that, of course) and conducting original "genocide" research in foreign archives, some are so green around the edges, they figure because they encounter information, it must have been for the first time. In reality, the manipulations of Lepsius are old news. This is not to say Dr. Özgönül's work is not to be appreciated, as hopefully he has come upon new insights.
If the author of this article was inspired by the truths presented at this conference, that is very refreshing. Too often, bigoted Westerners brainwashed by Armenian propaganda are in "denial," no matter how solid the evidence may appear to be. Regardless, the author was being far too optimistic, in regards to the impact of this conference. The genocide industry has an aversion to truth, and none (more importantly, the biased Western media as well) paid serious attention to the goings-on. They would much rather focus on the closed-door genocide club meetings, like the Suny-Gocek WATS workshops (where only like-minded participants are allowed to attend; that is, one must have already agreed there was an Armenian genocide).
The fact that Turkish conferences allow the opposition to attend is already a great sign of how much more honest the Turkish side is. This is nothing new; Dr. Levon Marashlian provided a report on a similar conference back in 1990. (He was the only one with the guts to have attended, even though "the usual gang of propagandistic idiots" were all invited.)
Running a search for "New Approaches in Turkish Armenian Relations," the name of this symposium, makes it apparent that there has been practically no coverage in the English language press, except in sites such as panarmenian.net and armeniandiaspora.com. The most popular report was "Not Many 'New Approaches' for Armenian Issue," written by an Armenian-Turk, Talin Suciyan (Sujian); one can tell from the title how little the partisan author cared for the proceedings. The author sneered in his sub-headline that the conference "witnessed the reproduction of nationalist reflexes and unscientific propositions."
The powerful genocide industry has managed to get their claws into Turkey itself, hoping to manipulate gullible Turkish minds. Late in 2005, a genocide seminar was held in Bilgi University, where not only the speakers, but even the people in the audience were evidently pre-screened. (This one was originally slated at Bogazici University, and caused a commotion. A little backdrop may be read on this page.) Immediately after that travesty, the Turks held a conference of their own, inviting without fear genocide advocates. As flawed as this one reportedly was (it went off the genocide topic), a few genocide advocates like Fikret Adanir did attend (while Halil Berktay, the star of the Bilgi U. affair, did not), and were evidently shell-shocked by all the irrefutable evidence. The Istanbul U. conference held in mid-March of 2006 appears to have been a step in the better direction, focusing on genocide particulars, as ignored as it was in the genocide universe.
Justin McCarthy seated next to Israel Charny at the Istanbul University conference
McCarthy and Charny, together!
Seeing Israel Charny trying to compete with the likes of a genuine scholar, Justin McCarthy, would have been worth the price of admission. The two were seated next to each other, littlle Izzy and the robust McCarthy, and the study in contrasts must have been irresistible. One who attended the conference privately mentioned that she had seen Hilmar Kaiser greet Charny at the lobby after Charny's ordeal, and overheard Kaiser offering words of consolation. Spoiled with their usual one-sided genocide club conferences, the genocide advocates must have been aware that they were severely outmatched.
----------------------------------------------------
© Holdwater
The source site of this article gets revised often, as better
information comes along. For the most up-to-date version, and
the related photos, the reader may consider reviewing
the direct link as follows:
www.tallarmeniantale.com/gen-conf-Istanbul.htm
-----------------------------------------------------
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"Genocide Scholars" such as Israel Charny claim Turkey conducted a genocide under the regulations of the 1948 U.N. Convention on Genocide. (For example, as Charny wrote in a 2005 open letter to Turkish leader Erdogan.) Since Charny is a "genocide scholar," one would think he would at least be an expert on what the 1948 Convention says, since Charny in particular has shown little evidence of being a scholar in most everything else. (See "Revealing the true identity of the sham 'genocide expert' Dr. Israel Charny," evidently written by a fellow Israeli, at the bottom of this page.) . . .
Let's examine more closely the requirements of the U.N. Convention.
Armenian Diaspora's Accusing Turkey Of Genocide Is A Legal Crime
ANKARA - ''Armenian diaspora's accusing Turkey of genocide is a legal crime,'' Sukru Elekdag, MP of the main opposition party --Republican People's Party (CHP)-- said on Thursday.
Sukru Elekdag
Speaking at an international symposium held at Ankara's Gazi University on ''Turkish-Armenian Relations and 1915 Incidents'', Elekdag said, ''those who advocate Armenian thesis, cannot prove their allegations within the context of the United Nations Conventions on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The Article 4 of the Convention says that only persons and public officials can be accused of genocide, not juristic persons or states. Also, Article 6 of the same convention says that those allegations should be determined by competent tribunals.''
''Parliaments of several countries decided to recognize so-called Armenian genocide by violating the United Nations Convention. A decision made by violating international laws does not have any legal ground. The law does not define the 1915 incidents as crime of genocide. Therefore, an undefined act cannot be considered crime. This is the principle of 'there is no crime without law'. Under all these principles, it is impossible to describe the 1915 incidents as genocide, and to accuse the Ottoman Empire and Turkey of genocide. Those allegations have both political and legal dimensions. Therefore, a court of arbitration should be formed to deal with the issue,'' he said.
(Source misplaced)
A competent tribunal was set in motion, to find individual Ottomans guilty of massacres. This was the Malta Tribunal. It never went to trial, because for over two years, its administrators could not find evidence for conviction. The archives of several nations were searched, including the archives of the United States, and certainly the archives of the Ottoman Empire, which was under the control of the British occupying Istanbul. Every accused was set free at the end.
"Nullum Crimen"
Along with the the principle of 'there is no crime without law,' as stated above, is the principle of Nullum Crimen.
The principle called "Nullum crimen, nulla poena sine praevia lege poenali" is a basic maxim in continental European legal thinking,and recognized in virtually all modern democracies. It was authored by Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach as part of the Bavarian Code in 1813. This maxim states that there can be no crime committed, and no punishment meted out, without a violation of penal law as it existed at the time. This basic legal principle has been incorporated into international criminal law. It thus prohibits the creation of ex post facto laws.
What this basically means is that penal law cannot be enacted retroactively, for an offense not existing when that offense was committed ("nullum crimen"); that is, one cannot be penalized for doing something that isn't prohibited by law.
Apart from it, the alleged acts against Armenians in 1915 do not constitute the crime of genocide because International law did not prescribe it as the crime of genocide in 1915. Moreover, if we apply logic to generality then, “the killing of Jesus on (the) cross constitutes the crime (of) torture under the European Convention on Human Rights”. How (is it) consistent with ... common sense? How can you apply the present concepts retroactively? How could any reasonable person argue that (the) British Empire’s occupation of Egypt in (the) 1800(s) constitutes the crime of aggression? Was that act considered aggression at that time?
Nurlan, http://genocide.com/
More 1948 U.N. Convention Requirements
Other requirements:
"INTENT" must be proven. That's the magic word. The only evidence put forth implicating the Ottoman government of the INTENT of systematically destroying the Armenians has been the Aram Andonian documents. These have been proven to be forgeries.
"There is no crime without evidence. A genocide cannot be written about in the absence of factual proof."
Henry R. Huttenbach, history professor who appears to support the Armenian viewpoint exclusively, as do... curiously... nearly all so-called "genocide scholars"; The Genocide Forum, 1996, No. 9
"POLITICAL ALLIANCES" are exempted. The Armenians allied themselves with the enemies of their Ottoman nation. "I must emphasize the fact, unhappily known to few, that ever since the beginning of the war the Armenians fought by the side of the Allies on all fronts." (Boghos Nubar)
The U.N. Itself has Refused to Designate this Episode as a Genocide
Propagandist-Activists like Harut Sassounian, publisher of the California Courier, are still going around claiming the United Nations has recognized their genocide. This is a falsehood.
In 1985, a pro-Armenian rapporteur who was part of a U.N. sub-committee, Benjamin Whitaker, attempted to force this issue down the U.N.'s throat. (Sassounian was one of the activists involved.) The issue was debated, and Whitaker's report was refused. The details may be read in this article, "The Truth About the Whitaker Report." Genocide websites such as preventgenocide.org, unethically or ignorantly, have put up this report, bearing the opinion of its author, as if the Armenian Genocide were officially accepted by the United Nations.
Here is the truth, established after 1985:
"(The) United Nations has not approved or endorsed a
report labeling the Armenian experience as Genocide."
Farhan Haq, U.N. spokesman, October 5th, 2000.
On June 4-7, 2005, at a Florida Atlantic University genocide conference, Juan Mendez, Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide to the Secretary General of the United Nations, was criticized for calling the Armenians' genocide an "event." This article tells us that the Argentinian "responded that since the UN has not officially recognized the genocide, he was not allowed to call it that."
As reader Conan put it: "The UN is the organ that has established the Genocide Convention. If even such an institution doesn’t recognize the Armenian genocide, Turkey has the right to punish the so called Armenian genocide as libel. That is the right of every nation."
A Genocide Conference Deals with INTERNATIONAL LAW
The following is from a program of a genocide conference, the details for which weren't handy. Nevertheless, there were some interesting ideas. See what you think. (The emphases are mine.)
Session Five: Implications for International Relations [Saturday 9-10:30]
P. Terrence Hopmann (Brown University): Chair
Gerard J. Libaridian: "An Assessment of Armenian-Turkish Relations"
Xxx: "The Turkish Position"
Xxx: Discussant
GENOCIDES, WAR CRIMES AND INTERNATIONAL LAW:
International Law appears to be undergoing significant readjustments, through a process of trials and errors and in response to the dynamic changes taking place in the international world and economic order. Many of the changes point to a compromise of the hitherto theoretically absolute sovereignty of the "nation-state". New concepts of international sanctions are emerging, and efforts are made to build or strengthen international courts and fact gathering independent organizations.
The diplomatic struggle that takes around the Armenian "Genocide" has important bearings on the search for new international legal concepts and for a revised and more autonomous international legal system:
The concept of "Genocide" as a crime entered the international law in 1951, by an act of the United Nations General Assembly. It was not until 1993 that the United Nations was able to establish the War Crimes Tribunal to investigate and prosecute people involved in crimes against humanity, including genocide. From a purely legal point of view, is it possible to "try" a case that occurred in 1915-16 on the basis of a "law" established in 1951 and in a court established in 1993, or in any "court" or legislative organ for that matter.
There would be sufficient evidence to make criminal charges against the Unionist Ottoman government of the Great War years on the basis of international conventions of which it was a signatory, namely the conventions about the obligation to protect civilian lives in war times. Perhaps we can make similar charges against the revolutionary Ankara government for the offenses against civilian Armenians living under its jurisdiction in 1919-23. However, can we charge a government for the crimes committed by the one it succeeded not in any peaceful way but because of a radical defiance of and rebellion against its authority? What are the criteria to determine the continuity of responsibility from one regime to the next in a given territory? One would presume, from a purely legal point of view, that one has to look at the international treaties that recognized the establishment of a new regime for answers to the question of the continuity of responsibility. If so, there would be little ground to make a case against the Republic of Turkey for what happened in 1915-16 or 1895-1918.
Let us presume that we can think of other legal criteria to link the Republic of Turkey to the Ottoman State concerning the flagrant offenses against peaceful and civilian Armenians. Will we (and can we) then apply the same criteria uniformly to all the other cases of flagrant offense against civilian and peaceful people that occurred in the same era, as one would expect in legal matters? Would not the list of such crimes committed by extinct or extant governments be a very long one, even if we limited ourselves to the modern era alone, as suggested above?
Perhaps we should focus our energies to the development and strengthening of international legal principles and institutions that would help prevent the recurrence of genocides and similar offenses against humanity. In that case, past incidents should still provide us with the necessary insight as well as the necessary moral resolve to develop legal principles and institutions that would be effective in preventing similar atrocities in the future.
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©Holdwater
tallarmeniantale.com/united-nations.htm
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Sir Martin Gilbert is known as a biographer of Winston Churchill; his web site tells us he has written some 75 books. A good chunk of these are Holocaust (9 books) and genocide-related. Here we have another genocide-centric scholar who has completely accepted at face value the Armenian Genocide Industry's claims. . . .
He participated in a 2000 "Armenian Genocide" conference co-sponsored by the Armenian National Institute, and the result became a 2003 book entitled, "America and the Armenian Genocide of 1915," edited by Jay Winter — who had already established himself in the Armenians' corner, with the PBS production, The Great War. Let's examine the caliber of his work.
"Twentieth-century genocides"
Already we run into trouble as Sir Gilbert designates a few "genocide personalities" as "pioneer scholars who have shown just how widespread the barbarism of governments can be." He cites, for example, Israel Charny. Charny is a self-appointed "genocide scholar" who has not written any major works. The psychotherapist's publication list shows mainly volumes that he has edited. Why Sir Gilbert would want to include this putative scholar as one to be respected sheds light on Sir Gilbert's own academic values. (See "Revealing the true identity of the sham 'genocide expert' Dr. Israel Charny," written by a fellow Israeli, on this page.)
Israel Charny
Sir Gilbert arrives at the conclusion that "Ottoman Turkey had already, in 1894 and 1895, massacred 100,000 Armenians," and reminds us (as if the Western-provided nickname should serve as evidence) that the sultan in power was universally known as "Abdul the Damned." At least Sir Gilbert didn't go totally overboard with the numbers (but he left out 1896), as does Vahakn Dadrian, who gave a count of 250,000 in a recent interview (in this book's collection, Dadrian has a chapter where he cites 150,000-200,000, following the Armenian genocide principle that "numbers are not important" for Armenians who love to provide figures dependent on where the wind blows; the real casualty rate of the late 1890s hovered around 20,000). No word whatsoever on the fact that the Armenians and Turks got along harmoniously in previous centuries, and the reasons for these "massacres" stemmed from Armenian terror groups massacring Muslims (5,000 were killed, lives that no one cares about), in order to invite European imperialists in to give the Armenians free hand-outs. As Kamuran Gurun wrote in The Armenian File, "it would be fair... to remember how many people lost their lives in rebellions or disorders in their own or other countries, and think how much right they have to use the term massacre."
Yet, Sir Gilbert has no compunction in using the term massacre to describe the cause of death of of his inflated number of Armenians. We are beginning to learn how "fair" Sir Gilbert is.
We will soon learn how "competent" Sir Gilbert is, as a scholar. Ignoring the other side of the story is the kiss of death for any valid historian.
Sir Martin Gilbert
Gilbert provides an account of Kurds murdering 60-400 Armenians, and how Armenians in a church were burned by Turkish troops. His footnote is from his own book (as are many of the others), A History of the Twentieth Century, 1900-1933, vol. I. Perhaps Gilbert relied on a report by British Vice-Consul (he makes reference to this consul in the text), but (if this is the case) relying exclusively on one source does not make for a good historian. Particularly when the British were in their post Gladstone "Hate the Turk" phase. In addition, he irresponsibly portrays the Kurds and Turks as brutes who murdered Armenians for no reason... based on a hatred that suddently evolved out of nowhere, after centuries of peaceful co-existence. He provides no word on the violent actions of fellows like this man.
Let's reproduce what Gilbert has written about other examples of inhumanity (pp. 10-13):
Thus the century began, and the fate of the Armenians was at its core. In the hundred years ahead, not only war, but racist, genocidal impulses that sometimes hide in the fog of war, were to be the grim counters to progress in the medical, technological, and environmental sciences, and the civilizing influences of the arts. It was only a narrow line between hatreds which generate war and the killing of soldiers and civilians, and genocides which set out to destroy a whole race. Also in 1900, in an attempt to weaken the Boer guerrilla movement in South Africa, the British Government seized thousands of women and children and forced them into what were called, at that time, "concentration camps." The idea was not to exterminate the Boer people, but to cut the fighting soldiers off from their homes and isolate them to the point of despair. Seventeen concentration camps were established. They had little food and almost no medical facilities. A further thirty-five camps were set up for Black Africans who worked on the farms of the absent fighters, so that they too would be unable to plough, or harvest crops, or look after livestock.
The death toll in the camps was high. A British woman, Emily Hobhouse, who visited the camps, wrote:
I began to compare a parish I had known at home of two thousand people, where a funeral was an event - and usually of an old person. Here some twenty to twenty- five were carried away daily . . . The full realisation of the position dawned on me - it was a death rate such as had never been known except in the times of the Great Plagues . . . The whole talk was of death - who died yesterday, who lay dying today, who would be dead tomorrow.3
Returning to Britain, Emily Hobhouse led a campaign against the camps, which were forcefully denounced by the Liberal Party leader. Henry Campbell-Bannerman. "When is a war not a war?" he asked, and gave die answer: "When it is carried on by methods of barbarism in South Africa."4 The British Government quickly instituted improvements, and the death rate fell. The final toll, however, was far higher than that of ±e battlefield: 28,000 Boer women and children died in the camps, and more than 50,000 Africans.5
The cruelty of the concentration camps in South Africa was certainly barbarism, but it was not genocide. (Emphasis Holdwater's.) The Boers and British signed a peace treaty in 1902 and the Boers flourished — so much so that within fifty years they were imposing their own tyrannical apartheid ideology on the Black African majority.
Elsewhere in southern Africa a more sustained attempt to destroy a whole people took place in that same first decade of the twentieth century in German-ruled South-West Africa (now Namibia), where the local people — the Hereros — found their land and livelihood taken away by a group of German colonists, less than 5,000 in all, who had been acquiring land with what the German colonial department itself described as "fraud and extortion."6 The Hereros rose in revolt. In the punitive expedition launched against them, thousands were killed. When news of the severity of the punitive measures reached Europe, there was widespread indignation, including in the German Parliament, that such savage destruction had been inflicted by a colonial power. The Herero people survived; so too does their folk memory of the cruelties inflicted on them. The fierceness of colonial reaction to local "native" rebellion was often fuelled by racial, dehumanizing animosities — hatred, scorn, contempt — that could certainly be described as genocidal. In the Dutch East Indies nearly 1,000 local women and children were killed when the Dutch suppressed a rebellion there in 1904. There was indignation in Holland at what had happened, not only amongst the socialist Opposition, but also within the government. One member of the governing party declared the Dutch soldiers had behaved like "Huns and Tatars" massacring the women and children for the commercial ends of mining and oil exploration.7
Since May 1903 news of a reign of terror in the Belgian Congo was reaching Europe as a result of the efforts of Edmund Morel, a shipping clerk in Liverpool. Morel published graphic accounts of atrocities which arose out of the system of forced labor which was imposed by the Belgian authorities — under the direct rule of King Leopold — on the local inhabitants.8 What he described had all the hallmarks of genocide: Belgian punitive expeditions which, on their return to base, brought baskets of human hands as proof of their ruthlessness.
Nine months after Morel's first published exposure of the crimes, Roger Casement, the British Consul in the Belgian Congo, sent an eye-witness report of Congolese women and children chained in sheds as hostages, and men beaten up for failure to produce sufficient rubber at collection points. He wrote of mass executions, and terrible mutilations inflicted on the natives by white officials. Casement estimated that as many as 3 million native Congolese had died of disease, torture, or shooting during the previous fifteen years. A Congolese soldier who was sent to get rubber, and had to open fire to do so, had to bring back a right hand for every bullet he expended. At one rubber collection site, Casement reported, the soldiers had used 6,000 cartridges, "which means," he noted, "that 6,000 people are killed or mutilated; it means more than 6,000 — for the people have told me repeatedly that the soldiers kill children with the butt of their guns."9
As news of the Congolese atrocities spread. President Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and Joseph Conrad were among those who protested.10 It was only after two years of international protests, how- ever, that the Belgian Parliament debated the situation in the Congo, and another two years until Leopold agreed to hand over his personal control of the Congo to the Belgian Parliament. The atrocities ceased. International protest had prevailed, though long after the initial cruelties were made known.
Within the Russian Empire, the fires of political and national dissent that had been lit at the beginning of 1905 continued to smolder and burst into flame. In the Armenian provinces of Russia, where resentment against Russian anti-minority policies had been smoldering for most of the year, the conflict was made all the more bloody when, in September, Azeris (a Muslim people then indentified as Tatars) attacked Armenian homes in Baku, Tiflis, and Erevan. Fearing Armenian national ambitions, and noting that the Armenians had been joined in their protest in Baku by Russian revolutionaries, the Tsarist authorities took the side of the Tatars. For their part, the Tatars raised the green banner of Islam and proclaimed a Holy War against the Armenians. Hundreds of Armenians were killed, and dozens of Armenian villages destroyed.11
In 1906 it was the turn of the British Government, then a Liberal government — led by those who had condemned the "methods of barbarism" in South Africa six years earlier — to suppress a Zulu revolt in southern Africa with great severity. More than 3,000 Zulus were killed.12 A racist attitude of mind underlay the brutality of the action, which amounted to an exercise in extermination. That same genocidal potential was in evidence a mere three years later, in 1909, when 20,000 Armenians living in Adana and Tarsus, in southern Anatolia, were massacred by the Turks.
There were episodes during which Armenian men, women, and chil- dren were forced into churches, which were then set on fire: those who tried to run out were shot dead by armed Turkish soldiers.13 Thirty years later, in September 1939, in German-occupied Poland, Jews were driven into synagogues which were then similarly set alight — the SS then shooting dead those who broke out.14
2 Gilbert, Twentieth Century, vol. I, pp. 31-2.
3 Gilbert, Twentieth Century, vol. I, p. 38.
4 Gilbert, Twentieth Century, vol. I, pp. 38-9.
5 Gilbert, Twentieth Century, vol. I, p. 39.
6 Gilbert, Twentieth Century, vol. I, p. 99.
7 Gilbert, Twentieth Century, vol. I, p. 100.
8 Gilbert, Twentieth Century, vol. I, p. 94.
9 Gilbert, Twentieth Century, vol. I, pp. 94-5.
10 Gilbert, Twentieth Century, vol. I, p. 95.
11 Gilbert, Twentieth Century, I, pp. 112-13.
12 Gilbert, Twentieth Century, vol. I, p. 131.
13 Donald E. Miller and Lorna Touryan Miller, Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 63-4.
14 Martin Gilbert, The Second World War: A Complete History (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1989) p. 7.
What a nice outline of some (but not all, by a long shot) 20th century tragedies preceding the Armenians' tale. Thanks, Sir Gilbert, for reminding us the Armenians' often-heard claim of being "The First Holocaust of the 20th Century" is a lie. It's too bad Sir did not gather a clue here, as to the validity of the rest of the Armenians' claims. (But he may be beyond hope. In the only non-Gilbert footnote provided above, he stakes his reliance on the hearsay of Armenian Oral History.)
Whenever there is a conflict between Armenians and Muslims, Sir Gilbert will treat the Armenians as poor, innocent victims. Note how he makes the Azeris the aggressors. Yet even Armenian sources give evidence to the contrary:
In the Armenian-Tartar War of 1905 the Armenians had much the better of the fighting. Many of our men had served in the Russian Army, and were trained soldiers. We Armenians were rich and possessed arms. The Tartars had never received military training. They were poor, and possessed few arms beyond knives.
(Ohanus Appressian, Armenian soldier who documented one of the "genocides" Sir Gilbert conveniently left out, that of the systematic extermination of Turkic Azeris and other Muslims [in the Republic of Armenia, during post WWI], as told in Men Are Like That, 1926; this was regarded as "an appropriate analogy to the Jewish Holocaust" by a writer in the June 21, 1990 issue of The Jewish Times.)
Since Sir Gilbert reminds us of the travesty committed upon the Congolese, we must wonder if Adolf Hitler actually uttered his famed quote, why he did not say, Who today remembers the extermination of the Congolese? Imagine... a toll of 10 million (plus countless mutilated) at the hands of one of the many European imperialists, and the talk today is on the falsified "genocide" of a people who know how to shriek loudly, are white, wealthy and Christian.
What industry could be more hypocritical than the genocide industry? Only the victims deemed "worthy" are highlighted, and the ones who suffered greater catastrophes are only given reluctant lip service.
To showcase the hypocrisy of Sir Gilbert himself, let's compare the details of the Boer War that he provides, to the Armenian experience:
Oscanyan in 1863
1) The Boer people rebelled to escape the British yoke. Ottoman-Armenians too rebelled to escape the "Turkish yoke," as we are often told. (But the real reason was Armenian greed for land, hoping to cash in on the fortunes of Orthodox cousins in the Balkans; the fact is, Armenians never prospered in their history as much as they did under the Turks. As H. Oscanyan wrote [The Sultan and His People, 1857]: "[The Armenian) community constitutes the very life of Turkey, ... there exists a congeniality and community of interest between them and the Musulmans."])
2) The British put the families of the Boers into concentration camps, to isolate the fighters. The Turks had a much better reason to move the families of the Armenians who had rebelled (and those innocent ones who were caught in the middle, in a desperate time when friend could not be told from foe): the existence of the nation was at stake, fighting a world war on multiple fronts against superpower enemies who were designing to eliminate the Turkish nation.
3) Poor planning and a lack for humanistic concerns allowed many Boers to starve and suffer. Poor planning, chaos of war and the shortage of manpower and resources allowed many Armenians to starve and suffer. In the case of the latter, the bulk of the relocated Armenians still survived, 500,000 by the count of Morgenthau (Sept. 1915) and Toynbee (early-to-mid 1916).
One of these, Sir Gilbert is quick to brand as genocide, completely concentrating on pro-Armenian sources. The other, coincidentally the actions of his own nation, Sir Gilbert tells us "was not genocide."
Sir Gilbert delves into familiar propagandistic territory:
With Russia at war with Turkey since October 1914, the large Armenian Christian population in Anatolia, which had long been denied any national rights by the Turks, hoped against hope that a Russian victory over Turkey might lead to the recognition of Armenian national aspirations. The Russians tried to woo the Armenians. On 30 December 1914 the Tsar, on a visit to the Caucasus front, declared: "a most brilliant future awaits the Armenians."15 As Russian troops pushed deeper and deeper into eastern Turkey, the Turks accused the Armenians of being secretly and even actively loyal to Russia. Starting on 8 April 1915, Armenians throughout Anatolia were attacked and massacred. Armenian soldiers serving in the Ottoman army, who had already been segregated into unarmed labor battalions, were taken out of their battalions in small groups, and killed.16
15 Martin Gilbert, The First World War: A Complete History (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1994), p. 108.
16 Gilbert, Twentieth Century, vol. I, p. 356.
Russia declared war in November 1914, when the Ottoman-Armenians were primed to attack their country immediately.
"Long been denied any national rights by the Turks" Sir Gilbert is making music to the Armenian hosts of his conference, who love to think that the Armenians were no more than slaves. Yet, as soon as the Armenians were freed from the harsh rule of their co-religionist Byzantine rulers, their lot became incomparably better.
How odd that the "historian" Sir Gilbert appears to have no idea that the Armenian millet had been granted a landless autonomy, according to even Richard Hovannisian... leading to the preservation of their "national" language, religion, overall "racial purity" and culture since the end of the 11th century. (Compare with the "national rights" of Hawaiians, after a mere century of U.S. rule.) Generally, the prosperous Armenians lived better lives than their Muslim counterparts. The Armenians kept getting more rights, marked especially by the Imperial Reform Edict of February 18, 1856, granting legal equality between Ottoman Muslims and Christians. Almost all areas of Ottoman society were open to Armenians, even to the extent of serving in government. The gap kept narrowing until the Young Turks' decree of 1909. The trouble was foreign interference and Armenian greed; greater freedoms meant greater ease for treacherous Armenians to work against the interests of the state.
Leon Surmelian demonstrates how wholeheartedly everyday Armenians were in support of the Russians, in "I Ask You Ladies and Gentlemen." (It's a matter of irrefutable record the Armenians rebelled against their government; leader Boghos Nubar stated plainly the Armenians were "belligerents de facto." Why does Sir Gilbert amateurishly phrase this historic fact in a manner that makes his reader think this conclusion was a flight of fancy in the minds of the Turks? "The Turks accused the Armenians of being secretly and even actively loyal to Russia.")
"Starting on 8 April 1915, Armenians throughout Anatolia were attacked and massacred." Horrible. Sir Gilbert should be ashamed for his irresponsible and propagandistic documentation. According to him, the Terrible Turks conducted themselves in the manner that Turks know best, go about a murderous spree simply on suspicion that the Armenians might have done something wrong. What a racist attitude.
The fact of the matter was that Armenians were rebelling throughout the Empire, beginning as soon as Russia had declared war in November 1914. There were a whole list of "disturbances" caused by Armenians that the tolerant Turks tried to overlook before deciding on the resettlement policy.
As for the Armenians in the army... here was a desperate life or death struggle where every man was needed to ward off the invading superpowers, particularly mortal enemy Russia. Would it make sense to draft these much needed Ottomans into the army, arm them and train them, only to take their weapons away? The reason why this action was necessary was because the treacherous Armenians deserted in large numbers with their arms to the side of the enemy, and those who remained fired blanks and resorted to other acts of betrayal. (Of course there were "good" Armenians among them, just as with the civilians who were relocated. But the actions of the traitors ruined it for everyone, during a most dangerous period for the country.) And yes, some Armenians were killed. Not to be admired, but this is called "human nature," and no human of any nation is above taking action against those who are regarded as traitors, particularly when the survival of the nation is at stake. But if Gilbert is presenting the notion that these soldiers were all killed as a matter of policy, he is showing real propagandistic stripes.
During the last two months quite a number of Armenian soldiers have been brought back in groups of two or three hundred from Erzurum. They have arrived in a most pitiable state due to their exposure on the way at this season of the year and in the privations they had suffered.
Leslie Davis, The Slaughterhouse Province, p. 181. (Davis was a U.S. consul in Harput. Quite a distance the Ottomans had these soldiers travel, if the idea was to knock them all off. [Another hostile witness, this missionary also relates the transfer of large numbers of Armenian troops into Sivas, the center of Anatolia.] As far as the "pitiable state," let's not make the usual mistake of only concentrating on the Armenians' woes; the Turkish soldiers were not having any picnics.)
"Underfed, misused, paid but little and that rarely, ragged and dirty, these Turkish troops were as wretched in their liberty as we were in our captivity."
Harold Armstrong, British POW, “Turkey in Travail,� 1925, p. 23
"Even before the war many Turkish troops had been in the most wretched condition. In 1916 some were fighting with ‘no overcoats and no boots’..."
Akaby Nassibian, “Britain and the Armenian Question, 1915-1923,� 1984, p. 121
"...[E]ven the Moslems suffered. I felt sorry for these recruits. They were such a miserable, submissive lot, just resigned to their kismet. They never joked or laughed. Some of them were barefooted. They lived on bean soup and brown bread, but the soup was like dishwater, and lucky was the man who fished out a bean. They were starving."
Leon Surmelian, "I Ask You Ladies and Gentlemen," 1945, pp. 74-5.
“The Turkish soldier...was not protected from heat and cold, nor from sickness.�
Dr. C. D. Ussher, American ABCFM missionary and physician in Van, whose memoirs were the basis for the film, ARARAT
Sir Gilbert enlists the aid of a favorite Armenian guru:
Henry Morgenthau, the American Ambassador in Constantinople, himself a Jew, reported to Washington on the atrocities which took place between 15 April and 20 April. His report reveals an intensity of terror with which students of the fate of the Jews a quarter of a century later will be familiar:
Morgenthau
The Turks' army turned aside and invaded their own territory of Van. Instead of fighting the trained Russian army of men, they turned their rifles, machine guns, and other weapons upon the Armenian women, children, and old men in the villages of Van. Following their usual custom, they distributed the most beautiful Armenian women among the Moslems, sacked and burned the Armenian villages, and massacred uninterruptedly for days.
On April 15, about 500 young Armenian men of Akantz were mustered to hear an order of the Sultan; at sunset they were marched outside the town and every man shot in cold blood. This procedure was repeated in about eighty Armenian villages in the district north of Lake Van, and in three days 24,000 Armenians were murdered in this atrocious fashion.17
Djevdet Bey, Governor of Van, then demanded 4,000 Armenian men from the city of Van to serve in the Turkish army. Believing this was an attempt to deny the Armenians of Van their only means of self-defense, the Armenians refused. Morgenthau's report continued:
On April 20, a band of Turkish soldiers seized several Armenian women who were entering the city, a couple of Armenians ran to their assistance and were shot dead. The Turks now opened fire on the Armenian quarters with rifles and artillery, soon a large part of the town was in flames and a regular siege had started. The whole Armenian fighting force consisted of only 1,500 men; they had only 300 rifles and a most inadequate supply of ammunition, while Djevdet had an army of 5,000 men, completely equipped and supplied.18
17 Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, p. 297.
18 Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, p. 297.
Uncanny! What true historian would resort to the propagandistic poppycock of Ambassador Morgenthau's Story?
Morgenthau (aside from a trip to Palestine he relates in his "Story" book) never left the environs of Istanbul. He relied on his information from consuls, who similarly never served as eyewitnesses (other than seeing some dead, and not seeing how they died and [in the case of murdered victims] by whose hand, as with Leslie Davis). These parties got all their information from biased missionaries and often-deceitful Armenians. Morgenthau relied on Armenian translators, who frequently distorted the translating for their cause, as did Morgenthau's consuls. Morgenthau the Zionist hoped to get America to war against the Ottomans, to better carve a path for a Jewish homeland.
Note all the typical propagandistic nonsense that Gilbert is unbelievably presenting as actual fact. The Russians are at the gate, and whatever was left of the Turkish forces (after the Sarikamish disaster, not helped by the many thousands of Ottoman-Armenian soldiers who were counted on but did not show up) were going to take time out to conduct an extermination campaign? They were naturally going to pass around the Armenian women amongst themselves, manna to influence Christian sympathizers in the USA.
"Turks are vastly more moral respecting women than Europeans."
Mormon Missionary Tanner, also observing that the Turks "are the most honest and moral of the Orientals." From his "Who Can be So Polite and Courteous As a Turk,� 1886. (And this doesn't mean there weren't bad Turkish men who were incapable of committing crimes against women; humans of every stripe have both their devils and angels. The point here is that as a rule, the upbringing of the Turks disallowed them from showing discourtesy toward women and children. The opposite of what racist pro-Armenian propaganda would have us believe, that Turkish men were genetically predisposed to brutally ravage.)
It's maddening that Gilbert would perpetuate the terrible lie of poor, helpless Armenians trying to hold off a superior Turkish force (300 rifles against 5,000 men; sounds like this other nutty story printed in the newspaper of Morgenthau's pal, Adolph Ochs); the Armenians were the ones with the sophisticated weaponry, against the rusty rifles of whatever few Turkish men were left behind to use them. It was the weaponry-stockpiling Armenians of Van who could afford the very best... chiefly Mauser pistols and rifles that worked like machine guns. In contrast, weapons provided by the Turkish government were basic old-fashioned rifles, so primitive they would explode after only a few shots. The local Muslims also had limited ammunition.
The real scoop is presented by Cevdet Bey's April 24 telegram to the Ministry of the Interior (Four days after Morgenthau's phony account, above):
"Until now approximately 4,000 insurgent Armenians have been brought to the region from the vicinity. The rebels are engaged in highway robbery, attack the neighbouring villages and burn them. It is impossible to prevent this. Now many women and children are left homeless. It is not possible nor suitable to relocate them in tribal villages in the vicinity. Would it be convenient to begin sending them to the western provinces?"
Note that on the Armenians' "Date of Doom," the only "deportation" in mind was the relocation of the Turks themselves.
Perhaps this telegram is where "historian" Gilbert got the 4,000 figure (differing from what is below) that he wrote was demanded of the Armenians by the Van governor. Gilbert tells us Believing this was an attempt to deny the Armenians of Van their only means of self-defense, the Armenians refused. Putting aside the notion that conscription into the army of one's nation is not generally a matter of choice, let's straighten out Gilbert's propaganda: it was the Van Armenians who were the aggressors, and "self defense" was not a consideration. Prof. Turkkaya Ataov relied on an Armenian source (La Défense héroïque de Van, p. 4.), while explaining another reason behind this denial of troops:
[A]n Armenian book, printed in the war years, honestly admitted that people "contracted diseases in the trenches" (...maladie contractée dans les tranchées...). The Armenians had then refused, according to the same source, to give Cevdet Bey, the Governor of Van, the 3,000 soldiers whom he had asked from them, one of the reasons being fear that they might die of epidemics. The reference in the title of the book above (namely, “the heroic defence of Van�), by the way, actually concerns the successful attempt of the Armenians, as Ottoman citizens, to seize that strategic town and hand it over to joint control with the invading Russian forces.
Gilbert writes: "There was one brief moment of respite for the Armenians, when Russian forces reached the besieged town of Van, and rescued those Armenians who had been trapped there under Turkish bombardment for thirty days." (Hoo-boy.) He continues: "...the killings went on. In Bitlis, 15,000 Armenian civilians were killed in eight days. In the Black Sea port of Trebizond, in the course of a two-week orgy of destruction, an estimated 15,000 Turkish troops murdered all but 100 of the 17,000 Armenian inhabitants of the town. The Italian Consul-General was an eye-witness to the terrors of Trebizond..."
C.F. Dixon-Johnson's 1916 "The Armenians," a source as legitimate as they come (a Briton daring to deviate during wartime) exposed the lies of the Italian consul, who, according to Lord Bryce, "saw (the Trabzon drownings of 8-10,000 Armenians) done with his own eyes." The account of the same event, as given in the Messagero of Rome, is "entirely different, the (Italian) Consul (Signor Corrini) being made to say that the banishment of Armenians under escort, and wholesale shootings in the streets, continued for a whole month, while there is nothing about the Armenians having been shipped out to sea and drowned en masse in one afternoon."
In 1916, Dixon-Johnson called the Signor's story "preposterous." In 2000, Sir Martin Gilbert tried to pass the story on as "fact." If there are better shortcuts to ruin a scholar's credibility, it's hard to think of any.
Sir Martin Gilbert does not miss a beat in his perpetuation of Armenian propaganda, by telling us the 235 Armenian leaders arrested on April 24 were all put to death. There was a rebellion throughout the country; such a rebellion needed to be led by leaders. While no doubt innocents were among those accused, the majority of these arrested were ringleaders of the rebellion. (Accordng to the Autumn 1960 Armenian Review's article on assassin Soghoman Tehlirian, Harootyoun Mugurditchian ratted them out; Tehlirian murdered the "traitor.") The accused were sent to prison, and some were executed, as any nation would have done with wartime traitors. Peter Balakian gives evidence of some survivors in his "Burning Tigris," like a relative priest who "escaped." (This is the one who earns the nickname, the Action Priest.) The famed Armenian musician, Komitas, was released after two weeks.
Gilbert then reminds us that The British, French, and Russian Governments, each of them at war with Turkey, issued a joint public denunciation, on 24 May 1915, of the Turkish "mass murders" of the Armenians, describing the killings as "a crime against humanity and civilization," without bothering to tell us it suited the purpose of these governments to take the heat off Russia's treatment of Polish/Lithuanian Jews and to come up with a better monster to influence American opinion. Gilbert also fails to mention each of these governments had secret treaties to divvy up the Ottoman nation between themselves, and what better justification than to accuse their enemy of a terrible crime? If he were fair, Gilbert would also have covered the fact that none of these Entente nations held the moral high ground, their histories awash in blood at the expense of conquered peoples. But what can we expect from a "historian" who can't even get the name of a country correct? (Of course, the Ottoman Empire was called "Turkey" informally, at the time. When a historian writes a scholarly piece, however, it's time to get formal; the Soviet Union was also informally called "Russia," but no historian writing about the Soviet Union would be caught dead calling it "Russia." What unethical "genocide scholars" attempt to do with this "error," of course, is to try and link the actions of the Ottoman Empire with today's Turkey.)
Estimates of the Ottoman-Armenian population
Nobody is surprised in the audience when Gilbert labels the weasely Prosecutor Vahakn Dadrian as an "eminent scholar" (I suppose Gilbert must admire Dadrian's methods of focusing only on one side of a story; Gilbert has done a pretty good Dadrian-style presentation of "history" himself). He contends that in April and November 1915 more than 600,000 Armenian men, women, and children were murdered (fact: there were around 1.5 million pre-war Ottoman Armenians. Fact: even Dadrian signed his name to a proclamation, agreeing one million survived. Gilbert is invited to do the subtraction); to back up his claim, he gives us another example of hearsay-ridden Armenian Oral History.
Further, Gilbert steams ahead with: More than half a million Armenians were deported by the Turks southward to Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). Of these deportees only 90,000 survived repeated attacks by the Turks, beatings, and executions, as they were driven southward. (Yet even Toynbee and Morgenthau are on record for believing 500,000 were alive, by April 1916 ["Treatment of Armenians..."], in the former's case; Morgenthau was also quoted [by Vahan Cardashian, in a March 3, 1916 letter to Lord Bryce] as saying Armenians were found in good numbers in almost all the interior cities of Turkey, and that the attitude of the Government was passive. [The Armenian Review, Winter 1957, p. 107.]) Gilbert also tells us 200,000 were forcibly converted to Islam, giving his Twentieth Century book as a source. There were no forcible conversions; if such were Ottoman policy, all of the Balkans would have been Islamic today. Many Armenians converted voluntarily, in hopes of getting exempted from the relocation policy. Many discovered the government did not fall for the ploy.
The man is simply out of control.
Here is a passage I found interesting:
One eye-witness to the terrible suffering of the Armenian deportees was 25-year-old Jewish woman, Sarah Aaronsohn — a member of a Jewish espionage group working for the British against the Turks — who had set out from Constantinople to her home in Palestine, and traveled that December through the Taurus mountains to Aleppo. Her biographer, Anita Engle, has written:
She saw vultures hovering over children who had fallen dead by the roadside. She saw beings crawling along, maimed, starving and begging for bread. From time to time she passed soldiers driving before them with whips and rifle-butts whole families, men, women and children, shrieking, pleading, wailing. These were the Armenian people setting out for exile in the desert from which there was no return. (The NIli Spies, 1959, p. 62)
Whole families! Thanks, Sarah, for putting to rest the Armenian propagandistic notion that all the Armenian men were all killed.
We are aware by now that most resettled Armenians had a terrible time, and quite a number died. This is the tragedy the Armenians suffered... a tragedy they could have avoided if they did not listen to their greedy, fanatical revolutionary leaders. When one decides to become belligerents de facto, there will be unpleasant consequences. Unfortunately, the innocent also would get caught up in this tragedy, but nobody said war was fair.
Once again, we hear only about the Armenian suffering. Gilbert's favored witness, Ambassador Morgenthau, also wrote in his "Story" book that thousands of Turks were dying daily of starvation, estimating an entire quarter of the Turkish population died as a result.
As far as the reliability of the above, were there soldiers who mistreated these civilians? Undoubtedly; "law enforcement officers" are known for their heavy-handed ways in any country. Here is a rare, genuinely neutral witness (the 25-year-old lady in this story was not neutral; like the Armenians, she worked against her nation) who wrote, "I sure got to view misery, but planned cruelties? Absolutely nothing."
"I have seen dying and dead along the roads — but among hundreds of thousands there must, of course, occur casualties. I have seen childrens' corpses, shredded to pieces by jackals, and pitiful individuals stretch their bony arms with piercing screams of 'ekmek' (bread). But I have never seen direct Turkish assaults against the ones hit by destiny. A single time I saw a Turkish gendarme in passing hit a couple of slow moving people with his whip; but similar things have happened to me in Russia, without me complaining, not then, nor later."
Note how both bore witness to similar scenes. Yet in one, the implication is intended cruelty; the other is steeped in reality, and reason.
Any "witness" who uses the sympathy-evoking term "desert" is already suspect. The fact is, the Armenians were transported to regions known as "The Fertile Crescent."
Ottoman Jews were the one millet who remained loyal. In an emotional encounter, one summed it up:
"The Ottoman dynasty is the saviour of Turkish Jews. When our ancestors were driven out of Spain, and looked for a country to take them in, it was the Ottomans who agreed to give us shelter and saved us from extinction. Through the generosity of their government, once again they received freedom of religion and language, protection for their women, their possessions and their lives. Therefore our conscience obliges to serve you as much as we can in your darkest hour."
That is how the Armenians should have felt (and of course, some did feel that way) and why apologists for the Armenians, like Sir Martin Gilbert, deserve to be exposed for their shoddy scholarship. With the Jews, there were those who behaved abominably, such as Ambassador Morgenthau: dishonoring the one nation that was probably the most pure-hearted defender of Judaism throughout history. However, the few Ottoman-Jews who betrayed their nation, for the same Zionist principles, cannot be condemned enough... and their claims would need to be taken with a grain of salt, since they were working for the overthrow of their nation. The testimony of traitors like Sarah Aaronsohn must only be held credible by people who write propaganda, such as Sir Martin Gilbert. (And let's not forget this testimony comes second-hand, through a biographer. We are further informed that Sarah Aaronsohn was "Captured by the Turks two years later... taken to Damascus, tortured, and took her own life to avoid betraying her companions." Source: Gilbert's "The First World War.")
Gilbert continues with his shamefully one-sided reportage by telling us, "In 1920 more than 30,000 Armenians were killed in Cilicia." (His sources: "The Lions of Marash, 1973," and "La Passions de la Cilicie 1919-1922," 1954) Once again, the notion that the poor, helpless Armenians were viciously murdered. What really happened was:
About 120,000 Armenian settlers were brought to Cilicia during these years, in addition to the 50,000 who came from Istanbul and elsewhere in Anatolia to Antep, Marash and Zeytun, all for the purpose of establishing an Armenian state in Cilicia under the permanent protection of France. The Armenian legion went out of control, just as Russian officers discovered to their horror (with out-of-control Armenians under Russian command) in eastern Anatolia.
With the occupation of Cilicia by the légionnaires the local Muslims soon found themselves in a state of lawlessness under the French rule. While the French officers witnessed massacres caused by their légionnaires, Gautherot went on to describe a horrific event that occurred in February of 1919. In a summary the following event occurred: “About one hundred Armenian légionnaires left their quarters for the city without any orders from their French commanders. They set up posts where they were stopping the civilians and asking them about ‘their religion and their papers.’ Subsequently the first Muslim was killed on the spot just for being a Muslim. Then these men went on a rampage of creating anarchy among the local Muslim inhabitants. Many, including women and children, were killed without provocation.
Once again, the Armenians commit their terrible crimes. They act, and the Muslims react. And once again, unethical or ignorant, biased scholars only report the damage done to the poor, helpless Armenians. It's sickening.
Gilbert also tells us:
In the early months of 1918... several former Russian imperial cities fell to the advancing Turkish army, among them towns with large Armenian populations: Ardahan, Ardanuj, Kars, Erevan, and Baku. During this Turkish military advance, 400,000 Armenians were killed. (Source: Gilbert's "Twentieth Century.")
400,000! So many Armenians were killed, it's a wonder how their worldwide population mushroomed from a pre-war 3 million to around 7 million today.
(Gilbert actually goes on to claim 7 million was... the pre-war worldwide population!! Indeed, the 1.5 million in the empire, the 1.1 million or so in Russia, and the half-million or so in the rest of the world must have added up to Gilbert's incredible figure. Even the Armenian historian Pastermadjian, son of terrorist Armen Garo, did not dare to climb so skyward, settling at 4.1 million.)
Sir Martin Gilbert
This "historian," I fear, relied on the same biased sources as his fellow genocide scholars, like Rudy Rummel. For example, wildly pro-Armenian Near East Relief representatives were on the spot attesting that there were no massacres of Armenians in Kars. However, pro-Armenian authors like Christopher Walker and Dickran Boyajian insist 6,000 to 10,000 Armenians were massacred. We don't have to guess very hard as to which account or version Gilbert prefers to give credence to.
Gilbert moves on to "one further tragic act in the destruction of Armenian life and livelihood. In September 1922 with the loss of tens of thousands of lives, the Armenians living in the western regions of Anatolia, particularly in Izmir and Aidin, were driven from their homes and forced into exile in distant lands."
E. Alexander Powell sets a straight record as to what really happened, in his "The Struggle for Power in Moslem Asia," 1923:
A case in point was the burning of Smyrna in September, 1922. There was scarcely a newspaper of importance in the United States that did not editorially lay that outrage at the door of the Turks, without waiting to hear the Turkish version, yet, after it had been attested by American, English, and French eye-witnesses, and by a French commission of inquiry, that the city had been deliberately fired by the Greeks and Armenians in order to prevent it falling into Turkish hands, how many newspapers had the courage to admit that they had done the Turks a grave injustice?
The kind of injustice Sir Gilbert has committed time and again, within this chapter. He gives the impression that once more the poor, helpless Armenians were set upon by the Muslim hordes for no reason. No mention of the glee with which the Armenian portion of Izmir's population had helped the invading Greeks with atrocities committed upon the Turkish population. As the victorious Turks came in to reclaim their city, the Armenians felt they had to get out — just as the Armenians of Cilicia, once the tables turned.
Gilbert: "Between April 1915 and September 1922, 1,450,000 Armenians had been murdered. In the anguished words of Richard Hovannisian, "Our generation didn't have grandparents. Why didn't we have grandparents?"
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Sir Martin Gilbert is actually trying to sell us on the idea that out of a pre-war population of around 1.5 million, nearly all Armenians had been "murdered." Even though Armenians themselves concede one million survived. He is proving time and time again that any book with the author "Sir Martin Gilbert" is to be avoided at all costs, if such is the level of his expertise.
And Richard Hovannisian is quite the comedian. If it weren't for all the surviving grandparents, Hovannisian's generation (and successive ones) of Armenians would not be so filled with anti-Turkish hatred.
As it turns out, Hovannisian's own surviving grandmother (yes, as a representative of his generation, he had at least one grandparent) filled his head with genocide stories. The professor has been quoted as saying: "These stories took fairy-tale form in my imagination, full of childlike impressions of a far away land and a mythic struggle of good against evil." ("Hovannisian Introduces Students to Study of Armenian Genocide," Edward Thurber) If we are to examine the psychology behind such mind-destruction common to so many Armenians:
"Dr. D. Calonne indicated that [the] grandmother figure was also important in the writings of Saroyan, Najarian and Balakian, as it was in Alishan's poems. The grandmother was the factor that transmitted the disaster to the following generations and thus establishing a link with the past. The grandmother was 'mad as her people's history.' Her madness passed onto her grandson. Calonne noted that the grandmother gained the stature of 'Magna Mater' as explained in the book titled 'The Great Mother' by Erich Neumann. Certain Jungians claim that this pre-monotheistic figure reflected a very regressive characteristic and was close to madness."
Turkish grandparents did not dwell on their sufferings and treat their tragedies as a "religion." Thus, the Turks have been spared by the hatred too many Armenians sport. How ironic, since Gilbert's thesis is based on hatred as a cause of what he calls a genocide. The Turks and Kurds from those years did not carry hatred in their hearts, either. Some came to hate, after experiencing the terrible horrors the Armenians had perpetrated against them and their families... but even these sufferers looked to tomorrow, and did not poison the minds of their children.
Quite the contrary to Gilbert's conclusions, if there were racial hatred, it was the Armenians who exhibitied it. Ohanus Appressian, from "Men Are Like That":
"For too many years Armenian mothers had lulled their children to sleep with songs whose theme was Turkish fierceness and savagery."
When Sir Mark Sykes (another "Sir" who vilified the Turk, but at least he had the excuse of doing it for patriotic reasons, in the service of Wellington House) wrote, "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," what he was getting at was a feeling of superiority the Armenians possess with their "pride of race." The name of the Armenian Youth Federation (AYF) originally was "Tzeghagron," which literally means 'to make a religion of one’s race. (Hairenik's Nejdeh wrote: 'The Racial Religious believes in his racial blood as a deity. Race above everything and before everything. Race comes first. Everything is for the race.') It is this supreme racism that stems in the minds of too many Armenians today, all too apparent in their forums.
It is this racism that enabled the Armenians to look down upon the Turks as the subhuman untermensch, enabling them to kill off non-Armenians (including Jews) in large numbers... over half a million in and after WWI that the world simply doesn't give a hoot about. It is this racism that allowed the Armenians to clear out as many non-Armenians from their country — which barely had Armenians two centuries ago — and to establish as racially pure a state as possible. The hatred has been on the side of the Armenians.
Gilbert predictably gives credence to the Bryce-Toynbee Wellington House report, The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-1916, claiming that the propaganda "detailed the killings with unequivocal documentation." Amazing. We're told that the author of the report, Arnold Toynbee, stressed that the Turkish claim of Armenian treason and rebellion against the Turks could not "bear examination" and was "easily rebutted." This would be the same Arnold Toynbee who later admitted his work at the agency was "war propaganda," and it is the propagandist's job not to uphold the principles of truth. There is no question the Armenians rebelled, when even Armenian leaders from the period are on record for having admitted no less. It is absolutely amazing that an "established" author as Sir Gilbert would still try to pass off propaganda as "unequivocal" evidence in this day and age. But just when one thinks he can sink no lower, Gilbert then attempts to fortify his case with a work of outright fiction, "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh."
He then relates Michael Hagopian's "mulberry bush" story. ("As Turkish soldiers rampaged through the town in the summer of 1915, an Armenian mother hid her baby boy in a mulberry bush and prayed to God that the Turkish soldiers would not find him.") Hagopian is the man behind "The Armenian Film Foundation," which has produced a number of Armenian propaganda films since 1979.
Gilbert tells us of how "While the Armenian massacres were at their height, a 21-year-old Polish Jew, Raphael Lemkin, who was then studying law at Lvov University, found himself in discussion with his professors about one of the dramatic events of the day": the assassination of Talaat Pasha on 15 March 1921. (1921 was when "the Armenian massacres were at their height"?) When Lemkin's professors defended the Turkish action against the Armenians invoking the argument about sovereignty of States, Lemkin replied, in part: "Sovereignty cannot be conceived of as the right to kill millions of innocent people."
Yes, the man who would be behind the 1948 U.N. Convention on Genocide was similarly brainwashed by the ongoing propaganda of the day. (Lemkin ironically argued, however, that those who had formed political alliances, as the Armenians had done with the Russians and other allies, would be exempt from the U.N. definition.) Lemkin was so influenced by the one-sided reportage that no doubt appeared in the "Christian" Polish press, he actually believed the Turks had killed millions.
Luckily, Sir Gilbert steps in to correct Lemkin's mistaken notion by writing in the next sentence: "million and a half Armenians murdered between 1915 and 1922." Thanks, Sir Gilbert, for presenting such a "fact."
The Sir then moves on to more general war and genocide information. With his record for honoring blatant inaccuracies, one must approach this putative scholar's offerings with caution; he reveals:
In the Allied naval blockade of Germany an estimated 500,000 German civilians died of starvation as food supplies were ruthlessly blockaded — the same number of Germans that were killed in the bombing raids of the Second World War.
Rudy Rummel had written: "During the war the British navy blockaded Turkey, including the Turkish Levant. No food was allowed in by sea." This situation exacerbated the massive famine already taking place within the Ottoman Empire (few were left to till the fields, according to Ambassador Morgenthau, since every man was needed at the multiple fronts.) Yet Gilbert (along with fellow "genocide scholar" Rummel) prefer to use the word "murdered" for all of the Armenian casualties (up tp 600,000 — the actual figure — who died from all causes combined, a number equivalent to the German civilians, we are told, who died from hunger.)
Yet Gilbert does not accuse the German government of "murdering" its people who died of starvation. Isn't that interesting?
Sir then provides details regarding the "Rape of Nanking" (where some 300,000 were killed from a population of perhaps 650,000.) After providing examples of some horrors, Gilbert concludes:
Such was the fate of human beings whose only "crime" — judged to make them worthy of death — was that they had been born Chinese, just as the only "crime" of the Armenians between 1915 and 1922 was ro have been born Armenian, the only "crime" of the Jews between 1939 and 1945 to have been born Jewish.
What an irresponsibly ugly parallel. Indeed, many Japanese thought of the Chinese as subhumans, as did the Nazis with the Jews. But the Turks had a brotherly feeling toward the Armenians, through centuries of mostly harmonious coexistence. Gilbert, in his propagandistic frenzy, is wishing to convey the notion the Armenians were killed because of racial hatred.
No. The Armenians suffered their fate because most in their community supported the revolutionary zeal of their fanatical leaders. They rebelled. Even with the rebellion, the Ottoman government tried to take good care of them. (Based on genuine orders.) Some were not carried out properly, thanks to wartime chaos and corruption, and a shortage of manpower and resources. Those who died mostly died for the same reasons all Ottomans died: famine, disease and combat. Yet, the majority, some two-thirds of the original population, survived. Those who were murdered mostly fell victim to bandits —frequently Kurds and Arabs — who terrorized the ill-guarded caravans. Many Kurds acted in reprisal for the terrible crimes the Armenians had committed upon Kurdish families.
Gilbert slips into fantasyland:
There is one little-mentioned element of the Holocaust which I should like to mention. From the moment of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the SS killing squads inside Russia itemized daily and sent back to Berlin lists of the thousands of Jews they had killed. They noted down with pedantic precision, in separate listings, the exact numbers of Jewish men, women, and children whom they had murdered each day. They also listed, from time to time, individual Armenians whom they had killed. Like the Jews, these Armenians were not killed because they were soldiers or partisans, or constituted a threat to German rule, but because they had been characterized as beneath the dignity of human beings. Whenever I am in Lvov, one of the centres of the SS killing areas, I visit the Armenian quarter there, conscious of this link: that even the Holocaust had an Armenian aspect.
If the SS killed Soviet-Armenians, they must have slipped up on their Nazi ideology; the European-Armenians got themselves to be recognized as fellow Aryans, and contributed with gusto to the killing of the Jews. I suspect if Soviet-Armenians were killed "from time to time," the reasons had nothing to do with racial extermination. Otherwise, enough Armenians would have been victimized, and these boo-hoo'ing people would have been the first to advertise the fact.
It's incredible that Gilbert the "historian" would speculate to such a level of absurdity; I suppose he's so hasty to declare the Armenians a genocidal brothers-in-arms, that he will go to extremes to find any imaginary link.
Gilbert then whitewashes the events of Karabakh. He relates the 1988 incidents in Sumgait as "indiscriminate, brutal torture and killing, the mutilation and rape, the looting and burning" by Azerbaijanis against the typically helpless, innocent Armenians, without saying a word about the atrocious behavior of the Armenians, especially in 1992.
What a racist attitude.
Sir Gilbert should be deeply ashamed. As a scholar, he relies upon propaganda for the presentation of his facts. Those who utilize propaganda as their source produce propaganda. His credibility as a genuine scholar can be seen for what it is worth. He has completely shown the Armenians to be helpless, innocent martyrs, while characterizing the "rampaging" Turks as bloodthirsty savages.
As a Briton, he has a responsibility to expose the terrible war propaganda of his nation that demonized the Turk, evils which continue to spread their poison today. Gilbert serves as an agent of that poison spreading, to make matters worse. He actually still points to sources such as Bryce and Toynbee, as discredited as these sources were, even immediately after the war.
As a presumed Jew, he should be most ashamed. He is denigrating the one nation that has defended Judaism over the centuries, when Jews were being persecuted all over the "Christian" world. He is accusing "Turkey" (that's what he calls the Ottoman Empire) of the worst crime against humanity, without offering any factual evidence, besides the hearsay and canards of Armenian propaganda.
These immoral "genocide scholars" have been allowed to get away with the spreading of their hatred for far too long.
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© Holdwater
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