The Turkish-Armenian Dilemma

The non-binding Armenian genocide resolution set to come before the United States House of Representatives has the odd quality of being totally right and totally wrong simultaneously. It is right because the Armenian genocide should be recognized as such. Not many outside of Turkey dispute this. Why is it wrong? Because it comes at a very bad time.

Democrats are shooting themselves in the foot, as would the United States as a whole. Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the resolution's author, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi are making Democrats vulnerable to accusations of not caring for US troops in Iraq. Pissing off Turkey right now is a bad move, even though it is immoral not to recognize one of the first genocides of the 20th century.

Now there is indication the House resolution may be dead because of the backlash. This is good, for now. This should come up again when the United States is out of Iraq and Afghanistan and doesn't depend on Turkey for logistic support, and when a Turkish invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan wouldn't be such a threat to Iraqi stability. Maybe if most countries of the world agreed to recognize the genocide, Turkey would not be able to punish anyone for such a move.

Both the United States and Turkey come out bad from this affair. Turkey brazenly decided to impose sanctions on Armenia, punishing it for lobbying in favor of the resolution. Punishing the descendants of the genocide is shameless. Turkey should definitely be rebuked for that.

Turkey also should be rebuked for how it dragged Israel into this. Their foreign minister was here last week and he demanded that Israel prevent Congress from adopting the resolution and said that it would not only harm relations with the United States, it would also harm relations with Israel. They didn't say the same thing about relations with another American ally, the UK. Why? I guess because the Brits don't control America, but the Turkish government thinks that Israel, through the vast Jewish conspiracy, could get Congress to vote any way the Elders of Zion want. Fuck them. The foreign minister also threatened that the Jewish community in Turkey would suffer from a backlash if the genocide were recognized. If Israel had any guts we'd say, "you know what, if that's how you're trying to fight this - with anti-Semitic threats, we might as well adopt our own resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide".

Haaretz Editorial: Israeli Help For Darfur

I totally agree with today's Haaretz editorial (click here for the Hebrew version):

More than 250,000 people have been killed in Darfur since 2004 and nearly 2.5 million Sudanese have fled their homes; the situation in the region could now spiral completely out of control.

The widening of the conflict to include Chad and the Central African Republic has already caused more suffering and killing in the region. International efforts are focusing on pressuring Sudan to agree to the deployment of a large multi-national force in Darfur. One can see almost everything in the approximately 12 camps that are strung along the border with Sudan, under deteriorating humanitarian conditions: children who have lost their parents, refugees who have lost all their possessions, murder and other forms of violence. The acts of violence that have spread to Chad in recent months have caused hundreds of thousands of local people to flee their homes, undermining living conditions and what little security there still was in the region. It is not rare for babies to die from hunger and disease, for women to be raped and for people to be murdered. International assistance to about a quarter of a million displaced persons is declining.

Under such conditions, Israel should not be missing from the list of countries providing life-saving help to the region's inhabitants. Nearly 20 non-governmental agencies are operating in eastern Chad - Italians, French, British, Dutch, Spanish, American and international groups that have made assistance to the victims of violence in Darfur the focus of their work.

The Jewish-American Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), which provides psychological and welfare assistance to the victims, is alone in representing Jewish values, which consider assistance to refugees paramount. Some of its funding comes from contributions by IsraAID, an umbrella organization for humanitarian assistance, which also sent a few Israeli volunteers. This is not enough of a presence.

Israel should extend immediate assistance, whether funded by non-governmental agencies or directly, to refugees and displaced persons who have found shelter in Chad. The absence of diplomatic ties between the two countries should not be an obstacle. Israeli assistance to the victims of the tsunami in Indonesia, with which Israel also does not yet have full diplomatic ties, is an important example in this regard - despite the differences in the nature of relations between the countries.

In the past Israel has shown that it can provide much-needed aid to disaster areas throughout the world, demonstrating the Jewish values on which its establishment was based. Assistance to Muslim victims can illustrate much better than any international public relations campaign that the principles by which Israel was established are universal and do not discriminate between humans based on religion or race.

Israel, which came into being after the Holocaust cannot stand idly by in the face of the suffering of Darfur's refugees.