Letter to the Knesset of the State of Israel

Issue 10, Spring 2012

Dear Honourable Members of the Knesset of the State of Israel:

We write on behalf of organizations working for the remembrance of the genocide committed against Assyrians during the same time period in which more than a million and a half Armenians were exterminated.

Please read the letter below.

Sincerely,

Seyfo Center
27 January 2012

To:
Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin
Knesset Education Committee Chairman Alex Miller
Knesset Member Ze'ev Elkin
Knesset Member Aryeh Eldad
Knesset Member Zahava Gal-On

Dear Honourable Members of the Knesset of the State of Israel:

We write on behalf of organizations working for the remembrance of the genocide committed against Assyrians during the same time period in which more than a million and a half Armenians were exterminated.

We would like to bring to your attention a matter of great importance, namely the inclusion of the Assyrians and Greeks in the Knesset's forthcoming legislation on the remembrance of the Armenian genocide. While the world is aware of the Armenian genocide, many do not know that genocide was also committed against other ethnic groups, namely the Assyrians and Greeks, who were living from time immemorial on their ancestral lands, which were within the borders of the Ottoman Empire in 1914. The so-called "Young Turks" who deported and killed Armenians also led massacres against ethnic Assyrians and Greeks.

Hundreds of thousands of innocent Assyrians faced targeted killings, rape, abuse, destruction of homes and villages, and the razing of churches at the hands of the Ottoman Turks and their Kurdish allies. Nearly 50% of the Assyrian population was slaughtered, or about 250,000 persons, as well more than 300,000 Greeks (Exhibit 2). The archives show that the government of the Young Turks exterminated its Christian subjects in the form of massacres, death marches, and mass deportations. These brutal policies resulted in the deaths of two million Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks. In 2007, the world's foremost group of genocide scholars, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), formally recognized both the Assyrian and Greek Genocides (Exhibit 1), announcing that:

"It is the conviction of the International Association of Genocide Scholars that the Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities of the Empire between 1914 and 1923 constituted genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, and Pontian and Anatolian Greeks."

The IAGS called "upon the government of Turkey to acknowledge the genocides against these populations, to issue a formal apology, and to take prompt and meaningful steps toward restitution."

In 2006, the European Parliament urged Turkey to recognize the Assyrian and Pontic Greek genocide along with that of the Armenians, and to facilitate scholars' access to the historical archives and "all relevant documents" (Exhibit 2). On March 11, 2010, the Parliament of Sweden endorsed a resolution to officially recognize the Assyrian Genocide alongside those of the Armenians and Greeks (Exhibit 3). This followed several public statements on the Assyrian and Greek genocides by the State of New York under Governors George Pataki, Eliot Spitzer, and David Paterson (Exhibit 4). As you may be aware, there exists an extensive corpus of academic research and archival material proving that a campaign against the entire Christian population took place within the former Ottoman Empire from 1914 through 1928 (Exhibit 5).

Contrary to the arguments of some diplomats, remembrance of the Ottoman Christian genocide is not "anti-Turkish" or "anti-Muslim." Turkish Muslim human rights advocates support recognition and remembrance of late Ottoman genocides. The Istanbul Branch of the Human Rights Association, Turkey, Commission Against Racism and Discrimination, recently declared that genocide denial is an incitement to further cultural destruction, for "denial of the annihilation of a nation with all its social system, professions, works of art and historical heritage by the state itself intentionally and in a planned manner, means to endorse the crime and to justify such violence," and that "denial of a crime against humanity such as genocide has nothing to do with freedom of expression." In 2008, one of the founders of the Turkish Association for Human Rights, publisher and writer Ragip Zarakolu, argued that in "1997 and in 2000, people who published on the Armenian genocide were prosecuted but acquitted while they are nowadays condemned," and that Turkish law is "incompatible with democracy". Mr. Zarakolu was sentenced to prison for publishing a translation of a book about the Armenian genocide, known as the crime of insulting Turkish national identity. The Human Rights Association of Turkey told the World Conference Against Racism in 2001 that "Turkey's legal and administrative system has been built on the basis of the Turkish ethnic group only.... The Government system did not, at best, recognize the other cultures, and, at worst, has aided in destroying those cultures." Nobel-prize winning Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk said in 2006 that there is only a "small minority who are struggling for democracy and secularism in the Middle East," and that in Turkey and elsewhere, a writer must "change one's words ... in a way that will be acceptable to everyone in a repressed culture, and to become skilled in this arena," i.e. a "shaming and degrading" exercise.

It is the hope of all signatories to this letter, that the Knesset of the State of Israel takes appropriate measures to include the Assyrian and Greek peoples in forthcoming legislation on the remembrance of the Armenian genocide.

Thank you for your time. We look forward to working with members of the Knesset in addressing the importance of recognition of the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Genocide.

Signatories (Alphabetically)

Scholars:

-   Dr. Adam Jones, University of British Columbia (Okanagan, Canada), and Member of the International Association of Genocide Scholars
-   Prof. David Gaunt, Sodertorn University (Stockholm, Sweden)
-   Dr. Deborah Mayersen, Asia-Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, University of Queensland (Queensland, Australia), and Member of the International Association of Genocide Scholars
-   Dr. Donna-Lee Frieze, Deakin University (Melbourne, Australia), and Member of the International Association of Genocide Scholars
-   Prof. Hannibal Travis, Associate Professor of Law, Florida International University College of Law, and Member of the International Association of Genocide Scholars
-   Dr. Henry Theriault, Worcester State College (Massachusetts, United States), and Member of the International Association of Genocide Scholars
-   Dr. Herb Hirsch, L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs,
   Virginia Commonwealth University (Virginia, United States), Co-Editor, Genocide    Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, and Member of the International    Association of Genocide Scholars
-   Dr. Racho Donef (Melbourne, Australia)
-   Dr. Theofanis Malkidis, Democritus University of Thrace (Komotini, Greece), and Member of the International Association of Genocide Scholars

Organisations:

-   Assyrian Academic Society (USA)
-   Assyrian American Association of Southern California (USA)
-   Assyrian Australian National Federation (Australia)
-   Assyrian Cultural Club (Poland)
-   Assyrian Federation in Germany and European Sections (Germany)
-   Assyrian Genocide Research Center - Seyfo Center
-   Assyrian Institute of Belgium (Belgium)
-   American Mesopotamian Organization (USA)
-   Assyrian Solidarity Association (Switzerland)
-   Assyrian Universal Alliance (Australia & New Zealand Region)
-   Assyrian Youth Federation (Sweden)
-   Australian Assyrian Arts and Literature Foundation (Australia)
-   Beth-Nahrin Cultural Club (Australia)
-   Diyarbakir TurAbdin Assyrian Association (USA)
-   Federation of Pontian Associations of Australia (Australia)
-   Firodil Institute (United Kingdom)
-   Inanna Foundation (The Netherlands)
-   Iraqi Christian Relief Council (US
-   Panepirotic Federation of Australia (Australia)
-   Syriac Institute of Belgium (Belgium)

Source: Seyfo Center 1915, Postfach 2838, 33258 Gutersloh, Germany, www.seyfo.com, email: info@seyfo.com

____________

GPN Editor's Followup: My letter explaining why I did not sign the letter to the Knesset - IWC

January 26, 2012

Dear Friends,

While I had chosen not to sign on to a letter to the Knesset at this time for the reasons that I gave that I felt it could overload-complicate our present process seeking for the first time recognition of the "Armenian Genocide," you know that I am fully supportive of full recognition of all co-victims with the Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, worked for the resolution in IAGS that was passed during my presidency, and published our Special Issue of GPN (Issue 5) on the subject of co-victims. And I see no reason not to be identified with your proposal even though I do not sign a communication sent directly to the Knesset at this time. I am now asking your permission for us to reprint your present letter to the Knesset in one of the issues of GPN that are coming up.

With regards to all,

Prof. Israel W. Charny, Ph.D.
Executive Director, Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, Jerusalem
[awarded Armenia Presidential Prize 2011]
Editor-in-Chief, GPN GENOCIDE PREVENTION NOW, a worldwide Web Magazine with support of Carnegie Corp. NY www.genocidepreventionnow.org
Tel & Fax: 972-2-672-0424 E-mail: encygeno@mail.com

Tags: Armenian Genocide | Israel

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