GPN Website

Editor's Closing Statement and Two 'Requiem Contributions'

Again this issue begins with a section devoted to Iran Nuclear Watch - which was published as an advance Special Bulletin before the actual issue. One betitled genocide scholar has accused us of having an "obsession" with Iran. No, we are deeply worried not obsessed. Iran, a country with excellent intellectual resources and much more, is moving relentlessly to becoming a destructive nuclear power. Right now in the years preceding the showdown, Iran is fully committed to arming satellite not-quite-governmental forces, e.g., Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza with thousands of missiles which each already has used against Israel. A recent report conveys that Iran is collaborating with the renegade nuclear North Korea as the latter prepares defiantly - just like Iran develops its nuclear program - to fire a test warhead that is believed to be capable of carrying a nuclear load.

Non-democratic nuclear countries MUST be stopped in their tracks, or the survivors in Western civilization will be mourning the death of our many-century hopes for a better relatively safe world.

Editor's Closing Statement and Hopes for Future GPN Web Sites

THIS IS INDEED SADLY THE LAST ISSUE OF GPN GENOCIDE PREVENTION NOW PUBLISHED BY THE INSTITUTE ON THE HOLOCAUST IN JERUSALEM

We are proud to have pioneered new forms of journalism about genocide in GPN Genocide Prevention Now, www.genocidepreventionnow.org.

In this Web magazine, we have combined news and interpretive analysis of genocidal events and processes around the world with thoughtful essays; some on a breakthrough intellectual level about the study of genocide by some of the most devoted and outstanding genocide scholars in the world; and these together with delivery of a rich flow of news and information about activities taking place in the world of genocide scholarship and prevention.

In publishing the scholarly articles, we have developed a journalistic style of presenting articles in (relatively) magazine-readable fashion, and then with an easy click to an accompanying pdf version which includes full reference notes and references.

It is with a serious mixture of personal and professional regrets that we now close down shop for GPN at our Institute office in Jerusalem. The personal regrets revolve around my sadness (and gratitude) for growing so much older - I am now into my 80's. The professional regrets may be more painful because they reflect the fact that in all of our efforts in genocide scholarship in Israel these last 33 years since the founding of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem, we have failed to produce a viable new generation of genocide scholars. To my great regret (joined by several other colleagues), the understandable devotion of Israel to the memory and research of the Holocaust that befell the Jewish people also took on elements of superiority and uniqueness that have thwarted the development of genocide studies in this country. The one and only university that has developed a significant program, thanks to the outstanding work of Professor Yair Auron at the Open University of Israel, who is an Associate Director of our Institute in Jerusalem, has pioneered two elective courses which last year drew no less than 1400 registrations, and has pioneered a series of books in Hebrew on many different aspects of the genocides of different peoples. But Open University is not a research university with the full scholastic traditions of training new academic specialists.

We have - and continue to offer - the continuation of GPN to other appropriate institutions in the world, and we will cooperate and help them in their beginning as much as possible.
At this writing, we are pleased to announce that plans are currently underway to work on a new phase of GPN with the University of Hartford in Hartford, Connecticut. The university's Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies has a long and rich tradition of teaching about genocide and the Holocaust and the Greenberg Center's Philip D. Feltman Chair of Modern Jewish History, Professor Avinoam Patt will be heading the efforts. You will be hearing from him in the coming year about their exciting plans, including expanded efforts dedicated to the teaching of genocide prevention.

GPN and the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem remain open to receiving further proposals for a continuation of the broad-based Web magazine format that we have created in addition to the Web site we expect will be earmarked for educators by the University of Hartford. Please write Prof. Israel W. Charny at encygeno@gmail.com to discuss your possible interest in publishing a broad-based GPN.

I now take leave of GPN readers with very special thanks to the Carnegie Corporation of New York for making this three year project possible and supporting us graciously all through it, and with special warm thanks to Marc Sherman, MLS who has edited the Holocaust and Genocide Review (HGR) and to Karen Wolberger, MPH who has served so effectively as our Managing Editor and Webmaster.

In parting, I also submit to our readers and the world of genocide scholarship two major new intellectual pieces, the first A Worksheet for Describing and Categorizing a Genocidal Event; and the second: A Proposed Checklist of Ethical and Professional Criteria for Publishing Statements Accusing Policies and Actions of being Genocidal (-including Crimes against Humanity).

The Worksheet and the Criteria are intended for all possible situations of genocidal destruction. They are not limited and not rooted in the suffering and turmoil of any given ethnic, religious or national identity- including the author's. The test of these instruments is in their facilitating and insuring genuine scientifically factual information about any event of genocidal slaughter. Understandably, the field of genocide studies inherently evokes the strongest kinds of emotions of people in respect of their own ethnic, religious and national identities and their own political thinking. These instruments are offered with the hope that they will strengthen the abilities of all of us genocide scholars to work with the facts and only the facts.

--Israel W. Charny

GPN's twelve issues from 2010, 2011, and 2012 and its accompanying fine search facility will remain online for the next 5 years.