by Israel W. Charny
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I AM A HUMAN BUT AM I?
man genocider
I am a son of Adam Who am I?
A peace-loving man grateful for the gift of my life? A serial mass genocider?
An accomplice to mass murders? An all-too available victim?
A bystander getting away with a box seat on the madness of it all?
Long before the Government or Party or Church tell me it’s good to get rid of those maggots, and I go to do it
What do I look like in my everyday life? Do I wear a tie?
Do I speak nicely?
Do I love my children? Am I fun to be with?
Je Tue, donc Je Suis I kill, therefore I Am
I beat you, Descartes—mine is more powerful You die. I live.
You die because I command your death Of course I command my life
I told you I am the Commander
I am Eternal. Immortal. Superior.
My people are Chosen,
and we are the Superior ones
Your seminars on Holocaust and Genocide, films, books, TV programs, sermons, conferences, even laws and courts can’t stop us
We are Death, and Death always wins
Only we live, precisely because we are Death We are your Death
Response to the Presidential Prize of Armenia—May 30, 2011
SUMMARY
I thank the President of Armenia and the Armenian people for the great honor you have bestowed on me of a Presidential Medal for my contributions to recognition of the Armenian Genocide and my many years of academic researches of denial of genocide
–all genocides. Clearly we are together committed profoundly to recognizing and honoring the memory of the Armenian Genocide. But there is much more to be done to remember and honor the genocides of all people; and much more to be done beyond memory, for we need to fight against recurrences of genocide. Genocide is a universal problem of our human species. I propose three principles of moral values:
1. When we fight against the denial of a genocide of any people, we are fighting for recognition of all peoples who have suffered genocides.
2. When we fight against the denial of a genocide of any people, we are fighting against genocides of any people in the future of our human history.
3. When we fight against denial of any genocide, we are doing battle against the species-wide human capacity to commit genocide that is, tragically but evidently, an instinctual or built-in basic potential of our very natures as human beings.
To further our battle against denial I will present a number of ideas for projects that will aim at reducing and preventing genocide in our world:
1. R2L! Right to Life! A Worldwide Union of Genocide Victim Peoples- and ALL Caring People- on behalf of a Right to Life of All Peoples
2. A Worldwide Cultural Campaign for the Right to Life of All Peoples
3. An International Peace Army
4. A Worldwide Genocide Early Warning System
5. World Genocide Situation Rooms in Museums of Genocide
6. Worldwide Web Information about Genocide and Genocide Studies and Prevention
Fighting for a Better World for ALL of Us along with the Sacredness of Memory
I congratulate the Armenian people, all around the world, for your, devoted, capable, and proud defense of the memory of the Armenian Genocide against all those who would deny the history or put it aside out of their self-interest.
I am very pleased to be recognized as a person who is contributing meaningfully to the battle for truth about the Armenian Genocide.
And I am very grateful that the honor you are bestowing on me with Armenia’s Presidential Prize is also defined in response to my many years of academic researches about the process of denial of genocide –we know denial of genocide constitutes an actual stage in the very basic process of genocides — and that means the denials of any and all of the terrifyingly many genocides human society has committed.
I told a distinguished Israeli reporter the joke that came into my head when I first received a few weeks ago the exciting word from the office of the President of Armenia of my award.1 My joke is that I have known for some years that it was unlikely I would ever stand as a candidate for an Israel Prize — the highest recognition that Israel bestows for important achievements — if only because I have stood so firmly and repeatedly as a critic of the Israeli government’s shameful failure to recognize fully the
Armenian Genocide. So now the Government of Armenia has come to my rescue and awarded me a prize for Israel — that after all is my first name, so that with the help of Armenia I now do have an ‘Israel Prize.’
I am very honored and very grateful. I will continue to do my best to further full and honest recognition of the Armenian Genocide and all genocides. It is only natural that in most cases we devote ourselves first to the genocide of our own people which we feel most deeply, and then also to the genocide of peoples to whom we have become close, but in the long run we must remember and honor the genocidal murders of all peoples who have endured such hell.
It is this Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide that created the famous “First International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide” in Tel Aviv in 1982 that was so incredibly opposed by the Turkish government and then by my Israeli government as well. Personally I paid a heavy price in my academic advancement at the time when my university surrendered to government pressures to attempt to make me cancel the participation of Armenian speakers – or any scholars speaking of the Armenian Genocide—and if not cancel the entire conference. As I look back at this and then other countless incidents over the years of pressures to censor and cancel my representation of the authentic history of the Armenian Genocide, I am myself touched and pleased with the realization that I did not respond out of a feeling of being in any way especially brave or a hero, nor did I respond out of any sense of obligation. My judgments and actions were based on a simple sense that one must do what is right, meaning fair and just and decent, and that makes me feel very good and even deserving of the great award you bestow on me.
The Ugliness and Dangers of Denials of Genocide
Denials of genocide are very unfair, unjust and ugly. They are also extremely dangerous not only to the victim people but to our human civilization. Denials of genocide are not only disgusting attempts to humiliate the victim people once more, and hurtful reopenings of wounds of stigmatizing and persecuting the victim people once again. Denials of genocide are also loud and clear statements of a totalitarian or fascist attempt to dominate and control the very historical record of civilization. Such vicious demands for obedience and conformity are, of course, more characteristic of non- democratic countries, along with ideologies and unfortunately also some religions at times in their history that persecute nonbelievers, dissidents, and plain people who treasure freedom who are not blindly loyal to whatever the entity that seeks to be supreme and to have power over everybody. And as the great scholar of genocide, RJ Rummel of the University of Hawaii has shown,2 it is the nondemocratic countries that are far more prone to commit genocide.
Moreover, denials of genocide are also loud and clear affirmations of the legitimacy of violence, they are retroactive justifications of the specific violent killing that was done in the genocide, and they are warnings and calls for renewals of violence — whether towards the same victim people or to other peoples. In fact, it has become clear that denials of genocide often are messages from the deniers that they are already engaged in or preparing to be violent once again.
It is not at all by chance that Erdogan in the last year twice has threatened to expel 100,000 Armenians from Turkey3; and it is not at all by chance that Erdogan’s Turkey –
a regime that is bizarrely devoted to denials of the Armenian Genocide – continues to be violent towards the Kurdish people who have suffered thousands of destroyed villages, tens of thousands of dead, and who are frequently not allowed by the Turkish government to use their language or celebrate their culture.4
Similarly, it is not by chance that Ahmadinejad’s and Khameni’s Iran that, like Turkey, maintains a government policy and attaches its governmental prestige and resources, to denials of the Holocaust,5 even as Iran predicts and calls for the annihilation of Israel – already a ‘stinking corpse’ in Iran’s various ill-chosen rhetoric6- this along with mocking the world by continuing the development of nuclear weapons.7 Moreover, Iran for some years now has been providing thousands of missiles to surrogates – Hezbollah and Hamas – who have attacked Israel with these weapons and are preparing major attacks for the future. Iran the denier of the Holocaust is a country engaged in major violence and could well be propping itself for the unthinkable.
Now I am aware that I am making these remarks to Armenians, and when I am actually with you physically in Armenia, that Armenia is a small vulnerable neighboring country to Iran. It is obvious that Armenia wants and needs to maintain a positive relationship with its powerful huge neighbor. Your situation also reminds us of how Israel has been attempting to have a good relationship with Turkey very much at the expense of the truth of the Armenian Genocide. I am convinced this policy has been deeply wrong. Of course, I do not believe that nations –especially small ones– can afford not to evaluate political realities and security risks, but I think that in the long run there must be limits to the extent of realpolitik and that denials of the history of a genocide are beyond the limit that should be acceptable.
I am personally fortunate to be a citizen of two wonderful democracies, the US and Israel, and I have to face the facts that my USA too has not been authentic about the Armenian Genocide. I am disappointed deeply in both my countries. Moreover, I have a deep conviction that integrity and truth are valuable ideals for all countries that want to develop as healthy societies, and I even believe there is a degree of real power that develops for countries, however small, that live by these values as much as possible.
I believe that denials of the truth of a genocide not only hurt the victim people and the values of our overall civilization, it also pollutes the cultural values and weakens the countries that adopt denial as their policy. For our planet as a whole, denials of past genocides bode poorly for the future and make it all the more clear that there will certainly be new cases of genocide, most probably with an increasingly devastating range of destruction. The extent of the madness of genocide that already exists is unbelievable. The same great researcher, RJ Rummel, has given us an estimated
conservative total of 262 million dead from genocide in the 20th century!8 As individuals, groups, nations – particularly nations recovering from past disasters – we get understandably lost in our day to day preoccupations first of all with staying alive. But a little thought will bring to our awareness that the moral values we choose to live out will also affect our survival deeply. In medicine we have known for a long time that people who want to live really do better in their medical battles for life, and I believe that nations that stand for life –for their own people and for others – also will show a greater historical resilience.
Genocide is a Universal Problem of our Human Species
Genocide is not an Armenian problem, and it is not a Jewish problem – for that matter neither s it a Bosnian problem or a Serbian problem (the Serbs, recently perpetrators, have also been victims of genocide not so long ago), nor a Cambodian problem or a Russian problem or a Chinese problem. Genocide is a universal problem of our human species.
I propose three principles or statements of moral values regarding the battle against denial of genocide:
1. When we fight against the denial of a genocide of any people, we are fighting for recognition of all peoples who have suffered genocides.
2. When we fight against the denial of a genocide of any people, we are fighting against genocides of any people in the future of our human history.
3. When we fight against denial of any genocide, we are doing battle against the species-wide human capacity to commit genocide that is, tragically but evidently, an instinctual or built-in basic potential of our very natures as human beings.
I did not plan to write a poem to include in these remarks. It wrote itself as it were — an experience that many writers describe occurring to them from time to time – in April this year, somehow under the influence of Holocaust Day in Israel, Armenian Genocide Memorial Day – we had an important and moving memorial seminar at Hebrew University again this year (with great appreciations to Prof. Michael Stone), and my receiving notification of this prize from the Armenian President’s office.
I do not mean that all human beings are genociders, and I do not mean that all us human beings can or will commit genocide in historical situations and life scenarios that invite us or even command us to do so, and I do not mean that all nations, ethnicities, religions, or political movements are equally likely to kill masses of human beings.
On the contrary, I mean that every individual and every nation or other group must exercise a choice whether or not to give a hand to mass death. Our first choice in fact is whether to allow ourselves knowing or unknowingly to be much too available as Victims who are not prepared to fight for our lives. But then we must also choose whether or not to be Accomplices, also Bystanders, and finally – with a further special seriousness – we must choose whether or not we will be Perpetrators who commit genocide.
This is what Albert Camus taught us at the end of World War II:9
ALBERT CAMUS
THE YEARS HAVE KILLED SOMETHING IN US. AND THAT SOMETHING IS SIMPLY THE OLD CONFIDENCE MAN HAD IN HIMSELF, WHICH LED HIM TO BELIEVE THAT HE COULD ALWAYS ELICIT HUMAN REACTIONS FROM ANOTHER MAN IF HE SPOKE TO HIM IN THE LANGUAGE OF A COMMON HUMANITY.
WE HAVE SEEN MEN LIE, DEGRADE, KILL, DEPORT, TORTURE — AND EACH TIME IT WAS NOT POSSIBLE TO PERSUADE THEM NOT TO DO THESE THINGS BECAUSE THEY WERE SURE OF THEMSELVES.
BEFORE ANYTHING CAN BE DONE, TWO QUESTIONS MUST BE PUT: “DO YOU OR DO YOU NOT, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, WANT TO KILL OR ASSAULT?”
FOR MY PART, I AM FAIRLY SURE THAT I HAVE MADE THE CHOICE. AND, HAVING CHOSEN, I THINK THAT I MUST SPEAK OUT, THAT I MUST STATE THAT I WILL NEVER AGAIN BE ONE OF THOSE, WHOEVER THEY BE, WHO COMPROMISE WITH MURDER.
ALBERT CAMUS in Neither Victims Nor Executioners, originally published in Combat, 1946.
Remembering a Genocide Is Sacred, but There is Much More also to be Done to Prevent Genocide
Clearly we are committed profoundly to recognizing and honoring the memory of the Armenian Genocide. But there is much more to be done beyond memory. We need to fight against recurrences of genocide. I always felt as a Jew that working towards the prevention of renewed genocides was the most profound way I could express my devotion to memorial of the Holocaust.
On this special occasion I would like to suggest that many tasks await all of humanity to seek to intervene when genocide breaks out , and to seek to prevent genocide; moreover that there are special meanings and challenges for people who have suffered genocide to be at the forefront of such activities for all mankind.
Armenia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Edward Nalbandian, said eloquently to a conference held in Yerevan in December 2010 just past:10
Nations have a right to memory and to access truth. Those who deny genocide contribute to the development of genocide. A toxic inevitability gives birth to genocide.
How stringently do we condemn genocide? To what extent do we want to be informed about genocide? The sons and heirs of those who suffered genocide need to be joined by the heirs of whose who committed the genocide in remembering. The road to reconciliation is not of denial but of remembrance.
Excerpts from Closing Remarks to the Conference: “The Crime of Genocide: Prevention, Condemnation and Elimination of Consequences,” Yerevan, Armenia, December 14, 2010
I would like now to propose to you a few projects for prevention of genocide. Like in medical research of a dread disease, at this point there are so many varied possibilities to be explored and tested. I think that each profession and scholarly discipline and line of human endeavor can generate projects that can direct human creativity and ingenuity to new efforts to stop the ghastly killing of genocide.
The following are a few samples of the many vital projects that are waiting to be developed to attack genocide. I personally am now an old person, and after having launched many new initiatives in the course of my work life, I now propose to others to pick up the implementation of these ideas –even as I personally will continue to a limited extent in some of these projects to the end of my life:
1. R 2 L ! Right to Life11
R 2 L ! RIGHT TO LIFE A WORLDWIDE UNION OF GENOCIDE VICTIM PEOPLES – AND ALL CARING PEOPLE—ON BEHALF OF A RIGHT TO LIFE OF ALL PEOPLES
This is a proposal for the mobilization of a range of past victim peoples, to be joined by people of good will from all other nations, to preserve and honor the memory of all fallen victims and all past genocides, and to devote the memorial process to new actions on behalf of protecting human life in our world today and in the future.
In my opinion, this is a worthy idea that can be launched with an Internet/Facebook type recruitment; it is deserving of strategic planning and budgetary support say from the United Nations, or a great international company or organization; or an ecumenical world religious body, and more.
This proposed concept of R2L should be recognizable as a companion to the historic proposal of R2P or the Right to Protect12 which was put forward by Gareth Evans, former Foreign Minister of Australia, and Mohamed Sahnoun, Special Advisor to the UN Secretary-General. The Commission issued its report in December 2001. It has been adopted by the United Nations and has been considered by many as a momentous
breakthrough in human thinking and the value system of the international community. R2P specifies that in contrast to the time-honored principle of national sovereignty, when a country sees mass killing taking place in another country, it is legitimate and in fact a duty to intervene to stop the mass killing. R2L is a companion concept that asserts the inviolable right of every human being to live.
A cardinal rule for any R2L project or activity must be the authenticity and scientifically established validity of information, for which purpose it is not difficult to establish clear procedures for ruling on the admissibility of information, such as use of multiple multiethnic and multidisciplinary evaluation committees working parallel but entirely separately from one another and protected to the utmost from political pressures from any source.
I also want to note that in the course of working with information about past genocides, it is inevitable that data also will be presented about the execution of genocidal massacres and even larger genocidal campaigns by some of our otherwise victim peoples, in various cases including our own beloved peoples for all that we legitimately remain strongly identified with our sorrow and anger at our having been victims of genocide (on the same or other historical occasions). The true facts and critiques of the faults and errors of our various peoples also need to be dealt with responsibly and respectfully, and in no case should they be taken as weakening the memorial of our
experiences as victims.13
The goal of R2L is to become a window into a far better world with less ethnic rivalries and less ethnic cleansing and genocide. After all, the natural cry on the lips of all of us when we memorialize our losses to past genocides is “Never Again.” Genocide scholarship must be based on full and objective truth and an overriding loyalty to humanity as a whole and to life that are greater than our heartfelt loyalty even to our own beloved people.
In the present proposal I begin with the establishment of such a movement by no less than victim peoples of past genocides, for who should be more sensitive than the peoples of past victims of genocide to the right of all living people to live? At the same time, the proposed organization is obviously for all people, and those who hail from non- victim peoples are no less invited to further the work of R2L.
Beyond the symbolic value of an organization of R2L and the statement it makes to mankind, I see R2L itself undertaking meaningful action projects, as will be noted in some of the following proposals.
2. A Worldwide Cultural Campaign for the Right to Life of All Peoples
A WORLDWIDE CULTURAL CAMPAIGN FOR THE RIGHT TO LIFE OF ALL PEOPLES
(core materials may be made available from the previously proposed organization, R2 L)
In the forefront of its various activities, R2L as a major international office might conduct an international cultural campaign on behalf of the sanctity of life and commitment to protecting human life. The campaign should be orchestrated in projects in the different languages of our world, and conveyed through the various cultural forms known and trusted by different peoples, including religious activities, media presentations, educational institutions and programs, government announcements, or health advisories. The campaign will be conducted by a wide range of respected and beloved cultural heroes including religious leaders, government leaders, military heroes, culture stars including musical performers, medical leaders, sports stars, and more.
I have described such a campaign at some length in my recent book on the psychology of suicide bombers.14 At the core of the group of cultural leaders will be the leaders of major religions in order to invoke the special appeal and archetypal power of religious images for millions of people on our globe, including secular people many of whom also have in their early memories and imagery an imprinting of a basic religious emphasis on
“Thou Shalt Not Kill” or the mercifulness of God or Allah (note there is a dialectical contradiction in most religions between respecting life and calling on the faithful to spill the blood of various strangers and innocents). The religious leaders selected for leadership of the campaign should be spiritual leaders who are honored in their cultures and regions but also in the larger world as representing decency and integrity – religious leaders who are known bigots and persecutors of other peoples, like those who issue religious fatwas to murder writers or who issue religious edicts condoning suicide bombings , must be excluded. The overall campaign is to bring together a wide rangeof culture leaders in a broad inspirational, advertising and entertainment campaign that would function over a good number of years, to inculcate a new level of cultural prohibition against killing and its replacement by a greater reverence for human life.
3. An International Peace Army that Responds like a Police Force to Reports of Mass Murder
AN INTERNATIONAL PEACE ARMY (IPA)
As described in the Encyclopedia of Genocide15 I propose an International Peace Army (IPA) that should be composed of at least three major “Armies.” What is distinctive in this proposal is that all three are components of a single integrated IPA command, so that the planning and execution of measures by any component army are reviewed, authorized and implemented in a unified framework:
(1) The IPA Military
(2) The IPA Medical and Humanitarian Army
(3) The IPA for the Rebuilding of Safe and Tolerant Communities
The basic logic is as if simple. World or large-scale violences require police forces just as any domestic community does. When mass murder breaks out, there needs to be a machinery for calling the police— and the IPA needs to be empowered to act professionally to examine whether mass killing is going on and attempt to stop it without requiring new political authorization each time to overcome old meanings of intruding on national sovereignty. Of course there will be complex situations such as when mass killing might well be “justified” – say former concentration camp inmates are lynching their past guards, say a colonial people that has been enslaved is turning on its cruel masters – nonetheless, the role of an international police is to stop the killing of groups of civilians using military force prudently as needed. Together with its “Military Army” the IPA goes in from the outset as an integrated force that includes a “Medical Army” whose immediate charge is to save, treat and protect human lives with the best methods of medicine and public health and safety.
The last of the three components, the “Army for the Rebuilding of Safe and Tolerant Communities” is relatively unfamiliar and therefore may warrant more of a brief explanation here. This Army is not only charged with restoring basic societal systems (water, electricity, health services), and with reestablishing the basic structures of civil government and community life with basic democratic and justice systems, but also with steps towards a reconciliation of ancient enmities. The job of this Army includes doing as wise combat as possible with prevailing ethnic/religious/political/what have you prejudice, hatred, wishes to achieve ethnic cleansing, and historical hatreds and revenge ledgers. This Army’s work obviously must continue for a long period following termination of the genocidal trauma. It will be responsible for reparations; legal prosecution of perpetrators; Truth and Reconciliation Commissions; and statements of national regret and apology; all within the framework of a campaign to overcome time- honored collective memories calling for revenge or other motivations for power.
Otherwise, every victim community may be doomed to unchanging collective memory and a never-ending perpetuation of vengeance-goals.16
In all of its constituent armies, the International Peace Army will need to be composed of nationals from a very wide range of countries, and to include the participation of a wide range of ethnicities, religions, races, and prevailing political orientations. 17 The
IPA will need to be an army of all the people on behalf of the lives of all human beings. The three armies are to work together with each other under an integrated command. No single army is to be superior and more powerful in decision making.
4. A Worldwide Genocide Early Warning System
A WORLDWIDE GENOCIDE EARLY WARNING SYSTEM (GEWS)
This is a proposal to establish and maintain a WORLD GENOCIDE EARLY WARNING SYSTEM on behalf of all peoples somewhere in the world—perhaps in a particularly symbolic location such as the scene of a past genocide – or perhaps at several different locations spread round the globe paralleling and supplementing the work of one another, like multiple science institutions devoted to a shared goal.
The proposal for an early warning system on genocide has a long and honorable intellectual history and a very disappointing record in real action. The original proposal by me and my colleague, Chanan Rappaport, in Jerusalem in the late 1970’s, with a major publication exposure in 1982, earned widespread interest and praise from heads of state, the United Nations, the New York Times, and of course many professional reviews, and over the years was reprinted several times; but we never succeeded in getting together the funding to put such an early warning system into operation. Nor did other pioneer thinkers and some social scientists who did in fact go further operationally in important pilot projects, such as about minorities at risk around the world – Ted Robert Gurr and Barbara Harff have been outstanding among such researchers,18 but no one has succeeded in putting into operation an overall Genocide Early Warning System for the world.
The overriding purpose of a Genocide Early Warning System is to combine the authority of scientific information systems with the voice of an international agency whose identity is carefully cultivated and maintained to express the responsible and disciplined voices of a group of trusted and respected senior leaders of many of the world’s peoples, including leaders of different religions and ethnicities and political orientations, joining together to issue warnings of genocide based on responsible empirical information. One cannot emphasize enough how crucial will be the selection of the directors of GEWS. They must represent large and varied segments of the population on Earth, and they must be men and women who are selected on the basis of outstanding records of defense of all human beings.
5. World Genocide Situation Rooms in Museums of Genocide
ESTABLISHING WORLD GENOCIDE SITUATION ROOMS IN MUSEUMS OF GENOCIDES OF INDIVIDUAL PEOPLES AROUND THE WORLD
(core materials may be made available from the previously proposed organization, R2L)
This proposal is to establish and maintain a WORLD GENOCIDE SITUATION ROOM in
each of many museums around the world that are devoted to a specific genocide.19
Amazingly, I know of no Holocaust or genocide museum that has made a real transition from its dedicated presentation of the genocide with which it deals to the actual current and future threats of genocide in the world in which we are living—there is some exception in what was the Committee of Conscience and then the Academy for Genocide Prevention at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, but it is limited and not really reflected in the museum experience for the visitor. I have several personal experiences over my many years in genocide studies of proposing such World Genocide Situation Rooms to several museum directors, and in more than one case finding great interest and in fact excitement in the senior professionals heading the development of the proposed museum project, only to find that the Situation Room does not come into being when the museum opens. The usual explanation is that many of the members of the board of directors of the Museum, often including prominent survivors of the genocide of the specific people, feel that any attention to other peoples, past or future, will diminish the concentration and significance of the museum’s specific topic of its one victim people.
When visitors to a genocide museum come to the end of the exhibit, they are often truly moved to sympathy for the victims of the genocide, but often they are also troubled by their knowledge — or even with their intuitive understanding — that new genocidal events continue to take place at this very time in our world. Many of the viewers are now charged with a tension and a desire to know more and do more, but museums do not respond to or harness the caring and the energies that have been evoked. Years ago my colleague in the Genocide Early Warning System, Chanan Rapaport, and I proposed to Israel’s Yad Vashem to recruit each year a corps of high school juniors and seniors and train them to be guides at the Museum and to conclude each tour with a group discussion about what genocides are taking place in today’s world and what involved citizens of the world can attempt to do, but Yad Vashem dismissed our proposals. If anything the tradition that continues today at Yad Vashem insists that guides (not the student groups we proposed) be very well trained in the facts of the Holocaust and that they purposely avoid bringing up the genocides of other people – and we know of cases where guides have been dismissed for violating this policy of maintaining an aura of exclusivity and uniqueness around the Holocaust.
A World Genocide Situation Room could provide an update about mass murders taking place in the world and information about places and situations which have been identified as potential genocide hot spots. It could also arm museum viewers with a beginning number of tools for participating in actions to reduce the extent of genocide, such as letters to the leaders of democratic countries or to the UN calling for intervention, appeals to church leaders, requests for information from news media, boycott actions against governments committing genocide, and more. Such Situation Rooms can help transform museum viewers from passive onlookers into more informed and active world citizens –very much as an extension of their caring and honor of the specific people whose genocide is memorialized in the museum.
.
Recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the State of Israel
I cannot take leave—your press won’t allow me!—without a further reference to the State of Israel’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide. Israel has been entirely wrong in not recognizing the Armenian Genocide. At the same time, thank heaven I have been able to say now for many years that we have won the battle for recognition of the Armenian Genocide in Israeli culture, our media, and in our public. When a few years ago a delegation of four of us – Prof. Yair Auron, Prof. Yehuda Bauer, Former Minister Yossi Sarid, and myself — came to lay wreaths at the Armenian Genocide Memorial, we indeed represented our larger Israeli society.
At this very writing we have been informed that the Knesset will hold a major hearing on recognition of the Armenian Genocide. The overall Knesset has already voted – now for the third time in Israeli history – to hold hearings on possible recognition of the Armenian Genocide. Each of these votes in itself has represented some progress towards our goal. In the Israeli system a proposal then has to be reviewed and decided by a major committee of the Knesset. Politics are not simple, as you know, and our opponents have succeeded in the past in defeating the recognition at this level.
This time the proposal will go to the Committee on Education where, unlike proceedings in the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Security where a proposal even can be buried without any discussion at all and no one knows what happened, discussion and voting in the Education Committee will be publicly known to us. My closest colleagues and I have not been too hopeful of success, but now there is more possibility of success than we previously estimated. In truth the possibility of recognition is greater now that Turkey has shown its vicious side to Israel, and there are many of us who will be ashamed if we now achieve recognition for this reason rather than on the basis of a real correction of Israel’s error all these years. But you do not have to doubt that we will celebrate too.
I would like to conclude with inspiring words recently by Armenia’s President Serzh Sargsyan21 and also a moving statement by Armenia’s longtime former Foreign Minister, Vartan Osakian, speaking at the UN on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps of the Nazis.22 Both recognize eloquently that
we human beings are all together in one planetary civilization and that we must fight on behalf of all human life.
President Sargsyan said to the Russian press:
There can be no reconciliation without Genocide recognition. Those who are trying to present attempts to establish relations with Turkey as reconciliation are wrong. Real reconciliation comes after recognition…
The fact of Armenian genocide is indisputable and we must spare no effort for Turkey to recognize the Genocide finally. It is a struggle for justice and for security. It is at the end of the day, a struggle for inadmissibility of such crimes not only in our region, but throughout the world..
Then Foreign Minister Osakian said:
After Auschwitz, we are all Jews, we are all Gypsies, we are all unfit, deviant and undesirable, for someone, somewhere. After Auschwitz, the conscience of man cannot remain the same. Man’s inhumanity to men, to women, to children, and to the elderly, is no longer a concept in search of a name, an image, a description. Auschwitz lends its malefic aura to all the Auschwitzes of history, our collective history, both before and after.”
.
In parting, once again, I thank the President of Armenia and the Armenian people for the great honor you have bestowed on me of a Presidential Medal for my contributions to recognition of the Armenian Genocide and my many years of academic researches of all denials of genocides.
REFERENCES AND NOTES
1 Barnea, Nahum (May 5 2011). Remember, don’t forget [column about award of Armenian Presidential Prize to Prof. Israel W Charny]. Yediot Ahronot. (Hebrew).
2 Rummel, R.J. (1997). Power Kills: Democracy as a Method of Nonviolence. New Brunswick,NJ:Transaction Publishers
3 Erdogan threats expel 100,000. See GPN GENOCIDE PREVENTION NOW, Issue 3. Shut Up About the Armenians or We’ll Hurt Them Again.
http://www.genocidepreventionnow.org/HomeIssue5Winter2011/GPNISSUES/Issue3Summer2010/tabid/ 70/ctl/DisplayArticle/mid/460/aid/281/Default.aspx
4 Turks Hit PKK with Chemical Weapons. GPN GENOCIDE PREVENTION NOW, Issue 4. http://www.genocidepreventionnow.org/HomeIssue5Winter2011/GPNISSUES/Issue4Fall2010/tabid/90/ctl/DisplayArticle/mid/523/aid/161/Default.aspx
Tuncel, Sebahat (June 18-19, 2011). Arab Spring, Kurdish winter: Turkey must grant rights to Kurds or face their fury. International Herald Tribune.
5 Iran Denies Holocaust. GPN GENOCIDE PREVENTION NOW, Issue 4. http://www.genocidepreventionnow.org/HomeIssue5Winter2011/GPNISSUES/Issue4Fall2010/tabid/90/ctl/DisplayArticle/mid/519/aid/187/Default.aspx
6 Richter, Elihu D. with Alex Barnea and Yael Stein (Spring 2010). Iran Follow-up Tracking: Incitement to genocide, support for terror, pursuit of nuclear weapons, and suppression of human rights – from prediction, precaution, and prevention to … preemption? GPN GENOCIDE PREVENTION NOW, Issue 2. http://www.genocidepreventionnow.org/HomeIssue5Winter2011/GPNISSUES/Issue2Spring2010/tabid/71/ctl/DisplayArticle/mid/482/aid/59/Default rights in Iran:
Cotler, Irwin (Summer 2011). Human rights in Iran: Nuclear threat, incitement to genocide, state- sanctioned terrorism and violations of rights of Iranian citizens. GPN GENOCIDE PREVENTION NOW, Issue 7. http://www.genocidepreventionnow.org/Home/GPNISSUES/Issue7Summer2011/tabid/108/ctl/DisplayArtic le/mid/734/aid/322/Default.aspx
7 Yeranian, Edward (April 19, 2010). Iran says work has begun on new nuclear enrichment plant. VOA News.com
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/middle-east/Report-Iran-Expanding-Uranium-Enrichment- 91488114.html
8 Rummel, R.J. (1999). Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder since 1900. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
Rummel, R. J. data can also be accessed on his websites: www.hawaii.edu/powerkills, and www.joyphim.org, also on his blog on democratic peace, freedomspace.blogspot.com
Note: For a long time Professor Rummel gave the figure of 174 million dead as his conservative estimate of those killed by genocide (or other forms of mass murder, depending on your definition of genocide) between 1900 to 1994. In 2005 he announced that he had recalculated, especially in the light of data about genocide by Mao, and was revising the figure for the 20th century to 262 million human beings mass murdered.
9 Camus, Albert (1946). Neither Victims Nor Executioners, originally published in Combat, 1946, p. 5.
10 Nalbandian, Edward (2010). Excerpts from Closing Remarks to the Conference: “The Crime of Genocide: Prevention, Condemnation and Elimination of Consequences,” Yerevan, Armenia, December 14, 2010.
11 Charny, Israel W. (December 2010) R 2 L ! Proposing a worldwide union of genocide victim peoples – and all caring people—on behalf of a right to life of all people. Presentation to International Conference in Yerevan, Armenia: “The Crime of Genocide: Prevention, Condemnation and Elimination of Consequences.” The proposal was presented for the first time to the International Conference, “Three Genocides, One Strategy,” in Athens, September 2010-ii). The organizers of the conference, who constitute an ongoing organization that is planning to hold a next conference in Stockholm, announced that they had resolved to support the proposed development of R2L. The text of this paper was published in the GPN Web Magazine: The psychology of denying other victims of a genocide: A quest for exclusivity and superiority — disturbingly, not unlike similar motives in those who commit genocide (-updating the theory of the psychology of denial of genocide 2010). GPN GENOCIDE PREVENTION NOW, Issue 5. http://www.genocidepreventionnow.org/Home/SPECIALISSUE5ARMENIANGENOCIDECOVICTIMS/tabi d/101/ctl/DisplayArticle/mid/607/aid/245/Default.aspx
12 Evans, Gareth. The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and For All. Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, September 2008; Evans, Gareth and Mohamed Sahnoun. (November/December 2002). The responsibility to protect. Foreign Affairs.
13 To the best of my knowledge, the first scholar to call critical theoretical attention to the fact that victim peoples too have been genociders is Nicholas Robins who studied genocide and native peoples and noted that “there are also cases in which Indians were the perpetrators,” and he makes the important observation that this dimension of human history is often obscured. Robins, Nicholas A. (2002).
Genocide and Millennialism in Upper Peru: The Great Rebellion of 1780-1782. Westport, CN: Greenwood Publishing.
I found powerful examples in Japan where I visited reverently the two museums of the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and found no acknowledgment of the history of Japan’s invasion and genocidal persecution of the Chinese in Manchuria in earlier years, its clearcut aggression against the US and its brutal to genocidal treatment of Allied prisoners. These in no way remove the onus from serious consideration of the nuclear attacks and deliberation as to whether they constitute genocide for all that they were avowedly in self-defense and intended and did save Allied lives. Agree or disagree with him, the venerated father of genocide studies, Leo Kuper, took the position that genocide did take place. See Kuper, Leo (1985). The Prevention of Genocide. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
14 Charny, Israel W. (2007). Fighting Suicide Bombing: A Worldwide Campaign for Life. New York: Praeger Security International.
This proposal was also made to the International Symposium on the Holocaust convened by the Swedish government in Stockholm in 2004: Charny, Israel W. (2004). Battling for an Anti-Genocidal Culture.
15 Charny, Israel W. (1999). An International Peace Army. In Charny, et al. (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Genocide. Santa Barbara CA and Oxfords U.K.: ABC-Clio Publishers, pp. 649-651. See the summary and comments of Adam Jones, in Jones, Adam (2011). Genocide, A Comprehensive Introduction, Second Edition. London: Routledge, pp. 581-582. (The first edition of Dr. Jones’ comprehensive e text was published in 2006.). A summary excerpt from my original article and an excerpt from Dr. Jones’ comments will be found in GPN GENOCIDE PREVENTION NOW, www.genocide preventionnow.org, Issue 7 Summer 2011.
16 Thus, one observer of Yugoslavia wrote: “This is a culture of revenge where compromise is viewed as weakness. The brains and thoughts of Balkan people do not change so easily. There will be new cycles of revenge.” The New York Times proposed editorially that the West should help broadcast into Serbia news of the atrocities committed by its troops since Serbian media were forbidden to report them.” Sadako Ogata, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, wrote in 1999.
• First, we need to uphold the right to asylum.
• Second, fight xenophobia. Fear of foreigners is one of the most dangerous trends in modern society. It is a world-wide phenomenon.
• Third, assist countries in upholding refugee asylum. The brunt of migratory and refugee movements is borne by countries with insufficient resources to support even their own populations.
• Fourth, support multilateral humanitarian aid.
• Fifth, the international community must pay much closer attention to societies emerging from conflict. Peace-building in the period immediately after the end of conflict is a very weak link in the international cooperation system.
17 The truth is that I shudder at the thought of there being an international army or rapid deployment force at a too automatic call of any political leadership—an individual or a collective body—because I have learned that we humans and our leaders are notoriously dangerous, and that political intrigues, corruption and especially blind expansionist power seeking determine so many major decisions of people in power and collective groups such as nations and ideological groups. So many times our leaderships undertake destructive actions. The availability of an international army, however it is called a Peace Army, could mean that some leaders and institutions will be able to send striking forces and I plain don’t trust them for all that they may represent the most advanced forms of international governance committed to our values of peace, such as UN Security Councils acting on the recommendations of UN Human Rights Commissions.
On the other hand, I have little choice but to TRY to enjoy the leadership of such agencies if I want to overcome the time-honored rotten tradition of this world for mass murder which otherwise is a bloody certainty. What I would want is for our world governance system try to develop an immediate IPA response mechanism that is subject to a multiple check-and-balance structure for making the decision to dispatch the army, but the check and balance system will have to operate with immediacy– say like a judge being called out of bed to rule on an imminent execution. Here is a challenge for creative political science design. When a General Dallaire calls from a Rwanda asking for troops, I want to be able to send them out immediately and save hundreds of thousands of lives.
18 Harff, Barbara, and Gurr, Ted Robert (1993). Early warning of communal conflicts and humanitarian crises: Proceedings of a workshop held at the Center for International Development and Conflict Management, University of Maryland, November 5-6, 1993; Harff, Barbara, and Gurr, Ted Robert (1996). Minorities at greatest risk of humanitarian emergencies. The United Nations University and the World Institute for Development Economics Research, (28pp.);.Harff, Barbara, and Gurr, Ted Robert (1998).
Systematic early warning of humanitarian emergencies. Journal Peace Research, 35 (5) 551-579.;Harff, Barbara, and Gurr, Ted Robert (2004). Ethnic Conflict in World Politics. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
19 This proposal was also presented to the International Symposium on the Holocaust convened by the Swedish government in Stockholm in 2004: Charny, Israel W. (2004). Battling for an Anti-Genocidal Culture.
20 This proposal was also given in the above presentation and has since been put into active operation by the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem with major assistance from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. We publish a Web Magazine under the name GPN GENOCIDE PREVENTION NOW. See www.genocidepreventionow.org Four issues of the magazine were published in 2010. At this writing, in 2011 one Special Issue on Co-Victims in the Armenian Genocide (Issue 5) and two more magazines have been published.
21 Sarkisian, Serzh (2011). No reconciliation without genocide recognition, says Sarkisian. Asbarez; also in Moskoviki Novosti.
22 From a speech given by the Republic of Armenia’s then Foreign Minister, Vartan Oskanian, before the United Nations’ 28th Special Session in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps.