{"id":17395,"date":"2016-03-28T17:21:22","date_gmt":"2016-03-28T17:21:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/?p=17395"},"modified":"2016-03-28T17:21:22","modified_gmt":"2016-03-28T17:21:22","slug":"its-time-that-the-us-faced-up-to-the-g-word-and-finally-recognised-the-armenian-genocide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/?p=17395","title":{"rendered":"It’s time that the US faced up to the ‘G word’ and finally recognised the Armenian genocide"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Fisk<\/a><\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s not difficult to accuse the bad guys of genocide \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c Colin Powell had no problem over Darfur in 2004. We should stand up to the real bullies<\/h3>\n

All week, the G-word has been rattling around the foreign ministries of the world.\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0Ever since John Kerry \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c he of Israeli-Palestinian peace “in six months”\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0fame \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c announced that Isis was committing genocide against Yazidis, Christians and Shia Muslims, we\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7ve been trying to work out just what he\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s talking about.\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0Even the poor old Canadians and their super-liberal prime minister Justin Trudeau, have since been refusing to recognise the Isis atrocities as “genocide”\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c the attempt to exterminate an entire race of people \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c preferring instead to talk about \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u056a\u0093crimes perpetrated\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0539\u00bbagainst religious and ethnic minorities.\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0539\u009d Could this be, ask Canadian critics, because Canada last month withdrew the last of its clapped out CF-18 fighter jets from the battle against Isis?<\/p>\n

More likely the Canadians have caught on to the whole genocide trap.\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0But first:\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0yes, Isis have indeed committed horrific crimes against minorities under their control.\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0Their massacre of Shia Muslims and the murder and enslavement of Yazidi and Christian women and children are all real \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c perhaps 10,000, perhaps 100,000, the figures are as numbing as they are vague.\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0The Isis magazine Dabiq<\/em>\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0admits all this \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c perhaps the closest anyone has come to self-incrimination since Pol Pot listed his crimes in Cambodia.<\/p>\n

But there\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s a problem. These terrible atrocities are being committed on the very land and deserts upon which a far more terrible genocide was perpetrated just over a hundred years ago by the Turks who head-chopped and knifed and shot to death a million and a half Armenian Christians, raping their women and throwing so many of their dead men into the waters of Anatolia that the very rivers changed course. And Turkey \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c heaven be praised \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c is now our good friend, Nato ally and,\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0since this month,\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0our bastion against the Muslim refugee “invasion”\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0of Europe.\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0Back in 1915, the Brits and Americans had no problems in naming the guilty party, along with the Turks\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7 militia ally \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c again, take in your breath \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c the Kurds, now our brave allies against the forces of Isis darkness.<\/p>\n

All this, you see, is a bit embarrassing. The Yazidis and Christians of Iraq have certainly been massacred \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c including a few Armenian grandchildren of the 1915 survivors, although that hasn\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7t cut much ice in the US \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c although the Shia Muslims of Iraq were being slaughtered in Iraq by the thousand during the latter half of America\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s military occupation. \u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0The Shia, I suspect, have been given a bloodbath upgrade to genocide because Shia Iran agreed to a nuclear deal with the rest of the world. But back to Yazidis for a moment.<\/p>\n

One of the worst genocides against this forlorn, centuries-old religion occurred in 1892 when the Turkish Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II targeted them for mass extermination.\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0But the Sultan included among his victims tens of thousands of 19th<\/sup> century Armenians\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c whom Mr Kerry cannot bring himself to declare victims of genocide in the 20th<\/sup> century (although he did so for many years when he was a mere Senator).\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0So earlier references to Yazidi extermination have to be left out of the Kerry narrative of history. The current Kerry mantra for the Armenian genocide is \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u056a\u0093one of the worst atrocities of the 20th<\/sup> century\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0539\u009d.<\/p>\n

La Clinton is going to be no help in all this.\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0She regularly condemned the Armenian genocide until she became Secretary of State to Barack Obama and discovered that the frightful persecution of the 1915 Christians \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c a teaching forum for future Nazis who witnessed the genocide as young German army officers and later put their lessons into practice against the Jews \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c was now \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u056a\u0093a matter of historical debate\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0539\u009d.\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0Donald Trump has not yet entered this particular blood-boltered \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u056d\u009cdebate\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7 although his Trump hotel in Azerbaijan \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c a country which, like Turkey and (to its shame) Israel, denies the Armenian genocide \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c suggests that we shall be hearing from him soon.<\/p>\n

Much of the rest of the world \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c governments and parliaments of 29 countries up to last year \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c have recognised the Armenian genocide. For 20 years, The Independent<\/em> has regularly referred to the Armenian Holocaust \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c with a capital \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u056d\u009cH\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7, the very same word (\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u056d\u009cShoah\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7 in Hebrew) used by many ordinary Israelis to describe the slaughter.\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0But not the Americans.<\/p>\n

Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose Sukhoi jet had of course not yet been shot down by the Turks, attended the official genocide memorial day in the Armenian capital of Yerevan, declaring the genocide a fact of history \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c to the fury of the Turks — while President Obama skulked in Washington, still too fearful of offending his Nato ally whose airbases \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c ironically built, in many cases, on lands stolen from murdered Armenians \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c were so important to the US Air Force which was already supposedly destroying Isis. <\/span><\/p>\n

All in all, then a pretty mess. Kerry tells us that Isis is \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u056a\u0093genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology and by actions\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0539\u00bb\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0539\u009d as if the destruction of the Armenian people in 1915 was not \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c and is perfectly happy to label the dark forces of the \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u056d\u009cIslamic Caliphate\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7 as genocidal themselves \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c which they clearly are.\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0But it raises another frightful question. Since we know that Isis sells Syrian and Iraqi oil to the Turks \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c Russian bomber pilots have seen miles of Isis oil convoys running to the horizon towards Turkey \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c and since Turkish journalists have been imprisoned for reporting on secret Turkish arms transfers to Islamists in Syria \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c the Americans are, in effect, blaming Isis for the genocide of a hundred thousand or more human beings while being too frightened to label the Armenian massacres of a million and a half souls as genocide lest it offend Isis\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7 sinister chums in Turkey.<\/p>\n

It\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s not difficult to accuse the bad guys of genocide \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c Colin Powell had no problem over Darfur in 2004 \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c but shouldn\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7t we stand up to the real bullies who prevent us honouring the memory of those million and a half Christians who were treated just as Isis treats the Yazidis and Christians and Shia today: the Turkish government and the Turkish army and the Turkish institutes of state? And all this at a time when an increasing number of brave Turks are themselves acknowledging the Turkish genocide of 1915?<\/p>\n

Forget it:\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a075 million visas to Turkey in response to their $3-billion European bailout to block those refugees is enough to keep the Armenian mass graves of 1915 well and truly closed.\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0Just ask John Kerry.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/voices\/its-time-that-the-us-faced-up-to-the-g-word-and-finally-recognised-the-armenian-geoncide-a6952561.html<\/p>\n

photo by wikipedia.org<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert Fisk   It\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s not difficult to accuse the bad guys of genocide \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c Colin Powell had no problem over Darfur in 2004. We should stand up to the real bullies All week, the G-word […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17396,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17395"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17395\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}